This is a really hard problem space to solve. I'm very sorry to see this drama happening and I have sympathy for both sides. I routinely run into the issue that if I try to understand why people did something that went badly/harmed people without looking to blame them per se, I get accused of being "an apologist." But in practice trying to understand why things happen is essential to finding a real solution. Merely a…
> I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate. What feels like a breakdown of trust in society has been on my mind a lot recently. Without trust, it seems communication and collaboration becomes impossible. How can society solve any of its problems when people can't discuss anything about those problems…
I've been on Hacker News over 11 years. I would like to think I've been building bridges, but it seems like nothing I do is ever enough to reassure people I'm not some SJW Feminazi here to just piss on the guys and let them know what misogynistic assholes they are and it gets hard to keep trying when most of the community has watched me starve for years and openly told me "Not my problem. Get a real job." (while my writing hits the front page, but people don't want to support it financially, knowing I'm handicapped, etc).
I don't have a whole lot more to give and I've spent much of this year wondering if it's time to throw in the towel and leave HN. It feels downright abusive at times to stay in a community where I feel I have done so much to reduce sexism and open doors for other women and improve participation of women here and it's the funnel for a multi-billion dollar business, yet I remain dirt poor.
It's a rather jagged, bitter pill to swallow and I think I deserve a helluva lot better.
But then I don't know where I would go if I left. HN is the least worst thing. Other places are worse.
Metafilter was a toxic cesspit that banned me for supposedly "self promoting." They like to wrench their shoulder out of place patting themselves on the back for how what awesome, wonderful people they are and the mods were actively encouraging the membership to bully me at a time when I was homeless. One member of Metafilter that had a hobby of harassing me while I was homeless was a female ER doctor. Another was a very privileged American pursuing their PhD while living in Europe.
When you left your comment, I was staring blankly at some other open tab wondering how in the heck to talk about rape prevention and best practices for dismantling rape culture without using the word "rape" at all, in part because it's a triggering word for people who have been assaulted and in part because I get accused of being full of bull for thinking I know anything about such topics.
Some problems are just hard to solve. I do what little I can, which doesn't seem to amount to a handful of sand in the grand scheme of things.
I guess the upside is I'm mostly well at this point, in spite of the entire world telling me I'm a deluded fruitcake so it's not like I'm ever going to get taken seriously or given any respect.
And this is probably all the wrong things to say, as usual. I wish I had an answer for you. There doesn't appear to be one, as best I can tell.