
Lawyer lawyer lawyer LAWYER lawyer LAWYER - x0f1a
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/05/lawyer-lawyer-lawyer-lawyer-lawyerlawyer.html
======
dragonwriter
The bizarre thing about this post is that it attacks Patio11's post which
emphasized _consulting with a lawyer_ (and _predicted_ that the result of that
consultation would be firing the biz dev guy for cause, but emphasized that
the consultation was important), rather than any of the many comments that
recommended the action that Patio11 _predicted_ that a lawyer would recommend,
without advising consulting with an expert in the applicable area first.

This is bizarre, because her objection does not seem to be with the idea of
consulting with a relevant expert and being guided by their opinion, but with
firing without doing so, which _isn 't what Patio11 recommended_. From other
things in the post, its clear that the real issue is that the poster has a
personal animus for Patio11 because of some ancient personal drama the two
apparently had on HN in the past, and her perception that that interaction
resulted in the eruption of negative treatment of her by others in the HN
community. And, it really seems like she is mistargeting Patio11's response as
a pretext to resurrect drama over that and, simultaneously, make some vague
implications about gender dynamics at HN based on Patio11 being a high-karma-
rank male poster and her being a high-karma-rank female poster and the
relation that has with the old drama.

------
patio11
I believe I know why Michelle is dissatisfied with an interaction we had some
years ago over email, but that is not my story to share. I'm positive that
I've never criticized her, on or off HN, nor attempted to induce other people
to do so.

My comment about "A younger, stupider me" does explicitly repudiate advice
that I had given before to people, because I had come to realize there are
much better ways to freelance; it is in no way a commentary about other
people.

That is all I intend to say about this.

------
jasode
_> So, I am female._

Yes, but here's the way I read it: "I am [a] female" and you provided one
anecdote for us to consider. (E.g. Working relationship turned out fine for
you in the end.)

Nonetheless, I don't read it as "I represent females". My experience behind
closed doors with HR about harassing males is to err on the side of
termination.

Sure, if a man makes 2 offers for a _" drinks after work?"_ and the woman
refuses... it's reasonable to take him aside and say, _" dude, cool your jets,
she's not interested. Pursuing it is not good for your career. Are you getting
what I'm saying??? Great! Now get back to work. (smile.)"_

However, sending a comment with MILF Mother I'd Like to Fornicate is a totally
valid trigger for the company to go nuclear and fire you.

I guess we have different thresholds for what is hapless romantic ineptness
and what is bad behavior. I respect Mz's perspective but I disagree with it.

~~~
smoyer
"Sure, if a man makes 2 offers for a "drinks after work?" and the woman
refuses"

Turn that around ... if the woman is making the offer and the man refuses,
he's likely to still feel flattered but the woman is likely to get the signal
and move on.

But ... many men are absolutely clueless and will never get that signal. On
the other hand, if the man asks every day but goes no further, is that really
sexual harassment or is it just an expression of interest? I can't speak as a
woman, but I'd imagine she's thinking "this guy is truly clueless". Does she
also get irritated by it over time? Probably?

So I think part of this discussion needs to acknowledge that you can't write
HR policy that will satisfy everyone. What you can do is put absolute limits
in place, and provide a way for positive feedback - my favorite part of the
story is that the woman and man eventually rebuilt trust and had a good
working relationship. In my experience, this will never work with some people
- it becomes an obsession for them and policy is irrelevant.

~~~
mjolk
> if the woman is making the offer and the man refuses, he's likely to still
> feel flattered but the woman is likely to get the signal and move on.

I've had the opposite experience. I didn't feel flattered and she didn't get
the hint.

>But ... many men are absolutely clueless and will never get that signal.

Weasel words. We're in Anecdote City right now.

>So I think part of this discussion needs to acknowledge that you can't write
HR policy that will satisfy everyone.

