Even reading the title of this sent me into a downward spiral of intense paranoia/hatred/annoyance/terror. Was gift giving not already enough of a stilted, rote interaction? Do we need to systematize EVERYTHING!?! Is there no escape from this? What have we become?
For those of you who claim that the right thing in this situation would be to turn the child over to the authorities - what exactly do you think the authorities are going to do to make this situation better? The child obviously has some darkness that he needs to work through - to work through darkness he needs the support of a loving community. I find it very sad and disturbing that some commenters (who I assume are adults) believe that the right thing to do is to hand a child like this over to the police or mental institutions. This idea that the police are some sort of magical wand that you can wave at problems to make them go away is at the center of our (our here meaning the US & Britain's) social decay (c.f. the current treatment of drug abusers, ethnic minorities, and the "mentally ill" in the United States).
Assuming this story is true, what OP did was the right, human, adult thing to do - to treat the child as a human being capable of change and growth and to see to it that the community accepted him and moved him towards change. Concepts like "justice" and "psychosis" are easy to throw around and are very practical, but their use is typically the root of more harm than good.
You are calling a 17 year old person a "child". This is wrong, and perfectly in keeping with the trend of failing to raise children into mature adults.
17 year olds will be able to vote on their next birthday. They can hold jobs, they can drive cars, they can fly planes, they can even serve in the armed forces with their parents' permission. 17 year olds fought in the battle of Iwo Jima.
Calling this person a child diminishes them, and takes away their capacity for agency and responsibility. A big part of being a healthy, functional adult in society is responsibility. You can nurture them within a loving community all you want but if you protect them entirely from the consequences of their actions they will never become anything more than children.
First of all, you're picking on a very small point. The fact that I referred to this guy/kid/whatever as a "child" isn't really crucial to my argument except perhaps in a pretty indirect/connotative manner.
Second of all, to me, this kid is a child. I know some 30+ year old grown-ass men and women who are children. I was remarking on his (apparent) lack of maturity and his position within the community (still living with parents, pulling [admittedly extreme] "pranks", not living with the consequences of his actions).
I agree that to be an adult you need responsibility and that to get there you must increasingly suffer the consequences of your actions. My point (which you have avoided responding to entirely) centers on the fact that, in the US and the UK, turning ANYONE (child or adult) over to the "authorities" is not any sort of reasonable or useful consequence and, what's more, that it is disturbing to me that this particular idea of "punishment" or "consequences" or "justice" or whatever seems to continue to penetrate the public consciousness.
Just because he's 17 doesn't mean he has grown up. He obviously hasn't and treating him like a grown-up and expecting him to take responsibility when he obviously hasn't reached that part of his mental development would be very detrimental. That's why the article writer made sure to impress upon his parents that the boy needs counselling - to work through and correct whatever mental/behavioural issues he has.
That argument of course only holds if your goal is utilitarian with regards to the well-being of society as a whole and that family in particular. If you just seek to satisfy your inner craving for "justice", by all means - call the cops, destroy his life, create another criminal and drug user and watch him and his parents lose any hope of normal life, while you laugh and twirl your moustache from atop the moral high tower.
If it would be detrimental to him to "grow up" then will it not be detrimental to society to put him out in a world where he could do harm to others? Especially given that he already has a history of doing exactly that?
If the premise here is that this man-child is too immature to take on the responsibilities of adult society (such as the right to own firearms, the right to drive automobiles, the right to drink alcohol, etc.), that he is in some way developmentally disabled, then should he not be kept away from society and denied the ability to hurt others?
You are setting up a false dichotomy here. You are saying that the choice is either that this person be sheltered by a nurturing and loving community who protects him from the consequences of his actions and if not then his life will be ruined utterly. He needs to face the consequences of his actions. He needs to learn that it is necessary to abide by just laws in order to live in society and to fail to do so will result in very serious consequences. If he cannot accept any responsibility then he has no place in civil society.
What are the possible consequences of someone being sheltered from the consequences of their vile, hateful, violent acts? That person can become mentally and emotionally twisted and their hatred and lust for wanton destruction can grow. And this can occur even within the sheltering arms of a loving community. And then the hurt they cause others and the irreparable damage they do to themselves becomes even greater until they become a monster. A rapist, a serial killer, or merely an outcast who cannot mesh with society.
This is not about moral high towers, this is about ensuring that society does not become burdened with so-called adults who have never faced true responsibility and are incapable of functioning properly within society.
I think it is highly unlikely that any of his actions would result in any significant jail time. Community service, a fine, and/or some sort of probation are all more likely.
I had a childhood friend who got in with a bad crowd in high school. At some point, when he was about 17, he was caught illegally entering a business at night. His parents refused to go pick him up from the police station, so he had to spend the night and most of the next day in a cell. I don't believe his ultimate punishment involved any jail time.
I respect his parent's decision. That sort of action teaches a troublesome kid that there are real consequences for breaking laws beyond just upset parents. While a criminal record might make it harder for him to get a job in the future, it certainly doesn't make it impossible. I also suspect it is better than letting a kid think that other people will protect him and he can get away with whatever he wants.
I'm suggesting no such thing. I'm saying that if someone thinks that this person should be sheltered entirely from the consequences of his actions then it is similarly logical to shelter society from his cruelty. If you'll notice I haven't actually suggested a course of action for dealing with him, I've only suggested that he needs to experience consequences for his hateful and violent attacks.
The 17 yo might not be a child, but he is immature. His actions were not the actions of a mature individual.
Knowing the 17 yo, and knowing his family means the article author was able to make a judgement call about how seriously he takes the threats against his family and himself now that the veil of anonymity is revealed.
If he was still worried about the threats being enacted after the 17 yo was reveal then I'm sure he would have involved authorities.
Actions have consequences, and while I agree that what the 17 yo did needs to have consequences, by invoking the authorities the author could change this from an act that has a definite conclusion to something that is ongoing (if only on his conscience) when he hears stories about this kid's life 5, 10 and 20 years from now.
To let go of retribution and have a dark part of your life concluded and move on is sometimes a better outcome than having to drag something out to get justice.
When I think back to the decisions I made as a 17 year old (and an 18, 19, 20 ... year old) I think it is perfectly valid to call a 17 year old a child.
At that age I would guess a large proportion can barely cook for themselves, have never lived alone, probably never paid a bill or shopped at supermarkets.
How will that help? You don't solve the problem of people being immature even into adulthood by delaying the official onset of adulthood yet more. You solve it by treating teenagers as adults in training. Which used to be the case until very recently. Now we avoid giving responsibility to teens, we treat high school like day care or a prison, and we wonder why our "kids" don't magically acquire maturity when they turn 18, or 21, or 25, or 30.
Maturity and responsibility are skills that must be taught. And they cannot be taught at a distance, they must be taught live, with the real world, because it is only through learning that actions have consequences, sometimes serious ones, that maturity is acquired.
