America’s New Sex Bureaucracy • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#341

Post by _vertigo » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

lordlic wrote: post #136

_vertigo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your comment you seem to value who someone “is” (i.e. what their label is) more than you value what they have to say. Your reasoning for why the non-italicized portion is not good enough is “conservatives say that”. The reason you offer for why the professors get a frosty reaction is “they could be mistaken for stealth reactionaries”. Perhaps it’s less important to consider what label you can assign to someone and…

Didn't I just say that I agreed with the core argument of the article? I just wanted to make sure we all understood that this isn't a case of a "woke" (for lack of a better term) person concerned about moderating the worst excesses of the movement, it's a case of someone who wants to dismantle the whole thing. And it's absolutely relevant what a person "is." If NRA TV uploaded a special report on gun control, it matt…

I don’t necessarily disagree that it _matters_, but why does it matter, and how much? Why can’t you believe that you’re having to defend the point? What bearing does who someone is have on the actual _substance_ of an argument?

Personally I think that who someone is is absolutely useful information because it can contextualize the intent of an argument and provide a hint as to the biases of the person making the argument, which is a useful tool for thinking critically about the argument. However, when weighing the merit of the argument, it doesn’t matter who is making the argument.

That’s why I took issue - you said that the reason the italicized portion was needed was because without it you sound a lot like a conservative. That’s weighing the merit of the argument based on what kind of person makes it rather than the substance of the argument itself.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#342

Post by tzs » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #125

tkel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. For example Thomas Jefferson fathered 6 children with a slave of his. The millions of men who believed their wives had no right to vote, that it wasn't their place. The parents who shame their kids for their sexuality or gender identity. Prejudice and love can co-exist.

Thomas Jefferson raped a woman because he was a wealthy slave-owner in a white supremacist, patriarchal society and could do so with impunity. If you want to understand how to overcome prejudice, it begins with acknowledging historical reality for what it was and not trying to bend your understanding of events to correspond to foundational myths and deifications.

It's more nuanced than simply a wealthy slave-owner doing whatever he wanted with impunity.

When Jefferson was appointed has the US envoy to France and spent over two years living in Paris, he took Sally Hemings with him. This was before he started having sex with her.

France had abolished slavery, and under French law at the time if you brought a slave into France they had the right to leave slavery and remain in France if they wished.

Jefferson and Hemings started their sexual relationship while in Paris. When Jefferson went back to the US, she agreed to go with him (and thus return to slavery) in exchange for his agreeing to certain conditions, including that any children they had together would be freed.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#343

Post by manfredo » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #301

slimed wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the problem. You want to determine guilt based on what you believe is generally true about the world. Not about the facts of the case at hand. The negative ramifications of this mindset for the accused are hard to overstate.

How is that not equally true of anyone who makes the opposite determination? We have no information besides a third party report of an accusation and a retraction. My understanding of the world is that false accusations are rarer than many people think and false retractions are more common. There's negative ramifications that are hard to overstate to that as well.

It isn't different from the opposite determination in that sense. But the burden if proof is on the accuser (or at least it was, until recently), as expecting people proving a negative is often not feasible.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#344

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #333

vinceguidry wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's horrible that this happened, but to be perfectly honest, this is why society is having a massive argument around what consent means. Did she really consent to having sex with him if she felt so ashamed of it afterward that she accused him of raping her? How voluntary was it really? If you're a kid in this position, wondering whether it's dangerous to have sex, the answer is yes, it's one of the most dang…

Using your logic: Drugs are dangerous. Your rights being violated, your stuff being taken, and getting thrown in jail are just a few more dangers. If you don't want those things to happen, don't do drugs. The flaw is that you can't equate natural and artificial dangers. Natural dangers are equal-opportunity dangers. Artificial dangers can be used to oppress people. Also, avoiding behavior X is not enough to avoid the…

Drugs are dangerous even without the threat of being thrown into jail. They're not victimless either. If you become a junkie, you're a drain on everyone around you. Your family suffers, your ability to participate in society is wrecked. To say nothing of drinking and driving.

I don't do drugs recklessly. I don't have reckless sex. I do not think these things should be okay to do until and unless you take the proper care to do them without causing harm to others. If you don't take the proper care, then it doesn't matter whether the danger you run afoul of is "natural" or "artificial". Taking the proper care obviates both types of dangers.

Don't be reckless, or the life you ruin might not be your own.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#345

Post by rolltiide » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #3

>But after a lifetime in service of the feminist cause, she took on the case of a friend whose son she came to believe had been wrongly convicted of rape and won his acquittal on appeal. This is one of the big ways in which sexism is a much more tractable problem than racism and less potentially explosive. Women and men both have members of the opposite sex that they genuinely love. I have heard that fathers with dau…

> She asked if it mattered to them that she believed the acquitted to be innocent. The answer she received made it clear that the guilt or innocence of the accused was a matter of indifference. What mattered was that she had sided with the enemy.

I see this in a lot of forums, such as r/twoxchromosomes on reddit

The outspoken members there are women who assume their negative life experience is all women's experience. That they are speaking for the injustice of all women. Disagreeing with that version of reality is the worst sin of all. Offering a different perspective is at best tacit consent for the status quo or at worst advocating for the victimhood of women, intentionally(?) ignoring any other possibility. Offering a different perspective if you do not have two X chromosomes is mansplaining, no matter what the content is.

This is called an echo chamber. People don't realize they don't have as much consensus on reality as they believe.

I think one way to short circuit this is to reveal that the lack of consensus perpetuates the oppression of women. There are men willing to be allies and help create a gradient of collaboration, but given the censorship it is equally as entertaining watching a fragmented cause get nowhere due to its own balkanization that the echo chambers doesn’t even even seem to notice.

