These threads are among the lowest-quality on Hacker News. Everyone has an opinion on sex, and therefore sexism. Let's cover some of the tired old ground:
1. "Jokes are not discrimination." I hate to tell you this, but tasteless jokes are part of the problem. People absorb and internalize their environment. Maybe if I phrase it this way: Why is it that you bombard kids with pictures of women in bikinis and men in lab coats, then wonder why women don't go into tech in spite of their competence?
2. "We should solve actual discrimination, this just isn't important." Sexism is a multifaceted, interconnected beast of many factors.
3. "What if a woman showed a picture of a man in a bikini?" You are not being clever by swapping the genders, this isn't some math problem where you can flip the sign and cancel a bunch of factors out. People are constantly exposed to media which equate the worth of women with their physical attractiveness, so showing a picture of a woman in a bikini leverages decades of social conditioning. It reinforces the idea that women should be evaluated based on cup size rather than the quality of their GitHub repositories. To make an analogy, if you are a man, were you ever stressed out (maybe during your 20s) about whether you were successful enough? Have you ever paid for a date that you couldn't really afford so you could impress a woman? Imagine if you went to a tech conference with tons of women, and they made jokes about men who are poor, and showed pictures of guys with $10k suits driving Audis, joked about never dating someone who wasn't at least a senior VP, and then a tubby, mustachioed woman who hasn't showered approaches you and drunkenly asks if she can see your wallet, and asks how much you make in a year. "I bet it's a lot." She says, thinking it's a compliment.
I'd like you all to listen to this last bit.
This is a discussion about sexism. It's a proper field of study, like chemistry. It doesn't make non-stick pans, rocket fuel, or methamphetamine. However, just like doing meth doesn't turn you into Walter White, living your life doesn't make you an expert on sexism.
Most of you guys I'm guessing have never read a single fucking book on sexism, but you're chiming in with your damn opinions anyway. The reason why Hacker News discussions on Go, tech startups, and prime numbers are so interesting is because Hacker News is filled with experts on those subjects. A reason why the Hacker News threads on sexism are so terrible is because y'all are lazy fuckers who don't know what the hell you're talking about. Owning a penis makes you about as qualified to comment on how pictures of women in bikinis affect women at tech conferences as, say, the fact that I own a bicycle makes me an expert at automobile maintenance.
It's the same kind of thinking that leads people to think that they can hold an interesting discussion on philosophy when they ask whether the "red" that you perceive is actually the same as the "blue" that I percieve. Okay, sure, that discussion is worth having, I guess, and if you've never read a book on philosophy in your entire fucking life it might actually cover new ground.
I don't claim to speak for everyone, but discussions like this feel counter-productive because there's nothing to really say, and no amount of text is going to accurately portray another person's experiences. At this point, these posts are effectively just someone standing up and shouting "hey, there's some more sexism over here!" So what? Go confront the people that matter, like the people the original post is targeting. Sure, it's worth sharing so that we remain somewhat up-to-date on what's going on in the industry, but there's not much meaningful discussion to be had.
1. "Jokes are not discrimination." I hate to tell you this, but tasteless jokes are part of the problem. People absorb and internalize their environment. Maybe if I phrase it this way: Why is it that you bombard kids with pictures of women in bikinis and men in lab coats, then wonder why women don't go into tech in spite of their competence?
2. "We should solve actual discrimination, this just isn't important." Sexism is a multifaceted, interconnected beast of many factors.
3. "What if a woman showed a picture of a man in a bikini?" You are not being clever by swapping the genders, this isn't some math problem where you can flip the sign and cancel a bunch of factors out. People are constantly exposed to media which equate the worth of women with their physical attractiveness, so showing a picture of a woman in a bikini leverages decades of social conditioning. It reinforces the idea that women should be evaluated based on cup size rather than the quality of their GitHub repositories. To make an analogy, if you are a man, were you ever stressed out (maybe during your 20s) about whether you were successful enough? Have you ever paid for a date that you couldn't really afford so you could impress a woman? Imagine if you went to a tech conference with tons of women, and they made jokes about men who are poor, and showed pictures of guys with $10k suits driving Audis, joked about never dating someone who wasn't at least a senior VP, and then a tubby, mustachioed woman who hasn't showered approaches you and drunkenly asks if she can see your wallet, and asks how much you make in a year. "I bet it's a lot." She says, thinking it's a compliment.
I'd like you all to listen to this last bit.
This is a discussion about sexism. It's a proper field of study, like chemistry. It doesn't make non-stick pans, rocket fuel, or methamphetamine. However, just like doing meth doesn't turn you into Walter White, living your life doesn't make you an expert on sexism.
Most of you guys I'm guessing have never read a single fucking book on sexism, but you're chiming in with your damn opinions anyway. The reason why Hacker News discussions on Go, tech startups, and prime numbers are so interesting is because Hacker News is filled with experts on those subjects. A reason why the Hacker News threads on sexism are so terrible is because y'all are lazy fuckers who don't know what the hell you're talking about. Owning a penis makes you about as qualified to comment on how pictures of women in bikinis affect women at tech conferences as, say, the fact that I own a bicycle makes me an expert at automobile maintenance.
It's the same kind of thinking that leads people to think that they can hold an interesting discussion on philosophy when they ask whether the "red" that you perceive is actually the same as the "blue" that I percieve. Okay, sure, that discussion is worth having, I guess, and if you've never read a book on philosophy in your entire fucking life it might actually cover new ground.