I think the answer isn't so much giving people consequences as giving them responsibility.
It's ridiculous that some kids get their post secondary education degree without ever having held a job (of any kind).
I find it amazing that teens walk around with $200-$2000 worth of electronics that their parents paid for them with no thought to their value because they didn't pay for it, and they know they'll be replaced if they whine enough.
The case for upping the age of maturity to 25 is that there is solid brain science suggesting that that is how old we are when our brain finishes developing the ability to make mature decisions. See http://www.hhs.gov/opa/familylife/tech_assistance/etraining/... for that.
However you're absolutely right that children who are never given responsibility never develop their ability to take responsibility.
Totally agree. You see things from a different perspective when you start having responsibilities and duties, like having to pay for your rent, having to cook and do the cleaning yourself, and so on...
"...the tough thing about adulthood is that it starts before you even know it starts, when you're already a dozen decisions into it. But what you need to know, Todd, no Lifeguard is watching anymore. You're on your own. You're your own man, and the decisions you make now are yours and yours alone from here until the end. "
An arbitrary age of maturity has nothing to do with actual (as opposed to legal) adulthood or responsibility. The fact is that "kids" at the age of 17 and 18 are already making decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives. Making the legal age later will certainly not help these people realize that the decisions they are making are important or that they need to take responsibility for themselves.
I often find the idea of "maturity" an interesting concept. We have a fairly fixed average lifetime expectancy, which can vary by a couple of years depending on where you live (on average). I think the global average is 68 years old for both sexes.
The western world has an fairly fixed period of "maturing" into adulthood, which is usually achieved when the individual reaches 18 years old. Most countries then offer the vote and other "adult" related perks and responsibilities. Meanwhile, adults are living longer and social and health support costs for those people in retirement is increasing and this burden falls on the working population.
Historically humans have matured before 18 years old. This shift has happened over the last two centuries (western world). However, let's not forget that in many parts of the world, children start work and start families at a much younger age and it is socially acceptable within their own societies. These are concepts that we in the western world find (now) quite bizarre, but during the (British) industrial revolution, children (and we had a lot of them) helped to power the revolution, working in mines and factories. These children had children younger and further increased the population at a more rapid growth rate. We now look on this with distaste, disgust and a large degree of pity, but at the time I doubt it was viewed as so.
I would go further and state that today we see this as slavery, whilst back then they saw it as necessity. This necessity still exists around the world, and even though there is a huge drive in the western world to boycott companies in the third and second world who use child labor, it is an important source of income for their families living in poverty. Importantly and all to often forgotten, we are too blinded by our indignation to see otherwise. I'm not saying that this is right, merely making an observation.
Meanwhile our welfare states are collapsing and we have few options. We have to reduce our social support costs or see our support systems collapse. Alternatively we could import human resource from abroad to pay the taxes to support welfare. Importing labor is not without its own challenges, but has helped to build countries like the United States into global powerhouses.
Without a doubt, we need to extend people's working lives (i.e. later retirement), which is for many countries, especially in Europe, the first step on this path. The "lord taketh and the lord taketh away", but woe betide the state that tries to take anything away from its citizens. Countries like France are being brought to their knees by this welfare burden. The people protest in their millions as they see banks profit and get richer, but nothing will change, except for the fact that eventually, the French will have to accept later retirement and higher taxes.
Thus, the question I put to you is this: Do our children really need 18 years to mature, or is our system taking 18 years to mature them? Are we able to improve the system so that we can increase the number of workers in the system from the bottom up, rather than the top down?
We could radically change the way (and speed) in which we educate our children (and have more of them) to help offset the welfare gap from the bottom up. I haven't ever heard this idea proposed and the devil's advocate in me wants to question why not?
I have children and I want the best for them. On one hand I want them to enjoy their "extended" childhood, but I also want them not to suffer in poverty when they get older. The pragmatist in me thinks that there is little option other than consider extending the worker's life from both sides.
To summarize, the baby boomers fucked us and we and our children just have to live with the consequences.
"Without a doubt, we need to extend people's working lives (i.e. later retirement)"
How is this a given? Increased efficiency might counteract demographics. Hundred years ago a lot more farmers where needed to feed the same amount of people than today. If your phone can do your medical checkup, lots of medical aid workers can perhaps be freed to do other stuff.
I worry that we are being brainwashed on a constant basis by a rich elite to believe the "we have to work harder and longer" dogma. It doesn't make that much sense, given that we are a lot more technologically advanced than 50 years ago. Granted, the population has grown, too. All I want to say that I wouldn't take your claim at face value.
As for working children: sure, children can work. Does that mean they are adults? I think in our times it basically means being allowed to vote and make responsible decisions. You can still work in a coal mine following orders without being able to make responsible decisions.
Obviously people will do what they need to survive, but while we can, we should probably try to attain to a higher standard.
Even for the child laborers in India it is not a given that things have to be what they are. Yes, the current system makes it so - doesn't imply that there couldn't be another system. Paying their parents more might be a start.
I guess that is my opinion, as I personally see this as the most attractive option to solve the deficit. You can of course raise taxes, but that decreases fluidity. Decreased fluidity dampens growth, etc..
"You are calling a 17 year old person a "child". This is wrong, and perfectly in keeping with the trend of failing to raise children into mature adults."
I see it slightly more cynically - in my opinion, either the 17 year old is "child" so is not held responsible and his parents are, or he is not a child and is held responsible. I don't accept the assumption that _nobody_ is responsible for a badly brought up child. The guy and his wife were put through something a lot closer to "terrorism" than anything many detainees at Guantanamo ever managed. If the kid had been Arabian, and hs parents had knowingly or unknowingly provided training and equipment that allowd the kid to do what he did - how differently do you suppose this story would have played out?
Let's not pretend there's reason or justice in how the US treats those people. That's part of a larger conflict, and has little value as an example of individual responsibility.
17 year olds may be able to do all of those things, however we know that the average male's forebrain doesn't fully develop until much later, as much as 8 years later. Some males aged 25 still have not developed to the point of advanced reasoning. Reasoning like being able to see the consequences and harm done by stunts such as sending threats like this. It's certainly not enough to dismiss this and say "he's 17, he's not a child anymore".
Who cares about a "fully developed" brain, if there is even such a thing? Human beings at any age are largely irresponsible and irrational and most people never move beyond this. Yet I know that the vast majority of 17-year-olds I have encountered do not mail boxes of ashes to Jews, or anything of the sort. That his brain is not totally "developed" absolves nothing. Should a person with an IQ of 100 serve less time than a person with an IQ of 140, because the latter is more "capable of rationality", or whatever other quality you want to ascribe to the mind? At some point, certainly short after the reasonable age of entry into the working world (probably sixteen) people need to be expected to act decently. Sure, I'm in favor of rehabilitation -- punishment is a revenge-instinct and waste of resources -- but we should do ourselves and these people the service of being honest about what they are: criminals.
