Silicon Valley Women, in Cultural Shift, Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment

Silicon Valley Women, in Cultural Shift, Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment
nytimes.com

Now we live in a world where a guy can be publicly shamed for attempting to flirt or for making a pass at a woman he is interested in?

If a woman sent me a Facebook message saying that she wanted to date me, or even sleep with me, and I wasn't interested, I would just say "No", not call a newspaper. It's an offer, not a rape.

Newsflash: the workplace is the second most common place for couples to meet. People of different genders who are bound to sometimes be attracted to one another are going to be forced to spend long hours with one another. And a lot of people are not good with subtle cues, especially men.

Uneven power dynamics makes this more complicated, but a complete social ban on any attempt at flirting is just silly. Speaking of uneven power dynamics, try to find me an example of a man reporting a woman to a newspaper because she offered to sleep with him.

>During the recruiting process, Mr. McClure, a founder of 500 Startups and an investor, sent her a Facebook message that read in part, “I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you.”

One would think having the phrases "hire you" and "hit on you" in the same sentence when communicating with someone undergoing recruitment at your company would be reason enough to take pause for a moment, and maybe ponder why PR suicide seems like a good idea.

>Mr. Canter, in an interview, said that Ms. Dent “came on strong to me, asking for help” and that she had used her sexuality publicly. He said he disliked her ideas so he behaved the way he did to make her go away.

???

>Lindsay Meyer, an entrepreneur in San Francisco, said Mr. Caldbeck put $25,000 of his own money into her fitness start-up in 2015. That gave Mr. Caldbeck reason to constantly text her; in those messages, reviewed by The Times, he asked if she was attracted to him and why she would rather be with her boyfriend than him. At times, he groped and kissed her, she said.

That one's just downright pathological creepy in the extreme.

But no. Not a chance.

We get roped into hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of hours of coding camps and university curiculum, and then spat out into a constant professional grind with treadmills that never end, and no other life beyond a professional one.

Clothes, cell phones, cars, gas, houses, utilities, drinking, and razor thin budgets to maintain all these things, and no life except the life at work.

Why are women getting mobbed and groped in the workplace, because there's no free time, and nobody actually has lives outside of work. Everyone is pent up, and there's no actual culture anymore. Just work.

Don't pretend like this is a sexism thing. It's an economic thing. And not just some work/life balance garbage.

This is about being able to afford to live a life among your peers, at eye level, just treading water, without working 80 hours and 3 jobs.