
I was mistaken for a call girl - dpaluy
https://drugstoreculture.com/the-night-i-was-mistaken-for-a-call-girl/
======
fareesh
If an old man shows up to watch the high school girl's volleyball matches
daily, maybe he really likes volleyball, right?

An old woman would definitely have the privilege of that assumption. An old
man wouldn't.

Welcome to society, it will never be perfect and that's ok. Trying to turn the
dials and create a perfect one is the stuff of comic book villains. It looks
like the west has solved so much that it is starting to go backwards. In the
third world we have actual cases of families forcing daughters to stay home or
worse, get married at 17. Give me a break with this Nerf ball stuff.

~~~
akudha
_An old man wouldn 't._

Some time ago, there was this news article - an old man was turned away from a
park, because he was alone and because everyone else in the park were "a
family with kids" and they won't feel comfortable with a "single old man by
himself" (don't remember the exact words, but this is the gist of it).

It gets worse. A woman with her son (just a kid) was asked by other moms to
leave, because they were all mums with daughters and she was the only one with
a son. I don't get the logic at all.

Society is weird...

~~~
jshaqaw
Yup. And when I’m at the park with my kids and some other child asks for help
with something like getting up on a structure I have to say politely say no
(I’m a man) for fear of it being interpreted the wrong way by someone. Just
the way it is and to some extent I get it.

------
lolc
I find the conclusion took a strange turn from the story:

> Those women who were complicit in hashtag crimes have actually undermined
> the cause, taken us back years in our endeavor to be taken seriously.

The people fighting to prevent sexual attacks would generally also acknowledge
other areas for improvement. Saying that you have different priorities is
acceptable. But denying their priorities is not. That they are causing more
sexism elsewhere is a long shot. It is not even connected to the main story.

~~~
DubiousButOkay
Pretty sure you’re engaging in selective blindness to the nature of
politicization among humans.

At a fundamental level the political winds are that of retaliation for past
grievances. Not just immediate grievances with lving victims, but all
grievances across recorded history, with no definite end-game.

This creates a politically charged atmosphere that polarizes players to exist
in two camps, primed for conflict intended to escalate beyond a stated goal of
fairness.

Now you have bitter, uncompromising rivals who will not negotiate, striving to
enforce inflexible terms and who benefits? Those external to the fight. Those
not dragged down and injured by the grudge match.

Pay attention to the ones looking for a fight, trace that back to those who
egg them on, and a picture develops about what’s really going on.

Where there’s an “us versus them” tone, the divide and conquer tactic can be
found.

Years of setback may be true, if enemies are alert and opting not only to
defend, but actively destroy dissent and redouble dominance.

The war being fought isn’t something camparable to the abolition of slavery.
To call our current climate tantamount to one of slavery is hyperbolic without
question.

~~~
james_s_tayler
So beautifully put.

I noticed this after learning Japanese and then listening to how Asians talk
about other Asians and then checked what the other sides were saying and I was
like... Oh man... this is vicious. Then I noticed the same thing in other
countries that share borders, there are cases where they are sworn enemies or
have bad blood because of beefs going back hundreds of thousands of years.
It's amazing.

------
ggm
The managers retreat into my business my rules is a common response from
people unable to deal with being caught out wrong. If you're unwilling to
apologize, acknowledge mistakes, asserted rights are the joker card?

~~~
goldcd
My very optimistic explanation would be that "The manager had had other
valued, single, female customers sit at the bar - and they'd been
propositioned by men...and he was trying to protect.." Oh I'm not even buying
this myself..