That sounds so weird. This is particularly males? Males with healthy diets and lifestyles, ones with terrible diets and bad lifestyles, or across the board?
Especially since the average male lifespan was around 35 years up until a few millenia ago. Are you saying that most males died before they reached maturity?
AFAIK 'average male lifespan was around 35 years' is based on estimates that includes all males including the relatively large percentage who never survived childhood
And your implication that a "loving community" can wave a magic wand and make this sick adult better is equally incorrect.
I would suggest in fact that some of the signs this troubled individual would behave in this manner were probably already apparent to his parents, but they chose to dismiss it because no parent really believes their own child can be capable of such horrible behaviour.
This is a person that needs professional help - from an objective third party. The authorities, while certainly imperfect, can provide this.
For all you know, when this adult was confronted and "broke down" it could have all been an act. He could truly be a psychopath (and his actions certainly suggest that)
I'm of multiple minds of this. My personal relation to this is my brother was a punk in his teenage years. He stole from friends, neighbors, and even my mom's engagement ring and hocked it all to by drugs and alcohol. My dad was and still is in the firm "loving community" area with him. Selling my dad's car was the last straw and we sent him to a juvenile detention/rehab/detox center to recover. We feel this was actually worse because this is where he learned from the other people how to lie, cheat, and evade better than he would have on his own. For years he would comeback and steal from my dad knowing he would not be turned in or would at least be released to his care. Now he is career criminal and next chance for parole is in 16 years.
My brother needed professional help but I don't think he got it from that rehab center and sure as hell did not get it in subsequent trips to prison when he became an adult. For him he could act and say exactly the right thing to whoever he was talking too to convince them he was reformed yet again. Being sent away for rehab was probably the wrong action but we did try several things prior to that that never helped.
I think this kid is trouble and the parents knew it which is why they gave the author the option to engage the authorities. They maybe afraid to do it themselves not knowing if he would hold a grudge against them if they did it (my brother did). I don't know if engaging the legal system would help and certainly wouldn't if he was a psychopath. For the author though, this is probably the best option as he did not escalate the situation with the kid. He probably will not be the target in the future but hard to say really. If the kid really is capable of those actions then I would not want him on my enemy's list. The kid has just learned that there are no real consequences for his actions. I think the parents need to be the ones that take action and at least have him see a psychologist as a minimum.
Neither do imply nor do I believe that a "loving community" can waive a magic wand and make this sick child better. I do believe that it is more or less the only chance he has. There is ample evidence that our justice system and public mental health facilities are woefully inadequate for dealing with mental disturbances which are increasingly abundant in society. The idea that "professionals" are somehow intrinsically capable of dealing with these sorts of problems is one of the more troubling and pervasive myths in the United States (at least among people I know/have met/in the beliefs of the people as presented in the media). I'm not an expert, but my impression is that ther countries known for having better track records w/r/t criminal and mental rehabilitation (Norway, Finland, Japan) have stronger community structures and a more communal-based jail/asylum system.
What do you imagine happening to this child once he begins receiving professional help - (and let's be clear, here - I am advocating professional help - e.g. I think it's good that the child will go to counseling) - from the authorities that be? If he is put into jail he has a high probability of becoming criminalized (attaching to a community of criminals ) - if he is put into an asylum he has a good chance of becoming institutionalized. What is the root of your faith in our prison/mental health system? I honestly want to know.
It seems that your belief might stem in the idea that the child's parents are somehow morally or intellectually weak and that therefore the government has to step in and be the child's "strong father/mother." Is this correct? If so, why do you believe that government agencies deserve this sort of power? Have they earned it?
I would probably do the same thing, I would probably not report the child of my friend to authorities.
But looking at this as a third person; I think he got away too easily. He did something evil, he got caught and what are the consequences? A slap on the wrist.
I didn't downvote, but an assertion coupled with waffle words and with no citation doesn't add much to the conversation. Phrasing it as "in my experience, love is contagious" would at least frame the comment more accurately (individual experience and opinion versus universal axiom).
If he has any connection to his parents at all, the embarrassment of being outed in front of his parents might be more than just a slap on the wrist.
Also, is this the "an eye for an eye" theory of justice? Personally I hope that my kid will behave in a good way because he considers it the right thing to do, not because he is afraid of punishment.
It's not an eye for an eye. But it is actions and consequences.
If you take an extreme crime (like murder), I don't think you'll find many people who would say "there should be no consequences to that as long as the person is truly sorry for what they did". There must be some level of punishment, and there will be disagreement about what the appropriate level is.
Now this was not murder, but it was true terror over a period of 4 years. Do those actions have consequences? Or just give him a hug?
This 17 year old has problem, and he needs intensive psychological counselling at the very least. He didn't know why he did it? It was just a game? Those are scary answers and the problem needs to be fixed.
At least having him in the police database, fingerprints, IP address records, reports from his counselling sessions - would make it easier for someone else to catch him next time he does this. The next person he does this to will be starting from scratch trying to find out who this was, like the author was 4 years ago.
There seems to be an implicit assumption in your statement that either the only meaningful type of consequence comes from the authorities or that the parents will not enact any type of consequence themselves. Considering the reaction of the parents, I think it is quite likely that they will/did provide consequences more severe than a slap on the wrist.
I don't think the point people are making when they say he should be handed to the authorities is that they'll fix him. The point is that he should answer for his actions. Fixing the darkness or not, the kid DID make death threats and make someone's life miserable by unacceptable and criminal means. Criminals need rehabilitation, but they also need to be taught that their behaviour is unacceptable.
It's unfortunate that you have such strong authoritarian beliefs. Can I convince you that your ideas that criminals (this child is 17 - he has not, by our own state's very definition - attained an age where he can be defined as a criminal or where he can knowingly enter into the social moral contract that binds adults) "need to be taught that their behavior is unacceptable" is a very modern one and - what's more - one that is supported by state propaganda?
Do you actually believe that anyone who enters the prison system is "taught that their behavior is unacceptable?" Many sources indicate that the more common response to incarceration is "criminalization" - that this child has a high probability of connecting with negative forces which will push him further down the path of his darkness.
I recommend you read "Discipline and Punish" by Foucault - I think it would open your ideas to the genealogy of some of the ideals underpinning your beliefs and apparent faith in the modern justice system.
You credibly describe the flaws of the prison system, but you don't offer any alternatives.
Frankly, given the choice of a rock and a hard place, it is better to have a criminal in jail half his life and terrorizing society half his life, then terrorizing society for his entire life.
>Frankly, given the choice of a rock and a hard place, it is better to have a criminal in jail half his life and terrorizing society half his life, then terrorizing society for his entire life.
