Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 882 posts

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

#851

Post by danyim »

lebanon_tn wrote: post #628

> Lindsay Meyer, an entrepreneur in San Francisco, said Mr. Caldbeck put $25,000 of his own money into her fitness start-up in 2015. That gave Mr. Caldbeck reason to constantly text her; in those messages, reviewed by The Times, he asked if she was attracted to him and why she would rather be with her boyfriend than him. At times, he groped and kissed her, she said. > “I felt like I had to tolerate it because this is…

I believe Meyer was implying that while being a female founder is hard enough, her being a non-white minority makes it even more difficult due to racism.

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

#852

Post by speedplane »

curun1r wrote: post #627
mattzito wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we want to punish and ostracize the guilty Yup, that one. > or do we want to minimize the occurrence of this behavior going forward? False equivalence. I would imagine if VCs and investors get the message that if they hit on women they'll be fired, they'll stop doing it. > I'm not trying to blame the women who try to use their sexuality to their advantage or even those that engage in consensual relationships wit…

> I would imagine if VCs and investors get the message that if they hit on women they'll be fired, they'll stop doing it. You imagine wrong. Instead, they'll learn how to do it without getting caught. Lesson one comes from these incidents. Don't leave an electronic or paper trail. It's much less likely these women would have come forward if they hadn't had electronic records of chat sessions to back up their assertio…

In theory, there could be an intelligent psychological model that analyzes a male VC's brain and provides thoughtful suggestions to them to dissuade them from this behavior right before it occurs. While that's a nice thought, it's incredibly unrealistic.

The far more practical approach is to catch the bad guys over and over again, make examples of them and mete out punishment. That's how criminal deterrence works in every other field. No reason to make an exception here.

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

#853

Post by speedplane »

ubernostrum wrote: post #467
watwut wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Are you trying thay rape culture is a thing and dudes really need special courses on how to not be harassers? That does not describe or culture or majority of dudes in any way. Our culture is full of signals that harassment is wrong. It is also quite unlikely that people who climb the ladder and successfully play "impress investors and people around" social skills game are so clueless magically when they are al…

dudes really need special courses on how to not be harassers? Given the many first-hand accounts of ordinary everyday harassment and men who flat-out do not seem to understand what is and isn't inappropriate, or what the words "no" or "I'm not interested" or "leave me alone" mean, yes, it does seem there is a significant population for whom this type of basic education is absolutely and vitally necessary. Think of it…

I agree that this education is "absolutely and vitally necessary", however I disagree with you that this education is "basic" or that it should be relegated to just subset of the population.

Knowing how to communicate with people who are different from you, knowing how to disagree with another without insulting them, knowing how to check sexual desires in inappropriate settings, knowing when you are operating from a position of power rather than influence ... these are often not at all obvious, they are learned.

Everyone can benefit from this type of education.

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

#854

Post by abalone »

stcredzero wrote: post #844
abalone wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is like arguing "I'm just saying there should be equal rights for white people" on a post about white-on-black harassment because MLK Jr had "much to say about equality." Taken in context it is an attempt to deny the imbalance of power that exists and which civil rights / feminism seek to dismantle.

That is like arguing "I'm just saying there should be equal rights for white people" on a post about white-on-black harassment because MLK Jr had "much to say about equality." No, it's more like mentioning how people should be judged on the contents of their character, not the color of their skin. It's more like citing the importance of understanding the ideological basis of activism in the protection of individual r…

You've misrepresented the dismantling of sexism and racism as "tilting the playing field 'the other way'", a fabricated quote.

You've also utterly missed the point on MLK Jr. Using his words to suggest that racial oppression goes both ways on anything near the same level is a transparent attempt to deny the existence of white privilege. Popping up on threads about the oppression of women with non sequiturs about the oppression of men is exactly the same thing.

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

#855

Post by askawayok »

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…

What Milgram and Stanford experiments showed: ordinary people might do something evil if ordered by a person.

What this article is about: rich white men are sexist.

I fail to see the connection.

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

#856

Post by adrienne »

x1798DE wrote: post #824
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…

> 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 reason enough to take pause for a moment I don't know the exact situation here, but to be fair, if you were mostly flirting with someone and it was not a hiring situation, this would not be an unflattering thing to say - "hey, I like you and I think you…

It was a job interview.

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

#857

Post by adrienne »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #812
meredydd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. What I'm saying we should learn from this, and Uber, and all the rest is that we should treat "a constant murmur" as much stronger evidence than we currently do. (Not necessarily a slam dunk - but, in Bayesian terms, it should shift your priors much more now than it would have before these stories came out.) Edit: Although really, what stronger evidence will you ever get? I suppose you could get a personal accou…

It can't really be treated as "evidence". Maybe it's "probable cause" for looking into something -- but that's different in a couple of important ways: * One needs real and credible evidence to carry through with depriving another person of any liberty or property. * Probable cause never trumps or adds to evidence -- if you investigate and find nothing, that's it. One of the most confusing and unfortunate memes of th…

In a court of law, personal testimony is evidence. It isn't necessarily compelling by itself, but the idea that it isn't evidence because you don't like it is not actually how the legal system (or culture) works.

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

#858

Post by qb45 »

greglindahl wrote: post #848
qb45 wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, weaponized linguistics. The problem is, as any weapon, it can backfire. General public doesn't give a rat's ass about jargon churned out by all those activists. And I'm absolutely not singling out sex workers here, SJWs tend to be the biggest offenders now. If public familiarity with some subtle, nonobvious definition of "sex worker" is an important point of their strategy, they are probably doing it wrong. If…

So, for example, let's say you're an activist and you use "SJW" with the general public. Is that an example of overestimating familiarity with your jargon?

Yes :)

I now feel compelled to explain myself. My use of it was only in a secondary remark, non important for the main point of my post. And I think somebody versed in the nuances of sex work advocacy may have heard of this concept too. If not, well, not much loss.

Interesting that you caught SJW and missed virtue signaling. This is more obscure I think and, admittedly, it was a part of my main point. So, from google:

the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

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

#859

Post by eropple »

adrienne wrote: post #856
x1798DE wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reason enough to take pause for a moment I don't know the exact situation here, but to be fair, if you were mostly flirting with someone and it was not a hiring situation, this would not be an unflattering thing to say - "hey, I like you and I think you…

It was a job interview .

'adrienne, it looks like you've been hellbanned. I've vouched this post and your other post, but figured you should know so you're not just yelling into the void. When I've run across you I've consistently thought your positions were reasonable and from a group consistently both marginalized and ignored on HN, so I'm very surprised you're hellbanned.

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

#860

Post by dang »

james1071 wrote: post #831

This is what happens when people get rich quickly- lot's of them behave badly. It is hardly unique to men - there are plenty of rich bitches in female dominated indsutries. As for women being sexually harassed - that would stop immediately if they all shunned the rich guys. But, that's never going to happen, is it?

It looks like your account has been abusing HN by using it primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop; it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Post reply on HN