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

nytimes.com

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

#371

Post by linkregister »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #57
ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

I give a lot of credit to women like Susan Fowler who were brave enough to speak out, with starting what feels a bit like a tidal wave. I hope we see similar light shone on institutionalized racism.

You'd rather say that she was sufficiently well connnected to make her voice heard. Even then she came public only after she had left the company and was employed elsewhere.

Indeed. Anyone who was old enough to understand the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment investigation can recall how much Anita Hill was dragged through the mud, despite having a compelling case.

I think the fact that Susan was not currently suing Uber was the primary reason why her story was believed by the general public. The critics who would howl "she's just trying to make false accusations for a payday" had no ammunition. Either that or things have dramatically changed for the better since the 90s.

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

#372

Post by acjohnson55 »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #168
dkarl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think cringe is the wrong word. We cringe when we watch The Office and see people make social mistakes without meaning to. These are not unwitting social mistakes. This is people being assholes because they know they can get away with it. Furthermore, not having met any of these people but speculating based on my experience, I would guess that their motivations go beyond just looking for sex and knowing that one ti…

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…

> These people are rarely evil and predatory.

But then there's the argument of the banality of evil. We spend a lot of time thinking about the black swans of evilness, but I'd argue a lot more damage is done on aggregate by mundane shittiness.

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

#373

Post by Klockan »

linkregister wrote: post #363
Klockan wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 34 year old CEO asking a newly hired 23 year old college grad out on a date sounds like sexual harassment to me even if it was just a one time thing.

It certainly raises some interesting quid-pro-quo questions. Every sexual harassment training I've attended has mentioned this as very dangerous territory, but not explicitly sexual harassment.

If a CEO asked a much younger employee out and it made her so uncomfortable that she quit would you still say that it wasn't sexual harassment? Once is still too much. And for all we know Melinda might have felt compelled to say yes to avoid retaliation and only later accepted it.

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

#375

Post by dang »

gus1h wrote: post #332

They are all mindlessly ambitious dicks. That includes the women. These stories are just resume building tools.

We've banned this account and detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14674437 and marked it off-topic.

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

#376

Post by hkmurakami »

pravda wrote: post #218
tuna-piano wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to elaborate on point #4. I chose those examples purposefully: Those three are all well-known business leaders who have dated or married their subordinates. Presumably, there was a point where Gates/Brin/Knight initiated or suggested to initiate romantic involvement. If as it turns out the woman had not been interested, in retrospect, would the methods of initiation seem like sexual harassment? I believe…

>Those three are all well-known business leaders who have dated or married their subordinates. Here's another one: Bezos! He married a subordinate. http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Mackenzie+Bezos/Business+Leader... And she's cute. Cue ball did well for himself.

Apparently she initiated.

Bezos and MacKennzie met while working together at the New York City hedge fund D.E. Shaw.

In a Vogue interview, MacKenzie said Bezos was the first person she interviewed with at Shaw. She asked him out to lunch one day and they were engaged three months later. She was only 23 years old when they married.

“My office was next door to his, and all day long I listened to that fabulous laugh,” she told Vogue. “How could you not fall in love with that laugh?”

http://heavy.com/news/2017/06/jeff-bezos-wife-mackenzie-writ...

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

#378

Post by acjohnson55 »

pharrlax wrote: post #269
taytus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He turned off comments on his super creepy post.

He touched someone's face once like eight years ago "in a way that made her feel uncomfortable". A stupid, asshole, casually sexist move? Yup. Worthy of being raked over the coals despite bending over backwards to make amends in the years since? Uhhh... no, not really. Don't get me wrong. The other stories are really, really bad. Insanely evil, even. But the idea that Sacca's extremely minor dick move almost a decade…

He, himself, admits that this sort of behavior was a pattern. I don't think he has been or will be raked over the coals, because he seems to exhibit genuine remorse.

I respect him, but my sympathy isn't with him.

I'm sure it's deeply uncomfortable to be under this level of scrutiny and lumped in with people who have been caught doing things that seem skeezier. But you know what's worse? Not being a billionaire and trying to make a living in a world where people you need are more interested in having sex with you than your business value, or at the very least, are more than willing to tie one to the other.

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

#379

Post by bjourne »

fhrow4484 wrote: post #148
Apocryphon wrote: post #15

How is it that the old money industries of Wall Street and Hollywood, no vanguards of gender egalitarianism themselves, seem to have less flagrant sexual harassment issues? Do they keep them under wraps or are they just more mature by now?

They don't get discussed here because this is Hacker News, but this is discussed often in the media: https://www.google.com/search?q=women+in+wall+street+sexism&... What is interesting is that there seem to have been a burst of articles in 2016, but nothing in 2017. The first three pages of google results above have almost only articles from 2016, and a few from 2012, 2013, etc. Maybe sexism sells more when it happen…

Perhaps because techies are seen as holier than you types? Sexual harassment stories in churches are way juicer stories than about other organisations.

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

#380

Post by xor1 »

splitrocket wrote: post #369
xor1 wrote: post #159

What are your thoughts on women with borderline personality disorder abusing an environment in which the burden of proof is placed entirely on the defendant?

You are saying there is a chance a bad actor might abuse a social dynamic in which you are the less powerful participant?

I'd like to think that I know how to recognize, avoid, and, if needed, placate those bad actors now. I'm not sure why you're trying to frame my concern as if it were directly applied to me, i.e. I'm worried that I'm going to be a target or victim.
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