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

nytimes.com

271–280 of 882 posts

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

#271
when they put "flirtitious messages", general compliments, and other forever-used ways to approach a woman in the same bucket as sexual harrasment _something_ is very wrong with those people.

i will say these women in that article are pretty. there, i said it. count me in.

"feminism" is morphing into some fringe cult which brings together few and divides many. talking of imbalance...

sick. very sick.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many people like that, and no, they don't derive an enjoyable power trip out of being rejected at all. Theybdon't know they can get away with it. They don't know that they are doing it . These people are rarely evil and predatory. They usually genuinely believe that the behavior they are exhibiting is desireable. They think that this is how the game is played, and these things are a form of peacocking. They th…

I think you're completely neglecting the fact that there is a large contingent of women that this behavior WORKS LIKE CATNIP ON. There is a reason why a huge amount of porn in the world (and porn made for women) about boss / secretary, teacher / student, rich person / poor person, mentor / underling power imbalances: it's a major part of our sexuality as social animals. So, these men have often gone through life bein…

> So, these men have often gone through life being wildly successful with this type of behavior up until society started to change around them.

I feel so bad for them. /s

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully man on man abuse comes out as well. Sex abuse between all pairings / genders happens but there are not so many women VCs so it's unlikely that's going to come down here. But there are quite a few gay VCs. My advice to everybody is keep meticulous notes and records of your interactions with others, regardless of gender. This is important to expose abuse and to expose lies.

Do you know of specific stories? Have you experienced this yourself? I am a gay man who has raised money, and networked with various gay VCs. I’ve never seen this kind of behavior from them personally.

I am a straight man who has experienced this personally. I can't give too many details without revealing who I am and who the VC was, but I can say the VC works at one of the largest corporate funds, and I was a bootstrapped founder at the time.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many people like that, and no, they don't derive an enjoyable power trip out of being rejected at all. Theybdon't know they can get away with it. They don't know that they are doing it . These people are rarely evil and predatory. They usually genuinely believe that the behavior they are exhibiting is desireable. They think that this is how the game is played, and these things are a form of peacocking. They th…

I know many people like that, and no, they don't derive an enjoyable power trip out of being rejected at all. Theybdon't know they can get away with it. They don't know that they are doing it. These people are rarely evil and predatory. They usually genuinely believe that the behavior they are exhibiting is desirable. Basically, power corrupts. Being a boss, an investor, or an employer comes with power. Just having t…

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

#275
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think building a policy based on the possible existence of a vanishingly small group of bad actors is a great way to make excuses for avoiding solving real problems...

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/border... I don't consider 1.6% among the general population to be "vanishingly small". That's easily approaching and I think even exceeding 1/100 when you factor for women only, since the majority of BPD diagnoses are for women. This isn't really insignificant when you think about how many people you will run into during a typical career. This also doesn't accoun…

You're conflating two different things: if 1.6% of the population has BPD that still doesn't tell you that 100% of them are untreated and spending their time and credibility making false accusations, or that those wouldn't fall apart fairly quickly. That might happen on TV but most real people with mental illnesses spend time trying to minimize their impact on others, not act like the bad guy in a police procedural.

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect less VCs to take meetings with women, sadly. Why? There's a really simple procedure that can solve these problems: Don't hit on, feel-up, or try to have sex with people you're in a professional business relationship with. That goes double for people you hold power over (managers to employees, VCs to Founders, etc). If you're really truly worried about false accusations then here's another fix you can have…

If you're a VC, you can just ask if it's okay that you record the meeting for record-keeping or pick-your-reason.

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

#277
post #172

There was a constant murmur(or was it a constant shouting) of hate crimes performed in the name of Trump shortly after the election, but almost all of them turned out to be hoax hate crimes perpetrated by the victims. I'm not saying that is the case with sexism in SV, which certainly exists - I am merely saying that people claiming something usually isn't enough proof alone that something is happening. Of course, you…

Partisan political tangents definitely aren't going to help here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14674213 and marked it off-topic.

There was nothing partisan about my post - I wasn't taking any sides, but just pointing out that purported hate crimes were widely reported in the news, which many turned out to be perpetrated by the alleged victims. For example, the Greenville, MS historic black church which was burned down days before the election with "Vote Trump" graffitid on it - which turned out to have been perpetrated by a member of the same church.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/us/mississippi-church-fir...

But I guess, if simply mentioning Trump makes something partisan, then yes, I brought in partisan politics.

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

#278

There was a constant murmur(or was it a constant shouting) of hate crimes performed in the name of Trump shortly after the election, but almost all of them turned out to be hoax hate crimes perpetrated by the victims. I'm not saying that is the case with sexism in SV, which certainly exists - I am merely saying that people claiming something usually isn't enough proof alone that something is happening. Of course, you…

I'm sorry, I've seen absolutely no evidence that "almost all of them" were hoax hate crimes and I don't think you're capable of producing credible proof to this effect.

Sure I can, perhaps by column inches allotted to the story?

The reason it is 'almost all of them', is because the most outrageous crimes garner the most attention, but at the same time are least likely to be actual hate crimes. For example, the historic black church firebombing in MS which happened days before the election...which turned out months later to have been done by a black member of that same church.

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

#279
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is people being assholes because they know they can get away with it. Nope. These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes. Never attribute to rational decision making what can be attributed to rotten character.

Then why does their behavior disproportionately affect women, who have less power to complain about their behavior? If this were entirely an aspect of their character or personality they'd be an asshole to everyone equally, not opportunistically take advantage of people who have less ability to stop them.

> they'd be an asshole to everyone equally

I think they often are. But you don't hear about it, because almost no one cares about males at the bottom of the social ladder. At the bottom, men are "valued" (for a lack of a better word) even less than women.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell one.

I'll tell you one. A bank I worked at in the mid 80's had one woman working on a floor in a fairly separate building away from the main building. That one woman had to endure pretty much constant harassment from two guys who were technically her superior and their boss didn't lift a finger to stop it. I made a good bit of noise about it to HR and then she begged me to stop because she was afraid they'd let her go. Th…

I want to play!

One of the West Point/Sloan MBAs, Chip, showed his dick to a recruiter.

One of my lawyer friends had a hiring manager show his dick to her.

I've been in tech for a decade and haven't met anyone who has been exposed to a dick in person.

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