
Nerds and Male Privilege - seancron
http://kotaku.com/5868595/nerds-and-male-privilege
======
rayiner
One comment I wanted to make about this the last time this came up...

"Privilege" is a loaded word. It's a word that some people take great offense
to, but it's a word that cannot rationally be ignored.

Success can be a pretty fragile phenomenon. I never fully appreciated the
benefit of privilege until relatively recently. I was an unfocused teenager
who slacked in college, but stumbled onto a good career anyway (so far,
fingers crossed). I would like to ascribe it to turning myself around and
working hard, but the fact of the matter is that privilege played a huge role.
I got to work at a cool startup right out of high school, because I lived in
the sort of relatively nice neighborhood where well-connected people launching
startups from their basements might live. I never had to worry about credit
checks for jobs because my parents had kept me on a small line of credit all
through college to build up my history. When I quit my job to go to grad
school, I never worried about running short of money just as finals were
rolling around--daddy could always front me a couple of hundred to get me
through the rest of the month. This is not trust-fund level privilege, just
something pretty much any engineer or the like could provide for his (or her)
family, but I'm pretty sure without it I would be working some below-median
job today.

So... before you decry the article, remember that success, for most people, is
at the margins. Think about how you got to where you are, and ask yourself: if
people just found me 5% less credible because of my gender, race, etc, would
life really have turned out identically?

PS) I was reminded of how uneven things can subtly be a couple of days ago
during the SOPA hearings. One of the posts that made it to the front page of
reddit was a photo of some woman giving testimony, where the photo had been
edited to look like it was an x-ray shot through her shirt. I thought to
myself how interesting that was. Not that it was so insanely offensive in and
of itself, but rather because I've never seen something like that pop up on
the front page when a man says something dumb on TV.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Credit checks for jobs?

~~~
rayiner
Standard procedure in some fields, surprisingly common in others. I had a
friend get hassled about an open collection before taking a job with the feds.

~~~
mixmastamyk
No credit as a 20 year old should be acceptable, no?

~~~
burgerbrain
I would not worry about it.

Probably worth looking into establishing some credit anyway though, if you're
thinking about buying a car or anything like that in the near future.

------
ryanwaggoner
Is there a term for the ridiculous rhetorical tactic of insisting that any
attempt to refute one's claims as being illogical is itself only further proof
of the claims made? I stopped reading when he said this:

 _"I will pause now for the traditional arguments from my readers...Got all of
that out of your systems? Good.

Because that reaction is exactly what I'm talking about."_

Why bother having a discussion with someone who sets up their argument to be
that those who disagree with their argument are only proving the point?

~~~
sciurus
I think the author has a good point, although it's tricky to make: You can
spend all day making excuses for specific instances of sexism in comics and
video games, or you can realize that your ability and need to do that is a
sign of a problem.

~~~
Locke1689
You seem to be spending a lot of time making specific excuses to why you don't
need to listen to an opposing argument. Perhaps you should realize that your
inability to listen to logical arguments is a sign of a problem.

~~~
jdp23
Or, perhaps you should realize that the "logical" arguments are not actually
logical and have been repeatedly refuted.

~~~
prodigal_erik
If you're trying to win over rational people, and refutations are out there to
be had, they need to be included. Anyone who thinks "everyone says this
argument has the same glaring flaws, and that illustrates how _awesome_ the
argument is!" is at risk of reaching conspiracy-theory levels of crazy.

~~~
jdp23
The author explained why the people making the traditional arguments do in
fact illustrate how accurate his observation is. It's true though that
articles won't reach guys are so defensive or clueless on this subject that
they're not responding rationally.

------
127
Lets not be sexist and respond in a fashion that anyone would respond to a
male who whines: stop whining, get a life. Either put up or shut up. Can't
handle the heat? Stay out of the kitchen. If male centered entertainment
bothers you, make your own. Use your money as a vote to influence the
industry. I guarantee that the industry likes money.

The arguments that women should be treated with silver gloves are by their
very nature sexist.

"mouth-breathing troglodyte" pretty much immediately tells me what way the
article is going to go. Which is to demonize male sexuality.

"And that was when I shot him, your honor." another sign of clear bias.

This is like reading straight from a feminist cookbook. Nothing new, nothing
that would be worth any deeper thought.

I enjoy what I enjoy. It's not illegal so you may as well shut up. It's not up
to you, dear author, to tell me how I should live my life.

There was nothing new in the article. It was the same tired argument that
because men like boobs and they consume popular entertainment that contain
boobs they are evil. Which makes no sense to me.

Maybe as the author grows up and lives a little he will see through the
matrix.

We all have our biases. But it is a different thing entirely to confuse your
shallow rationalizations with actual fact.

~~~
AllenKids
I have but one quibble, why is treating women like a men automatically not
sexist? Your response follows the same line of logic as "gay people have equal
right, right to marry the opposite sex"

I think there is a blind spot.

------
DenisM
What a waste of time, this article. There is a great case to be made for
treating every human as a person, and not a member of the class, but he did
not make this case.

First, the author complains that women get treated only as sexual objects in
most games/comics/etc. Ok, that could be. It's not in Halo or Bioshock, the
only games I play, but let's look at the data. So then he mentions opposing
view - that men get sexualized too, and then instead of addressing that
objection calls it sexist and dismisses it. Really? I would expect some stats,
not simply "only sexist would say that" kind of reply. He does this repeatedly
throughout the article - not addressing an argument, but simply labeling it
with an ugly label and moving on. FWIW, the picture of batman he posted looks
sexualized to me, as far as I can judge those things.

Then he just goes to make unsubstantiated broad claims. But of course pointing
out lack of substance would be sexist, reflexive and defensive of me :)

A few choice quotes: "A man who's strong-willed or aggressive won't be
denigrated for it". In my neck of the woods he will. I did, and I saw others
going out of line getting a talk.

"...nor are men socialized to 'go along to get along'." Same thing here, I've
seen it all the time.

~~~
slavak
"It's not in Halo or Bioshock"

Not to take sides in this argument, but you might want to reconsider that
specific statement:
[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3449/3698998163_fe844856da.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3449/3698998163_fe844856da.jpg)
[http://gamingsrapture.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2011/...](http://gamingsrapture.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2011/12/halo.jpg)

------
jsz0
This article is built on a bunch of assumptions and stereotypes which is
terribly ironic given the subject matter. Some of it may be true but some of
it just very wrong.

 _Men can expect that their presence at an event won't automatically be
assumed to be decorative or secondary to another man._

Not really. Ask the benchwarmers for a high school sports team.

 _Despite the growing presence of women in comics, as publishers, editors and
creators as well as consumers, a preponderance of men will either treat women
at conventions as inconveniences, booth bunnies or even potential dates._

I can't comment on comic books but in the books, movies and TV shows I want
I've actually found the exact opposite is increasingly true. There's a strong
temptation to make the female characters super-human creatures with a PHD and
a shotgun. Always a witty comeback. Always the most moral and ethical
characters.

