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Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

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Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#111

Post by narrator »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #70
wisty wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should not be inviting themselves into the room or home of a coworker, period. People should not be trying to get cozy, let alone try to date, people they have only casually met, especially if there is a power imbalance between them or if there is absolutely anything at stake in the professional relationship. Yet the majority of marriages after college are formed exactly that way - a guy asks an acquaintance…

This is not an excuse. Stop. Just stop. An acquaintance is not a coworker, period. It's not even a question. Most of the time an acquaintance is fully empowered to tell you to fuck all the way off if you make an unwanted advance. And their life goes on as normal afterward. The equation is vastly different if people are coworkers, especially if there is any sort of difference in authority, seniority, connectedness, or…

I read a recent account on the net in a NSFW forum written by a woman who wanted to have casual sex with a co-worker on a business trip. She gave several very obvious hints to the guy she was interested in with no response.

She finally had to resort to flashing her boobs at the guy to get him to acknowledge and fulfill her desires.

Me personally, it would take that level of chutzpah from a female co-worker before I'd even consider and I still might be worried about the whole thing ending badly. Kind of funny where we're at with male/female relationship dynamics these days.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#112

Post by pron »

mquander wrote: post #99
InclinedPlane wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still wrong. The onus is on the person with more authority, power, or privilege. There is a responsibility to educate yourself if you are in such a position (and most men are, in some way or another, in the tech industry). It's 2017, there's no excuse for being ignorant any more. If you're a "flirty" person, for example, that's fine, but you need to go the extra mile to make people feel safe. Be on the lookout for no…

You know, the tech industry has a lot of people on the autism spectrum, and not everyone has hardware-accelerated mind modules to identify non-verbal forms of discomfort in realtime. Nor do I think that should be a hard job requirement for writing computer programs. If people are feeling uncomfortable but not speaking up, they are going to have to come to terms with the fact that a large segment of the programmer com…

First, people have come to terms with this reality; in fact, only a small percentage of discomfort ever get reported regardless of reasons for the man's behavior. Normally, something rather extreme has to happen for there to be any complaint.

Second, those who find it harder to read social cues may just need to follow the rules more carefully. For example, don't try to make romantic or sexual advances towards someone who is in some way (directly or indirectly) subordinate to you.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#113

Post by christophilus »

Pica_soO wrote: post #51
vkou wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's suppose that false rape accusations are a wide-spread problem. They aren't, they are far rarer then actual cases of rape, but let's suppose that they are. How exactly do you propose to deal with them, without a chilling effect on reporting real rapes? It is a crime that is notoriously hard to convict, to the point where most victims keep silent.

If you accuse somebody of a crime s/he didnt commit- and it comes out, you should suffer the same sentence - circumstances of the person you accused would have received as sentence.

Er, only if you can prove the accuser was being malicious, rather than mistaken, or off their meds or whatever. I think you'd need to prove criminal intent.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#114

Post by imartin2k »

jacalata wrote: post #107
wisty wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People should not be inviting themselves into the room or home of a coworker, period. People should not be trying to get cozy, let alone try to date, people they have only casually met, especially if there is a power imbalance between them or if there is absolutely anything at stake in the professional relationship. Yet the majority of marriages after college are formed exactly that way - a guy asks an acquaintance…

Do you have a source for the claim that the majority of post college relationships are between colleagues?

It seems to be a substantial number at least. http://www.siop.org/Media/News/office_romance.aspx

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#115

Post by mcappleton »

wand3r wrote: post #36

This world is getting so fucked up. We can't crucify people for "hitting on" or other somewhat tame behavior because we have nothing left to throw at the real offenders. Conversely, people benefit on both sides of the equation; using sex to their advantage or weaponizing allegations like this. Sexual assualt is REAL and should be punished. We need to focus on a balance between being human and being a predator. People…

False accusations should be punished with the same penalty as the accuser tried to put upon the innocent. Until that happens, people will see no reason to stop false accusations that they think will help them.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#116

Post by mrkrabo »

strathmeyer wrote: post #49
mbesto wrote: post #16

That's right, no one would ever abuse an online system for blacklisting VCs accused of sexual harassment...smh https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14773434

LOL a leader of YC once threatened to ruin my career and prevent me from ever being hired because of a comment I made on an article that was linked here. Now I know why.

It is crazy to use your real name to comment on stuff. I limit my real name to GitHub, and even there I always try to comment on stuff like a robot would.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#117

Post by qq66 »

vkou wrote: post #23
qq66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that the penalties for doing this are usually just civil. I imagine people's behavior would be very different if the next person who manufactured an allegation to attack a business competitor got a twenty-year (or even two-year) jail sentence.

I also imagine that people's behaviour would be very different if actual sexual harassment carried a twenty-year jail sentence. It doesn't, though. Those cases are all civil.

Maybe they should be criminal. Too many people are allowed to buy their way out of consequences that would actually harm them.

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#118

Post by jacalata »

imartin2k wrote: post #114
jacalata wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for the claim that the majority of post college relationships are between colleagues?

It seems to be a substantial number at least. http://www.siop.org/Media/News/office_romance.aspx

Mm, that doesn't look terribly convincing compared to a real study like this one from Stanford which shows a much lower figure: (link in the article to the full study if you can access it) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/08/how-m...

Re: Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco business rival in disguise

#119

Post by qq66 »

jopsen wrote: post #110

> the next person who manufactured an allegation to attack a business competitor got a twenty-year (or even two-year) jail sentence. haha, typical Americans... let's throw more people in jail. Empathy is in short supply for sure.

When economic power begets political power, the state's justice molds to the needs of those with money. Thus, Purdue Pharmaceuticals executives who knowingly misled doctors about the medication OxyContin, causing the explosion of opiate addiction that kills 50,000 people per year, were not even sentenced to a day in jail, but rather paid completely affordable fines both personally and as a corporation. My empathy is with the victims of those kinds of crimes that the powerful have had rewritten into misdemeanors, not with the perpetrators.
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