The HR policies exist to prevent sexual harassment and to optimize for "safe
against lawsuits." They're not supposed to make people satisfied or happy,
they're there to protect the company.

~~~
smoyer
"Weasel words"? - I don't agree. My observations are based on 35 years in the
workforce and I've seen all sorts of weird male-female interaction.

"Broad generalizations"? - Certainly. I'm not surprised at all that you've
experienced exactly the opposite interaction (and I've seen extreme cases of
that twice). But I also worded my post carefully to convey really loose values
- "the woman is likely" and "many men are".

I haven't collected statistics, my experience is that men are more attuned to
what's appropriate than "in my distant path" and that women are less tolerant
of it (both good things IMHO). So you can disregard my opinions, but if we're
going to require double-blind studies to post in HN comments, this place is
going to get very quiet.

I do agree with your paragraph about HR policies and lawsuits. Isn't it nice
on those occasions when HR is better than that?

------
meesles
What is up with this Reddit-like trend towards drama and immature posts on HN?
I don't come on here to see this kind of junk, I come on here to find
informative posts on topics surrounding tech. I don't care about your beef
with patio11. Hell, I don't even care who you two are. Please stop polluting
this site with meta posts that reference each other, which encourages less
useful information and more clutter on here.

~~~
beeboop
I recommend just flagging it and moving on.

------
bargl
Can I just say that I <sarcasm>love</sarcasm> how people are immediately
jumping on the, LETS FUCKING NUKE THIS GUY bandwagon.

How do we know the complaint was legitamate? Where is the scientific doubt?
Where is the investigation?

While I don't approve of the OP raking another HN user over the coals this
publicly. She does make a GREAT point.

Seek mediation, don't fire right away. She isn't saying don't get a lawyer,
that's what HR would do in almost all cases. They'd probably have independent
mediation where they spoke with both people in an attempt to see if things
could be worked out.

But that is in fact what adults do. They mediate, they don't act without doing
research, finding context and getting both sides of the story. If the male
says, "Well I never said that!" and you terminate his employment how is that
an appropriate reaction? What if he DIDN'T actually say she was a milf?

For all the sanity I see here on HN a little discretion and taking a little
more thought before an action would be something I'd EXPECT this community to
applaud. She isn't saying don't fire this guy, she's just saying don't fire
him right now.

I also want to go on record saying I do think that the female who filed the
complaint was not lying at all. I would suggest that you implicitly trust her
statement, but you also need to talk to the other employee. You should get a
lawyer involved. BUT you should also get HR involved. If this is something you
outsource to a company that does HR then great, but don't just nuke the guy.

~~~
mschuster91
> But that is in fact what adults do. They mediate, they don't act without
> doing research, finding context and getting both sides of the story. If the
> male says, "Well I never said that!" and you terminate his employment how is
> that an appropriate reaction?

Sorry, but that isn't true all too often.

We have seen both radfems and rad-MRAs starting shitstorms on the Internet
over all kinds of stuff where a reasonable adult just thinks "what the fuck
have they all been smoking", including SWATting, shitstorming employers, death
threats, vile behavior etc.

I desperately wish that everyone calms down a lot and thinks before typing,
but unfortunately, this is no longer possible: only maximum brutality will
ensure publicity, no matter the costs.

~~~
bargl
I should have written. "But that is in fact what adults should do".

------
GVIrish
Eh, I would say that there is more than one viable way to approach the issue
and it totally depends on the people involved and severity of the infraction.

In this case maybe counseling/training could fix the behavior in the harasser,
maybe it wouldn't. The other thing is, sometimes there is conduct that merits
firing outright, without counseling. For some people/companies that line would
have been crossed with the 'milf' comment.

From the standpoint of making the world a better place I do think that
incidents like these can be turned into teachable moments so that people can
understand better what is, and is not appropriate. But really, companies
should make that part of their training when people are brought on so that
situations like this can be avoided in the first place. If someone still
crosses the line after that, then they won't be surprised when they are fired.

------
spriggan3
> Men and women need to learn to interact at work

I disagree, there is something called respect and politeness, if you need to
learn it at work ,then your parents did a bad job raising you.

Calling a woman "a milf" is inappropriate, period. I'm black, if a colleague
called me "n__gger", would he need training so he can learn to interact at
work with black people ? that's not serious.

