> ...if a white guy gets offended while trying to learn that it's less of a problem than the actual object of our activism.
Nobody is arguing this.
Here's the thing though: it doesn't matter if one problem is worse than the other, at least as to the point people are trying to make in this thread.
When activists are openly hostile or otherwise inflammatory to people who are sympathetic to but not yet behind the activists' cause, they undermine that cause by pushing away and alienating the very people who are signaling that they're on the cusp of changing their perspective. Those people who held out an olive branch only to have it knocked aside are less likely to become allies in the future.
> Frankly if I have to argue with this person and tiptoe around their fragile ego in discussing these things I'm not sure we want them in the first place.
I'm sorry, but this is phenomenally short-sighted. This is how the human psyche works. Virtually any person who's been converted to your cause started from a position of disagreement, went through a transition period where they started to question longstanding beliefs and assumptions, learned to empathize with people who were harmed by the status quo, and eventually discarded or significantly amended those original beliefs. You will be hard-pressed to find a psychologist who will suggest that ridiculing or attacking a person in that transition period will do anything but turn them away and calcify their original position.
>Those people who held out an olive branch only to have it knocked aside are less likely to become allies in the future.
You're still acting like people are doing us a favor by trying to understand us.
They aren't, and we deserve better than that: either deal with us substantively or dismiss us, but don't expect us to try and manipulate your biases in such a way that you end up agreeing with us. That's what you're asking when you say we should try to convince people.
>You will be hard-pressed to find a psychologist who will suggest that ridiculing or attacking a person in that transition period will do anything but turn them away and calcify their original position.
And yet, I've seen the opposite of this happen time and time again. When people are ready to learn, it looks a lot different than this. When people aren't ready, yeah, this is basically what happens. Not to mention that if you talk to a psychologist about rational argument they'll tell you it's a quirk of human cognition, not the rule, and that it's basically futile as a means of really convincing someone.
If they really support us they'll understand eventually and come around. If they don't, they won't. I say this because it happened to me, and here I am arguing with you about this. It takes a very mature person to want to understand these things, and not everybody is mature enough.
This whole concept that we have to be nice to bigots lest they become more bigoted is hugely abusive and unhelpful, and you've yet to justify it.
> they undermine that cause by pushing away and alienating the very people who are signaling that they're on the cusp of changing their perspective
You have repeatedly made this assertion, but you have made no effort to substantiate it. Why do you think you're in a better position to judge what works and what doesn't than the activists who deal with this stuff every day? Being hostile towards people who are ignorant and react indignantly when their ignorance is pointed out is a strategy, and one that seems to work. Sure, some people don't take criticism well and you lose them. But some people _will_ listen, improve their behavior, and will eventually become worthwhile allies.
You have repeatedly made this assertion, but you have made no effort to substantiate it.
(I am not the person you are replying to, but) I have actually offered myself as an example in this discussion, which has been repeatedly pissed on. I am the top ranked woman on HN, in spite of never having had a tech job. When I still had relatively little karma, I was noticing that men on the leaderboard were closing ranks and things were getting what felt kind of ugly on my end. I was getting remarks that suggested to me that I was "prominent" for a woman here. I gathered data to verify that and soon concluded that I was rather high ranking for a woman, in spite of my low score.
I have worked really hard to move certain people out of my way without turning it into a fight and to participate in good faith and so on. I am noticing in recent months that other women are benefitting from the changes here, which weren't simply wrought by me, it is far more complicated than that.
Of course, I have known lots of people in life who will simply dismiss whatever I have accomplished with some convenient explanation like "survivor bias" or "that's just your opinion" or even "It is wild coincidence, stranger things have happened." People seem to basically believe what they already believe. Confirmation bias seems to make most people interpret all events through the lens of their current mental models and getting people to consider others is quite hard.
I did not originally set out to become anyone of influence on Hacker News, but after discovering that I had fairly high rank for a woman in spite of zero ambition, I decided to run with it. And I went from something silly like 4k karma to currently above 19k karma in probably a shorter time than it took me to get that original 4k. Furthermore, I no longer see men on the leaderboard routinely closing ranks to exclude me and things like that. The atmosphere has changed and without a battle.
I am expecting this comment of mine to also be torn apart and pissed on, which is par for the course for this type of comment. Nonetheless, I am leaving it "for the record" in hopes that it causes some people to think, even though it is highly unlikely to change your mind at all.
Nonetheless, I think you're making a bit of a generalization here from messageboard karma to the real world.
The community here on HN is self selected for a particular kind of person, and the people that would be on my side in this discussion really tend to avoid this board for similar reasons.
I have no doubt that you'll get more karma for being cordial instead of abrasive, respectable instead of radical. But I care very little about how much karma I have.
Eh, karma is far easier to point to than the things I actually pay the most attention to. I also cannot fathom why people make this sort of distinction between cyberspace and meatspace. People get jobs and work and meet future spouses and on and on via online forums. There are an awful lot of real world movers and shakers right here on Hacker News.
>I also cannot fathom why people make this sort of distinction between cyberspace and meatspace.
I don't, in general, I just meant that randos online are not the target of my activism, and I'm not currently trying to conduct myself in such a way that they become allies. That's all.
Nobody is arguing this.
Here's the thing though: it doesn't matter if one problem is worse than the other, at least as to the point people are trying to make in this thread.
When activists are openly hostile or otherwise inflammatory to people who are sympathetic to but not yet behind the activists' cause, they undermine that cause by pushing away and alienating the very people who are signaling that they're on the cusp of changing their perspective. Those people who held out an olive branch only to have it knocked aside are less likely to become allies in the future.
> Frankly if I have to argue with this person and tiptoe around their fragile ego in discussing these things I'm not sure we want them in the first place.
I'm sorry, but this is phenomenally short-sighted. This is how the human psyche works. Virtually any person who's been converted to your cause started from a position of disagreement, went through a transition period where they started to question longstanding beliefs and assumptions, learned to empathize with people who were harmed by the status quo, and eventually discarded or significantly amended those original beliefs. You will be hard-pressed to find a psychologist who will suggest that ridiculing or attacking a person in that transition period will do anything but turn them away and calcify their original position.