~~~
lolc
Haha, yes. In that case the manager would have explained that they were being
paternalistic. Which could have enraged this customer too, but probably less
so than labeling her an escort.

~~~
rage_quit
The idea of the manager being paternalistic is stupid, but manager as tool is
not.

What if the narrative villifies the less charismatic individual sufficiently?

Instead of the manager arriving to rescue other customers, the manager plays
the role of a tool.

What if the other customers used the manager as a tool, and being a dimwitted
jerk, he took the cue as an opportunity to engaging misanthropic behavior.
Other girls at the bar wanted to cause harm to someone they didn’t like the
looks of, so they complain to the manager, craft a lie, and the manager takes
the bait, enforcing the will of malicious tattletales?

Or, what if the manager is actually operating the bar as a front for a nearby
hotel brothel, and at the request of a pimp, ousted an unfamiliar face that
seemed to be a threat to business?

Would these versions be juicy enough to satisfy a quest for truth?

------
Simulacra
As a woman, I really think there’s more to the story then she’s telling us.
I’ve seen this same story that she’s been blasting to several websites, and I
honestly can’t picture this. I’ve sat at the bar alone eating, drinking, or
just staring at my phone, many times in many big cities traveling. I’ve never
gotten so much as a cross-word from anyone. So I call BS on this. There’s more
going on here that we’re not being told.

~~~
jcampbell1
I believe this story. If you were on a business trip and went to the bar at
the Waldorf Astoria, then you would be around escorts. The bartenders would
completely know you are not an escort because they haven't seen you before.
Men may approach you, but looking for conversation and would quickly know you
were a business traveller. Most men aren't looking for escorts at all, but
ones that are, don't make it obvious.

Bottom line is there is a decent amount of high end prostitution around high
end hotels near midtown during the weekdays.

It is nearly invisible which is why she didn't notice it for years. Now that I
have told you, you will probably start to see the pay-for-play scene. It isn't
huge, but it exists in the business traveller world.

It sucks that she got mixed in with it. That being said, it is a small number
of women and men in that scene, it has a flavor of consent, and I personally
think other harassment issues are a much broader problem to worry about.

As a guy, the pay-for-play scene is often super annoying. Get approached, have
an hour conversation, then get asked for money. Just feels irritating to have
a conversation that was financially motivated. The bars then start policing
it... like not allowing the girls to approach men, e.g. making them sit at
tables.

I know a bit too much about this scene because I have a policy against any
shaming of sex workers. Thus after rejecting their pay-for-play offer, I often
end up in a conversation about their lives and work. I make it clear that I
don't look down on them.

I suppose the possible thing missing from the story is that she is a healthy
adultly woman that enjoyed having sex and went home with interesting and
attractive men from the bar. Normal thing to do, especially if you don't have
time for a relationship because you are splitting continents. The bar could
have misread the situation.

------
ykevinator
This seems not worth the effort it took to write. She's an excellent writer
though.

------
300bps
Now try being an “unaccompanied male” on a playground filled with children and
see what happens.

[https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/police-called-after-
man-...](https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/police-called-after-man-
seen-14990130)

People make judgments about other people. They base them on a mixture of
accurate, incomplete and inaccurate data. They base them on their own biases
and perceptions. They base them on their own agendas and lack of time to
explain them.

These events aren’t article worthy.

~~~
cco
I would encourage you to join people like the author as I hope she would join
you in condemning the prejudice against me in places with children rather than
try to say, "yeah but this is worse!"

------
ajnin
I felt immediately sympathetic to this article. The tale of everyday injustice
is something that speaks to me, makes me want to change things. However when I
see #MeToo, I feel much less sympathetic. Why ? Because it paints a single
enemy : men, and as a man who does not feel at all like he behaves in the way
often described next to this hashtag, _I_ feel an injustice. The MeToo
campaign is creating too camps, and a such it can create entrenched or
retaliatory positions like this restaurant owner. A war is not something
anyone should want.

~~~
lsiebert
I mean, how familiar are you with the MeToo movement? Did you see female
friends and colleagues post on Facebook about their experiences? Read tweets?
Or are you hearing about it through the news?

Because it's not about men as an enemy. It's about people saying that they too
have been effected by sexual harassment, assault or abuse. It's someone
saying, "That happened to me, too."