If the male employee was just a bit pushy and insistant, while it is
inexcusable, I would give him a warning and training. But you can't make up
excuses for someone who call a female employee "a milf". There is no training
that can fix that. That's not being "insensitive", that's being straight out
macho in a professional context.

~~~
ted12345
Is calling a black person "nigger" really equivalent to calling a woman
"milf"?

Somehow I think that analogy just confuses the issue.

~~~
mjolk
I can't speak for the person you're replying to, but I think he's stating that
there's lines in the sand that once you cross, sitting with HR and watching
some dumb training videos and reading some policy documents is no longer
sufficient recourse.

> Over the weekend... He asked to take the conversation off Slack (moved to
> Whatsapp) and asked if they could hang out (she said, "sure as friends in
> work context"), referred to her as a milf (ugh...), and asked if he could
> tell her a secret (she refused)[0]

In the context of the original post, I believe this is one of those cases. To
tie this into the analogy to which you're responding, if one of my employees
asked another to move off work-chat so he/she could assail him/her and was
acting genuinely sleazy, I'd pack up the offending employee's desk, lock down
accounts and access on Sunday night, and make sure I was there first on Monday
to escort him/her out of the building.

The language that my team uses would make a drunk sailor blush, but I think
this is a pretty clear case of justified firing. It's damn hard to hire a
great team and nothing will destroy it faster than interpersonal issues.

0
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857)

~~~
belorn
Lets compare to a similar situation but without this being about men vs women.
Two co-workers go to a bar, and gets into a physical fight. During the fight,
one of them call the other something really inappropriate like n__gger or
s_ut.

Do you fire both instantly the next day? Physical fights and insults are both
unprofessional, and as a zero tolerance policy, that means they need to be let
go instantly. Do you only fire the insult throwing employee? Do you talk to
either one of them before issuing the boot?

~~~
mjolk
Going into another anecdote just confuses the matter. Like most interpersonal
issues, the specific context and actions are important.

I will say that the scenario that you've created is markedly different.

------
masklinn
That's a bit of an odd post.

The original post was by an owner/founder ("just hired a new biz person", "my
existing employees", "my employee", "I'm one of the founders"), had they been
big enough to have a dedicated HR department with any possible expertise in
that (rather than, say, one person in charge of hiring and payroll) they'd
naturally have gone through that rather than asked how to handle it on HN.

I thus assumed — and I think most others readers including patio11 did as well
— that there was no such HR with any expertise on the subject which could
handle the situation.

------
bkeroack
It's not a "[m]en and women need to learn to interact at work" issue. It's not
your job to teach employees this. It's a _business continuity_ issue. If an
employee is kept on who shows this kind of totally inappropriate behavior it
can become an __existential threat __to the company.

If (probably "when") the behavior continues--or worsens--now you're
responsible for keeping an employee that has a known history of sexual
harassment. I would posit that there is not a single employee so valuable as
to be worth this risk.

~~~
vacri
Speaking of business continuity, staff churn is costly and time consuming -
advertising the position, doing interviews, negotiating, paying a recruiter...
and even when you finally get the new employee, it takes a few months before
they're fully familiar with the job.

It's worth having a talk first to try and fix things, warning the employee
that it won't be tolerated again. It's not like once you have the talk you
lose all future opportunity to fire them.

------
anoonmoose
_Please do get HR involved. Please do not listen to the people here who are
advising you to nuke the man from orbit, it 's the only way. Doing that will
only deepen the problem._

Seems to me that doing this would deepen one problem ( _...please do not use
final solution /terrorist tactics. This only hurts women in the long run._)
but I'm not sure it deepens the actual problem the poster from yesterday had
(a potential lawsuit).

~~~
cptskippy
I think what she's trying to say is that while firing the individual is an
easy solution, it isn't the best solution. In fact I would say it has a number
of negative consequences for the employer beyond the cost of losing the
employee.