 _Men are also not going to be automatically assigned into a particular niche
just based on their gender._

Tell that to some straight guy who happens to like female-centric things.
They're going to be assumed to be homosexuals most of the time.

 _And when they are seen as customers, they're often automatically assumed to
be buying one of the designated "girl" properties_

Perhaps in the same way a man strolling around certain types of stores popular
with females would be seen?

 _One of these is welcomed into geek culture with open arms, the other has to
justify their existence in the first place._

Says who?

 _makes women feel unwelcome in fandom_

Tell that to all the rapid female Twilight fans.

------
mkramlich
In other news, most comic book artists and writers are male, most readers are
male, a big chunk are teens, and males like pretty/nude/curvaceous females,
most teen males likes big breasts and many teen females want to have big
breasts, and oh yeah, sex sells. And comic books don't exist in a bubble in
their own universe. It's part of this larger thing called the human race.
Whatever good/bad/natural things exist in the human race will also be present
in the comic book industry. Men have been ogling and fantasizing over females
for thousands and very likely millions of years. Clue up. Next topic!

And on a related note, I really wish "gender" submissions on HN would start
getting banned automatically. Because they almost always end up a case of
beating a dead horse over and over and over again, especially from the
perspective of those who've been around long enough.

ps. The author of the OA needs to wander into the Romance section of a
bookstore some time. He'll be shocked, _shocked_ at the level of sexual
objectification and stereotyping that goes on there. But in the reverse
direction. But since the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about
that, then it's not talked about. It's considered perfectly okay. Quotes from
the article like this are common with people who've been programmed with that
mindset: "(Obvious disclaimer: I'm a straight white man.)" <\-- Oh you poor
accidental oppressor you!

~~~
rmc
_most comic book artists and writers are male, most readers are male, a big
chunk are teens, and males like pretty/nude/curvaceous females, most teen
males likes big breasts and many teen females want to have big breasts_

The TV show Mad Men is set in the early 1960s USA, when the same thing could
be said of the professional world. "Everyone who works here is men, our
clients are men, our customers are men" etc. And yet there was a lot of
discrimination and sexism then. And things have changed (in the professional
business world) then.

 _the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's
not talked about_

Sure they do. Here's a series of blog posts about how twilight has terrible
characters. <http://skepchick.org/2011/11/twilight-breaking-wind/>

------
moxiemk1
I really enjoyed this article. Harris O'Malley seems to _actually see the real
problem_ , and expresses it with a hell of a lot more nuance than most other
treatments of the subject do.

>> And when you check back on Friday, I'll provide you with some concrete
applications on how being cognizant of male privilege will improve your
relations with women.

I'm excited about the possibilities of the "practical applications" - there is
an awful lot of "identifying the problem" and "raising awareness" (as
Helianthus refers to in another comment on this thread), however, not a lot of
solutions. Obviously they're not simple, and they're not easy, and they're
imperfect, but I'd like to see some other people's ideas about them.

~~~
doktrin
At first, I enjoyed the article.

However, I lost all respect for the author after reading some of his responses
in the discussion thread.

One post of his in particular caught my eye :

"...And the first thing you did when confronted with this topic was to defend,
counter, argue, and resist.

And by doing so, you immediately lost based on the rules set forth by the
article..."

The notion that an argument cannot be refuted because of some preemptive ban
on counter-arguments is, frankly, ludicrous to the point of being offensive.

This doesn't invalidate the contents of the article, but it effectively ends
my interest in reading anything else by this author - including his follow up
piece.

~~~
philwelch
Probably the worst feature of modern feminism is the idea that any and all
disagreement with modern feminism is sexism and thus deserves no consideration
or response.

------
eftpotrm
While I agree this is a problem, I think it's as much one of society in
general both polarising and demonising. (Context - IT nerd guy, single.)

I've known similarly female-dominated groups where men are automatically
regarded as good-for-nothing troglodytes who will lazily eat, drink and watch
sports all day with no positive contribution to wider life, while the
intelligent, capable, hard-working and long-suffering women get on and do the
important things the men simply can't, because they're men. Indeed, this will
sometimes be seen openly in popular culture - advertising, sitcoms, soaps etc.
I've done quite a lot of voluntary work with children, particularly younger
children over the years; in some contexts there is still mild incredulity
about the idea that a man can understand and cater well for small children,
because that's What Women Do Best.

Sure, we need to watch out for ourselves and try to respect all on their
merits, not objectify and stereotype. Equally there's plenty of women who
_don't_ fit in with the group I outlined above. But - work to address this
problem on all fronts. Fix it when we see it in our behaviour and those of us
around us, whether we're the aggressor, the victim or neither.

------
zdw
I don't think this is limited just to video games, comics, and such - a lot of
TV and sporting events are full of "beautiful people" often wearing
less/tighter things than they ought to be wearing.

How is this different/worse than having cheerleaders on the side of a football
field? Or Baywatch?

Not that I'm defending poor or sexist behavior, but singling out "nerds" as
being the worst troglodytes out there seems a bit much.

~~~
orangecat
_a lot of TV and sporting events are full of "beautiful people" often wearing
less/tighter things than they ought to be wearing._

"Ought"? The feminist position is that women should be able to express
themselves however they want. And it turns out that given the choice, many
women actually do want to wear revealing outfits. Exhibit A: Halloween.

~~~
pyre
Halloween is a bad choice to prove anything. Using your logic, I could prove
that most people would prefer if our standard wardrobes were a choice between
zombies, pirates or ninjas.

I saw someone with a really great Two-Face costume this Halloween. Does this
mean that that person would rather spend their entire life in a Two-Face
costume?

------
beloch
The article makes some interesting points, but permit me to play devil's
advocate when it comes to the way women and men are portrayed in geek media.
All media, really.

Men: Serious. Women: Sexy.

Okay, no arguments there. But what does this difference in portrayal of the
two sexes really mean? However much some might believe otherwise, humans are
hard-wired by evolution to have gender roles. Homo sapiens has been around for
roughly a hundred thousand years. Our species evolved from older hunter-
gatherer species and has existed for almost its entire history as hunter-
gatherers. What little we know about hunter-gatherer societies suggest that
they were relatively egalitarian, but with definite gender roles.

Men: expendable risk takers. If half the men in a hunter-gatherer band are
wiped out by a mammoth hunt gone wrong, the next generation can still be just
as large, only with slightly less genetic diversity. So what makes a mammoth
hunter popular with the ladies? Well, he has to look like he's going to be one
of the guys who will actually come back. i.e. A badass.

Women: non-expendible reproducers. No matter how many men are around, the
number of women who successfully bear children are what defines the
reproductive success of a band. If you're a man, you don't want the woman who
goes out mammoth hunting with the guys, you want the woman who picks berries
(gathering was probably even more vital to a band's survival than hunting!)
and who has hips made for making babies.

In this light, what we might really be seeing in geek media is portrayals of
both males and females that cater to our perception of desirability to the
opposite sex. Powerful, serious, badass men are desirable to women, so they
are what we see in comics. The same goes for sexy, fertile, women. Men and
women are being portrayed differently because different things set them apart
as elite or superior to others of their gender, thanks to our hunter-gatherer
wiring.

If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass and
woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males. It may
simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this is one
thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over.

