Actually, the Guys are Right About This
There's already a piece on this site called Latitude where I talk about deciding to not leap to conclusions about people being sexist pigs when I say something mathy and they have trouble accepting that I know that. I'm a former homemaker, not a NASA engineer or college professor, and there's just no reason for anyone to go "Seems LEGIT. Makes sense. Don't ALL sickly full-time homemakers use advanced mathematics while grocery shopping?"
Pro tip: If you're a homemaker trying to make ends meet on a budget, being mathy is handy for keeping running totals in your head while grocery shopping. And if you can remember all upcoming medical appointments and other important events a year out without a calendar, that's a neat trick too that makes scheduling apps irrelevant to your life.
In my last post a couple days back, I mentioned that Jack (AKA jacquesm) said this to me and I just didn't reply:
Great to see you're healing like that, you should write a book about what you're going through, or at a minimum a very well documented website, I've never heard of someone with CF to recover that much by banging their head against the problem, collecting the data in one spot might be a godsend for others.
Why didn't he check my profile? I have no idea.
Maybe he was busy and distracted and goofing off on HN as a break from serious work. Maybe he assumed that with my health issues, I didn't have time to do something like that.
Maybe he's a sexist pig and thinks girls are all lazy, incompetent and stupid.
And that last is certainly how I frequently FELT while posting in Hacker News and getting pissed all over and dismissed and gaslit about how you CAN'T make money online by people earning a living online or via the existence of the Internet because they were coding up the architecture of the thing.
To reiterate: I'm not any less guilty of making stupid and disrespectful assumptions about Jack.
The only programmer I really knew socially was my brother-in-law, the younger, ugly trophy husband of my career sister who was STILL living with his mommy when she began sleeping with him when he was around thirty years old who married her for her money and PROMPTLY ran up her credit cards while she lost her mind about it and complained to me.
So while I absolutely knew programmers make vastly better than minimum wage, no, I wasn't on Hacker News oohing and aahing about Talking to PROGRAMMERS. So impressive!
I was literally thinking about Jack in terms of "Dude, I'm on Hacker News way too much because I am medically handicapped and have no life. What is wrong with YOU that YOU are here all the time??? Why don't you get out of your Mommy's basement and go golfing or something?"
Beyond generally being polite and well mannered, my ENTIRE reason for trying to be respectful to him was that he was high on the leader board of the forum we both spent time on, so he was an important person in a shared social space. And THAT was IT.
No one was saying he was Mr. Big. No one was telling anyone "Remember to mind your Ps and Qs around him. He's Somebody." Everyone else ASSUMED if you were on Hacker News, you must KNOW his importance.
Newscasters don't necessarily introduce the current US president as "President of the United States and that makes him the world's most powerful man!" They tell you "President of Podunk Country" and explain why that's relevant to this breaking news story and why you should care when they think you probably haven't heard of him.
You're just supposed to KNOW who the current President of the United States is if you are anywhere on planet Earth. You're assumed to already KNOW that's a big deal and keep up with the name of the current President.
That's so assumed to be something everyone obviously knows that if an ambulance gets called on you because you fell on an icy sidewalk and smacked your head, "Who is president?" is one of the questions they ask to check if your brain is working. And I knew but I was also thinking "Dude, I don't follow the news. If I hadn't known, it's not necessarily evidence I splatted my brains."
Elizabeth Taylor was introduced at some award ceremony as the next presenter and the audience quietly giggled about it because who doesn't know who Elizabeth Taylor is? It's humorous that they introduced her because she needs no introduction.
So no one ever emailed me and said "Sweetie, let me explain this to you since you are not a programmer and don't seem to get it."
And while I was hoping to learn to program, I was on Hacker News the way people hang out on Twitter or Reddit. It was a way to pass the time after work while too sick to leave the house and get a life.
I don't know why he didn't check my profile before saying that. As a guess, probably because he's trying to chat up a pretty girl and not thinking of me like a serious career contact.
But before you go screaming "SEXIST PIG! He should TAKE her SERIOUSLY!!!" realize that I wasn't taking him seriously either. He was like the guy I went bowling with and I was oblivious to him being CEO of my company, so to speak.
I had a blinding headache and was throwing up, so I chose to not reply to his comment. Because I felt like publicly embarrassing him by saying something like "I have one. It's in my profile." was a good way to cut my throat socially on Hacker News.
If I had thought "Oh, he's Mr. Big! Opportunity knocks!" I might have emailed him and tried to say "You must be busy and distracted. That's in my profile actually. I would be thrilled if you read it and gave me feedback. Sorry I'm such a spaz. I'm especially sick today. Apologies for the no doubt many faux pas in this short email."
If I had really had my act together, maybe I would have made up a lie and gone "Actually, I am already doing that! I've added it to my profile JUST NOW! Thanks for the encouragement!"
He's not a medical professional. He's a programmer I had only recently realized isn't actually living in his Mommy's basement and I was super sick and my primary focus was just getting through the day.
This is a primary difference between male coded social environments associated with serious careers and female coded social environments associated with your private life:
Men expect you to prove yourself. You start with ZERO status and earn respect.
Women expect you to be polite and respectful and blah blah blah to everyone you meet. And then tear you down a la Mean Girls to see what's left standing when they call you on your bullshit.
Women ranting about sexist pigs failing to RESPECT them by not assuming out the gate with zero evidence that "Well, obviously, Doreen is mathy!" or "I should check her profile and SEE if she has such a website before bringing that up as small talk while trying to get a chick's phone number." are in the wrong.
The male standard is a time-tested public sphere metric for evidence based social standing.
That female expectation is more like "You don't know who my daddy is and you should assume I'm related to someone important and try to not offend me or anyone who knows or cares who my daddy is."
And it's not the way to get taken seriously in the world of work.
Was I contemplating how I might actually prove my ideas or get traction? Sure, I was.
I was thinking people in CF land would trust another person with CF and take me seriously and it would be a grass roots thing. And that didn't happen.
No, I didn't think Hacker News and programmers had any real bearing on a former homemaker getting taken seriously for DIY home remedies for CF.
Much less that I needed a programmer in The Netherlands to respect and understand my home remedies as an important stepping stone to money and power.