[rosser]

All I can think of in response to this diatribe is a line from The Big Lebowski:

"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."

Seriously, dude; chill. You can communicate your (not incorrect) point so very much more effectively without ragefacing all over the person you're replying to. It gets in the way of successful communication, and probably does horrible things for your blood pressure to boot.

[ZenoArrow]

I disagree. Of the comments I've read here so far, I agreed with hbags the most. There are plenty of more measured responses to be found here, but none that captured how I felt as well as hbags. I'm not someone who holds grudges, and I accept we all sometimes say things without understanding what we imply, but in the moment I was glad someone could give voice to how I felt.

[MartinCron]

Yeah, I have to agree. I've burned a dozen bridges and poisoned quite a few wells before I learned that a message like that can actually be much stronger if you step down the rhetoric just a notch.

Easier said than done.

[hbags]

I'm not dumb enough to try to change the stripes on a proudly bigoted jerk like Meritt.

I just want anybody who sees his spew to know that his opinion is not the only one. I want any human who is harassed to know that if they share their story after the fact, that's good.

And they shouldn't worry about the fact that some utterly worthless assholes like Meritt will try to shame them for speaking out. They shouldn't be ashamed if they were too afraid, too shy, or too confused to respond in the moment.

It is GOOD that we share these stories. It is GOOD that we move towards a world where these things happen less often.

And the utterly worthless assholes like Meritt who want to shame people for sharing their stories... they might be well represented in HN, but they're a minority of normal humans.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

[vacri]

I'm fine with a bit of profanity and would like to see more, personally. But when your comment is basically nothing but invective, you don't really have a leg to stand on when you're calling someone else worthless.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

Meritt said 'say something right then and there, it's more effective. Then write a blog post about that instead'. Whether that's true or not could be up for debate (likewise the victim's responsibility to do something), but you have to be pretty one-eyed to read that as shaming the victim into silence rather than encouraging the victim into action.

[wonderzombie]

Sorry, but this is part of a pattern. You may feel OK with treating this as an isolated incident, but it's not. It deserves to be lumped into a category of common responses to stuff like this: victim blaming and derailing.

It does approximately nothing to prevent a situation like this from happening. It puts the onus on a woman to deal with other people's utterly unacceptable behavior. It erases the responsibility not just of the aggressor, but everyone else in the room with her who did nothing.

I'm sure it's pure coincidence this also divests the commenter from any obligation to talk seriously about these issues.

[vacri]

How many more caveats do I need? I even specified that the concept was up for debate and that it wasn't the victim's responsibility to do anything.

everyone else in the room with her Unless everyone else in the room was attending to the interaction of her and that one guy, this is hyperbole and doesn't help. If I'm in a conversation on one side of the room, do you really expect me to run over and forbid someone putting their hand on someone else's leg, despite not being aware of their previous conversation?

Anyway, if you want to talk about derailing, how about we talk about how this stupid large thread is focusing almost entirely on the preamble of the essay, and not the core theme that women aren't treated as being intellectually capable by the group? A large thread that is inflamed by throwing abuse around? How does this help the author resolve her article's thematic problem, being that her mind isn't respected?

[wonderzombie]

Hey, I'm with you on the last part.

I'm addressing the fact that merrit's comment has no merit, and it's safe to pigeonhole it as worthless. The debate in this thread is whether or not it's helpful, and I weighed in, trying to talk about it at a somewhat higher level.

As far as "everyone else in the room" is concerned, that's absurd— it's a false dichotomy, excluded middle, etc. Rather than just write it off, think about it in good faith for like five minutes. How you would approach an ambiguous situation like this?

How about you ask? Apologize if you've intruded? You can all laugh it off — "ha, sorry, I thought you might be one of those guys" — and now you've broken the ice.

Nobody's asking you to be Superman zipping around the room, let alone the entire world. But there's a world of difference between that and just keeping an eye out once in a while.

Incidentally, in my mind, this counts as a productive conversation and not derailment— if more dudes showed less tolerance for this kind of bullshit, the world would be a better place.

[vacri]

On the 'everyone else in the room', you're effectively blaming some people for not responding to something they were unaware of, is my point.