~~~
rayiner
> If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass
> and woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males.
> It may simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this
> is one thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over.

It's not about self-flagellation or who is pandering to who. The article makes
a broader point about how the perception of gender roles affect's our
collective judgment about women's' contributions in geek society.

Your point about the basis of roles in biology is well taken, but:

1) It's not really clear how it's relevant to the larger point of the article.
Batman is surely the epitome of sexual desirability in a man (rich, smart,
attractive, crime fighter!) but what about the Joker and the Doctor? Skinny
guy with disfigured face and pudgy dude with a neck beard? Those portrayals
have nothing to do with sexual desirability. The Joker is supposed to convey
manic-scary, and the Doctor precise-scary. Meanwhile, all the female
portrayals are sexy-something. Sexy-crazy, sexy-eco terrorist, etc. Indeed,
the point you make really reinforces the point in the article: we only portray
women in terms of their sexual attractiveness, while we're willing to
entertain a full range of human traits in men.

2) You can't say how much of these perceptions is rooted in culture versus
biology. We're genetically predisposed to be skeptical of people not from "our
clan", and slavery of not-like-kind people has been a feature of human society
since antiquity, yet here we are in 2011, with massively different perceptions
than even 60 years ago.

Perceptions aren't just abstract subjects of self-flagellation. They matter.
Heck, geeks should be all too aware of this. As a born loudmouth, I've noticed
countless times where people would take my opinion more seriously over someone
who was more socially cautious. My girlfriend and I went through a pretty
extensive recruiting process in our field in the last year, and you couldn't
pay me to switch places with her. She assiduously avoided mentioning me,
because it always lead to people trying to figure out if she was a flight
risk, while my mentioning her always made me seem more stable. Even if the
difference in perception gives women a few % handicap (though I'd postulate,
without evidence, it's a heck of a lot more than that, especially in fields
like tech or finance), that's a pretty substantial liability when you factor
into account the level of competition.

~~~
127
>but what about the Joker and the Doctor? Skinny guy with disfigured face and
pudgy dude with a neck beard?

Yes, I'm sure no woman found Heath Ledger sexy in Dark Knight. Also the Doctor
being an imposing, dominating, taking the control type, surely kills any and
all appeal he might ever have on women.

Both the Joker and the Doctor are still very masculine, powerful characters no
matter how you look at things.

If you use male criteria for judging the attractiveness of a man to a woman,
you are using male criteria for judging the attractiveness of a man to a
woman. It is also called projection.

------
there
_Remember the example I mentioned earlier with my then-girlfriend in the comic
store? Her opinions were deemed mistaken and she was told she didn't "get it"…
because she was a girl._

i'm not sure how that had anything to do with being a girl. she was told she
didn't get it because she didn't get it. if a male walked into that comic shop
looking out of place, picked up a book and said something disparaging outloud,
he'd probably get mocked just the same for being a newbie.

my girlfriend is into comics and i'm not. if i went into a store with her and
started saying shit about comics, i would completely expect to get called out
for it. the only difference is that i wouldn't storm out and never return like
the author's girlfriend.

~~~
sciurus
<http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#butbut>

~~~
skore
Not really sure whether that applies. There is a rather combative part of geek
culture when it comes to defending either your own or the established view of
your immediate peers. In that regard, geeks can indeed be astonishingly
egalitarian in their derision of somebody with a perceived inferior viewpoint
or understanding of the matter at hand. At that point, really all bets are off
and if it is a battle between geeks, it is often a competition for who can be
the most emotionless asshole.

This piss taking is something that _most_ people would find offensive and it
is this area of geekdom that is often perceived as the prime example for the
emotional and social inability of geeks, particularly when a non-geek or a
very fresh geek gets into such a fight. Put differently - the inability to
understand that an argument about viewpoints can have limits that are deeply
hurtful to other people when crossed is something that is often lost on geeks.
In that regard, it is easy to conclude that the geek in question was simply
being sexist. But it is also true that it was just an example for a geek not
understanding that he didn't win additional points by venturing into the area
of gender.

The problem is that the article really doesn't do much to qualify the "because
she was a girl" statement. Was that an actual quote? Was it heavily implied?
Or did it just fit the narrative closely enough that it would be accepted as
another example per default?

------
kstenerud
Part of the problem is that the OP is concentrating on a game targeted
specifically at guys who can't relate to women.

You can't say that Angry Birds is misogynistic, nor could you say the same of
Bubble Bobble, Spy Hunter, Tempest, Centipede, Strider, Tetris, Farmville, and
thousands of other video games throughout the ages. One thing Facebook, iPhone
and Android have FINALLY brought is "casual" gaming for the masses, by
demonstrating a market that nobody could see due to the social stigma of the
geeky loser gamer.

The crazy shit only comes with heavy action games, mostly FPS (but even here
there are numerous exceptions, such as Left 4 Dead).

But then again you see the same thing in TV and movies; they cater to
different audiences, some of whom are offended by things the other audience
likes (usually what the other audience finds sexually appealing). But when it
comes down to it, it's escapist media. People don't care that it's unlikely,
and they most certainly don't assume that it in any way reflects real life,
any more than someone playing a FPS is likely to take a gun to work and start
shooting up the place.

The comic industry in America on the whole has never grown up beyond male
adolescent fantasy. That's unfortunate, as there are much richer possibilities
(the Japanese manga industry, for example, caters to so many segments it's
mind blowing).

But make no mistake: The American comic industry is not an example of male
privilege, or any unconscious attempt at keeping women down; It's a vicious
cycle of social stigma against comic READERS, and the resulting lack of market
for a wider audience. Maybe someday the "iPhone of comics" will come and save
us.

------
sapphirecat
When an article about the problem is published on a gaming site, after it
makes the point, it's got a couple of gratuitous chick images stuffed in it,
with captions like "Bet you're paying attention to what I have to say now!"...
Hmm.

I have always hated "You are male, YOU WILL LIKE THIS CHICK" flavored
messages, and this _still_ bothers me. Especially in an article like this.

------
tsotha
What a load of crap. Female comic book characters are scantily clad? You don't
say. But let me suggest that has not much to do with "privilege" and
everything to do with the fact that teenage boys are hard-wired to appreciate
this kind of thing. No, it's not a "social construct" or an effort to keep the
oppressed in her place.

Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex
fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?

