The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced • Hacker News Board

Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced

#71

Post by forgottenpass » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #23

rectang wrote: post #2

I hope that as time goes on we are increasingly able to see ourselves as all in this together, rather than in a zero-sum game between genders.

I think it's better to realize that we're not all in this together, and instead to sacrifice unearned personal power in order to help the less powerful simply because we think it's just, not because we think that it'll ultimately benefit us in an indirect way. There's no way to allow power to women without giving up power over women, so control of women's agency and options has to be zero-sum.

>I think it's better to realize that we're not all in this together

Without an idea of "we're all in this together" from what would I derive motivation towards the just? Or even a definition of justice?

(Just in case we're having some miscommunication around different readings of the phrase, where one describes an "is" and different "ought": I see the phrase "all in this together" to refer to our shared inescapable subjection to the consequences of society. Although I can envision a reading that takes it as some assertion we're all equivalently culpable for steering. Unless you really want to get into the semantics, I'll stop typing and leave it at the point I see the former definition used in the parent post.)

Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced

#72

Post by groby_b » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

existencebox wrote: post #60

groby_b wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure where you're seeing a "somewhat sticky # of jobs": https://www.statista.com/statistics/192356/number-of-full-ti... , https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employed-persons As for "a brief search": I literally went to Google, typed "number of jobs" with the first suggestion being "number of jobs in us by year". The very first link has the answer. May I suggest that when you ask inflammatory question,…

I was unclear with my "sticky jobs" statement; and referred primarily to the initial rate of change of women entering the workforce. I did try to look at the data for that, but while there is a spike of labor participation rate (per capita/% seems a much better metric than absolute #) during the male/female convergence in the 50's/60s as womens rights progressed, it seemed primarily externality driven. [0] That being…

Ah, that makes much more sense, thank you.

> there's the intuitive fact that remedying discrimination is by definition going to cause the previously elevated party to lose that

I think it's more than an intuitive fact. There's at least one study I can think of - "Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man"[1]. And it seems to support the idea that there's a loss, at least in the short term, for the previously elevated party.

I still don't think it's a zero-sum game in the long term. But that is at the core of the problem - people feel threatened now, they don't always care that in the long run, things might turn out well.

Which prompted me to write my reply in the first place - anything that reinforces the notion of a zero-sum game is incredibly toxic to resolving this issue. And even if we'd all be at our most level-headed selves, it's a rather hard issue to solve.

(It's worth noting that we're off on quite a tangent. None of the above really relates to sexual harassment that much. That is an abuse of power. While I'm an avowed feminist, I'm not convinced that simply having more equality in the work force will solve the issue of harassment. That likely requires a huge cultural shift to our basic mode of thinking)

[1] http://perseus.iies.su.se/~tpers/papers/Draft170122AER.pdf

Re: The Transformation of Sexual-Harassment Law Will Be Double-Faced

#73

Post by explainplease » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

drtillberg wrote: post #24

The article's link to the Chinese cultural revolution is a hidden gem.[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/03...

Thanks for pointing that out. The stories in the Wikipedia article are sobering. I hope we are not seeing a modern equivalent of struggle sessions in our media now, but...