In any case, look at what happened. There was the initial hug, and a subtle signal 'no' was sent'. There was the hand on the leg and a clearer 'no' was sent, at which point it stopped. What is there to intrude upon? As an observer, at want point do you launch into the defense? Stop your conversation because two people over there have initiated flirting, and you have no idea one way or the other that one of them isn't into it?

Breaking into the start of other people's nascent flirting makes you an arsehole. And "I thought you were one of those guys" isn't going to help the mood - it's basically saying to the other party "hey, I thought this guy was a creep". Wait until you have more information that one party isn't interested.

Similarly, with the encounter in the article, jumping in at a point before she was able to resolve it in the article is also robbing her of her own power. She resolved it pretty quickly and moved on to other things. Stepping in with an "is this guy bothering you" before she's even had time to send a clearer nonverbal 'no'? Someone has to be pretty helpless before you jump the gun that quickly.

[hbags]

No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you should never be allowed to say anything.

He's an asshole and a bully. If a victim doesn't protest withim his designated free-speech zone he doesn't want them to protest at all.

[dragonwriter]

> No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you should never be allowed to say anything.

No, he says, explicitly, that not saying anything there and then but blogging about it later won't be as effective in producing the desired change.

He does not say that people shouldn't be allowed to talk about it after the fact without addressing it immediately, he says that doing so is not the ideal choice if the goal is to actually deal with the problem.

There's a universe of difference between what he said and your characterization.

[vacri]

No, he never said or even intimated "don't write about it". He said that writing this article this way would only be read by people who already agree. He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire, but there is nothing in what he said that meant "don't write at all". That's your projection. He said "if you do A, it won't be as effective as B".

The person who is being an arsehole and a bully is you, naming, shaming, strawmanning, abusing, and being generally vituperative.

[dragonwriter]

> He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire

He didn't say that being proactive at the time would spread like wildfire, he said that being proactive at the time and writing about that experience afterward would.

[vacri]

Yep, that's what I meant. And to be specific, I don't think if the article was "I asserted myself with the groper and he withdrew" would spread like wildfire. It wouldn't reach a particularly different audience to this one, methinks.

[DorintheFlora]

Would it? I personally doubt that. Do you have an example of something like that working? Or is that just speculation?

[pstack]

Hbags, you are full of shit.

Merritt said the behavior was unacceptable and the way to fix it is to address it when it occurs. Followed by the comment:

--- "Running off to write yet another gender-division-in-the-tech-world blog which will be read, primarily, by the sort of folk who already agree with you isn't going to make nearly as much of a difference as taking care of issues promptly". ---

Then said that a story about a bad situation where the person spoke up about it would be a great story that would spread "like wildfire".

At absolutely NO point in Merritt's short post was it said that if you don't speak up when you are uncomfortable or accosted, you should never be allowed to say anything about it.

You owe Merritt an apology for straight out lying about the content and intent of their comment and repeatedly attacking their character based solely on the things you invented (then repeated) in this thread.

[hbags]

You owe Merritt an apology

No way. Meritt clearly attempted to shame her for writing about something that, for whatever reason, she didn't confront immediately.

He's a censor. He's shaming her for protesting outside his designated free-speech zone. Fuck him.

[pstack]

Repeating your accusations doesn't make them true.

Knock your vile rhetoric and bullying off for five seconds and quote, for all of us, the specific sentence or more from Merritt's comment where he shamed the author, implied or supported censoring her, or said that she should not be able to post about her experience.

It is a simple request. I'm not asking you to irrefutably prove your ability to bend spoons with your mind. Merritt's comment was quite short. Just copy and paste the precise part of his or her message where what you keep attacking them for is actually stated or even implied.

Don't worry, we'll all wait. Go ahead.

[Crito]

[OT]

> about: hell-banned by bigoted assholes

I don't see any evidence of you being hellbanned^. Furthermore, hellbanning is (typically, at least) an automated process. It is done by an algorithm that evaluates the quality of your posts using their score as the metric of quality. At the time that I am writing this, this seems to be your only post in this thread that has been voted into the negatives.

^ I have showdead turned on, so unless you deleted the comments that you have made since being hellbanned, I would see them in your comment history.