Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

I've been in tech for close to 20 years now. I get paid pretty well compared to the national average pay, and globally speaking it's off the charts.

But the figures and activities mentioned there are completely alien to me. This is the (a?) world of high finance and I can't relate to it.

I've seen a lot of casual and systemic sexism in the tech industry, in the trenches and at the coal face so to speak. I think it's often this that is the focus of criticism of the industry as a whole, and I think it's this that's a valid criticism of the tech industry.

To be absolutely clear - From what I've read here, Ellen Pao was treated really, really badly and has a whole litany of valid complaints, I just don't recognise the business painted here to be "tech".

There's a useful graph somewhere of various degrees earned by gender split. The numbers run the gamut.

Pao got roasted on reddit because she became the figurehead for widely unpopular community changes. At best you could say she was set up as the patsy by Reddit's board.

GamerGate was a cluster fuck where existing troll groups like GNAA and BWC jumped in, as did the nihilistic lolcow milkers of baphomet and kiwifarms. But the whole thing was started by a scandal over an ex helldump member, whose anti harassment group was later caught doxing and harassing, and whose posse got caught false flagging in the Social Autopsy drama. To pretend like GG is a misogynist troll army means falling for the narrative set out by the media the movement accused while ignoring the realities of the spheres in which it took place.

GG is also not right wing, as Brad Glasgow's research showed, so associating it with the alt-right is more idiotic narrative spinning. Like when feminists lump together MRA, red pill and mgtow as some sort of unholy woman hating underbelly, instead of the 3 very different things that they are.

None of this has been objectively covered, nobody bothered to investigate, only to do what the article above does: feature one sided profiles of self declared victims who stood to gain a lot from that portrayal. Visit r/KotakuInAction for instance and observe how what was claimed to be a "smoke screen" for hate is still going 3 years later, still covering abject failures in reporting, while banning all harassment.

(Repost: stop flagging the truth, you cowards. What is it going to take to admit you got rolled by a sociopath and her pets?)

Many cultures and subcultures in many times and places have had cultural protocols for people to indicate that they are interested in each other and would potentially like to do whatever, and protocols for acceptance and rejection of said advances. Perhaps tech (and to be honest the office workplace in general) needs to work something out for that. Most "nice" people end up holding themselves to restrictions that turn out to be grossly stricter than what the actual law says, so the "nice" people feel stifled when they actually aren't, and the not-so-nice people have no real guidelines and just do as they please.

It would at least give some guidelines to people on how to act, because right now the guidelines are all mostly negative... don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other thing, but I don't know the positive guidelines. That's sort of difficult to navigate through.

So, caveats. First, please don't read into my first paragraph anything that isn't there. I am not endorsing any particular set of protocols nor claiming that any particular set was perfect. I am simply saying it might be helpful if something existed; feel free to craft it to your sensibilities. Second, I'm married with no intention of changing that, not in SV, and psychologically and politically not a match for SV culture anyhow, so I'm not trying to suggest any specific protocol because anything I'd suggest wouldn't stick anyhow. (Or possibly there is a clear protocol and I'm just so out of it that I don't know what it is on account of not caring, but I'd expect more people to be discussing it in these matters and I don't see that, so I assume this is not the problem.) Third, I make no claim that the mere existence of such protocols would suddenly magically make all harassment go away, but having something, especially something with positive suggestions about how to go about courting, would be a good start. It's hard to referee a game with no lines on the field. (That may be the most important sentence in this post.)

My only specific feedback is that "nobody should ever be approached for anything ever and anyone who is approached has all rights to go arbitrarily ballistic on social media" is simply unrealistic; humans are gonna human. Part of the eventual contract would have to be that whatever an "approach" is, you do get one chance, and if you get the "go away and never raise this again" then yes, you are obligated to do that. The protocol could include some way of opting out entirely; without an argument that this should be used by tech, as an example, I would point out this is one of the purposes wedding rings serve.

I'd be happy to see some examples of their actions.