If what you care about is the damage done to society, someone who spends half their life in prison and then gets out will (on average) do far more damage in that half-life than they would have done in a whole life spent outside prison. Prison is quite literally worse than nothing when it comes to preventing reoffending
(though community service is better than either prison or nothing, IIRC)
In my opinion, to situate this conversation in a framework where "alternatives" are to be considered is to already assume an authoritarian stance. I believe that the model you are assuming is one in which there is some sort of established "government" which selects among alternative systems sharing the property that they are maintained by varying degrees of implicit/explicit use of force.
I would never claim to know how to set up a working mental health system or a functional system of criminal rehabilitation. What I claim is that the properties that these institutions have in the U.S. are MAINLY determined by historical accumulation (trauma -> reaction) rather than by organic growth from well-defined principles. I advocate the decompilation of these institutions and the organic outgrowth of new, community-based (preferably non-governmental) institutions.
I agree that there may be cases in which a "criminal" (your word, not mine) must be separated out from society [1], but that these cases are far, far rarer than most people believe. Most "criminals" in the U.S. are ethnic minorities suffering under an incoherent and evil system of drug criminalization.
From an unsystematic/non-governmental standpoint, I also believe that society needs to do more work in increasing its acceptance of different psychological and mental needs from a younger age. I'm very lucky that I was put in a "gifted" program because, had such a program not existed, my rage would have been intense, long-lasting, and I honestly may have killed someone. If my talents had been treated as a "difference" in the way that most peoples' are (exclusion from social events, bullying, emotional and mental abuse, punishment, etc.) I would have turned out very differently indeed.
Perhaps the reason that I feel so strongly about this topic is that there is a great deal of darkness in me (I don't believe everyone is like this). I throw a tremendous amount of personal effort at overcoming it/transforming it/thinking about whether it's really "darkness." During certain periods of history (including this one) homosexuality was seen as "darkness" in many places - now we think back on these periods as being backwards/bigoted/wrong. I must accept that some of my personal darkness is NOT bad/evil (e.g. some of my perverse sexual tastes) but that it only APPEARS bad to many people in society. I have come, through discussion and queer community support, to accept parts of myself that I have been ridiculed for and told were evil from a very young age - which ridicule and torment drove me deep into despair and hatred.
I suppose that I am ultimately advocating acceptance of darkness because I don't really believe in darkness. I believe that if we accept what we currently think about as dark (ultimately, for instance, it would be great if we could accept death) then we will see that it is not so dark after all.
THEN WE CAN LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER, THE END.
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[1] Let me be clear, here. I can't even really name any. Maybe certain serial killers/mass murderers - but who else? Who, really, needs to be put in permanent time-out, anymore? Can you even name anyone?
After reading this, I can only say one thing: you're living in fantasyland. This is the real world, not some libertarian utopia. And regarding your last point, what about pedophiles? Rapists? Should we just surround them with love and forgiveness?
Yes, I believe we should surround them with love and forgiveness.
We also should -have- provided them with love and forgiveness so that they would feel comfortable talking about their problems before they could result in severe issues.
What do -you- suggest we do? Beat them up? "Teach them a lesson?" What will that accomplish, exactly?
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Let me just say that I sense a great deal of pain in you. This is not an attack. Your points seem to be based in fear and anger - you are being very reactive rather than clearly laying out a well-reasoned argument. E.g. contrast your response to my own - yours relies on ad hominem and caricature and then finally a straw man argument. You seem sad. I hope you're OK. Hope!
Sometimes what's best for society isn't what's best for the individual. Society benefits from having sadists removed from the equation. It doesn't matter much, from a societal standpoint, whether they're rehabilitated or incarcerated, as long as the sadistic entity is removed from the equation.
If there were no examples of sadists who could not be rehabilitated, your point would be obviously true. Unfortunately, there are many examples of sadists who resist rehabilitation. These people exist now, whether or not they could have been rehabilitated earlier by love and forgiveness. Even if you were strictly correct, you'd still have a bootstrapping problem, in the form of what to do with these people today.
I contend that there will always be people who become sadistic outside the reach of whatever institutions you attempt to create to shower love and forgiveness on them, and I further contend that many people who, once they become sadistic, cannot return to a state of empathy. For the first point, I only have to point to hunger. Food and shelter are obviously tractable problems, yet we continue to have a problem with hunger and homelessness. To think we can eradicate more complex social problems than those is really quite naive.
As to the second point I am open to scientific evidence to the contrary, but please bear in mind that from society's standpoint, a recidivism rate greater than zero may still be less preferable than lifelong incarceration for sadistic criminals. Most people would agree that once you've taken a few lives for the fun of it, it's not worth the risk to another member of society to "find out" whether you've been successfully rehabilitated.
As such, this is also one of the arguments for the death penalty. If that risk you speak of is too high to see any chance of rehabilitation, what good does incarceration do?
Still, this child has no repeat history that we know of, and probably wasn't reprimanded for his behaviour before. It is likely that he could be a psychopath with everything he said, but it is also likely that the veil of anonymity made him less sympathetic to the human plight of his victim, just as we all take what we see on the internet with a grain of salt.
EDIT: Ok, maybe not really a child, but in the eyes of the law you might as well consider a minor a child. However, I sure know few hackers who exploit their status as a minor as best they can to avoid legal consequences.
The point of not killing is that you can free the wrongly incarcerated when you discover a mistake. But I'm not arguing specifically for or against the death penalty here--my thoughts are so confused on that particular issue I could probably argue either way. Otherwise I agree with what you're saying here.
What if, due to his incarceration, the terrorizing he does for the half of his life where he is not in prison, is twice that of the terrorizing he would have done over the course of his whole life, where he never imprisoned?
Here's the thing: actions have consequences. Bad actions result in bad consequences. Such is the learning process of lots of species. Do you think training pets by reinforcing good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour is modern and supported by "state propaganda", whatever that means?
I do believe that prison systems can be good at rehabilitation. Maybe not in the US, where you seem to be from, but it's working in many other countries in the world, look at the Nordic countries' prison system if you want proof. And even if the prison system doesn't manage to rehabilitate the person, it serves as a punishment. I don't see what's wrong with punishing behaviour that has been deemed unacceptable by society. At least it's better than doing nothing, and in my opinion has more of an impact than doing nothing and surrounding him "with a loving community".
The concept that one class of humans is the "punishers" who are teaching the other class(es) underlies most (if not all) fascist/authoritarian/racist ideologies of the last 3 centuries.
Of course you don't see what's wrong with punishing behavior that has been deemed unacceptable by society. Unfortunately, behavior that society is largely OK with (e.g. drug use) is punished nontheless - unfortunately, society can (and has often been) quite wrong about what should be punished (homosexuality, female sexuality, prostitution, sexual "perversion," drug & alcohol use, to name a few).
