Silicon Valley Women, in Cultural Shift, Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by qb45 » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #446

ableton wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't comparing the west to China. I just don't know a whole lot about feminism over there so I didn't include it. Gender is the distinction between men and women. If you eliminate the distinction, which feminism is trying to do as quickly as possible (along with LGBTQFHTKEO), you eliminate the concept of gender alltogether.

You were talking about disliking equality movements in the West. I was adding that it's happening in China and other Asian nations too. So that leaves you with... the Middle East and Africa?

You talk about putting women in executive and engineering positions, ableton talks about the belief that sexual behaviors are a cultural construct and can and should be eliminated or bent arbitrarily to social progressives' desires.

The former can be achieved without the latter - just jail people who dare to discriminate against women, problem solved. Soviets managed to implement this even in Muslim states, go figure.

The latter is how the former is being attempted in the West and some are skeptical.

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

#712

Post by chasing » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #216

For everyone who is wondering why these people act the way they do, the answer is that their actions work some of the time . Otherwise, why would they do it if they continually strike out? What one person might see as harassment, another might see as an exciting "chase". I've known women who have had guys be very aggressive (it's a fine line) and they were quite taken by it. This of course is not excusing the behavio…

> For everyone who is wondering why these people act the way they do, the answer is that their actions work some of the time. Otherwise, why would they do it if they continually strike out?

Eehhhh... I don't buy that.

I think some guys just literally have no real idea to create romantic relationships. The best they can come up with is trying to leverage their financial power with shitty pick-up lines.

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

#713

Post by chasing » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #18

I had always heard the constant murmur of sexual harassment happening in the Valley, but I was never sure if there was any merit to it. I anecdotally had never seen anything that would even come close to a situation like those described, so I kind of brushed it off. But then articles like these come out. Wow. These are some of the kingpins of Silicon Valley shown sexually harassing with hard, factual evidence. I had…

There's plenty of talk of it happening in NYC's tech community as well. When those stories start coming out, believe them.

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

#714

Post by sillysaurus3 » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #676

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His reputation is in ruins. It remains to be seen whether anybody will do business with him. Both of those combined equals social ostracism, so we should at least be sure it's warranted.

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

#715

Post by pluma » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

azernik wrote: post #651

pluma wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you completely ignore the cultural context. Rape and sexual assault (of women) is seen as one of the worst possible crimes[0] a man can commit in most Western societies[1]. These crimes are so heinous that even accusations are enough to destroy someone's career and social status, even if the accusations are dropped or proven false. This is further complicated by these crimes generally being very difficult to…

The cultural context is pretty much the exact opposite. The cultural context is that men with power tend to get away with sexual harassment of subordinates for years before anyone gets caught. Only when there is a mountain of evidence and a small army of accusers does the world actually believe them. For all of the VCs described in this story - this was a pattern , corroborated by independent sources, and with detail…

I think the distinction that can be made is that allegations of sexual abuse of women are less damaging in some cases than others. That the people in question were able to "get away with it" says more about how their character is generally perceived from the onset than about society in general.

It's true that society is ridiculously "tolerant" of gross misconduct of some people more than others but there are enough examples of lives being ruined by false allegations to validate my original point.

As a sibling comment pointed out, Trump was elected despite his "locker room talk" and multiple women alleging sexual abuse (plus the actual chauvinism he has displayed on numerous occasions). However I would wager that similar allegations would be far more damaging if leveled against someone like Sanders.

There's also the effect that successive allegations sometimes even reduce the credibility of the allegations because of suspected bandwagoning ("Oh, she just wants some of that attention to make herself interesting").

Humans are fickle and irrational, especially when in a group. Individuals tend to be treated differently but this tends to be more about social status than gender itself.

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

#716

Post by gracenotes » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

Yes. It is a slow, slow decline into the kind of behavior described in the article that could have been stopped or mitigated at any point along the way but wasn't. Not necessarily in terms of how someone is deep down, but in terms of their understanding of how they can/should interact with people around them.

Rather than refuse to understand how someone could have gotten there, let's try to understand the assumptions they made along the way. Then rather than pretending we're unaffected by the culture around us, let's see if we share some of those assumptions. If we want to fix things rather than be blindsided by them, these are at least the first steps.

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

#717

Post by s73ver » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

qb45 wrote: post #550

zbraniecki wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article, and this conversation is about one pathology. You bring up a different one and say "we should treat them equally!" - that's not very different from the "all lives matter" bullshit. Sexism and discrimination of women in tech industry is a massive problem. What you described probably exists in some cases, but is not a) related to the problem at hand and b) orders of magnitude less profound. By bringing it…

The other pathology is relevant because it contributes to the first one. It's not about equal exposure for the sake of equality, but relevant to understanding how shit works and how to deal with it.

No, it really doesn’t. The two have nothing to do with each other. One is quite rampant, while the other is quite rare.

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

#718

Post by abalone » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

photik wrote: post #536

abalone wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we must also be careful of the power in evidence-free accusations and abrogation of "innocent until guilty." Not saying that is necessarily happening here. But you are strongly implying it. In a case where many of the men admitted their guilt, nonetheless. Your comment is just "men's rights" activist talking points.

That's fairly dismissive. He was asserting an unbiased approach at accusation. How is that a "men's rights" activist talking point? Are you suggesting that bias should exists against Y chromosomes?

> Are you suggesting that bias should exists against Y chromosomes?

No. The men admitted guilt in this case and the women did supply evidence. This makes his assertion a politically motivated non sequitur.

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

#719

Post by s73ver » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

tnone wrote: post #679

notjack wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

The lack of concern is evidenced by nothing actually being done about it.

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

#720

Post by samstave » Sat, Jul 01, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #709

samstave wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have forgotten to post a link you intended... The scary thing is that btc is likely the traffickers currency of choice these days. How traceable are btc transactions wrt what types of goods or services are supposedly purchased with btc?

Untraceable if you use a mixer. Why not blacklist coins that have been mixed? It's not hard to figure out whether a coin has been tumbled through e.g. bitcoinfog. I think most of the resistance to this idea comes from people who've used Silk Road clones, most of which force you to mix your coins. But as bitcoin becomes more valuable and ransomware more prevalent, the argument that silk road is ethical and should ther…

Blacklisting the coins would be easy: Exchanges simply close your account if you receive a large number of BTC that have been tumbled. It's easy to identify the coins and to easy to close the accounts while refunding the coins.

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Seems like the future will be full of black-market banks and money laundering (as opposed to how its always been ;-) #PanamaPapers)

Is this the most difficultt financial problem: We don't want government watching every single move we make, yet we dont want criminals to be able to easily hide all their nefarious actions...

Where is the correct balance?

We have those who are supposedly the beacons of the tech future now being revealed as just as bad as others...

Faith in humanity is being assaulted a fair bit more than it had been in the last few decades...