| ▲ | bigyabai 6 hours ago |
| It gets to their head. I had had a boss (from a YC-funded company, no less) that behaved in this way. Talked down on me with the g-slur, used language barriers to alienate his peers, and demanded religious sensitivity whenever we met after work. His entire life was defined by this religiously insecure identity, and several meetings were derailed by him thinking he was slighted by the rest of the team. That led to team members avoiding him, which reaffirmed his perception of being discriminated against. In reality we were all just baffled by his inability to adopt a secular work ethic. As a queer person I could partially empathize with his behavior. Some of the smartest queer people I know are also frustrated, downtrodden and crass in protest of their mistreatment. But they're also generally grounded people that buckle down at work and get things done. They don't accuse people of being bigoted, lash out at coworkers or use slurs in the office. Perhaps it helps that queer identity isn't eschatological in nature, but that's only my best guess. |
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| ▲ | Avicebron 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| the g-slur? I won't say it in case it is a slur, is that the word the jews call non-jews? |
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| ▲ | sebzim4500 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That makes way more sense, I thought he meant gypsy. In either case he should just say the word, this site isn't for children. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Avicebron is correct. I avoided being specific because I didn't want to derail the thread with responses from people that fulminate over specific keywords. |
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| ▲ | woodruffw 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Whether or not “goy” is a slur is pretty complicated. It has pejorative uses, and outside of a strictly religious context any non-Jew is almost certainly only going to see those pejorative uses. But strictly speaking it’s a Hebrew word that means “nation,” and isn’t any more or less offensive in the abstract than Jew, Arab, Brit, etc. (To my understanding, the closest equivalent is “ummah” in Arabic, where the connotation is flipped: goy can refer to a Jewish person but typically does not, whereas the ummah typically refers to Muslim peoples as a collective but can also be a general stand-in for “nation” or “world.”) | | |
| ▲ | throw368833 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It’s not literally a slur, but because it has developed negative connotations Jewish people tend to avoid it nowadays. Online, you are more likely to see it used by antisemites. Which is why I think that story is very likely bullshit. It’s from an account that very frequently posts pro-IRGC content, and has previously used “the G word” itself. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247908 | | |
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| ▲ | 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | madspindel 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think he ment Gypsy and not Gentile. | | |
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| ▲ | throw368833 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Your contribution to a story about a Jewish person is that you once worked for a Jew and you didn’t like him. |
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| ▲ | bigyabai 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thank you for your input, six-number throwaway. I am answering the parent's question while humanizing a complex, intelligent person that I worked for. |
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| ▲ | bbeonx 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | tomhow 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Please don't comment like this here. The HN guidelines ask us not to engage in political or ideological battle or use swipes like "comically stupid take". Same goes for your other comment in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48590901) – "sigh how are so many brilliant people this stupid?" adds nothing but venom to the discussion. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | | |
| ▲ | bbeonx 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | the first post was a swipe, i'll grant you. probably shouldn't have said it. it was a knee-jerk reaction to a structurally fallacious argument that leaves no room for discussion: "i reject your stance not based on reason, evidence, or anything that you can interact with, but based on an new presupposition i've just now decided is true". though i'll admit the severity of my knee jerking was probably amplified by some of the other opinions he holds. the second post is actually about (a) me having understanding for a position of someone i disagree with harshly, and (b) the logical structure of an argument, not the underlying topic itself. it was in reference to the content of the link that was posted. anyway, mods can take it down, i get why the rules are there. you're also right to ask folks to keep it clean. but i stand by it; dude just seems to have a trifecta of awful traits and i'm so so so tired of super rich tech dudes ruining the world. |
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| ▲ | altmanaltman 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | dekhn 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What you're describing about gender is.... not really scientific. It was basically declared by fiat by researchers. It's not an authoritative definition and many people disagree with the concept, at least when it gets conflated with scientific topics. | | |
| ▲ | bbeonx an hour ago | parent [-] | | there are some things that clearly exist that are really hard to nail down with definitions; once we get into anything social, we are kinda playing with that territory. everything is so fuzzy that our normal way of defining things breaks down. so saying precisely what gender _is_ is going to be almost impossible. but there are definitely roles and traits that are highly correlated with a person's birth sex that are distinct from their birth sex. there can even be genetic reasons why those correlations emerged. but they are still distinct. as evidence, what it _means_ to be a man, woman, etc, differs from society to society. if you ask me to quantify this precisely, i will struggle. but it's plain for all to see. |
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| ▲ | p1necone 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think you need to read their comment again - they are clearly talking about sex and gender as two different concepts. | |
| ▲ | bbeonx an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | sorry, is this in response to my post? in which case, this is exactly the distinction i'm making. the entire argument is whether or not there _is_ a distinction; my point is that this guy just, a priori, decides gender doesn't exist. but there is plenty of evidence that it does. there are plenty of social traits associated with sex that differ across different cultures: pink used to be a manly color, now it's a feminine color; "be a man" doesn't literally mean "make sure your sex is male"; etc. there are traits that are heavily correlated with a person's sex that are culturally reinforced, and this is distinct from their sex. | |
| ▲ | wincy 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is a motte and bailey though. A regular person on the street has never seen a distinction between these two words, and common sense prevailed after years of Silicon Valley policing of speech to try to make an unpopular position seem tenable and widely agreed upon to get the average person to step in line. | | |
| ▲ | p1necone 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you seriously trying to claim that e.g. wearing dresses or liking the color pink is somehow fundamentally tied the the genitals in your pants or the chromosomes you have? The idea that gender is a social concept is so blindingly obvious that, like bbeonx I kind of assume that anyone making comments like yours about "common sense" is either blindly parroting talking points without thinking about them, or arguing in bad faith. |
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| ▲ | tentlewick 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | p1necone 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Basically saying that women and men should present and behave within a narrow set of parameters. I think you're putting words into peoples mouths there. Acknowledging that there is a social construct we generally know of as "gender" and acknowledging that certain stereotypes and common understandings of that concept exist is not at all the same thing as demanding that people should fit into the narrowest stereotypes that you can think of. Also worth noting that you acknowledging the existence of sexist stereotyping is an acknowledgement of the existence of gender as a social construct. | |
| ▲ | AlotOfReading 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There are both descriptive and normative uses of gender. To use a less charged example, it's not prescriptive to identify as American. It's not prescriptive to say other people identify you that way, even if your passport says Canadian. An example of using the category normatively would be saying someone isn't American because they burn the flag. My experience is that most of the people using "gender" normatively don't differentiate it from sex. |
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