Firing the individual without an investigation by HR sends a message of zero
tolerance to intolerance (an intolerance of intolerance) to every other
employee in the company, that any employee faux pas is utterly unacceptable.
This would create a guarded work environment and have negative impact on the
culture.

The two employees agreed to take the conversation from a work platform (i.e.
Slack) to a personal platform (i.e. Whatsapp). To me this is akin to asking
someone in the Office break room if they'd like to get coffee at Starbucks,
it's asking to broaden a relationship beyond the scope of coworker. At this
point the scope of their relationship (i.e. work related vs personal) is
nebulous and I would argue broadens the scope of acceptable conversation.

From what little we know, it sounds like it wasn't unreasonable for him to
think the bounds had been extended and also the guy grossly overstepped his
bounds. In that regard, firing him summarily might be grounds for a lawsuit.

------
medecau
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857)

------
squeaky-clean
I saw the author's comment on the original thread, I think it's an alright
idea in a Fortune 500 company like she mentions, but not so realistic for a
startup. How large is the original Ask HN author's company? They might not
even have a proper HR department, or person, and nothing set up for
sensitivity training.

"Men and women need to learn to interact at work" stuck out to me as well. I
think they should learn that... around the age of 12 after getting over their
fear of cooties. Not the first few weeks at a new job.

It's fine to be trained on "How to speak to investors during a conference
call." or "How to speak to other companies during a sales call or trip.",
skills related to the job. But not "How to speak to someone attractive in a
professional setting."

If you bring on a new dev, it's expected that you'll have to teach them
internal stuff, in-depth details on your current stack. It's a little annoying
to have to teach them how to use Git properly, pull, branch, push, but
sometimes you pick someone that really doesn't know. But I would certainly
want a dev to be fired if they asked me what a for loop was. This feels that
elementary to me. I would expect every developer to know what a loop is, and I
would expect every single employee to understand at least the basics of human
decency.

Also, all the emphasis on gender in the blog post and author's profile. Why is
this a gender issue, it's just an etiquette issue. What if it was two men, or
two women in this scenario? Why does it matter the gender of the two people
involved? And what does it matter the gender of the commenter? For me,
everyone on HN is a genderless construct, and I almost never read. I saw the
patio11's comment in the other thread and agreed with it most. I had no idea
it was patio11 that wrote it.

------
tmaly
what is the beef with patio11 ? He has given my good comments on my posts over
the years. That is how HN is designed.

~~~
justaman
This article reads as "Don't take his advice. I don't like him therefore his
advice is bad."

~~~
chillingeffect
I'm kind of getting the same vibe, BUT...

...I'm assuming there's something subtler and importanter to it, because it
seems Michele/Mz has a damned decent brain going on. I mean seriously, how
often do you find someone with this nuance of opinion:

"I loathe the expression "The Patriarchy" and I think it mostly does not fit
the issues of gender disparity seen on HN. I can think of one or two men there
who strike me as staunch supporters of "The Patriarchy," but I think most men
there are not actively trying to keep "little women" in "their place." They
are mostly just human beings, who happen to be male, who don't know a better
answer than the crappy situation we currently have. But, then, most women
don't have better answers either and have much more vested interest in finding
such answers. I see no reason to vilify men for such a prosaic shortcoming of
happenstance." [1]

