I'm confused what the point of this question is. Would you have found it more satisfying if the parent had said "I had a couple of [male] contacts from the good ol' days"?

Why mention gender at all? Does anyone call out a "young male manager" in such a story?

Not saying OP did this, but one can imagine using adjectives to hint at competence or lack thereof here.

FWIW I have no dog in this race. Parent comment just got me thinking.

People do it when subconsciously or consciously trying to paint a picture with stereotypes. So if someone wanted to illustrate they were talking about a testosterone filled ego driven 20 something, they might include the term young male manager in their descriptor.

Is it right or wrong? Probably not great. I don't do it. But I get how it happens. Probably not nefarious, just a little tonedeaf.

True -- though when I think about it, I imagine them using a more specific male adjective like "bro" or "dude." "Young male manager" would have triggered a "why are they mentioning male?" and yet "female" slipped under my radar until another comment called it out.

I wonder if that's because you have a stronger stereotype for male than for female in your mind (not to suggest that you use it, just that you have one or are aware of what others might have as their stereotype). I don't have strong generalizations either way but especially not for the term female, which is why I never understood when people got uppety about it to begin with. Now that I understand some people have a negative stereotype attached to their usage of the word I understand why people get annoyed. But it is a bummer as its all so personal and subjective that no matter how careful or sincere you are you could tread on someones toes and convey the wrong message, as I suspect the parent comment has done.

Does it count as slipping under the radar if you've both called it out?

> Why mention gender at all?

I don't know, but if that's the intended question then it'd make sense to ask that (which someone else already did, so I recommend upvoting if you're interested).

The question whose point I don't get is the one I responded to. It seems absurd to ask "why did you do X but not Y?" when doing Y would've only left you more dissatisfied.

Ah. I interpreted it as "perhaps you prefer to identify genders in general, but that's belied by not using it here."

The subtext, whether it's intentional or not, seems to be that the gender of manager that he (yes, assuming OP's gender) spoke to is relevant to the negativity of the experience. The message can be condensed down to "female + new Apple = bad, male + old Apple = good"

What I'm baffled about is why the comparison was made against the contact's gender. How would involving the contact's gender have helped? Or if that's not the question that was intended, then why not ask the actual question that was intended?

How does involving the manager’s gender help?

I don't know, I never claimed it does.

So you’re not baffled by the use of “woman manager”?

In fact that question did pop up in my mind too, and hence I did upvote the other commenter's question asking about that.

But I find it curious that why you're pressing on interrogating me like this. Why the inquisition?

Quite the opposite, I would think. Removing the gender references doesn't detract from the argument, so why have them at all?

I don't know, but what I'm asking is: if your real question is "why mention X's gender?" then why instead ask "why mention X's gender but not mention Y's gender?"?

I think the point is to make the difference more stark; merely saying "why include the manager's gender" doesn't show the inconsistency between calling out the gender in the case of the employer the writer is unhappy with but withholding it in the case of the employee the writer is happy with.

> I think the point is to make the difference more stark; merely saying "why include the manager's gender" doesn't show the inconsistency

But that's the thing -- is the GP's problem really the difference/inconsistency? Is that really what they're trying to highlight? If it is, then I agree, but that's what I was trying to clarify, because it seems more likely to me that making it more "consistent" could've left them unhappier.

I might not have been clear; GP's (GGGP's?) question was rhetorical; their point was to make a point, not to actually suggest a course of action that they preferred.

To put it another way: suppose I ask someone "why did you forget my birthday but not his?" It's not that I want them to forget his, too (though that is one literal interpretation). It's to suggest that the answer isn't merely "I forget birthdays in general."

That would be weird in this situation since "I mention every gender in general" would be quite a bizarre response (and behavior)... and arguably even more fuel for subsequently accuse the speaker of sexism if that's the intention.

Your comment seems to be against multiple HN guidelines, particularly those regarding assuming good faith, not post shallow and dismissive comments, and the rule regarding ideological wars.

Sexism is one of the biggest tech issues of the past several years. I don’t think asking someone to consider why they used a specific word– even in “good faith” is a problem.

Gimme a break. Their comment is clearly not shallow, nor dismissive and is raising a legitimate, albeit fairly mundane, point in my opinion. And I’m sure we can all try to hold ourselves to a high enough standard to not initiate an “ideological debate war” over that sort of comment.

Because it's important for young women to see representation and role models in tech.

The real weirdness is why OP thought that the front line customer service drone was a "middle manager".