If it feel's pervasive enough to be a campaign, instead of a movement, that
says more about our culture's response, or lack thereof, to sexual misconduct
then it does about men.

~~~
ajnin
I don't know directly anyone who is in that situation. I know about it only
indirectly, through the news, blog posts and such, but it's affecting me all
the same.

I think "MeToo" goes beyond simply exposing particular situations. It is also
attempting to explain those cases of abuse by the gender of the perpetrator,
as if it was the ultimate cause. Maybe the particular individual is an
asshole, but not the whole category. Maybe that guy that "mansplains" things
is condescending with everyone. I think that too quick generalization and
broad accusation creates resentment and diminishes the potential of support
from both sides.

I wish things were written like "many persons have been called out" instead of
"many men have been called out", because the latter implies that only men can
be, and also even if logically false it is easy to go from A => B to B => A in
the eyes of opinion.

~~~
BerislavLopac
> I don't know directly anyone who is in that situation

Which situation -- do you mean "being harassed"? I'm pretty sure you do, as it
is quite safe to assume that any woman you encounter has been harassed at some
point in her life. The only question is how severely and how long ago, which
still does not take away the effect on her emotions.

~~~
ajnin
I meant someone who spoke as part of the "MeToo" movement. I certainly know
women who have had some bad experiences with men, but none that expressed that
publicly, as that was the question I was answering.

~~~
BerislavLopac
And your comment is precisely the reason why.

------
Jonnax
It this legal in New York?

Where a man is allowed to eat at a bar but a woman is not?

~~~
blunte
As with my rules and non-rules, it's ultimately a question of a court battle.

Particularly in the case of restaurants and businesses choosing not to provide
service to homosexuals, it depends on the state. But it also still depends on
the courts to enforce or clarify rules.

Unfortunately what this all means is that unless someone is looking for a
potentially lengthy and costly legal fight, the rules don't matter.

The flipside of this is that even if there are rules, a motivated litigant can
make it not worth the opponent's time or money to fight.

In this specific case, the best way to get "justice" would be to push a
publicity campaign to make the restaurant feel pressure and change its ways.
But that too requires effort and time to do, and success is iffy. Keep in mind
that it's NYC, and there are more diners than good restaurants usually. So if
she gets angry, and even if she gets a few thousand other people angry, that
restaurant still probably won't suffer.

------
techpop10
This is awful! When these things happen, why don't people name names? What
restaurant did this????

------
Markoff
article it's missing name of the restaurant, so don't waste your time, might
as well read Harry Potter. if it's not made up story she should name and shame
them

------
anotheryou
I don't get the hn algo, but how did I click this, presumably on the front
page, now to find it in the very very last place (entry 441) of hn?

srceenshot of page 15, showing older dupes with less votes above:
[https://i.imgur.com/ibnV65s.png](https://i.imgur.com/ibnV65s.png)

edit: now it's gone from p15

edit2: if this would have been transparently flagged as off-topic for HN I'd
understand. But given the content of the article this is sadly ironic, I
really hope there is a "mechanical" explanation for this.

~~~
andor
Somebody might have flagged it, or it was a moderator.

That's why I generally read HN through
[http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/), they show all frontpage items
sorted chronologically.

~~~
anotheryou
oh sweet, thanks!

If it was flagged I'd still see it, no? (I have that enabled)

edit: now it shows as [flagged] [dead]

edit2: and back on the front-page again, thanks for undoing this mods

edit3: now vanished (even from "new"). weird mechanics or a mod-battle :) ?

edit4: I'll take the down-votes with pride

~~~
angry_octet
There is a significant cohort of users who flag this type of article. As there
is no way for them to say why they dislike it, I doubt we will ever be
certain. Obviously it isn't technical or scientific, it is anecdotal, perhaps
valid reasons for not upvoting, but surely not flagging?

I've only flagged obvious spam and a dangerous pseudoscience article. And
after that, I couldn't flag anymore, so I guess I'm not in sync with the
powers that be.

I think it is just necessary to accept that HN is imperfect, only one venue,
and reflects the biases of its users to a significant degree. It is a shame
those biases are not more transparently revealed.