~~~
rmc
_Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex
fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?_

If you're an attractive man, then you can get gay men (esp. older gay men,
_especially_ older, ugly, gay men), to do this. If you want people falling all
over you, and doing things, there are ways to do that.

~~~
tsotha
Well, you see I specified "opposite sex".

~~~
rmc
What you meant (i presume) is "i want people who I want to sleep with to fall
over themselves to please me". What women actually get lots of time is "people
I don't really want to sleep with, but want to sleep with me, falling over
themselves to try to please me". As such I think the analogy of 'ugly gay guy
hitting on straight guy' is apt, and similar to what a lot of women face.

~~~
tsotha
It's not really the same. The thing is gay guys don't actually constitute a
large percentage of the population, but straight guys do. Women get all sorts
of preferential treatment without even realizing it.

I once went to Vegas with a friend and his attractive wife. We showed up
without any kind of plans, and she decided she wanted to go to one of the more
exclusive restaurants. I wandered over to ask if they could squeeze us in.
Nope. All booked until we were gone. So I went back to the casino and broke
the bad news, at which point she went to the restaurant to talk to them
herself. We were eating there a few hours later.

Now, she didn't give them a big tip or promise sex or anything like that. She
just asked (well, "wheedled" is probably a better word). And she knew to ask
when they said no to me because that kind of thing happens all the time. Why?
Well, according to her it's because men just don't know how to ask. I have
another theory, which is that (straight) men are wired to do things for
attractive women even when there's no chance of a relationship.

------
ig1
The other day I was shocked to see this:

<http://twitpic.com/7to6eb>

An article referring to females working in technology as "tech totty".

This isn't some obscure insider tech publication, it's the cover for the
industry journal for graduate recruitment.

I find it shocking that a mainstream HR journal would use such a term, and I
think it's a sign that it's a wider issue than just the geek community.
Society as a whole needs to become more accepting of girls in geek culture.

------
gambler
Want to see less sexism in games? Stop buying shallow and commercialized
titles and support developers who actually try to express their ideas via the
medium. Seriously.

I'm not saying you should switch to a different kind of games and ignore the
trends in the rest of them, but I see that a lot of people decrying "sex and
violence" in various types of media are also validating the exact same works
that are fundamentally based on sex and violence. That doesn't make sense.

~~~
rmc
Yes vote with your wallet. "Money lets you effect the change you want to see
in the world".

But that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to give out about sexist stuff when
you see it.

------
einhverfr
I thought there were some interesting things that he missed in his assessment
of comic books, presumably because of a specific cultural lens he was looking
at.

The commic book male figures he mentioned fell into two types: The deadly
serious, strong, _sexy_ Batman and two not particularly sexed supervillains.
In other words, while the women are all about sex, for men, only the good
guys-- the superheroes-- are. This may still make a case for male privilege
but it's not as clear-cut I think as he wants to think.

The second thing is that men tend to stare at boobs. This is not unique to
geek culture.

This being said, I do think that it is important not to dismiss people's views
because of gender. Some of the most talented programmers I have ever met were
women. In fact I would take that further and say the most talented programmer
I have ever worked with is a woman. I learned a heck of a lot about security
audits, programming secure code, and also general algorithms and good software
design, development, and engineering practices from her (including her
starting IRC dialogs to call me on the carpet for mistakes on my part). To the
extent women's views are ignored because of gender that's pretty bad.

But another thing I have heard from women in open source is that one of the
most annoying aspects of gender in open source is to be asked over and over
"so what do you think we need to do to get women involved in open source?" I
have seen plenty of replies of "Do you have ANY idea how annoying it is to be
constantly asked that?"

------
AndyKelley
One thing to note is that it only takes _one_ obnoxious person to ruin it for
all the other well-informed and well-behaved people in any given room/server,
because good behavior, by definition, does not draw attention to itself.

~~~
jodrellblank
We don't _know_ he was even an obnoxious person (see also, the Actor-Observer
bias <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias> ), we only
have her boyfriend's third party account of the interaction.

Other options:

\- What she said was stupid and noobish, and he replied bluntly - rudely but
not sexistly.

\- What happened was misinterpreted as sexist because the interpreter is her
boyfriend and jumps to her defense easily.

\- The man in the comic book store interpreted her as being mocking and
hostile and retorted in a similar fashion, when she didn't mean it that way.

\- The man in the comic book store intended his comment to be a mocking
imitation of a sexist, thinking he was being witty, but was taken as being
literal.

\- The shop manager agreed with the complaining customer because he was
complaining and not because he was right.

\- The man in comic store is normally nice and was temporarily more sexist
than he usually is for some dull and specific reason, like he saw a very-near-
miss in the carpark by a female driver.

~~~
AndyKelley
I think your comment is much stronger if you take out the last one.

------
commieneko
I've had a serious interest in comics/animation for about 45 years. I've had a
professional interest for about 30 years.

I can't really comment on video game culture, from a personal point of view;
obviously there were no video games when I was growing up. And the only video
game that ever held my interest, other than for their graphics technology, was
_Myst_ ; and it hardly had any people in it at all, objectivized or otherwise.

(I _have_ been doing some work learning Blender the last few weeks. And a lot
of the tutorials I've been working through have a definite gamer design
aesthetic to them. I swear if I have to work through another youtube video
about how to create an inappropriately under-clad-for-the-forrest elf girl, or
sullen, post-apocalyptic hooker/warrior, I'm gonna barf...)

American animation has always been stuck at the grade school, pre-puberty
level. So its gender problem is less objectification than it is the whole
princess thingie.

However, for American comics the primary audience has pretty much always been
sexually maturing males. (Historically, with a few notable exceptions, comics
aimed at girls were created by men with little insight into what a female
audience might like.) So it's not particularly surprising that the successful
comic market caters to power fantasies, rebellion, and sexual objectification.
And the fact that comics, again in the U.S., have usually been considered a
third rate art form, means there's been no real incentive to conceal or
domesticate the raw, naked id on display a lot of the time.

Now I actually have no real problem with that. Geeky teenagers who can't get a
date, or have gender empathy issues are people too. I can relate. And a little
misogyny, and misandry, can be fun at times. (There's nothing particularly
uplifting and socially relevant about the Three Stooges either; but I still
enjoy the occasional Nyuk and eye poke.) And certainly the over-the-top,
operatic story lines would seem to require picaresque, allegorical characters,
ripped from the collective psyche.

But, _damn_ , a little variety would sure be appreciated.

If I accidentally wander into a comic book store these days I'm surrounded by
little else but 40-60 year old S&M archetypes, minute variations on characters
created years before most of the current audience were even born. And with a
bipolar range of emotions, angry dominatrix to submissive sex kitten, that
would make an anime/manga tsundere blush.