The fact is that the kid involved in this story didn't do anything "wrong" that could be easily trained out of him. Probably he has a whole set of complicated complexes of problems. For instance, one thing that many people in the US and UK (and other places) seem to suffer from is sexual/touch deprivation. Maybe if the kid were getting laid instead of playing on his laptop he wouldn't have engaged in such weirdo behaviors. I'm just sayin' - legalize drugs and prostitution and 99% of these problems go away.
>The concept that one class of humans is the "punishers" who are teaching the other class(es) underlies most (if not all) fascist/authoritarian/racist ideologies of the last 3 centuries.
So I'm Hitler now.
>legalize drugs and prostitution and 99% of these problems go away.
Do you think kids should be trained like pets? It seems a lot of people do, they also think they own their kids somehow. Sad...
As I said in another comment: personally I hope my kid will end up doing what is right because he believes it the right thing to do, not because of fear of punishment.
Not saying that punishment is never necessary (I am not sure). Obviously it works, because people (and animals) can learn from pain. You learn if you touch the stove that it is hot and will burn you, so you will not touch it again.
Smart people might realize that their parents or society punishing them is not quite the same as a stove burning them, though. The one is a law of nature (heat burns), the other is just man made laws that can be resented and broken. Once you have installed that resentment against society and obedience in a person, you might have a real problem on your hands.
I do not think that kids should be trained like pets. They are more intelligent and react to a more nuanced approach. My point about punishment just means that bad actions should be sanctioned and good actions rewarded.
My parents never physically punished me, but as soon as I was old enough to understand what was going on, just knowing that I'd disappointed them would make me feel extremely bad. There's no resentment there. They taught me how to behave in a way that is acceptable in society and if I misbehaved I was aware that I was wrong. Hopefully that's how everything would go.
But as always, there will be bad apples (and good ones, too). What do you do when someone's such a sociopath that they don't care when they hurt other people? That's when I believe that punishment should be carried on by the society and not the parents, in the form of jail, probation, juvenile court, etc.
Operant conditioning isn't actually harmful, as long as you're not operant conditioning your kids into doing harmful things or into not doing important things.
Well it seems to go against my values. I want my kids to think for themselves, not merely be executors of my authoritarian commands. I am not their boss.
Children are not small adults. There's a point in their lives when not throwing temper tantrums in public is what you want out of them and they're just not mature enough to negotiate with reasonably. This is also the age where hopefully you're going to have to install some sort of conscience, since kids aren't really born with one, either.
The authorities are precisely the proper people to turn the "child" over to. Only they would have the resources and skills required to determine whether the troll has performed similar acts before and whether he is a psychotic (of course the parents also likely know, but aren't likely to do anything effective).
Also because it provides a record of his activity for future reference.
I don't believe the "game" excuse - I think the troll is a full-blown psychopath.
Retribution isn't constructive, rehabilitation is. If the authorities were able to enter him into a programme of psychotherapy, perhaps this would have been the better option.
I think the young person who committed the abuse probably could be classed as someone with a (possibly extreme) personality disorder.
Bearing this in mind, turning the other cheek and allowing him to continue unhindered isn't going to be that constructive.
Counselling was mentioned - I really hope the perpetrator receives some; for his sake, and the sake of all those he comes into contact with.
> For those of you who claim that the right thing in this situation would be to turn the child over to the authorities - what exactly do you think the authorities are going to do to make this situation better?
The authorities are going to stop the harrassment.
You seem to be under the illusion that harrassed people have some obligation to help their harrassers.
Feel free to help this wayward person but you're way out of line in complaining that the victim didn't do so.
well said, the story seems a little too dramatic for me to believe is possible...wow ! I mean mailing stuff...May be the right thing to do is to show the damage done which the author did, and to let the kid off with some counselling and forgiveness allowing a chance for him to change his ways and have a shot at a bright future.
There are several different types of reading slowly.
Math is slow because you have to work things out as you read it.
Books written very long ago are slow because I read them like a detective, looking not just at what the author means to say, but also at what he's saying implicitly about how things were at the time.
Other books I read slowly because they're so good I don't want them to end. I used to have to make a conscious effort to make Patrick O'Brian novels last, and I stopped reading them at about number 12, to save the rest for later.
(I worry though that I wouldn't like them so much now.)
If I could do it over, I'd read O'Brian's novels with several months to a year between each one (perhaps one every winter and summer solstice). There's really something to be said about savoring such an authentically detailed, nuanced, and intellectual universe.
As it is, I find my recollections of the Aubrey-Maturin adventures muddled and vague, since I burned through the first 20 at an addict's pace. Not recommended.
Agreed. I read them as slowly as I could manage over the course of about five years. Even 21 was a great read. I was blown away that I was still maintaining the same enjoyment 15, 16 books in. I just assumed the quality would have had to deteriorate. Although O'Brian does get a lot of reuse out of Stephen's joke about the dog watch being cur-tailed.
There has to be a distinction between technical and non-technical books here. Otherwise (excluding purely academic books), I'd say 'On Lisp' - even though that's probably because I was not ready for it yet. In fact, I've had to read it multiple times. Same goes for SICP.
The post is not arguing against conformity - it is arguing against submission. It is arguing against a system that rewards submission.
I believe that a generation of extremely sophisticated, powerful, people who are eager to submit is a powerful and evil tool.
Fashionable status symbols are means by which one man dominates another. Many believe that a society of mutual respect will not seek tools of domination.
The issue with hierarchies is that they are historically weapons of oppression wielded against the marginal and unprivileged.
The issue with listening to what your friends think is cool is that your friends might be twats.
There really are problems with these behaviors, categorically. There really is a problem with submission, categorically. We are animals, we are spirits, we are not robots.
There's nothing wrong with robots. Be a robot if you want to. There are many people eager to use and reward you.
Slight digression, but I was interested in your last few sentences. Why do you not think that math or physics have an end game? I think that academic mathematics is dead/worthless, for instance.
Maybe you're talking about the difference between "ideals" and the incarnations of those ideals.
Capitalism is indeed an ideal, but its incarnation (so-called "global capitalism") might disappear as the dominant mode of human interaction. Here's hoping. This has happened in the past, right? E.g. there is no "Feudalism" as such, any more, even if concepts of feudalism are used.
Similarly (going back to Math), "Math" as such will never die - but its incarnation (the mass of all people doing all Math) might have an end game.
I'd actually love a math revolution, since I love math, but it doesn't look like it's going to be easy to re-invigorate it.
That's a philosophical question I don't have the energy to properly answer right now. In the most general terms, I'm just saying that we will always have to make decisions within certain constraints, and widening the constraints is hard so there will often be competition between different actors within those constraints, much as in evolutionary terms.
Almost all societal problems are essentially organizational problems. E.g. food distribution.