If you want to see things that people you respect recommend, go to twitter and
curate your feed. Although the constant reordering and sometimes-showing and
so on is even worse on twitter.

~~~
sctb
I don't see why you couldn't flag! Are you sure?

If we speak of biases that way, then I'm not sure there's anything outside of
bias. This site has a bias towards a particular kind of discourse. It's not
that Twitter doesn't have discourse, but it's a different style. Topics like
this one can be quite controversial and flamewar-style, and Hacker News
readers have a bias against flamewars. It's not that flamewars aren't
discourse, but it's not our preference here.

Yes, it's only one venue, and it does reflect its users (and its history and
its conventions and its table-based layout, etc.). How could it be any other
way? Something that's a detriment to thoughtfulness and civility is when we
project our own opinions onto the canvas of “bias” constituting the mechanisms
of discussion which are invariably present. It's never what we think, and
always a projection.

This is supported by the fact that _everyone_ perceives moderation, flagging,
etc. to be in support of the opposite side. Has anyone ever complained, “Boy,
this really confirms my existing view without adequately representing what I
disagree with. How biased!”.

Sorry for the rant! I'm of course generalizing and addressing more than you've
actually said.

~~~
angry_octet
I can flag articles, but not comments. I'm not sure if this is just me of
course, but given comments appeared marked as [flagged] it seems so. Inflation
in kerma required for flagging? The rules are rather opaque.

I'm fine with bias, it is as you point out, expected and unavoidable. It is
more obvious who likes/dislikes what on twitter, though they keep making that
harder to determine analytically. I guess the problem boils down to there
being no sense of who is voting one way or the other, and would you respect
those people? Like, I'm not going to care if Jacob Wohl downvotes something,
or if a bunch of Wohlites (or Chomskyists for that matter) are angry, but how
can you tell?

As to articles specifically related to gender and women, I would say HN has a
problem. It is up to HN owners to decide whether to damp down the jerk
responses, the flagging, etc.

I prefer HN posts because they don't have to be absurdley short, and there are
no memes. How I hate memes. Though the lack of respect for humour and wit
really diminishes discourse.

------
mac_was
Maybe it is because man usually arent call girls?

~~~
sampo
How would you know, unless you ask the men?

~~~
mac_was
Well statistics says that. Prostitution is one of the oldest jobs and it was
always a women domain, not men. It is of course a very bad thing and in my
opinion it is sad that so many women are forced to enter this profession...

------
DoreenMichele
Eh, they can't prove who is or is not a call girl. They have blunt tools at
their disposal for trying to "crack down" on this, such as saying "Hookers
typically sit alone at the bar. So no more single women sitting alone at the
bar."

I'm not saying it's fair. I'm just saying they may have valid reasons for the
policy of cracking down on sex workers and they don't need to have actually
mistaken her for a sex worker per se to decide this policy applies to her.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
So there's a strong correlation with being female and being a sex worker, as
opposed to male.

Now replace the correlation with other undesirable traits, like being a thief
and having a certain skin colour.

Do you still call that a 'blunt tool to crack down on issues that don't
necessarily apply to each individual' or can we just call that racial
discrimination and agree no such tools should be applied?

The idea it's okay for your daughter, wife, mother etc to be denied a seat,
where you can sit alone, because she's a priori categorised as a sex worker
merely because of gender, is pretty insane to me. Of course your personal
relationship shouldn't matter, but maybe it hits home a little bit more like
this.

The whole idea about discrimination is that people are judged not on the basis
of their own behaviour, but the behaviour (or stereotypical views of such) of
a group they (often involuntarily) belong to. And that's inherently unfair.

Instead we should always try to make a fair assessment of the individual. Of
course we use mental shortcuts that can be discriminatory, but we always have
to try and allow recourse. That's why a 60 year old tends not to be hired as a
security guard, because they lack the fitness. That tends to be viewed as
reasonable age discrimination, but only in the context of explaining the
underlying assumption, that age determines fitness, and that this assumption
is not challenged by the applicant. But if the 60 year old can demonstrate
sufficient fitness and challenges the assumption, denying the job based on age
is no longer lawful. In short, the assumption must be reasonable, must be made
clear, and must not be challenged.

