[Hairy_Sandwich]

One of the key facts I hear about privilidge over and over, is that it is so ingrained in those who benefit from it, that they don't even realize it. So how else are they supposed to understand if you don't explain it to them? Essentially your message then becomes "You're bad but I can't tell you why, you should just know" which just seems like you're wasting their time. If it's worth their time to care, it's worth your time to explain it.

[steveklabnik]

The point is that it's not the _responsibility_ of the oppressed to educate their oppressors. Obviously, it can be useful, and education is a big part of it.

But it's perfectly legitimate to say "Listen, I cannot explain this to you, but understand that what you say hurt me, and if that matters to you, you should take the time to figure that out."

It's about the asymmetry: for the privileged, this is a situation, an unusual part of their day, something that needs to be dealt with. For those who aren't, it's an ingrained part of everyday life. Your entire life could be devoted to education and there still wouldn't be enough hours in the day.

[rjknight]

It might not be the responsibility of the oppressed to educate their oppressors, but who else is going to do it?

I agree that the "booth babe" situation is sexist (and I also happen to think it's incredibly stupid - semi-naked women are not going to make me buy your product, and I'd feel insulted by any brand that used that as a marketing tactic). But we also live in a society and, as hackers, in a sub-culture where we generally prize reason and debate over emotion. When we're debating other topics here, this reason-over-emotion thing doesn't seem to be a problem.

If someone says "I want you to do, believe or refrain from doing or believing something, and I can't explain why" then we generally ignore it. In no other context would this be seen as a reasonable line of argument.

The thing is, I don't often see people saying "this makes me feel bad ergo it's a bad thing". Most feminists have well-worked-out arguments for their positions and it's not hard for any reasonable person to accept them. I've been persuaded of many feminist arguments and this has contributed to changing how I see the world. Sure, when we're talking about arguments on Twitter then there's not a lot of space to cite references or bring in supporting arguments, but to pretend that they don't exist or aren't necessary isn't helping.

tl;dr I think the hacker community prizes rationalism and if you want to persuade them of anything you should use rational and not emotional arguments. This may be annoying but demanding that the hacker community abandons rationalism isn't going to work.

[steveklabnik]

> we also live in a society and, as hackers, in a sub-culture where we generally prize reason and debate over emotion.

This is an ideal, but it's not true at all. Look at all the 'dramas' posted all over HN, does that seem like reason to you, or emotion?

Hackers are people too, as much as they try to deny it.

> who else is going to do it?

Either them themselves, or someone else. I think maybe this comes from a slight misunderstanding of what the saying means. Let's say that Bob makes a joke about rape around Alice, a survivor. Alice says "yo, that is not cool, and you're making light of a trauma I experienced in the past." Bob says "Why?" Alice says, "I don't want to explain it to you, I'm really upset right now." The saying is trying to explain that it's not _Alice_'s responsibility to make Bob see exactly where he went wrong; he can either look at the numerous resources online to explain why, think about it and puzzle it out himself, or maybe, ask Eve or someone else about it. But forcing Alice to confront something in her moment of pain is just not right.

> I think the hacker community prizes rationalism and if you want to persuade them of anything you should use rational and not emotional arguments.

This is _exactly_ why there's so much sexism here. The rhetoric around this is extremely frustrating, especially with your charge of 'abandons rationalism.'

[rjknight]

Do you want to be righteous or do you want to be persuasive?

If you want to be persuasive, you appeal to people's better nature. You don't tell them that their cherished ideals of rationalism and no-bullshit, all-about-the-code ethos are a crock of shit, you tell them that you believe in this too, and you want it to be this way for everyone. The people who are undermining this are the misogynist minority, who are putting their irrational hatred of women ahead of all other things. The reason we keep having to have this tedious discussion is because these people are consistently attacking and undermining our fellow female hackers, and it's about time we told them where to go with that kind of behaviour.

The problem is, you've become convinced that the community at large is full of sexism, when it really isn't. It's just that nobody has figured out how to talk about this in a way that makes sense, and unfortunately arguments like yours are counter-productive (which is why people are arguing with you, which has the depressing effect of making you think that the community must be full of sexism, and the cycle goes on).