[1] [http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/hn-
tools.html](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/hn-tools.html)

~~~
cmdrfred
That was very well said. Statements like this attempt to find common cause and
allow us to come together for a solution. Calling someone a member of "The
Patriarchy" is dismissive and removes men from the conversation.

------
bcpermafrost
contex context CONTEXT CONTEXT

No two situations are the same. If the behavior can be corrected go for the HR
route. If the guy seems like a pretentious idiot, then lawyer up. Its the
managers job to assess the situation and act accordingly. If its affecting the
team, then something has to be done, which course of action he takes is on him
to see if anything can be done.

No one here has all the pieces to judge what the guy should have done. We can
give advice, or different perspectives but this michele girl is just about as
qualified to give advice as this alleged patio11. This blog is less about the
actual situation then just trying to up one patio11 it looks like.

------
Mendenhall
I had read the original post and the comment you are referring to, but I did
not post in the original thread. While I think you do have very valid points
and definitely some words to consider. When I got to this line I paused.

"Men and women need to learn to interact at work."

While I think it is very true the question I asked myself is, should my
company be the training ground for people to learn to get along ?

The answer I came up with is a resounding no. I think that knowing how to
interact with the opposite sex is something the individual is responsible for
before even entering the work place. If they want to pay me to teach them
manners then so be it, but I am not going to pay them to teach them manners.

Side note on patio11, I don't know or care who the dude is, from what you
describe he sounds a little sketchy but you know how internet rumors etc are.
Sometimes internet fanboys rush to support their hero, I didn't want to be
confused with those :)

My opinion is, Nuke em from orbit, its the only way to be sure! but I do think
your approach can be valid as well, just not the one I personally would take
in this day and age.

Side note - I don't like the term terrorist being used so lightly.

~~~
smoyer
I tend to lean towards patio11's solution simply because the description of
the perpetrator made him sound like someone who already failed to grasp the
limits of the social contract.

As for patio11's being sketchy, I think I've read everything he's written
(starting on the Joel-on-Software forum) and while I don't agree with him on
everything, I do believe he's got reasonable ethics and morals. Why use the
word sketchy when you simply don't agree with his opinion? And bear in mind it
was an opinion based solely on what was written in that Ask HN.

~~~
icebraining
_Why use the word sketchy when you simply don 't agree with his opinion?_

The post described a pretty different situation that just disagreeing with
him. Not that I'm taking it at face value, since it wasn't described in enough
detail to evaluate it for myself.

------
thieving_magpie
I read the article for the discussion on sexual harassment and left wondering
if I should arbitrarily hate some dude on HN. What is this doing here?

------
throwaway5752
As CEO, you have a moral obligation to your employees, a fiduciary
responsibility to the board and stockholders, and a legal responsibility under
California and Federal law that makes your suggestion poor advice.

It is very nice that in your instance and outcome that was so mutually
agreeable was reached by all parties. However, it could have easily gone
differently, and can go differently in the future. As other commenters in that
other thread noted: if the individual who was harassed was on a PIP, if the
individual harasses an external vendor/contractor/customer, if he or someone
else harasses another employee in the future, if the harassee leaves the
company under circumstances that are not mutually disagreeable... all of these
are very likely to result in material civil settlements to the company (and
possibly the CEO personally) if this is not handled in a way very close to
what patio11 described. Raising with HR vs contacting a lawyer will certainly
result in the same outcome, regardless.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>It is very nice that in your instance and outcome that was so mutually
agreeable was reached by all parties. However, it could have easily gone
differently, and can go differently in the future.

Exactly. It was a big risk and her company frankly got lucky that it worked
out.

------
donretag
Clickbait. Pure and simple.

Not only that but sentences like "I appear to be the highest ranked openly
female member there" appears to be a person obsessed with points, giving
validity to clickbait.

I have enough points, go ahead a downvote. They do not translate into money.

------
tptacek
This is a contender for the dumbest thread on HN of 2016. What _doesn 't_ it
have? Drama? Gender parity arguments? Relitigating old threads? It's like an
extravaganza of stupid.

~~~
peterwwillis
Please follow the HN guidelines.

~~~
tptacek
Everyone posting earnestly on this thread should be embarrassed. I'm even
unhappy Patrick did.

~~~
jasode
I think you're overreacting here. Yes, the impetus of the original article was
a weird "he said, she said" soap opera. And _some_ comments are feeding on
that aspect.

However, it looks like majority of comments are focusing on the "right" way to
deal with a MILF comment. Some members express that it is a zero tolerance
offense. Some other members express that something like that should only be a
warning and the person given a 2nd chance.

