You’ve made valid points cogently, and asked relevant questions that could be answered using scientific methods, but you’re getting downvoted, which is a polemic response.
Not sure, but perhaps statements like "Comments like these are so hilariously idiotic. Props for making me guffaw out loud." are why people downvote. Personally I think that OP contributed to the conversation so I wouldn't have downvoted (if I could), but maybe some people did because of that.
> Personally I think that OP contributed to the conversation so I wouldn't have downvoted
Same. He's saying the emperor has no clothes, with respect to the thread, which kicked off with this comment:
> To me this sounds like the mother's body is trying to "nudge" the odds towards a daughter after several sons, but sometimes the process "fails" and produces an effeminate male instead - a gay son.
I find it disturbing that his comment has been flagged and removed. All he did was call out some baseless extrapolation. How did "effeminacy" even enter the conversation?
The original "study" doesn't provide any evidential basis for any of this speculation. Its only data point is the supposed reporting by study participants that they have had more than zero same sex encounters in their life. How does that account for the thesis that a mother's body is generating effeminate homosexual males in a failed bid to generate daughters???
It's cause I said it with vitriol. I also included vulgar language like ass-fucking and dick-sucking. These phrases likely made more squeamish readers who wanted to continue talking about "the homosexuals" in abstract uncomfortable for a reason they didn't quite understand.
But I couldn't keep my anger in my throat. Saying a woman's body would want the boy to be more effeminate and therefore gay, is an idea made of swiss cheese. It's constructed nonsensically. But folks eat it up, cause "sucking dick is feminine"
Should I calmly let the emperor know that they are wearing no clothes? Be quiet, polite, deferential, and be sure to respect the politeness of this space? I'd rather scream he's been an idiot - you go out angry but at least you keep your pride.
I didn't hear "vitriol". Your language was more jocular and incredulous than vitriolic or offensive. Those vernacular terms for sexual behaviour are neither here nor there in a site frequented by linguistic, semantic, and ontological virtuosos.
The comment you were replying to doesn't respect "the politeness of this place." It is base identity politics, or wantonly offensive ignorance, couched in some form of "acceptable" language which seeks to describe a logical chain of thought.
But the logic is jello nailed to the wall. It's not even sham science. It's a red neck fairy story. That's why I considered it an abuse of moderator privileges to downvote your comment.
Anybody concerned about the standard of discourse on HN should feel the same, or be able to defend the "logic" you were responding to cogently, which they can't because it is the rhetorical equivalent of a stream of shit from a horses asshole.
If I am to "assume good faith", which is always an advisable thing to do, the bizarre fairy story stream springs from ignorance of "the homosexuals", not malice. The downvoting of your comment is a different matter.
