[mingus68040]

Insofar as they went along with the overall thrust of the "blackout", yes; that is support of a mysoginist agenda. However /r/science tried to sit on the fence by claiming they had to make their subreddit private due to its frequent collaboration with /r/IAma -- a reason which was nonsensical. None of this began until Reddit's administration indicated its intention to begin banning certain subreddits. The mindless culture of harassment and hate which has festered on reddit over the last couple of years couldn't tolerate a woman of color being behind this perceived attack on their majority-young-white-male "freedom". It's a joke to think that any of this would have happened with a white male as CEO.

[nbouscal]

How about an older white male, from a business background, who was openly trying to institute censorship and monetization and was unabashedly ignorant of Reddit culture? I'm fairly confident that a CEO like that would have been significantly more hated by Redditors. The issue wasn't race or gender, it was culture.

[TorKlingberg]

The hate for Ellen Pao on Reddit seemed to start with her gender discrimination lawsuit. Also what monetization?

[nbouscal]

I'm not claiming the hatred for my hypothetical white male CEO would follow the same narrative pathways. I'm claiming that it's easy to imagine reddit hating a white male CEO as much or more than Ellen Pao.

I won't disagree that race and gender were used as part of that hatred, that's obviously the case. I think, though, that it's easy to mix up whether things are tools that people use to attack someone they already hate vs. reasons for hating them in the first place. I don't honestly know which it was in this case, but it's not hard for me to imagine that it was the former.

[TorKlingberg]

I agree that the Reddit "hivemind" does not hate a woman just for being a woman, and they can definitely hate a white man. I still think they are more likely to hate a woman. The hate against Ellen Pao started with her lawsuit which is related to her gender.

To take a hypotetical, let's say Reddit's CEO was a gay man who had sued a previous employer for something related to discrimination based on sexual orientation. I think Redditors would have been less negative about that, as Reddit is very pro gay rights. Then, when Victoria was fired I think the anger would have been less directed at the CEO personally and more towards the admin team as a whole, or at Reddit's owners.

We could also compare the recent banning of /r/fatpeoplehate with /r/jailbait earlier. People were upset about that too, but I cannot remember outright hate directed at the CEO personally.

I do agree with you about the racist posts. That seems like it's just a tool used to attack her.

[CamperBob2]

The hate against Ellen Pao started with her lawsuit which is related to her gender.

My understanding is that her lawsuit was more related to her ethics, or lack thereof, than to her gender. Is that an unreasonable way to put it?

[Murky42]

If the trial based on sexual orientation was still as obviously fraudulent as pao's trial was then the result would be largely the same I think.

After reading up on the trial to me it seemed rather obvious that the suit was fraudulent and had no basis in reality. The jury quickly reached a unanimous agreement on almost all of the counts as well with little room for debate on most of the issues at hand. As far as I recall they just spent a bit of time on the details regarding one specific thingamabob.

FPH ban had some hate against pao but not on this level as far as I recall (wasn't really in the drama then). The jailbait shebangle is before my time so dunno there.

This combined with the various ethical misadventures of her and her homosexual husband (which would actually help them considerably from an ethical viewpoint considerably if the CEO was actually a gay male as then it wouldn't be an obvious sham marriage).

[rory096]

>I still think they are more likely to hate a woman.

Well sure. If 3% of people are virulently sexist (against women) and none or fewer are sexist against men, the overall sentiment leans towards sexism – especially when they're loud about it. But the opinions of the fringe should not indict the actions of the rest of the people on their side. I do not believe that most or even a substantial portion of the 200,000 people who signed the petition to remove Pao were motivated primarily by misogyny or racism.