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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

#641

Post by solnyshok »

ewjordan wrote: post #318
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we get out of this dead end? It's a chicken and egg problem. The biggest systemic factor is the absurd gender ratio, but if the consequences of that are self-reinforcing then the status quo remains. Many people have the instinct to turn to anti-harassment policies and enforcement, but that's like trying to fight cancer with aspirin. It might help a little bit but it's no cure no matter how much you use, and…

One obvious step is that we need to do what we do in every other subject: force all children to learn enough tech to figure out whether they are good at it or not by making it a required class. When schools do that, they find that tons of girls excel at programming, but probably never would have tried it if it hadn't been mandatory. Dealing with harassment in the industry is also key, but even if that was eliminated…

"forcing all children to..." is never an answer

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

#642

Post by nyolfen »

adamsea wrote: post #424
curun1r wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Intellectual consistency would require acknowledging the systematic repression of women in western history (not being able to vote, etc), and thus, the effects of what is still a patriarchial culture as often as not. In other words, your argument attempts to ignore simple historical facts which you can verify easily on Wikipedia.

i'm sorry, but this response is so meaningless it's basically just 'fuck you'. you could say it in response to absolutely anything regarding women.

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

#643

Post by malandrew »

tajen wrote: post #486
voidlogic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nope. These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes. To be fair, even an asshole may show some restraint when they have a clear understanding of consequences. Thinking their money buys them immunity from consequence is an enabler as they don't believe they have the slightest need for this kind of rational self-interest. You are both right, an asshole is an asshole as you suggest, but even so, assholes ar…

Men need to work hard to jail those assholes, here's why: They are the reason why men are described as generally threatening, discrediting and imposing huge constraints in advance on all men who show proper social restraint and respect for women.

I wonder how many innocent people we'll end up condemning with this posture. It's not like history lacks any examples that demonstrates that this is exactly what happens when you get tough and prosecutorial. You're pretty much sanctioning a pitchfork and torch attitude and that evolves into mobs that are often wrong.

These days it feels like we've learn nothing from stories like the Scarlet Letter that describe a time from our history where we treated women how you now propose that we treat men. Neither gender deserves this.

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

#644

Post by just4themoney »

manfredo wrote: post #481
watwut wrote: post #440

> a volunteer organization who went directly from "I don't think I can see a movie tonight" to "This situation is making me uncomfortable" with nothing in between. She tried to tell you gently in the way girls are taught to reject men while still being nice to them. If you reject dude other way, some tend to t get insulted anyway. You did not get it, so she informed you flat out about how she really think about the s…

Communications that are subtle and ambiguous are highly likely to be misinterpreted, and it is not reasonable to assume that the recipient reached the intended conclusion. Depending on what the above poster meant by escalating to "This situation is making me uncomfortable" I may or may not agree with the above commenter's statement that the person being approached acted irrationally. If the person being approached fo…

Social politeness dictates we approach high intensity situations with some grace and tact. It really hurts to be rejected and it really hurts to do the rejection because the rejecter knows he or she is going to cause another human being who took a risk and put themselves out there to experience negative feelings. Only psychopaths enjoy rejecting people. So we say "little white lies" to make it easier on both parties. We say "I can't make it" instead of what we really feel, which is "you are very sexually unappealing to me." Part of "being polite" is understanding this and playing along.

BTW, if you have trouble with this sort of thing I recommend Miss Manners books and newspaper columns. They are both very informative and entertaining. Plus they make me feel good that I was not as bad as some people who write to her. I was raised by my parents who are truly evil people and are assholes to boot, so I never learned manners or proper behavior and I'd like to not be an asshole myself, so I needed help.

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

#645

Post by sokoloff »

bt4u2 wrote: post #631

This is silly. Don't reduce me to some risk averse weakling because I'm not willing to put my neck out for strangers for little to no reward. If you're like that, and you regularly go to Africa to help people, more power to you. I'm not. Most people are not.

> I'm not willing to put my neck out for strangers for little to no reward

Part of my point is that is often exactly what is required of leaders.

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

#646

Post by Goladus »

adamsea wrote: post #424
curun1r wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Intellectual consistency would require acknowledging the systematic repression of women in western history (not being able to vote, etc), and thus, the effects of what is still a patriarchial culture as often as not. In other words, your argument attempts to ignore simple historical facts which you can verify easily on Wikipedia.

> Intellectual consistency would require acknowledging the systematic repression of women in western history (not being able to vote, etc), and thus, the effects of what is still a patriarchial culture as often as not.

Actually I'd say that dismissing a reasonable point about interactions between individual people using a narrow interpretation of history to establish a non-standard epistemology is the greater intellectual mistake.

In other words, that women couldn't vote 100 years ago says absolutely nothing about whether a venture capitalist abused his relationship with a client or whether a potential client tried to use sexuality for a competitive advantage.

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

#647

Post by snsr »

everdayimhustln wrote: post #569
ronilan wrote: 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.

People aren't archetypes or labels; that's too black & white, un-nuanced thinking. Psychological and sociological reseach proved most people act however they're expected to within a given power dynamic circumstance, except for a few outliers which will go their own way, for anti- or pro-community. This wrong "bad apples" analogy as it applies to police or genocide perpetrators also is dangerous because it's simply un…

> Instead, there must be social and business pressures brought to bear to prevent emboldened behavior with accountability.

Some of the actions described in the article are crimes - these assholes should be prosecuted.

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

#648

Post by Broken_Hippo »

mikeash wrote: post #111
rl3 wrote: post #7

This entire article is a smorgasbord of cringe: > 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…

That last part seems to go beyond creepy and into criminal sexual assault territory.

Mhm. Yet, I'm not sure I'd trust the cops to do anything about it. Heck, it is hard enough with actual harrassment: Groping is even more difficult. We have a hard enough time doing decent things when folks are raped.

If the person is lucky enough to work in a large place, there is som

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

#649

Post by tootie »

dkarl wrote: post #44
rl3 wrote: post #7

This entire article is a smorgasbord of cringe: > 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…

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…

It's cringey if the perpetrator is a hapless nerd. It's harassment when they hold power over you.

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

#650

Post by angstrom »

naasking wrote: post #422
andrepd wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>High functioning sociopaths. That's actually a medical/psychiatric diagnosis. I don't really think it applies here (or maybe it does, I don't know, I only know that you can't just throw that casually at run-of-the mill creeps).

I believe OP was referring to the studied fact that leaders and business moguls tend to exhibit many more of the sociopathic check points than the ordinary person.

Right, you might call these people manipulative, but on a level where they can camouflage their behavior.

Bill Cosby for instance could possibly be considered one. His also seems more methodical. What's worse: 60 possible rapes spanning decades or 60 possible rapes spanning a year?

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