I can imagine the owner's worry, and that he profiled her based on mental
shortcuts. But if she then demonstrates she is not a sex worker, denying her a
seat anyway is silly. Let's not forget, she came there for years. If she came
with colleagues, she'd leave with them. If she came alone, she'd leave alone.
She never engaged anyone else. The first thing you'd do is have an honest
conversation and see if your assumptions are even correct in the first place.
In this case they went straight to applying a policy based on a wrongful
assumption, and then denied any recourse or apologies once they were given
ample indications to be incorrect in their assumptions.

In this case, the assumption was made, was somewhat unreasonable given her
familiarity with the staff (knowing faces, names), was not made clear
initially, and was not allowed to be challenged. That's sex discrimination, a
case handled incorrectly and it's not ok.

~~~
netsharc
> I can imagine the owner's worry, and that he profiled her based on mental
> shortcuts. But if she then demonstrates she is not a sex worker, denying her
> a seat anyway is silly.

I'm not defending the owner's decision, but the problem with this is... other
patrons might still consider her one, and they might think/tell friends "avoid
that restaurant for your family dinner, escorts hang around there!". She's not
just condemning the owner, but probably many in society who still have the
same mental shortcut.

~~~
watwut
My ability to come first to bar where I will wait for other people (as opposed
to have to make sure to be late so that they kick me out) is something I want
to keep.

And as long as people in your thought experiment have zero consideration for
me, I wonder, why should I be considered toward their bigotry? Because the
conviction thay alone women must be escort is exactly that.

The example in former paragraph is quite relevant to me, because apparently
stereotype people openly express here (sometimes as joke sometimes serioisly)
is that women are often late. Come soon, understand that you are escort, come
minute late you confirm stereotype.

------
nilsocket
This is how woman start getting serious for such silly issues.

The problem with citizens of developed countries or those with rich background
is, they haven't seen how real problems look like.

They usually cry for very silly things.

Things cannot be perfect.

The more woman ask for equality, the more alone they are going to end up,
because men feel fearful even for approaching, who knowns what kind of
mentality the other person have.

~~~
dsajames
Not the more they ask for equality, the more behavior is directed at past
transgressions that had nothing to do with a guy.

Discriminatory divorce laws keep men from marrying. I see this very openly.

Overcorrection with MeToo will make many men hesitate to interact with a woman
if he gets a vibe that she might misread his actions. It will also decrease
interactions by men who planned on harrassing her though.

------
onetimemanytime
Discrimination? For a reason or another they thought she was an escort and
they don't like that kind of activity in their establishment. Maybe she was,
maybe she wasn't.

She says no, but very few would admit. Either way, maybe they don't even like
single, pretty women looking for their "knight in shining armor" at an
expensive restaurant. It ruins their image and they don't that kind of a
crowd. Just like they would not guys coming at the bar laughing and screaming
with a couple of escorts.

Not exactly sexual discrimination, as they'd almost certainly ban guys that
are touchy feely with female guests. More like trying to preserve their
reputation and business, false positives and all. You can't really ask to see
their Whatsapp or FB messages to investigate...

~~~
vidarh
> Not exactly sexual discrimination, as they'd almost certainly ban guys that
> are touchy feely with female guests.

Of course it is sexual discrimination. What more is, you're skating close to
it yourself by equating a woman eating quietly by herself with a guy being
"touchy feely with female guests". If she was being touchy feely with male
guests, and that was the justification, then that would have been an entirely
different scenario.

You go on to compare it to guys "coming at the bar laughing and screaming with
a couple of escorts".

Again you miss the point: If they set policies for conduct, such as "don't get
touchy feely with the guests or you'll get sent to a table" or "no laughing
and screaming at the bar", it'd be fine and not discriminatory.

But when they send women to tables but allow men to continue eating at the
bar, it is very clear cut. I don't know if it is illegal in New York, but that
clear discrimination certainly would be many other places.

~~~
grkvlt
I'm not convinced it would be illegal _anywhere_ though. She isn't being
prevented from eating there, simply being asked to sit is a particular place,
chosen by the management. This is basically the definition of how seating
works in restaurant. Your seats are selected for you, and if you don't like it
you can go elsewhere...