I lost interest in most American mainstream comics around 1975, mainly through
boredom. Now there has always been higher quality work floating around. It's
there if you look for it. But Sturgeon's Law applies, with the added
characteristic that the 90% case is almost indistinguishable and frozen in
time; and at adolescence. Sure the technology is getting better; we've got
better reproduction and the distribution system is no longer random mafioso
magazine distribution. But the literary style and moral compass is provided by
Frank Miller, with art direction by Eric Stanton. It's an insular culture,
with little cross fertilization with the rest of society, that keeps telling
the same story over and over. Now the base story and its archetypes are not
without their merits, but it's certainly not the be-all, end-all of the
medium. It just seems that way sometimes.

A year or so ago, when the _Scott Pilgrim_ movie out, I really enjoyed it.
After seeing it I immediately ran out and bought the graphic novels. I had
almost nothing in common with the characters, the music and video game
references were largely lost on me, but it was so nice to have something a
little different than the dull thudding of the mainstream American comics Ur-
legend. It was light, fluffy, with a novel, to me, storyline. And it had
engaging characters. I found it very manga-like, both in its visuals and its
approach to storytelling.

Which brings us to manga.

I got re-interested in comics around 10 years ago when the Japanese manga and
anime started to become easily available. Now everything bad and/or
chauvinistic that you can find in U.S. comics, and by extension, game culture,
you can find in spades in the Japanese product; and that's what you usually
find imported and bought by the U.S. comics companies and distributors.
However, if you look at the bigger picture, at the market in Japan, there's
much more variety and a generally higher level of literary and visual quality
than you find anywhere else in the world for visual media. I'm not really sure
why this is. Partly it is because there is much less stigma in their culture
directed towards comics; but that doesn't explain the problems with video game
culture over here. Over there not only boys read comics, but girls do too. And
young adults, and even 40 year old salarymen and OL (office ladies). They have
comics aimed at insurance salesmen, golfers, pretty much any kind of genre you
can conceive of. The Onion would have a hard time parodying the variety of
Japanese manga.

Now Sturgeon's Law still applies, but the absolute numbers are so much greater
that the absolute numbers of the good 10% is much higher than over here. And
the distribution of non-juvenile, male oriented material is much healthier.
The anime and video gaming industries seem to be less so, but they do seem
healthier than ours. And don't many of "our" more popular games come from
Japan?

One big difference in Japanese comic culture, in addition to its size, is that
it is much more of a participative one. Non-professional, fan created comics,
or Doujinshi, are a major "craft industry" over there. Comiket, the biggest
non-professional sales and marketing convention, routinely has half a million
attendees, twice a year, with _30,000+_ author circles, or groups, selling
their often high quality amateur comics and visual novels. Now admittedly, the
"adult oriented" Doujinshi get the most press, and a substantial percentage of
the audience, but there's a lot of alternatives for those who want it. One of
the alternatives is a form of erotic literature, some quite pornographic, and
much of it quite good, created by women and aimed at women. I don't see _that_
kind of thing in large demographic U.S. comics. Other than the Japanese
imports, of course…

Maybe the solution to the U.S. game industry's geek image has to do with
smaller scale, more diverse, more specialized gaming creation companies. With
games aimed at demographics who aren't 14 year old males or those who were
once 14 year old males and have never had an easily available and well
marketed alternative. I'm not really qualified to speculate intelligently.
That market may well exist and I'm just unaware of it.

If it does exist, I may be interested.

~~~
angus77
There's a lot of diversity in North American comics, just not in their sales.
All the diversity gets shoved into the back corner of the store, where only
those already "in the know" would dare venture. Check out Fantagraphics and
Drawn & Quarterly and their decades-long output of original, reprint and
translated material, on about as many different subjects as you can name.

~~~
commieneko
I'm well familiar with the non-mainstream American comic market and literary
scene; said as much in the post. But as you said, demographically it is very
small, though it does poke through here and there in the mainstream awareness.

Frankly, I find more diversity in the comics/graphic novel section at Barnes
and Noble than I do at the local comic book shops. And I'd say about half of
that was manga and manga oriented material.

Something I didn't touch on in my previous post, which is kind of ironic
considering our current venue, is the diversity found in U.S. web based
comics. (The 800 pound gorilla there is Penny Arcade, which is a sort of
sympathetic deconstruction of gaming culture.) But since the barrier to entry
is essentially zero, there's a lot of diversity in web comics; diversity in
style, themes, maturity, ... and quality.

Without really trying I've had the opportunity to meet dozens of web comic
creators. Their fan bases range from dozens to thousands; with the largest
rivaling mass media audiences. There is certainly much more exploration of
specialized interests in this arena than in any other western, English
language comics.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of commerce involved. Only a few are able to
make a full time living at it. In some ways that's healthy for an art form. In
others it can be very limiting. We can hope this aspect will change over time.

------
burgerbrain
I object to the connections drawn in this article. I am a tech professional
which means it is not terribly uncommon to have the nerd/geek label placed
upon me, but I have never and will never have anything to do with the
comics/videogame culture being described here.

~~~
drivebyacct2
That doesn't seem to be the important part of the article? I think the title
(ought to) imply "Some nerds..." anyway. Some people understand privilege
better than others, often due to their own circumstances. Being gay has given
me an interesting insight into privileges that span sexuality and gender
issues and having a close female friend who tells me about her daily
experiences repeatedly shocks me into new realizations of how good I have it
as a male, even if not a straight male.

~~~
burgerbrain
That seems to be the entire focus of the article. A modified headline would
have saved me my time.

An article about male privilege in the tech industry, which is what I expected
seeing as this is HNs, I would have appreciated. This however meant nothing to
me.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I guess I took it as more of a general intro to privilege for the lay-person
or 'lay-nerd'. I mean, take the basic concepts of privilege and extend them to
almost ANY females-in-tech-industry topic and you'll see it fits.

It's just like the thread a few weeks ago about women asking for raises or
more competitive pay with a shocking number of HN users saying "it's their own
fault for not asking for more", ignoring the research, discussions and
psychology behind why women don't ask for raises (they're rejected, shunned in
the workplace and often later let go).

(For the "record", I agree that there is a potential for a better discussion
of male privilege that would be more appropriate for HN that would probably
foster a more directed, specific discussion.)

~~~
burgerbrain
As an outside observer, I'd say that speaking about male privilege from the
context of comic book stores is like speaking about racism from the context of
19th century Alabama. It's just _so blatant_ to anybody disconnected from it
that it is very hard to make comparisons to other contexts.

~~~
mechanical_fish
How fortunate for the slaves of 19th-century Alabama that the abolitionists of
19th-century New England did not think this way.

Though I'm sure plenty of people tried to convince Frederick Douglass to stop
talking about Alabama all the time. It must have made for more than one
uncomfortable dinner party.

