> If progressive values are not hacker values, the hacker values will be, should be, and must be destroyed.
To presume that every aspect of your value system is superior to every aspect of everyone else's value systems is both astoundingly arrogant and also authoritarian. Improvement of societal values can't come about without minority groups being allowed to practice alternative value systems, as abhorrent as they might seem to the mainstream. As long as these groups aren't dramatically harming someone (ie: slavery, killing homosexuals etc) then I don't see what the problem is with this. The progressive values you espouse would have likely been popularly embraced much sooner had society not used it's force to clamp down on people practicing alternative values; yet now that your value system is gaining societal support, you are suggesting that society do the exact same thing to different people employing alternative values.
I would encourage you to be a bit more open minded. You might find that elements of hacker culture's or other cultures' values are superior to elements of your value system, and fuse those aspects into your existing values to make a superior system. At the very least, if progressive values are universally superior to hacker values then they will naturally win out over time. There is no need to to advocate the silencing of dissenting voices.
Progressive values are in fact the minority. Most people on hacker news (for example, but also in the world at large) do not believe women have rights to bodily integrity, to be respected as people rather than sex objects, and to be comfortable in their communities. This thread from yesterday is a great reminder of that, to anyone who thinks HN is some egalitarian utopia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9168299
In order to have any concept of morality, we must presume that every aspect of our value system is superior to every aspect of any other value system. But this isn't a negative. It isn't ~presumptuous~ to believe that murder and torture and rape are wrong. Likewise, supporting these things is not some mere "alternative" that should be encouraged by some moral-relativist position that all forms of society are equally preferable.
The universe is not fair. There is no law of physics that naturally leads to good triumphing over evil. The history of humanity is the story of the slow climb of our species out of the darkness, away from tyranny and patriarchy and towards freedom for everyone, but this has not come for free. The road to freedom is mortared with the blood of freedom fighters, from Joan D'Arc to John Brown to Bobby Seale to Martin Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X to Andrea Dworkin. In order to continue this slow climb, we have to fight. There is no alternative. This article and the voices supporting it here are evidence of the backslide that would occur if ever we stopped.
It's laughable to suggest that patriarchy doesn't harm people. Read the thread I linked and the comments if you think otherwise. Every rape joke/rape denial is one more brick in the wall of PTSD facing one quarter of women. Every dongle joke is one more pane in the glass ceiling protecting the good ol' boys club. You have the luxury, the privilege, of pretending these things don't exist because you are a member of the social class committing these oppressions. With your silence, you become complicit; and you are not even silent.
It's comforting to know that I'm not alone among hackers. There is no intrinsic aspect of hackerdom that demands being creepy or misogynistic. And one day, just as there are few hackers that are KKK members or Nazis, there will be few hackers that are misogynists. Because the ratchet of history only ever turns in one direction, and once this ground is lost to you it will be lost forever.
Where are all the misogynists in said thread? All I see is a bunch of nerds arguing about semantics. Just because some of them don't think that a certain behavior constitutes rape doesn't mean that they actually condone said behavior. I believe that almost everyone in that thread thinks that the man should be put behind bars for a long time.
What I (and probably many other nerds) don't get is why feminists are so adamant in calling all sex related crimes "rape", does it really matter if a person gets X years in prison for sexual abuse instead of X years in prison for rape? And how is it obvious that arguing for one of the sides equals being a misogynist who thinks that women shouldn't have rights to bodily integrity?
Wanted to chime in and thank you for your posts in this thread -- good, insightful, correct stuff.
I'm optimistic -- while there's a lot of noise and badness right now, ten years ago people weren't even talking about these problems in the tech community. Imagine where we'll be in another decade.
To presume that every aspect of your value system is superior to every aspect of everyone else's value systems is both astoundingly arrogant and also authoritarian. Improvement of societal values can't come about without minority groups being allowed to practice alternative value systems, as abhorrent as they might seem to the mainstream. As long as these groups aren't dramatically harming someone (ie: slavery, killing homosexuals etc) then I don't see what the problem is with this. The progressive values you espouse would have likely been popularly embraced much sooner had society not used it's force to clamp down on people practicing alternative values; yet now that your value system is gaining societal support, you are suggesting that society do the exact same thing to different people employing alternative values.
I would encourage you to be a bit more open minded. You might find that elements of hacker culture's or other cultures' values are superior to elements of your value system, and fuse those aspects into your existing values to make a superior system. At the very least, if progressive values are universally superior to hacker values then they will naturally win out over time. There is no need to to advocate the silencing of dissenting voices.