What do you expect the "center" of a food distribution network (Koch Brothers) to look like, besides a big fat cat? A big fat cat isn't too bad, as long as it's sleepy.
These people - Page, Musk, Schmidt, etc. - are about organizing the minds of society, so they are going to be different. Fat heads with big old asteroid-mining ideas :)
In my mind, an important point here is that NO ONE should be asked to put together a pot luck. Why does anyone think this kind of thing is appropriate in the workplace? It makes me want to vomit when workplace boss becomes social boss. If anyone ever told me to put together a pot luck my immediate response would be "go fuck yourself."
You're getting quite a bit of flak for this. You got a sucky boss? I rather like my co-workers, and potlucks are just one method of team-building/friendship making that can be had at work. No, work buddies should never be your only friends, but to have a pleasant time around co-workers, and to have team-building events such as those? There's nothing wrong with that; and, I would argue it helps to create a condusive and lower-friction environment.
There's a difference between friends and forced friends. There are lots of FreeBSD developers I'd be happy to invite over for dinner if they were in town, but that doesn't mean I'd be happy if someone told me that I had to invite them over for dinner.
My social life is just fine, thanks. I don't need a boss telling me who my friends should be.
My employer does this sort of thing, but it isn't mandatory. A sign-up sheet goes up in the kitchen, and there's never a lack of participation. From what I've seen, folks seem to genuinely enjoy doing this sort of thing, so more power to them. Sometimes I take part, sometimes I don't.
Now, if we were forced to participate, that'd be another matter.
Nothing wrong with a less frition-filled work environment. But it should not be mandatory. Also real friction caused by workplace politics rarely reduces due to such events.
I'm not a professional chef, I'm a sysadmin. Cooking isn't part of my job description.
I don't want to be forced to eat food prepared by people who don't have food handlers' cards, and I don't want my coworkers to feel hurt because I don't want to eat what they cooked and left in their car.
Want to improve morale and do teambuilding? Get a cater, or go somewhere for lunch.
For anyone else who had no idea what a "pot luck" was - it's basically a "bring-a-plate" event ("Odds on savoury, evens on dessert" at a residential street party).
I agree. The "asked to put together" is the offensive part. I consider myself lucky to work with people that I do want to hang out with, and sometimes we collectively decide to plan a social event together, but having it come top-down really riles me up.
I wondered about the pot luck thing, isn't the point of a pot luck that everyone brings something to eat for everyone? If she'd be the only one that had to bring something, it wouldn't be a pot luck any more, right?
At least, that's what I understand pot luck to mean? I like them a lot btw, very American thing, so we don't do it often enough here, but my hummus is always appreciated ;-)
However, I also feel sorry for all male programmers. A lot of male programmers I've met have extremely pent-up sexual drives. A lot of them do not feel comfortable with women or society.
The prototypical male programmer was extremely nerdy in adolescence, had minimal interaction with women, and sex life - forget it. Now they are working in a job where they can just do what they like - program - and a woman comes along with all those pheremones and everything. And yes he acts awkward and crazy because holy shit there is a WOMAN who does what he does.
I fucking hate all of this talk about "manchildren" and "brogrammers" and whatever else. Stop essentializing the problem. Stop the man hate. Fucking hell.
Do you really think the man who said:
"Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"
is a happy, mentally-healthy, well-adjusted human being? Hmmm? Where's the compassion for him?
Why is our reaction to superficial wrongdoing so fucking immediate and moralistic? As if he's not a person with his own problems?
I'm at a loss for words, this whole clusterfuck makes me so angry.
I fucking hate all of this talk about "manchildren" and "brogrammers" and whatever else. Stop essentializing the problem. Stop the man hate. Fucking hell.
If you're experiencing this pushback from women in the profession as 'man hate' that's certainly your right. I view it more as listening to a professional colleague telling a story from her perspective. I'm not experiencing it as hate, more as hearing from a woman 'this is my perspective'.
Do you really think the man who said:
"Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"
is a happy, mentally-healthy, well-adjusted human being? Hmmm? Where's the compassion for him?
Perhaps he's a victim too - none of us know the full story and we can speculate until we're blue in the face. But wouldn't you agree that his actions are highly unprofessional, creepy, and personally discouraging to one particular woman, and part of a broader pattern of discouragement toward women in technology overall?
I'm at a loss for words, this whole clusterfuck makes me so angry.
So what do you recommend to fix the problem? Where will you direct all that energy that your anger has activated?
Maybe the problem can't be fixed. As long as techies remain predominately male, this problem will persist.
And why are they predominately male? Either-
A: Men, for some unknown reason, like programming better.
B: The sexist environment drives women away.
Whichever one it is, the problem will not resolve itself. For A, as long as men like it better, and there are more of them, women will be seen as outsiders.
For B, as long there are more men, some of whom are sexist, the women will be driven away and the ratio of m/f will stay the same.
Consider this thought experiment: if it is the case that there is a ton of interest by women in programming, but that interest is frustrated by the "star wars" factor, that would imply that there's a huge pool of untapped female programming power. Why hasn't an enterprising business person realized this and created the next facebook-killer or google-killer by assembling a team of all-female ninjas?
My first reaction to this experiment would be "Because they were frustrated before they had the chance to graduate with a CS degree".
And the response to that would be to examine what the rate of CS enrollment is at all-female universities, if such things (still) exist. (I don't know that data looks like yet. lazyweb, can you answer this for me?)
> My first reaction to this experiment would be "Because they were frustrated before they had the chance to graduate with a CS degree".
Well, there's more to it than that. Female participation was fairly high in the 70s, dropped precipitously through the 80s, 90s, and early 00s, and is only now kinda-sorta-maybe starting to recover.
The hidden factor in there is the Personal Computer revolution. Prior to it, men and women entered college on roughly even footing w.r.t. computer exposure in their life-to-date. Once the personal computer took off, though, a big gender (and race) disparity cropped up.
Boys who had their very own computer to play with in their formative pre-college years received it, on average, around the age of 14 (IIRC, I'll try to hunt the exact stats down later).
Girls and minorities didn't receive a computer of their own to use until much later (19 as recently as the early 00s, which is, critically, after most people decide what to major in).
Intro CS classes turned into highly intimidating environments where the males had significant computer experience and may well have spent several years programming already; girls were at a significant disadvantage and enrolment fell off fast as they switched to majors where they weren't starting off at a several year disadvantage versus their peers.
Intro CS classes turned into highly intimidating environments where the males had significant computer experience and may well have spent several years programming already
When I started my first year of CS at uni, I had almost no experience programming and I definitely felt intimidated by the (many) fellow students who already had 5+ years of experience.