Anyway, back to the point. Yes, this is a particularly blatant example of a
male-privilege subculture, used in part for educational purposes. [1] You
would prefer to begin a conversation about male privilege by discussing much
more subtle examples? So that we can be treated to the usual two hundred
pages' worth of denials that the examples are even real?

\---

[1] Though in gamer and comic culture this is not an abstruse academic
exercise. And these are not small subcultures, even if they apparently aren't
quite big enough to encompass everyone.

~~~
burgerbrain
You are intentionally misrepresenting my comment. I vehemently disown any
meaning you apparently see in it.

What I am saying is that if we attempted to talk about, say, allegations of
racism in the YC process (a fairly popular discussion around here), it would
not be effective to talk about 19th century Alabama.

 _If you did_ , everyone would just say, _"well hell, we're not lynching
slaves for sport, there clearly isn't actually a problem here."_

Trying to base a discussion about sexism in the tech industry on something
talking about comic book stores is similarly flawed. The tech industry _is
not_ the comic book store community. Everybody outside that community _knows_
they are disgusting sexist pigs. It therefore bears little insight.

You may as well try to base the discussion on something about sexism at
truckstops or stripclubs. Either would be equally effective starting points
for a serious discussion.

------
Shenglong
[warning: slightly offensive]

I really would hope, that women in video games are in fact judged by how
attractive they are. I certainly wouldn't want an obese woman superhero saving
the world, just as I'm sure the gay males and the straight women wouldn't want
to see a tub of lard (excuse my language) in a male, who is supposed to
epitomize the superhuman virtues that we lack.

Yeah, it's shit easy to wave a finger and say "omg u guyz objectify womenz!!!"
but honestly, stop for a moment and think about it. This isn't unique to
nerd/geek/whatever-you-want-to-call-it culture.

This is spread through the ENTIRE western world. Why? We like beauty. We (and
I speak as a straight male - feel free to adjust the context to your
preference) like the way those subtle curves meld into a girl's hips. And why
shouldn't we? The female body is a thing of beauty - it's delicately crafted,
given form by years of grooming and attention. You'll be hard pressed, even
among the straight-female population (at least the 18-25 age group), to find
many people who think likewise about the male body.

When I told pg about my idea, he told me to consider how females would react;
this is very much the same situation. Try dressing a video game girl up in a
trench coat, with green hair, and ugly classes, and ask a girl if that's a
character she'd like to play. No, it's not.

Who am I to speak? I've been in the gaming industry for a while, and I've
probably passed my 10,000 hours of MMO development/management. Give most
gaming girls a choice, and they will CHOOSE to dress their characters in
slutty--or as they call it, "sexy cute"--clothing. Can you almost see most of
their legs? Yes. Should their nipples probably slip out once in a while, if
there was a realistic physics engine? Yes.

Do they care? No. Just as I would not like to play a male character whose
genitals are almost falling out, females would not like to (in general) play
female characters who are covered by obstructive and unattractive clothing.
Why do my friends adorn themselves in dresses that barely cover their
underwear when they go to clubs? I used to think it was because they wanted to
attract males, and while that may sometimes be the case, many of them have
loyal boyfriends and won't even dance with other guys.

Want to know the real reason, why there are so few girls in gaming? Well, I
don't know - though here's one (partial) guess:

Most "nerds/geeks" are disgusting. I have a _terrible_ sense of smell, and
sometimes I'm forced to recoil from my more nerdy peers. If everyone took the
time to shower daily, use proper body wash, shampoo (and watch out of
dandruff) and condition separately, exfoliate, and shave, I'd bet way more
women will enter the gaming phenomenon.

Remember - gaming isn't always a solo affair. Much of the time, directly or
indirectly, it's a social activity.

~~~
wanorris
> Give most gaming girls a choice, and they will CHOOSE to dress their
> characters in slutty--or as they call it, "sexy cute"--clothing.

I think there's a subtle point being lost here. Female characters designed to
appeal to women look different than female characters designed to appeal to
men. For example, if the characters are designed to appeal to women, you can
pretty much guarantee that they will not look like they have had basketballs
implanted in their chests.

Likewise, massive male characters built out of a mountain of muscle are
designed primarily to appeal to male power fantasies. Relatively few women
will find this especially attractive, and male characters designed to appeal
to more (straight) women would be built more along the lines of Ryan Gosling
or Ryan Reynolds.

~~~
georgemcbay
"For example, if the characters are designed to appeal to women, you can
pretty much guarantee that they will not look like they have had basketballs
implanted in their chests."

I am not a woman.

I live in Southern California.

I see quite a large population of women here who choose to implant what appear
to be basketballs in their _own_ chests.

One could debate whether or not this is due to a negative society influence or
whatever other factors, but clearly there is a segment of the female
population that embraces the "basketballs on the chest" look. Enough so that
they choose to participate in the look personally.

So be careful speaking for an entire group, especially when it is as big of a
group as "women".

------
vectorpush
Sexism isn't exclusive to nerds, and nerd hostility is about more than
females. This is the golden age of the geek, his once scorned subculture has
been universally vindicated across all domains. In TV, movies, music, fashion,
gaming, and of course business, being a geek is now the _in_ thing. The geek's
meteoric rise into the mainstream has caught the culture off guard. Suddenly,
everyone _wants_ to be seen reading comics, playing games, and tinkering with
computers, and now the once ostracized "true scottsman" nerd must account for
the burgeoning interest of the general public in "his" world.

------
armandososa
Please just Google images for "romance novels".

~~~
fforw
.. or look at the way men are often presented in chick flicks. Rich, handsome,
without any own personality whatsoever apart from magically mirroring what the
female character needs at that point.

------
culebron
I agree with the commenter who points out that the culture is not dominant,
and if it's that bad, it won't have much acceptance.

And all who care of the sexism in IT, geek culture, etc., should turn
themselves to the core problem. Use the Japanese method: ask 5 questions
"why?"

Why are geeks so sexist? They see women first of all as a sexual object.

Why they do this? Because this is what they want. They are sexually hungry
young men.

Why are they sexually hungry? They don't have much dating and sex. I admit
that some guys are ok in this area and just misbehave.

Why do they have issues? Because they're geeks, and geeks are uncool, not
sexually attractive.

Now, start curing this issue, not telling them to behave.

If a person is depressed, up to having no appetite, it's a common complaint
from the relatives that the sick person is mistreating them, doesn't want to
talk, closes the door, etc. Do you think a depression can be solved by telling
that person to behave? Or by telling "life goes on", "birds are tweeting, ha
ha"? No. It still doesn't make that person's needs met.

Yet when it comes to social phoenomena, the treatment that is zealously
promoted is to treat the outcomes, not the source.