I think it's a productive conversation because even if neither side changed
the others' opinions, at least we learned what others' thresholds were. I was
surprised to learn that MILF is not disrespectful enough for some folks to
terminate the employee. Now I question what others think is within the
boundaries of not firing. What about a quick butt grab in the hallway? How
about sending a nude to a coworker's phone/email? In any case, the only thing
that taints the discussion of this important topic is that it was begun by the
soap opera article submission. Some of us ignored that part.

~~~
kbenson
> I was surprised to learn that MILF is not disrespectful enough for some
> folks to terminate the employee.

I suspect that some people are unclear of, or have suppressed in favor of the
colloquial use, the definition or expanded form of MILF. If you think of it as
"very attractive mother and/or mature woman", which I think the meaning has
shifted to somewhat over time, then I can see how some people might have
differing interpretations for the severity of the remark. That's not to say
it's acceptable, it _is not_ , but I can see how someone could be somewhat
surprised _initially_ the severity of the negative reaction to their comment,
through _ignorance_ or _carelessness_.

------
ulber
The comment by patio11 [1] this article is trying to refute is not an appeal
to authority, and as such this article (being an ad hominem) seems ill
considered. Why attack the user instead of the comment?

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666947)

~~~
busterarm
If anything, Michelle demonstrates a good argument for getting rid of the
/leaders page on HN.

Comparing e-penises is an adolescent exercise and waste of time.

------
kbart
Please, keep your personal conflicts out of HN.

~~~
untog
People don't write their blog posts exclusively for HN.

Just because someone other than the original author posted an item to HN does
not mean the original author should be held to account for some perceived
slight to this site.

~~~
busterarm
I don't know if you noticed but she has a dedicated section in her site
navigation labelled 'HN-related'.

Whether her blog post is exclusively for HN or not, her post is definitely
for/about HN.

~~~
zepto
Is the implication that she shouldn't write about HN on her blog?

~~~
busterarm
No, the implication is that if the rules of community are no personal attacks,
making those personal attacks in another venue where it's still clearly and
identifiably about the community/member is still a violation of the rules of
community.

~~~
zepto
I think you have made this up.

I can't see anywhere in the guidelines where there is any rule about not
posting anything off-site relating to HN, or not identifying members of the
community.

There isn't even a rule against what you are choosing to label a 'personal
attack', but looks reasonably civil to me.

Even if there were such a rule, attempting to silence dissent _outside_ the
communities own spaces is behavior typical of a cult or authoritarian regime.
A healthy community isn't afraid of people thinking and saying things that
some of its members don't like.

~~~
busterarm
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906242)

I'm not saying silence dissent outside HN. People are free to post on their
blogs whatever they want. If they are making a personal attack against someone
on HN on their personal blog, the link to that blog post should be blocked
from this site and the user absolutely warned/banned if they themselves share
it.

~~~
zepto
How do you know it's an attack and not just a statement of fact?

~~~
busterarm
I don't think whether it's an attack or not has much to do with the factual
basis of a private disagreement that they had 4 years ago and how that speaks
to patio11's character or the quality of his advice now.

Not that I'm sticking up for Patrick. I frequently find myself in (often
silent) disagreement with him, but the post was extremely flimsy to me and not
much more than an offsite meta-discussion that contributes neither to the
original discussion nor this community. I flagged the link but since it
remains I think this is worth discussing.

~~~
zepto
If it's not an attack then everything you've said on this thread is
invalidated.

You may not be sticking up for Patrick, but you are sticking up for something.
In the absence of an attack, it's unclear what.

~~~
busterarm
It's absolutely an attack.

~~~
zepto
What makes it an attack? If what it says is true, it sounds like Patrick also
engaged in an attack. Why isn't he so vehemently sanctioned?

~~~
busterarm
I read the linked post. Patrick wasn't even addressing Mz or a comment of Mz.
On the face of it, it looks like Mz read too much into it.

~~~
zepto
I didn't see such a post - what are you referencing?

------
shrugger
[deleted]

~~~
pc86
Yes, this guy that operates "The personal blog of Michele in California" and
has basically her entire HN profile dedicated to the fact that she's a woman.

~~~
svote1
Gender is irrelevant when it comes to harassment. Men and women both can be
harassed. Also, guy is gender neutral, it's 2016.

