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Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

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Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the op, but female as well. Guy is a general term most times, but I've known a few women that get offended by it because they aren't male. Dude is also used for both, but a lot of folks don't want to use that in the office. Alternatively, just use person and be safe.

Be safe!!!!!! From what? Being scared of offending someone over the word dude or guys. I can't even imagine the anxiety you must suffer from if you are trying to avoid offending anyone. Hey I'm offended you used the word op. When I was a kid, these kids used to bully me by calling me an Op. Can you refrain was using that word.

Well, I'll try...

Yeah, horrible choice of words on my behalf :)

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not what I have seen. Men who are confident, powerful, happy, and successful get laid. In certain places, those in power are left-leaning, and so the confident, powerful, happy, and successful men are espousing left-leaning ideologies to signal their worthiness and virtue. However, if you conduct an experiment and have a hetero identifying but poor, weak, and uncertain man claim that he's a feminist, you'll find that…

From what I've seen of my communities, I don't generally believe this, but it could be the case in other communities I'm unaware of. Definitely, in the dominant societal structure, if you want to get laid you have to be confident, powerful, and successful. You're not going to go out to a club and get laid unless you meet certain requirements, or are capable of faking meeting them. However, there are subcultures which…

Also, the behaviours of rich, successful male feminists get called into question by feminists all the time.

Where did I say that I never see this? (Hint, I don't. You projected this onto me.) The thing is, though, that it's usually much harder to have such attacks stick against the powerful. Also, men who are in positions of power in such environs generally know how to navigate them. It's not that powerful men don't get challenged. It's that they weather the challenges, enjoy prestige and power, and get to mate.

That you don't see this suggests a bubble you're in.

Then go out on a limb and project what that might be. I'll give you a hint: Generally people imagine that I'm on the other end of the political spectrum from them, and they're generally wrong. I've had people vilify me for being a lefty hippy-dippy. I've had people call me a yuppie scum. I've had dozens of contradictory stereotypes ascribed to me. Basically, people like to dislike me because I don't subscribe to their ideology in the groupthink/jingoistic manner that's expected of most people. Instead, I see most such things as apes bludgeoning each other with ideological weapons -- because that's mostly what it is.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#403
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone trying to define how harassment should be dealt with, you're certainly keen on dismissively calling women "girls".

Women, girls and ladies are used interchangeably to refer to females. Grown women will also refer each other girls. To read such a common usage as misogyny is idiotic.

No, we don't. I am a woman and I do not use those terms interchangeably. Neither do any of the other professional women I know.

My female friends are called 'the girls' as a group. But at work it's either 'woman', 'gals', or 'guys'. I would never call a coworker girl unless she referred to herself that way, and I haven't heard my male or female coworkers do it either. At work calling an adult a 'girl' brings up immediate connotations of "the girls in secretary" from an earlier era, just as 'boy' brings up unpleasant racial connotations from that same era.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Folks"?

That has slipped into my vocabulary. I moved to Norway, and started learning Norwegian. Folk is one of the words for people, and has some other uses too. And it crept into my English vocabulary. I think I sound weird when I use it sometimes, but you are the first to point it out :)

I always think of Pete Seeger when I say it.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#405

"there was no harassment according to legal definition. " He's extremely lucky. In Canada, and in a growing number of jurisdictions - there is 'harassment' so long as the victim feels as if there was. If a girl feels harassed - then that's it. Guilty. It's a deep breach of our fundamental rights, in that crimes should be determined objectively, and not subject to the whims and feelings of a victim. Obviously, this is…

We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13193531.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#406
post #148

I think commenters who are reacting negatively to this story are reacting to the vocabulary rather than the story. Obviously I'm not a witness, but I tend to believe that these events took place more or less as the author describes them. At the same time, words like "sexism" and phrases like "as a minority..." are a big turn-off to some readers, myself included. This isn't because I don't believe in racism/sexism/xen…

> I would put this in almost literary terms: I don't want events to be described, I want them to be recounted.

That's a great idea and, if applied, is going to save a lot of time in fiction writing. For example, chapter 3 of Ulysses can now be just:

  Stephen walked on the beach, sometimes with his eyes closed, and sometimes looking at the sea.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#407
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why our society has such a poor understanding of mental health is because we demand a "real travesty" as a cause of mental illness. Unless there is one, the default assumption is that people are making it up. This is a dangerous belief that harms people.

I think what scoreponok is trying to say is at the end of the day, it's just a job. There is a lot of suffering and trauma in the world. Even though I don't want to try and quantify either of those for different events, there's probably a difference between say being affected by a natural disaster and issues at work. After all, work != life. Note that this obviously don't mean the issue is to be trivialised. After al…

This is where I can side with the author, even though I don't like her article.

It's obvious you don't understand what someone on an H1B has to go through. You often feel trapped, because moving around on an H1B is not simple, especially if you are in the middle of the green card process. You literally might not be able to leave your company, unless you want to give up years of being in line for your green card. So job stress could definitely lead to life stress.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#408

For anyone new to office politics, or have not experienced hostile politics before, keep those in mind: - Make sure to have some real friends at work. No, someone you work with everyday is not necessarily a real friend, you have to make real connections with them, so they are willing to defend and support you when things get tough. - Be observant and empathetic, so you can notice problems when they first arise, and r…

It's sad that with very few words changed, this could just as easily be a guide to surviving prison.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#410
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Guy here. One, those terms are not interchangeable. Words have meanings. Two, people will refer to themselves or people in their in-group by names that people in the outgroup should not call them. E.g., my friend runs a get-together called "nerd beers". I don't mind, because he is a fellow lover of technology. Other people do not get to call me a nerd. Many groups have similar patterns, including black and gay…

When people call females girls they are not infantalising them. Nor do people use this word in this manner. If you have a problem with the word girl in reference to a young woman then your quarrel is with the dictionary.

Do you call your male coworkers "boys"? Like, "Well, the boys in my team are very experienced in Java."

If you don't, then you don't use the term "girls" to talk about your female coworkers. Period. End of Story.

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