So, I suggest to the IT industry managers: start making your nerds' needs met.
I don't know how. Hire a prostitute? May be valid in some special cases. Make
a dating event? Maybe. Hire a psychologist? Can be useful. Make a party with a
most-women company? Maybe.

Basically, I think it's worth trying to let them have more dating and learn
some social skills. (This all has to be in a very delicate way, of course.)
But stop teaching people how to live. If you don't like how they behave, fire
them, don't try to become a father who dislikes his son but keeps living
together. (This is exactly what the article says: I hate this, but I stay!)

Solve the real issue, make their needs met.

~~~
wpietri
The point of the five whys is to elicit insight and fact, not stuff you just
make up.

It turns out that guys who get laid are also often sexist, so your theory is
bunk. There are also plenty of guys who don't get laid who aren't assholes to
women.

When you got to the notion that IT managers should create a culture of respect
for women by hiring prostitutes for their most sexist male employees, you
should have realized that you had approximately no idea what you were talking
about.

~~~
culebron
We did hire a prostitute for a depressed friend to make him feel better. Not
openly. I have no idea how it works for your company, that's why I wrote
"maybe".

Your trying to be judgemental and look down on everyone around completely
discredits your arguments.

------
cafard
Comic-book culture seems to me very tangentially related to nerdism,
computing, what have you. Al Capp was drawing remarkably endowed women in
"Li'l Abner" a decade before ENIAC appeared. I doubt he was the first
cartoonist to do so, as he very definitely wasn't the last.

------
dym
TL;DR version: <http://xkcd.com/385/>

------
rachelbythebay
This site still looks blank with Javascript off.

How hard is it to provide content in 2011?

~~~
gvb
If you turn javascript on, the text appears but it is still pretty blank.

------
wpietri
Hi! It turns out that discussions about privilege are not entirely novel. If
you would like to avoid making an argument that is a) missing the point, and
b) common enough to be listed in a catalog, start here:

<http://derailingfordummies.com/>

Arguments of that form are already all over this thread, so you can also use
this as a bingo card.

------
Tichy
Author writes "A man isn't expected to be a representative of his sex in all
things; if he fails at a job, it's not going to be extrapolated that all men
are unfit for that job", yet he seems to draw an awful lot of conclusions from
some random guy in a comic store coming on to his girl-friend.

------
firefoxman1
Anyone remember Perfect Dark? There was a female protagonist that could kick
some ass.

~~~
orangecat
Yeah, but she was attractive and therefore a tool of the patriarchy, or
something.

------
davidhansen
I'm not sure why the author of this article somehow thinks that geeks deny the
existence of sexism in geek culture. The reality is that it's widely known and
accepted. If the author wants to find something to rail against, he should
have chosen the fact that _everybody knows, but nobody cares_.

I'm not going to defend the treatment of women in geek culture, as much of it
is indefensible. but it seems that few people bring up one of the most
important factors in its existence, one which has nothing at all to do with
objectification. It has more to do with envy, anger, and an amazing ability to
hold a grudge.

Many HN readers are from a younger generation than myself. Many of you grew up
always equating geek with "cool", and have no conception of what it would be
like to be treated as nearly subhuman for liking computers. Some of us,
however, remember the torment, the humiliation, the violence, the scorn and
the ostracism of finding science, electronics, and computers fascinating.
There was, indeed, such a time. Many nerds who endured poor treatment at the
hands of their peers developed deep emotional traumas that, to this day, exist
to some extent or another. One of these traumas is borne of the experience of
being not merely rejected, but openly mocked by girls during the most critical
time in a young man's life when he is supposed to develop his sense of social
status and sexuality. Frustration and humiliation is quick to turn to anger,
and from anger, a deep rooted misogyny.

The result of this kind of upbringing is often a socially stunted man who,
despite all his powers of logic and reason, finds it difficult to reason away
the anger that he knows shouldn't be there, but is. He witnesses sexism and
mistreatment of women around him, but he lacks the empathy required to say or
do anything about it.

This concludes my armchair psychologist's analysis of _one possible dimension_
of a hypothesis of why many of my generation permits geek culture to allow
rampant sexism.

Caveats: I have no data or training in psychology to suggest this is at all a
significant factor. But I am quite familiar with the phenomenon, and I know
several other nerds who experience the same thing. I mention it only because
it seems the zeitgeist is that men don't even see the sexism. I posit that
many do see it, but it doesn't matter to (a good portion of) them. And that a
possible cause of this in geek culture specifically is latent adolescent anger
at women.

~~~
da_dude4242
"Some of us, however, remember the torment, the humiliation, the violence, the
scorn and the ostracism of finding science, electronics, and computers
fascinating. There was, indeed, such a time. Many nerds who endured poor
treatment at the hands of their peers developed deep emotional traumas that,
to this day, exist to some extent or another. One of these traumas is borne of
the experience of being not merely rejected, but openly mocked by girls during
the most critical time in a young man's life when he is supposed to develop
his sense of social status and sexuality. Frustration and humiliation is quick
to turn to anger, and from anger, a deep rooted misogyny."

The irony here is that the stigmatization of "nerds" was/is a product of males
falling outside acceptable gender roles as well. Calling these males
"privileged" is a way to dismiss and marginalize them.

Why is it that the majority of feminist articles I run into feel the need to
dismiss the problems of "privileged" in making an argument for their
perspective? They are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps it's selection bias and
only controversial articles float to the top but it really seems like this is
the norm.

~~~
wanorris
This is a pretty good starter inventory for what feminists mean when they talk
about "male privilege".

<http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/>

You may disagree with the analysis behind the list's construction, but I see
little if anything on that list that obviously gets crossed off the list by
virtue of being a geek.

Social justice theorists also talk about different kinds of privileges, so the
idea that geeks have male privilege does not exclude the possibility that
there is another form of privilege that they lack that others have. Some other
types of privilege that are sometimes considered are white privilege, class
privilege, heterosexual privilege, etc. You can have male privilege but not
white privilege, etc.

In other words, privilege isn't simply a binary have/don't have thing such
that geeks have it and women don't.

You could make an argument that there is some sort of gender-stereotypical
privilege that, say, football players share in but geeks do not. Is that where
you were going?

~~~
jcnnghm
Wouldn't it be trivial to create a female privilege checklist? For example,
while women may be asked to smile by random people (44), they are murdered by
random people far less often than men, representing only 21% of victims. Or,
while females spend more time grooming than men (27), they are much less
likely to have their genitals mutilated as infants by mothers who do not like
the way they look.

There can be some things in society that do not appeal to women. There are
certainly things that women find appealing that most men are not at all
interested in.

I always kind of thought that young geeks used comic books to escape their
reality. This is just a guess, but could it be that some geeks are awkward
around women because females weren't nice to them during their adolescence?
Sex hormone levels peak at around age 17 for men, senior year of high school.
Is it really that unexpected that men that get no positive female attention
during their sexual prime don't embrace women exploring geek hobbies?

Perhaps the focus of all these stupid gender articles should be on encouraging
young women not to alienate a large subset of people. I would be willing to
bet that if geeks were more accepted at an earlier age, many of the perceived
gender issues would disappear.

