zlacker

Remember that you are on an American website with a heavy, American audience. You have to learn to dissociate European (in your case German) discussions and experiences from American ones. Don't "import" their problems, ideologies, opinions, etc.

It seems like many non-Americans simply do not make the context switch and once they leave the Ameri-sphere (e.g talk to fellow non-Americans), they talk about American topics as if they were happening locally - and is if they were directly impacted with a major stake in the issue.

Remember where you are, who you're talking to, and the context. Since non-Americans seem so eager to copy Americans however, it can be prudent to be aware of what's going on across the pond without being heavily invested. The USA is now acting like a looking glass into the future of what successes and mistakes are going to be imported wholesale by other countries and their citizens.

>>LockAn+(OP)
Good points, thank you. It just seems like in this case, whenever the topic is discussed everyone points to "it is known" style twitter mobs, and the actual examples of twitter mobs that do show up tend to not be as unreasonable in general.

E.g. the cancelling and uncancelling of RMS seemed to me mainly...reasonable? Like, he says some weird stuff and defended ~~Eppstein~~ Minsky (sorry, memory got messed up, thanks skissane) in a tone-deaf manner (I have had the joy of exchanging emails with RMS and interacting with him at talks he gave at my alma mater, and he always seemed like a thoughtful and kind person whom I respect and admire, but I feel like "tone-deaf" is a fair description), maybe that's not a good thing to do if your job is to be a public figure? And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of what really is rape reasonable? So if this is an example of what people are afraid of, it seems a very...specific fear

>>LockAn+(OP)
Sometimes an outsiders perspective asks the right question. The parent simply asked why candor and sexism appear to be conflated.

    Curious conversation is good

BTW, the roots of the US is from a cultural melting pot.

>>igorkr+c2
> he says some weird stuff and defended Eppstein in a tone-deaf manner

He was defending Marvin Minsky, not Jeffrey Epstein. The former was twisted into the later.

>>skissa+Db
thank you, corrected

>>igorkr+c2
He didn't defend Minsky in a tone deaf manner at all though, what he said was completely taken out of context. In the post where the lady "outted" him, she literally quoted what he said and then paraphrased it to mean something completely different.

RMS literally said that its possible that Minsky did not know that she wasn't willing because she was being coerced by Epstein to appear like she was. What is tone deaf about that? It seems pretty obvious that Epstein coerced his victims into acting a certain way.

The post took this and rephrased it as "RMS said she was entirely willing", which wasn't even close to what he said.

> And very little twisting was needed to make his discussion of what really is rape reasonable?

Except he never questioned what is or isn't rape. He didn't even question whether the girl in question was a victim, it was pretty clear that he agreed that she was. He only said that, because of coercion by Epstein, Minsky likely was presented with the appearance that everything was ok, even though it wasn't and that this would have affected his judgement.

Of course, Minsky's wife also said that they were on Epstein's island together and that Minsky did not engage in any of the accused activity anyway. But that's neither here nor there.

>>LockAn+(OP)
Last I ran the numbers, HN readers were about half in the U.S., but of course many of those are immigrants, expats, and so on.

Please let's not make this about a specific group. That way lies flamewar, and I can assure you that cross-cultural misinterpretation is a huge problem here in all directions.

>>LockAn+(OP)
I see the same thing happening with American colleagues pouring down on us, non-Americans, all sorts of American-society-specific problems and making new workplace rules based on that. I wish neither of what you or I are describing was true.