During one of my first labs, I was told to write a toString method for a Java class. I could not understand why the signature had to say "String" twice. A TA spent half an hour trying to explain it to me and eventually gave up in desperation.
actually, my personal experience corroborates with that data. I'm a bit of an outlier, having switched to CS in my second year and never having written a line of code before then (my (male) classmates and coworkers are always shocked to learn of this, because they had all started programming at a much younger age).
Sure, the guy's actions are unprofessional (though I hate the term), and discouraging. I wouldn't say creepy. I really hate the term "creepy" because probably (and yeah, here I'm speculating) the guy has been called a creep his whole life. Probably he's even creepy. But shouldn't we feel sorry for such a person?
(United States) society has a really bad habit of locating blame on male citizens and not looking further for causes of their behavior. There are lots of examples of this, but a really blatant one is the current incarceration rate. We like to say "this person acted badly and they suck - I'm sure they have reasons - but they suck!" and stop the conversation there.
Like I said, I'm really sad that one of the effects of this big pile of sad men is that women are discouraged. But I'm also sad that they're sad - and that they engage in behaviors which make them more sad. For instance: unhealthy eating patterns, drug/alcohol abuse, gaming addictions, porn addictions, etc. I'm also sad that they're mean to other men - e.g. flamewars. I'm sad about a whole big bucket of things.
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You're asking whether I'd classify his actions in a particular way (unprofessional, creepy, discouraging) and, for the most part, I would. The question (as you point out) is where to go from here? What do I do with all this anger?
One thing I'd like to do is fight back against the conditions that make the world shit for nerdy teenage boys. I'll take myself as a prototype here, but as a nerdy teenage boy:
1. Other teenage boys are mean to you
2. Other teenage girls are mean to you
3. Your teachers more or less hate you for being better than them at the subjects they teach
4. Your parents think of you as a failure because you're not dating/doing normal things
5. Society at large is disgusted with you (media portrays you as a creepy pervert, etc.)
I mean, let's keep things in perspective, here. This woman had a shitty run of things, but was she suffering? Really? I (and a lot of people I know) had to put up with 100x more intolerance and aggression on a daily basis from the time I was 10 until I was 18. From both genders. I was bullied. I was laughed at. I was scorned by family and teachers. Sorry if we came out a little malformed.
Hell, I'm not even bad at interacting with women, since my skin normalized and I had the luck of working at a big retail store where I had to interact with them a lot. I had girlfriends and such and now I'm married. Shit has more or less fixed itself, but it's not really my fault as such.
Yeah, so what to do? Let's create art which actively portrays the sex-starved teenage nerd boy as heroic, in his own way? Let's give him some love, as a society? Let's extol his virtues, maybe once? What support is given to these people, really?
The sick thing is that for every such nerdy guy I know who became successful (mostly the smart ones, and mostly as programmers) I know 5 who were pretty much crushed by the stress of all this and have never really recovered.
I hear that. I think it's a positive step to have compassion for both sides in this workplace disagreement. And I sure don't mean to paint low-cut-shirt-comment-guy (LCSCG) as irredeemably evil.
The reality is, in the situation under immediate discussion he's in the role of the victimizer and he's crossed the lines in the workplace. Is what he did illegal or even fireable? No to the first, and probably not to the second. Does it mean he should never be allowed to work in his field again? Hardly.
But is it reasonable for him to be required have a talk with HR about what's 'OK' and what's 'not OK' when dealing with colleagues? I think so. Gaining a better understanding of the way your communication lands on people is a very important step in maturity and growth. Better he should learn such a thing later, in the workplace, rather than not at all.
And you're right - maybe he has a past history that drives him to behave the way he did / does. Perhaps earlier in his life LCSCG was victimized too. Perhaps he has anger or resentment against the popular girls who laughed at him or the football players who dropped his books in the mud and pushed his face in it. I don't know. None of us do.
Maybe LCSCG, and others in similar situation, can get some kind of help - coaching or therapy or socialization - that helps him interact with others in a way that's more resourceful. I think that's a result that almost anyone would support.
I started to reply to the grandparent, then came across this and realized you've summed up my thoughts nicely. The key here is that living in a society, there is some level of civility (respect, really) that you should try to attain. I'm fairly certain that many of us here have been put down (or worse) at some point in our lives. And I'm sure, at some point in my life, I made some poor choices because of those experiences. But, the point is, you absolutely do have to learn that acting out in kind to someone else isn't a solution. The solution is to treat others as you wish to be treated.
I agree that the guy is probably suffering from his own insecurities, but the bottom line is that he allowed his issues to place him in a situation of antagonizing a co-worker, probably without any repercussions, which speaks to a general climate of discrimination against women in the workplace. Still, some of your other points are interesting and I feel are valid in a larger context. Zen monasteries in Japan were segregated - women were a minority anyway, probably to a very large extent, but there were women monks, and they were generally not allowed much interaction with the male monks. All discipline among the males fell apart when a woman was in their presence, as the culture really gave them no background for normal interactions between the sexes. The head monks chose to sidestep the problem -- what could they possibly do to address the ills of the society at large?
Your analogy to a Zen monastery is a good one. For a lot of men (myself included), programming/chess/mathematics/etc. is an ESCAPE from women. I feel like what has happened in the past 10 years (note I'm not saying this is "wrong" - just that it's what happened) is that these monasteries have been invaded by women and that men have been acting very awkwardly.
Here's the real issue, I think - these men are acting AWKWARDLY. They are dealing with their emotions poorly. They are not good at dealing with their emotions, especially towards women. But when did they ever say that they were? Did we stop to think whether this is the reason that they went into a profession which (for a long time) was almost 100% male? To not have to deal with women and their emotions towards women? Do you think that a man who has trouble interacting with women in a relaxed social setting will be able to deal with them well in a professional setting?
The real pain for me is that this awkwardness is being recast as evil, sexism, etc. There's a lot of hate directed towards it, whereas what it needs (paradoxically) is love.
There are many problems with your post. First of all, women used to be far more represented in programming than they are today, with nearly 40% of CS degrees going to women in the early to mid 80's. These rates have been declining ever since and are continuing to decline. This is not a case of "women invading the man's space" as you seem to think, this is a case of women fleeing it. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html?_r=2
Secondly, you pass off these crass remarks by male programmers as mere awkwardness from poor social outcasts. How then do you classify the same type of remarks when made by, say, construction workers to attractive passers-by? Are they merely sad social outcasts, or are they brutes for taking advantage of their social setting to harass and demean women?
Women are harassed regularly both in and out of the workplace, and the responsibility needs to be on the harasser to change their behavior, not on the harassed to "find compassion".
Yeah, I guess I was factually wrong about rates of women/men employment in tech. I'm not sure this is crucial to my original point, though...
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Construction workers are basically social outcasts. They have low social and economic status. I am very sad for them and I don't think of them as "brutes" (which term is part of their oppression).