~~~
wazoox
> _they are murdered by random people far less often than men, representing
> only 21% of victims._

Murder is an incredibly rare occurrence in most countries and social
environments. On the other hand, women are a huge majority among rape victims,
and this is not exceptional: 5 to 10% of all women are sexually abused at some
point (depends upon the country, again).

> _Perhaps the focus of all these stupid gender articles should be on
> encouraging young women not to alienate a large subset of people._

Perhaps the focus of people like you should be to think about your attitude,
just like this article conveniently talked about? Your arrogance and close-
mindedness are astounding. Oh, before you ask, I'm a white, straight male too.

~~~
jcnnghm
_Murder is an incredibly rare occurrence in most countries and social
environments. On the other hand, women are a huge majority among rape victims,
and this is not exceptional: 5 to 10% of all women are sexually abused at some
point (depends upon the country, again)._

Rape makes up only 6% of violent crimes, and men are much more commonly the
victim of violent crimes than women. In fact, excluding rape, as the severity
of violent crimes increase, so does the probability that the victim is male.

And couldn't I also say that, while rape is relatively rare, men are over
twice as likely to be the victim of severe physical domestic violence (the
ratio of murder to rape and rape to severe physical domestic violence is the
same). Or that perpetration rates for physical violence as a whole are
significantly higher for women than men.

I personally think that these are all bogus arguments because they trivialize
rape. At the same time, trivializing murder is no better than trivializing
rape, unless you believe that men are expendable.

 _Perhaps the focus of people like you should be to think about your attitude,
just like this article conveniently talked about? Your arrogance and close-
mindedness are astounding. Oh, before you ask, I'm a white, straight male
too._

Nice ad hominem.

~~~
wazoox
> _Rape makes up only 6% of violent crimes, and men are much more commonly the
> victim of violent crimes than women._

Most victims of violent crimes are known offenders or their relatives. An
overwhelming majority of offenders are male (see the proportion of male vs
female in jail).

> _Nice ad hominem._

It's _ad personam_ if you want. You go straight to the usual tactic of
pretending that it's the victim fault. Take some time to imagine yourself in
the situations represented before being a judgemental jerk.

See this post for a good explanation:
[http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2004/09/guilty_unti...](http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2004/09/guilty_until_pr.html)

~~~
jcnnghm
You say that I am blaming the victim, then in your link, the related story is
as follows:

 _First of all, the obvious point is that women's intuition, while not
entirely the stuff of myth, is not so powerful that it can automatically
separate "good guys" from the bad. No woman can walk down the street and as
she passes a man, know with certainty that he isn't a threat. Given the high
incidence of rape and assault and harassment and other forms of mistreatment,
a woman would be a fool to leave herself continually vulnerable. The old adage
"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" seems to apply here.
When a simple smile is so frequently misunderstood and construed as a sexual
invitation, American women generally do have to operate on the assumption that
men are guilty until proven innocent._

Is this really an acceptable story that somehow illustrates your point? It
seems like it could trivially be rewritten into something incredibly racist.
If that is the case, than isn't this actually very sexist. But really, why
would anyone expect random women to smile at them?

And how are women the victim? Because some products are not designed for them,
but are instead designed to appeal to teenage boys? What if I feel bad because
the quizzes in Seventeen magazine do not appeal to me, and instead give
teenage girls ideas about the way men should be that I disagree with. Do you
think this quiz ([http://www.seventeen.com/fun/quizzes/celebrity/summer-
movie-...](http://www.seventeen.com/fun/quizzes/celebrity/summer-movie-
boyfriend-quiz)) is sexist?

~~~
wazoox
OK, I give up. I won't convince you from across the oceans and through the
internets that white patriarchy is a reality; you apparently live in the nice
world where oppression of the poor, the black and women doesn't exist or at
least doesn't matter, and I must live on a different planet than you. That
won't be much more than a sociological experience I guess.

------
Helianthus
Is it problematic that I'm sick of gender on HN? "Raising awareness" doesn't
mean much when it essentially provokes the same inconsequential firefights.
Can we just agree that men are pigs, women feel entitled, everyone's an
asshole, startups need good engineers, and stop it?

All this article really shows me is that the girlfriend was correct to avoid
going into a comic book store.

You cannot control culture you cannot control subcultures you cannot make
people think "right."

You can be selective about which subcultures you expose you and your friends
to and which you'll allow into your home.

Waxing eloquent about how we're unaware of male privilege has become preachy.

~~~
readymade
Step back and look at the big picture, if you will.

Nobody can force someone to change their mind about anything. That's entirely
up to you. Most readers here are probably pretty damn smart and capable of
creating incredibly detailed justifications for believing what they want to
believe. So in that narrow sense, you're totally right.

But on the other hand, it's pretty curious to think that you can't influence
culture with ideas. How did we end up where we are, with a constitutional
republic, human and civil rights, and so on? How did we abolish slavery or
give women and minorities the right to vote? If you can't change culture with
the strength of your arguments, the only answer left is that it just changes
on its own, as if by magic.

So if you think it's preachy, fine. Don't read about things that piss you off.
It's a fine strategy that's worked for far dumber people than you. But try to
recognize that without the "inconsequential firefights" there would be no
social progress at all. I for one don't really care if it takes 50 years, as
long as we don't kid ourselves into thinking that if we can't change
everyone's mind with one single blog post there's no point to discussing it.

And above all, have a nice day.

~~~
Helianthus
I think what I'm proposing is that we take local control of our subculture,
which Hacker News tends to do overtly on a regular basis by defining
moderation; for instance, blatant political slogans are discouraged because
they're likely to provoke flamewars.

This is exactly the sort of thing that's likely to provoke an unproductive
flamewar in my book.

------
elchief
we invented an awesome playground, and girls are mad cuz they can't dominate
it

~~~
danilocampos
I know it's Hacker News, but there's really only one response to this. Rest
assured I'd say it to your face:

You're an idiot.

------
cyrus_
We should stop conflating the term 'geek' with the term 'nerd'. I think most
people familiar with the cultures in question would agree that there is an
increasingly clear difference between the two (although membership in the two
is certainly correlated.)

~~~
LeafStorm
I don't think there's a concrete, universally accepted difference. Pretty much
everyone has their own definition of "geek" and "nerd," and how much they
overlap, and most of those definitions are mutually incompatible.

Also, <http://xkcd.com/747/>

~~~
cyrus_
People can have different, mutually incompatible definitions of the two,
that's fine. All I'm saying is that very few people who have any opinion on
the subject think the two refer to the same set of values and behaviors.

