Again, because you don’t have to deal with it constantly. Women are constantly being undermined.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91630773/theres-a-career-tax-on-...
> there's a difference between empathy and just policing language for no discernable reason.
And what I said in my comment is that I don’t know which happened to you, but that it’s important to understand that because you’re not suffering the everyday repercussions which are treated as “normal”, maybe you don’t really know which one it was either. That’s where the empathy comes in, it’s you reaching out to the person and talking about it, rather than just complaining about it on the internet.
> I think the reason you were downvoted wasn't the call to empathy
I was not referring to an isolated incident. In fact, I can fairly often predict when the worst people will come out to downvote and run (they never have the courage to comment). At this point I can assert with a good amount of confidence that HN has a severe dipshit problem.
> the insinuation that I somehow was not being empathetic in my comment
There was no such insinuation, but it is increasingly common on HN that people just read anything and foam at the mouth thinking they are being attacked. For a community which prides themselves on objectivity and correctness, there sure are a lot of assumptions and wrong interpretations.
> which perhaps I was not being empathetic but it seems irrelevant to the topic at hand.
As long as you believe being empathetic to a person who was affected by your words is irrelevant, you will be incapable of understanding the situation, seeing it for what it really is, and navigate it appropriately.