| HN Mirror

I work for a writing service. It fits nicely with blogging as it helps me develop my writing for actual pay.

I am medically handicapped and I don't work full-time. I don't need a lot of money. I do need better per hour/item pay. Getting taken more seriously would help.

I wouldn't say the problem is discrimination per se. That isn't how I would characterize it.

The problem is that most men seem incapable of having a private conversation with me without mentally framing it as personally intimate, aka romance. When men on HN take an interest in each other's work, they routinely move from public discussion on HN to private discussion, usually via email. They also make friendly chit chat as part of the process of establishing trust.

When I make friendly chit chat, men routinely interpret that as a romantic opening. When I try to move things to a private discussion, most men interpret that as a romantic opening.

I honestly don't think it has anything to do with thinking "I would never hire a woman." I think when I talk about sexism that's what people think I mean and I don't mean that. I mean my gender is a barrier to success, yes. I don't mean "Because people are all sexist pigs."

I don't think we really have the language and mental models to make the distinctions that exist in my mind. I blog at times about such things, but the framing of the problem space in my mind is not a framework I see out in the world.

Because of how I frame it, I don't see trying to hide or obfuscate my gender as a solution. I see that as trouble I don't need.

When men get excited about each other's ideas or whatever, they don't interpret that as sexual excitement. When they get excited about my ideas or whatever, that seems to be what they do.

My feeling is that establishing a professional relationship on the idea that I am not a woman would be like a bait and switch operation. We have the expression that when people work closely together and are heavily invested, they are in bed together. And metaphorically I feel like if I hide my gender, then at some point some man wakes up "in bed" with me and realizes I am a woman and reacts to that differently than if I were male. To me, that sounds like trouble that I don't want. I also don't see myself successfully pulling off that kind of deceit to begin with.

I think the world needs some means to help people more clearly distinguish work relations from romance. I think the lack of such fuels a great many problems, including sexual harassment at work.

I have been celibate for medical reasons for more than 12.5 years. I don't harp on that constantly, but I am quite open about it. I am also 52 years old, chronically ill, and spent nearly 6 years homeless. I only got off the street a few months ago.

Being homeless put a damper on romantic interest in me. I think men were afraid that I would just empty their bank account. But the rest of those details seem to not put much of a damper on such interest. And I don't get it. It sounds incredibly unattractive to me. Who the hell in their right mind interprets toothless gray haired poverty stricken sickly old hag as "hottie -- I'd hit that!"

A recent incident: Some guy exchanging emails with me invested significant effort into trying to figure out how to get next to me and actively hid from me his age, marital status and intentions. After it became clear that his agenda was romance, I learned he was in his late twenties. I am literally old enough to be his mother. My adult sons are similar in age.

So I am at wit's end. Even men so much younger than me that I would never in a million years frame them as date material cannot be assumed to be viewing me in strictly platonic terms.