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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

#671

Post by XorNot »

freeflight wrote: post #637
XorNot wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple question: do you commit sexual harassment? If no, this is not about you. The existence of this conversation is not aimed at you.

Simple counter-question: How do you define "sexual harassment"? Because that's the actual issue these days. Behavior that used to be "normal" and lead to people getting to know each other is considered "harassment" these days. Yesterday I read an article about Tinder in the German Cosmopolitan: http://www.cosmopolitan.de/dating-app-tinder-tinder-im-test-... One of it's points being that a big draw for many women is h…

Wow is there a lot to unpack here, and this really is a poor medium for it so I'll try and cut to the crux of the issue:

Is there consent? If you're not sure, don't do it.

And so a follow-up: do you think a VC pitch by someone of the opposite gender represents consent to making a sexual advance?

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

#672

Post by bjourne »

duggan wrote: post #617
bjourne wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The robustness principle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle ) or some permutation of it is used in virtually all communication systems and media channels. The burden is clearly on the sender of the message to be precise, not on the receiver to interpret a noisy message. I can't think of any situation, except for dating, where the burden is placed on the receiver.

You will note the robustness principle applies to "code that sends commands or data to other machines", not people.

It applies to human-to-human communication too. If a politician sends an ambiguous tweet, he or she will be blamed if the message is misunderstood. A marketing campaign can be accused of being racist even if the creators didn't intend it to be. If a worker doesn't understand a managers work orders, it is the managers fault -- not the workers, same thing with a student not understanding a professors lecture and so on.

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

#673

Post by gkya »

nashashmi wrote: post #521

Isn't there an inherent culture among men that dates all the way back to middle school, high school, and college that somewhat sets the tone for inappropriate behavior later in life? These kinds of behaviours happen a lot and begin at a very young age. And they seem to be okayed by nearly everyone then. Why don't these things stop before they begin? I almost feel sorry for the men in these stories because the rules s…

I believe it's the changing culture that causes these problems in general. The rules and the culture are changing, and the pace at which different people adopt the changes and adapt to the new society is different. Unfortunately it doesn't happen in an instant, and culture gaps between people cause this sort of awkward situations where communications fail. Many traditions and social situations need adapting, like meeting new people, dating, workplace, family, friendship, all the stuff that involves genders, and it'll only happen in time.it's not that far back in time that women had to fight for suffrage.

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

#674

Post by taway_1212 »

vostok wrote: post #452
nailer wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finance in London basically funds the entire sex industry.

Paying someone for sex is not the same as harassing your coworkers. You're also extremely naive if you think this doesn't happen in every other sales heavy industry. London just happens to have a large financial sector. I can assure you that the same thing happens in the oil, tech, and real estate industries for example. If we're taking about anecdotes, I had a friend in college who was a sex worker and most of her c…

> sex worker

What's wrong with a word 'prostitute'?

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

#675

Post by geofft »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #309
geofft wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a good start if he came to this realization on his own, instead of right after being contacted by the New York Times going "Hey, we're going to publish a story about your sexual harassment, do you want to dispute this account".

People make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes go back years, and sometimes a sudden traumatic event can snap someone out of the patterns of behavior they fell into. The point is that it's probably a mistake to treat him the same way you'd treat certain kinds of felons. Part of that is to give him an opportunity to contribute in a positive way to the world, like everyone else. If he's genuine, then isn't there some w…

I'd be a lot more inclined to believe that if the blog post weren't a bunch of "I am sorry for unwittingly participating in reinforcing systems of oppression" / "I am sorry for not calling out colleagues" / etc.

He knew exactly what the NYT article was going to say: they contacted him to see if he wanted to dispute it. If he were being genuine, he could have said "I did this thing, I apologize to the specific person I hurt". I'm absolutely giving him room to be genuine, he's just staying well out of that room.

... and, apparently, he's now updated the blog post disputing the NYT's account: https://medium.com/@sacca/i-have-more-work-to-do-c775c5d56ca... This is so bizarre.

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

#676

Post by geofft »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #349
obstinate wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally people have to do some penance before forgiveness, especially as the crimes grow more heinous. Continuing to live the rich and privileged life you were leading before, more or less untouched by the hand of justice, does not count for much in this dimension.

Certainly. But what does justice look like here? If nobody knows or nobody's willing to venture a guess, then we should at least acknowledge that complete social ostracism is a massive penalty. Are you sure the punishment fits the crime? It seems more likely that there's a reasonable middle ground, but maybe someone has a persuasive argument to the contrary.

I don't see any sign that "complete social ostracism" is the actual outcome here, or even a plausible outcome.

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

#677

Post by qb45 »

cbhl wrote: post #321
xor1 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please explain how it's derailment? Do you think my concern is an invalid one? As someone who has been through the ringer with borderlines multiple times, it is something that I think about constantly, and I think it's a mistake to ignore the fact that it's a real thing and that people with borderline personality disorder exist in professional workplaces.

Here's a resource: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Derailment

You surely could find a definition which isn't intermixed with propaganda.

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

#678

Post by vostok »

taway_1212 wrote: post #674
vostok wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying someone for sex is not the same as harassing your coworkers. You're also extremely naive if you think this doesn't happen in every other sales heavy industry. London just happens to have a large financial sector. I can assure you that the same thing happens in the oil, tech, and real estate industries for example. If we're taking about anecdotes, I had a friend in college who was a sex worker and most of her c…

> sex worker What's wrong with a word 'prostitute'?

Do you think all sex workers are prostitutes?

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

#679

Post by tnone »

notjack wrote: post #118
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.

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.

>women, who have less power to complain about their behavior

The exact opposite is true. Almost nobody would take a man who complains about sexual harassment seriously. Just look at the night and day difference in response to teacher student abuse when the student is a guy or a girl.

I do not understand what world people live in where constant special concern is twisted into a lack of it. I mean, I do, in so far as it's just benevolent sexism masquerading as equality, but I can't wrap my head around those people considering themselves rational.

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

#680

Post by mirimir »

naasking wrote: post #659
mirimir wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider them both to be sociopathic. Asking random women for sex is arguably also coercive. Edit: I note that smart robbers and rapists scope potential victims by making innocent requests. Then escalating.

> Asking random women for sex is arguably also coercive. Asking is coercion now? I'd like to hear that argument.

"That's a damn fine coat you're wearing ..." ;)
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