Don't get me wrong - I think of capitalism as more or less fundamentally oppressive. Pretty much everyone is being shat on by the system and we need to keep this in mind when we talk about justice and ethics. People are under stress. These problems are not easy to fix.
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I'm really not saying that the harassed has to find compassion - I'm saying that we all do.
The issue here is that you can treat a single harasser as a problem to be fixed, but when "harassment" becomes a systematic/structural phenomenon you can't think about things in terms of changing individuals anymore. You have to start thinking about policy decisions and social movements. I'm merely saying that when the social movement takes place which tries to fix this problem, I hope it takes into account the idea that the people doing the 'wrong' are not brutes, evil, etc. but mostly sad and awkward.
If you seriously feel a need to ESCAPE from women, I think you should consider seeing a therapist of some sort. A lot of the things you're asking people to feel sorry for do deserve sympathy, because they are signs of mental illness.
It is not that simple to equate a (perceived) need to escape from women to a mental illness. Female groups do behave differently than male groups in that they assert dominance and rank by psychological means whereas in male groups this happens more via physical means. It can be very hard for both women and men to enter a 'different-gender group', let alone to get accepted and feel comfortable. Especially in fields dominated by one gender, like, for example, construction, programming, education and child care, or health care this lead to problems and strengthens the trend of one-gender dominance.
In the last decade or two primary education has become a primarily female field even to that extend that male teachers (and teacher students) have chosen to leave the profession because they didn't feel at home in that environment any more. If you talk to them you'll hear stories about, basically, psychological war-fare among their female colleagues that they didn't want to get involved in but were forced into nonetheless. In these instances feeling the need to escape from women is quite natural.
So women who are demonstrably and statistically still suffering under male oppression now need to treat you softly and with love while you are accidentally crappy back to them? Nurture you back to health?
What was that you were saying about men not being puppies?
Sure, he has problems. We all have problems. But when you make your problems somebody else's problems, you're still an asshole.
It would be great if one of his colleagues would pull him aside, explain some things to him with a LART, and suggest that he get a therapist and an Ok Cupid account. But that's not obligatory, and is definitely not the problem of the person to whom he's being an ass.
Thanks for perpetuating stereotypes in the name of excusing unacceptable behavior. Many of these same comments could probably also be applied to stock traders and construction workers as well.
While it's unfortunate that some people fail to develop appropriately and learn to interact in an appropriately professional manner in the workplace, I don't know if that means folks have to feel sorry for them any more than if they failed to learn the appropriate technical skills to do their job. Interacting appropriately with the opposite sex and other ethnicities, etc., is a reasonable expectation of someone who wants to work in a modern workplace (and I don't limit that to the office or technology jobs.)
I think of stock brokers/financial workers as particularly miserable people - you can be rich AND miserable! I don't know any construction workers, but it really doesn't seem like a happy job.
It's not about excusing behavior, it's about talking about the reasons behind that behavior so that those reasons can be addressed properly. The proper way to address issues whose source is pain and suffering is compassion. Not "feeling sorry for" a person, but understanding that they too are suffering and including that understanding in your analysis of the situation. The point that I find very frustrating in all of this is that the suffering which causes "inexcusable behavior" is not being talked about. We're not talking about -why- men act in this way, except in flippant ways - calling them "manchildren," etc.
Having worked in both finance and software, I don't think either group is particularly happier or more miserable than the other. Both jobs have tradeoffs. Neither is truly stressful in comparison to say, being a soldier, EMT or policeman. (I can't speak to construction - but it does have a high injury rate.)
We're not talking about grossly inappropriate behavior here. We're really talking about behavior that's sufficiently in the margins that an otherwise "okay guy" might do it because they just don't understand why it's problematic, or they don't realize they're doing it. (As opposed to really blatant sexual harassment or misogyny, which is still common in lots of other industries.) It seems to me that the issue with most of what the OP relates is simply rooted in ignorance and/or insensitivity, rather than any kind of suppressed suffering.
Programing or any place in the world isn't some special place for poorly socialized men to hang out and ... what... hide? You know what would be good? Learning social rules and improving. Them maybe his life wouldn't suck and he could get a date. And you know what would help that? Being forced into social situations with women and being slapped when he steps out of line.
If you have a puppy and it pees on the floor, you don't feel sorry for it and lock it in the house so it can pee on the floor forever, you train it not to.
If we "just give up" on these men and leave them alone they will be miserable forever. If they are forced to learn (at a later age, you know what, all the rest of us learned this a long time ago) they maybe they can get on with their lives and not be miserable.
Yeah, wouldn't it be great if everyone was just totally psychologically normal? I bet everyone can just fix everything that's wrong with themselves. Everyone has a surplus of love in their life available to help them overcome their problems.
Most of the time, there are many shades of gray on an issue. To my mind, this is not one. At my employer, our (not small) engineering department is probably around 10% female. I'm trying to think of anyone in the engineering department that would be so catastrophically unaware as to think comments like that to a female co-worker would be even remotely acceptable. I literally-literally can't fathom it, and I can't even conceive of working with such a person.
You're right: men are not puppies. They're human beings who are capable of owning their actions and changing their behavior if it is unacceptable. I would also say that someone so fundamentally damaged as to be unable to restrain sexist or racist behaviors is not a valuable employee regardless of technical skill or contribution--but unable is not the same thing as unwilling, and I have a hunch that those who are actually "unable" are few.
So you're saying that anyone who makes misogynist remarks at work has some sort of "mental issue", and that because of this we should just let it slide, or at least be sympathetic?
Give me a fucking break.
Calling out negative behavior tends to be very effective.
It's not the author's job to serve as a target for those negative behaviors. The responsibility lies with those whose behavior is unacceptable to find a way to operate, for lack of a better phrase, within expected parameters.
And it isn't even difficult to do so, most of the time! Everyone has some personality traits they could stand to work on; those that don't will look for any excuse they can find to justify their continued poor behavior.
What. Are you... are you serious? I hope to god there's a rational point that you're trying to make, you're just making it very, very badly because you're so angry at the "man hate."
My point was that if we accept your argument, we must also accept the patently absurd (at least to me) argument that one must have compassion for Jeffrey Dahmer, and it doesn't sound as though you disagree.
I have sympathy for the outcast with poor social skills because of mistreatment by society.
But such an outcast ceases to be sympathetic the instant s/he makes someone else's life unpleasant. This isn't about "man hate"; this is about someone who made an offensive comment that made someone else uncomfortable. That's not OK, and we reasonably expect better socialization in our peers than this. If the person who made this remark is not a "happy, mentally-healthy, well-adjusted human being", then no matter how much compassion his condition might reasonably engender, he should get help.
Furthermore, by equating a lack of compassion for a man who is "not healthy" with "man hate", you implicitly claim that "men are naturally unhealthy". To me, this comes across as a greater denigration of men than any harsh reaction leveled at the oppressor.
