This is a really hard problem space to solve. I'm very sorry to see this drama happening and I have sympathy for both sides.
I routinely run into the issue that if I try to understand why people did something that went badly/harmed people without looking to blame them per se, I get accused of being "an apologist." But in practice trying to understand why things happen is essential to finding a real solution. Merely asserting that X person's/group's needs matter and they are being harmed isn't really enough to find a viable path forward.
Like I have seen people say that suburbia is "White supremacist design" because in practice it ended up being mostly Whites who got suburban housing when suburbia was born in the US. I have tried to make the distinction that suburbia was born in part because large swaths of greenfield development was quicker, easier and cheaper to create and that this choice wasn't, per se, racist.
I am aware there was real racism happening and there were a lot of bylaws that intentionally excluded People of Color, but I'm sure those bylaws would have existed even if they had been building towers of condos in downtown areas instead. It wasn't specific to the architectural form that was built.
I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate.
I asked this person about a thing they did. I had been having paranoid fears that they did that thing in reaction to me and stuff I was working on and when they replied to my inquiry they had a wholly unrelated reason.
I didn't tell them that I was having paranoid fantasies that maybe this was some kind of negative reaction to me. I framed it neutrally.
Their reply was very reassuring to me. It was reassuring in part because I trust and respect this person. If you don't have that piece, having a long list of negative experiences makes it difficult to believe they aren't intentionally harming you and then lying about their real motives to cover it up and enable additional abuse.
It is, perhaps, a mistake to leave this remark. Like Timnit Gebru, I'm pretty tired and frustrated with a lot of things and feeling rubbed raw and exhausted.
But it seems to me it doesn't get better by throwing in the towel and giving up on saying anything just because the entire world is touchy after a nearly year-long global pandemic.
> I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate.
What feels like a breakdown of trust in society has been on my mind a lot recently. Without trust, it seems communication and collaboration becomes impossible. How can society solve any of its problems when people can't discuss anything about those problems or potential solutions without it turning into a fight?
I've been on Hacker News over 11 years. I would like to think I've been building bridges, but it seems like nothing I do is ever enough to reassure people I'm not some SJW Feminazi here to just piss on the guys and let them know what misogynistic assholes they are and it gets hard to keep trying when most of the community has watched me starve for years and openly told me "Not my problem. Get a real job." (while my writing hits the front page, but people don't want to support it financially, knowing I'm handicapped, etc).
I don't have a whole lot more to give and I've spent much of this year wondering if it's time to throw in the towel and leave HN. It feels downright abusive at times to stay in a community where I feel I have done so much to reduce sexism and open doors for other women and improve participation of women here and it's the funnel for a multi-billion dollar business, yet I remain dirt poor.
It's a rather jagged, bitter pill to swallow and I think I deserve a helluva lot better.
But then I don't know where I would go if I left. HN is the least worst thing. Other places are worse.
Metafilter was a toxic cesspit that banned me for supposedly "self promoting." They like to wrench their shoulder out of place patting themselves on the back for how what awesome, wonderful people they are and the mods were actively encouraging the membership to bully me at a time when I was homeless. One member of Metafilter that had a hobby of harassing me while I was homeless was a female ER doctor. Another was a very privileged American pursuing their PhD while living in Europe.
When you left your comment, I was staring blankly at some other open tab wondering how in the heck to talk about rape prevention and best practices for dismantling rape culture without using the word "rape" at all, in part because it's a triggering word for people who have been assaulted and in part because I get accused of being full of bull for thinking I know anything about such topics.
Some problems are just hard to solve. I do what little I can, which doesn't seem to amount to a handful of sand in the grand scheme of things.
I guess the upside is I'm mostly well at this point, in spite of the entire world telling me I'm a deluded fruitcake so it's not like I'm ever going to get taken seriously or given any respect.
And this is probably all the wrong things to say, as usual. I wish I had an answer for you. There doesn't appear to be one, as best I can tell.
I vouched for your comment. It had been auto-marked [dead] due to containing some blocked keyword -- perhaps the very word that you talked about trying to avoid. I have noticed that a few words cause posts to initially show [dead] even when they are from high karma members such as yourself.
You can see if one of your own comments is dead by checking it in a private/incognito browser session. The status isn't visible to the comment poster while they are logged in.
Or if you log out, if I recall. It just generally doesn't occur to me to wonder if my comments are dead. I'm enough of a social outcast here that if it gets ignored, I figure people were just ignoring it.
For what it's worth, I think your contributions are important and you're a valuable member of this community. You've got a different perspective from many of the users of this site, and unlike many of them, your writing has actual _substance_. Regardless of whether or not I agree with what you say, if I notice your name on a comment, I know that I should pay attention to it.
I routinely run into the issue that if I try to understand why people did something that went badly/harmed people without looking to blame them per se, I get accused of being "an apologist." But in practice trying to understand why things happen is essential to finding a real solution. Merely asserting that X person's/group's needs matter and they are being harmed isn't really enough to find a viable path forward.
Like I have seen people say that suburbia is "White supremacist design" because in practice it ended up being mostly Whites who got suburban housing when suburbia was born in the US. I have tried to make the distinction that suburbia was born in part because large swaths of greenfield development was quicker, easier and cheaper to create and that this choice wasn't, per se, racist.
I am aware there was real racism happening and there were a lot of bylaws that intentionally excluded People of Color, but I'm sure those bylaws would have existed even if they had been building towers of condos in downtown areas instead. It wasn't specific to the architectural form that was built.
I recently had an exchange with someone that reminded me how important trust and mutual respect is and how the lack of such tends to cause problems to escalate.
I asked this person about a thing they did. I had been having paranoid fears that they did that thing in reaction to me and stuff I was working on and when they replied to my inquiry they had a wholly unrelated reason.
I didn't tell them that I was having paranoid fantasies that maybe this was some kind of negative reaction to me. I framed it neutrally.
Their reply was very reassuring to me. It was reassuring in part because I trust and respect this person. If you don't have that piece, having a long list of negative experiences makes it difficult to believe they aren't intentionally harming you and then lying about their real motives to cover it up and enable additional abuse.
It is, perhaps, a mistake to leave this remark. Like Timnit Gebru, I'm pretty tired and frustrated with a lot of things and feeling rubbed raw and exhausted.
But it seems to me it doesn't get better by throwing in the towel and giving up on saying anything just because the entire world is touchy after a nearly year-long global pandemic.