A common response to sexist behaviour by men in geek cultures is that He's just like that. In other words, sexist behaviour should be excused because men (or at least, certain men) just can't help it.
Examples of men to whom this excuse has been applied include:
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- Richard Stallman, here (in response to the EMACS virgins joke incident) and no doubt elsewhere.
- Hoss Gifford, perpetrator of the Flashbelt slide show incident
- "Ladies of #flashbelt , I am sorry for the Hoss preso, but in the flash community he gets a pass, kinda like Don Rickles - that's just Hoss." livenootrac on Twitter
- Randal Schwartz, who is known in parts of the geek community as "that Hooters guy".
- David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails, has said this in relation to himself in a blog post entitled I'm an R-Rated individual: "What I'm not going to do, though, is apologize for any of these preferences and opinions. I'm happy to be an R rated individual and I'm accepting the consequences of the leakage that comes from that."
- Hans Reiser, whose attempt at the so-called geek defense in his murder trial was an extreme case of "He's just like that"
- The Steubenville rapists' case is arguably the most well known case of this.
- It is also applied to fictional characters, such as cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew , or The Ice King from Adventure Time.
Responses and further reading
- "Being an ass does not recursively excuse you from being an ass, as some seem to suggest." Adam Conrad, here
- '... people kept telling me not to take it personally, he is always rude. In retrospect, I wish I’d said “No fucking way. I don’t care what shit y’all take from him. I don’t care if he’s an asshole to each and every one of you every single day. Even if he is, it is unacceptable for him to treat me like this.” I wish I’d said that.' Zero < tolerance << infinite
See also
- Men are just like that for the argument that most/all men are inevitably compelled to be sexist.
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