~~~
pc86
I don't consider myself a feminist by any stretch, and I'm a pretty
conservative person generally (certainly more conservative than most of HN).
But Jesus Christ, the _definition_ of "guy" is literally "a man." Let's not
start this "I didn't mean the actual definition of the word when I said it"
trope.

And I didn't say gender had anything to do with harassment. We're discussing
the article, which happens to be written by a woman.

~~~
busterarm
Absolutely incorrect. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2015/05/14/the-origin-of-the-word-guy/)

~~~
peterwwillis
It's not incorrect. Guy does mean "a man." Gal means "a woman." Those are
their uses today. They are as gendered as "man".

And just so I can get really pedantic: gender is inferred as a context of
speech. If you are calling a cis-woman "guy" or "dude", it is inferred you are
speaking colloquially. If you call a transwoman "guy" or "dude", it is
inferred [by the subject] that you are mis-gendering them, and is offensive.

And more to the point of the context of the (now-deleted) comment: if you say
"guy", "he", "him", and "dude" all about the same subject, you are calling the
subject a man. You can't argue your way around blatantly misgendering someone
multiple times.

~~~
busterarm
That's the thing about language though. It is because you choose it to be so.
Other people choose for 'guys' and 'dude' to have a different meaning.

Collectively we decide who wins. Nobody is right or wrong in the present
because it's a never-ending battle over an idea. Words change over time -
always have and always will. You can only be right historically in context.
'Guy', _historically_, does not mean 'man'. What it means now is your
interpretation. You should not get so bent out of shape because other people
disagree with you.

There is an inherent problem with basing gender-politics around the meanings
of words. How do you deal with people coming from languages that do not have
gendered pronouns that are trying to translate their language into English? Do
you beat them over the head for how wrong they are (before you say no, I've
seen it countless times)?

Also hey, guess what. 'He' has seen use as a gender-neutral pronoun well into
the 1960s.

~~~
peterwwillis
So you're saying it doesn't matter what you call someone, because hey,
interpretations.

~~~
busterarm
No, intent is what matters, not your feelings about certain words. I can't
control whether you get upset or not but I can control whether I intended to
offend.

Note this is not the same as ignoring someone's expressed choice (when being
directly addressed) if they have an issue with certain words.

~~~
peterwwillis
You have lots of control over whether someone gets upset. Don't call someone a
racial or sexual slur and don't misgender them, for example. If you know some
use of language is or could be problematic, don't use it. If you're not aware
what language that may be and accidentally offend someone, obviously you
shouldn't be held at fault, but you should then take it upon yourself to learn
what the problem was so you don't repeat it.

Because I personally know people who see 'guy' as a gender-specific word - and
because the dictionary says "guy" means "a man" \- I know i'm not going to
ever call a woman "guy", because it may offend them. I think this is a pretty
simple concept...

~~~
kbenson
> If you know some use of language is or could be problematic, don't use it.

I believe this is the disconnect between your argument and the prior
commentor's comment. This falls under "Note this is not the same as ignoring
someone's expressed choice (when being directly addressed) if they have an
issue with certain words." The issue is whether the person speaking should
know and consider guys to be gendered, and possibly offensive. The fact some
people are saying it's not gendered is evidence that's it's ambiguous to some
people. To assume someone was purposefully misgendering you without knowledge
of whether it's an honest mistake, as we've seen it might be, is not conducive
to communication.

> Because I personally know people who see 'guy' as a gender-specific word -
> and because the dictionary says "guy" means "a man" \- I know i'm not going
> to ever call a woman "guy", because it may offend them.

Which is fine, but you've been presented with evidence that all people don't
necessarily have that same knowledge. You can continue to assume that this
knowledge must be universal and people that act in opposition to it are doing
so purposefully and without regard for the feelings of others, or you can
extend the benefit of a doubt, and assume until further evidence to the
contrary that they are misinformed about what you believe to be true. I
believe giving the benefit of a doubt it more useful and leads to better
outcomes in almost every respect.