And this is all exacerbated because people aren't treating each other as individuals, and instead trying to speak for entire groups. The irony is that you can't even address this conundrum without grouping the people who do this together.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#346

Post by jeffdavis » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #344

jeffdavis wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using your logic: Drugs are dangerous. Your rights being violated, your stuff being taken, and getting thrown in jail are just a few more dangers. If you don't want those things to happen, don't do drugs. The flaw is that you can't equate natural and artificial dangers. Natural dangers are equal-opportunity dangers. Artificial dangers can be used to oppress people. Also, avoiding behavior X is not enough to avoid the…

Drugs are dangerous even without the threat of being thrown into jail. They're not victimless either. If you become a junkie, you're a drain on everyone around you. Your family suffers, your ability to participate in society is wrecked. To say nothing of drinking and driving. I don't do drugs recklessly. I don't have reckless sex. I do not think these things should be okay to do until and unless you take the proper c…

"Don't be reckless" is simply not good enough when there's no due process, no standards for evidence, and no standards for guilt.

You can be very careful, and still end up on the wrong side of a baseless claim. Could be anything from a lie, to a dream, to mistaken identity, to a drug dog sneezing. Without due process, anything goes, and being careful isn't enough, because suspicion becomes guilt and by the time you sort anything out the damage is done.

And artificial versus natural does matter. It's the difference between misfortune and injustice.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#347

Post by prepend » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #85

How in the world is the conversation not about the lack of ethics of the teachers and faculty who agree to serve as the amateur judges/questioners in these tribunals? Hello, I spent a decade of my life learning just how difficult it is to become an expert in my very narrow field. In fact I spend most of my time helping undergrads refine their rank speculation into tractable problems to potentially guide them to a dee…

Colleges are crazy places and professors do all sorts of weird things. I’m not sure why.

I was in a student court for something stupid and it was kafkaesque. I had to sit and hear a professor accuse me. I was not able to object or ask questions despite the professor making factually incorrect statements about how the phone company worked. However, when I spoke the professor was able to object, cross examine and refute me.

It was so weird and professors just sat there in the jury tolerating it.

There’s a lot of fake BS in college besides the knowledge. I just avoided all that stuff because how they would make these unjust systems and be totally cool with it.

I ended up talking with the Dean and he said he wasn’t interested in whether the process was fair he just wanted to find out if I “did it.”

If anyone I know gets into a similar situation I’ll advise getting a lawyer and not speaking at all.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#348

Post by icu » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

dclusin wrote: post #329

icu wrote: post #322

It is a sad thing to say, but the simple solution to this alarming trend of rescinding consent after having consensual sex is to record the audio of your interactions with the opposite sex. A voice-activated recorder that can store months worth of conversations can be purchased on Amazon quite cheaply. I've even heard of work situations where male managers refuse one-on-one meetings with female employees due to fear…

This is Richard Nixon level paranoia. I think that your second point is probably occurring quite a lot, especially in tech, where empathy & people skills aren't always high up on the list of priorities. But to walk around with suspicion to the point of carrying around a microphone is just lunacy. It's also an overreaction to such an unlikely outcome of being accused of misconduct with a female employee. It affects su…

It's not lunacy as society has forgone due process to the point that Harvard Law adjudicators, who are women no less, are sounding the alarm. If you can't imagine it happening to you, say it happens to your father, or your brother, or your son. The asymmetrical damage of a false sexual assault allegation is so far skewed to the accuser it's telling that you haven't suggested a more ethical and practical way of protecting yourself.

I'm all ears, with an open heart and mind but I just cannot think of any other means of defending against this problem.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#349

Post by vinceguidry » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #346

vinceguidry wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are dangerous even without the threat of being thrown into jail. They're not victimless either. If you become a junkie, you're a drain on everyone around you. Your family suffers, your ability to participate in society is wrecked. To say nothing of drinking and driving. I don't do drugs recklessly. I don't have reckless sex. I do not think these things should be okay to do until and unless you take the proper c…

"Don't be reckless" is simply not good enough when there's no due process, no standards for evidence, and no standards for guilt. You can be very careful, and still end up on the wrong side of a baseless claim. Could be anything from a lie, to a dream, to mistaken identity, to a drug dog sneezing. Without due process, anything goes, and being careful isn't enough, because suspicion becomes guilt and by the time you s…

You brought up Brett Kavanaugh. That's a silly example. Anybody in politics knows it's a hostile environment. It's like walking into a gunfight and expecting to not get hit. You might not get hit. But just being there makes you a target.

In the OP's situation, basic sexual hygiene would have prevented the whole thing. It will for everyone that doesn't put themselves first and foremost in a shooting gallery.

You can use the concept of herd defense to contemplate how to remain safe in these sorts of situations.

Re: America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

#350

Post by icu » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

dclusin wrote: post #340

maximente wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to walk around with suspicion to the point of carrying around a microphone is just lunacy you are straw manning heavily here. OP suggested recording high stakes interactions with the potential to turn sour at a later date, not what you've said here about walking around wired. what are your arguments against saving evidence for high stakes interactions that could turn into socially and career ruining consequence…

Conversations in the workplace happen organically. Sometimes the CEO will approach you at the water cooler and say, hey, got a sec? What are you gonna do? Say "brb let me grab my recording device?" Or start filming the encounter like people film the police?

I'm not talking about all out surveillance of all human interactions. I'm talking about being in a closed office with a female employee one on one, or when 'going out on the pull'. Basically your workplace, bars/clubs, or other high risk situations or venues especially where alcohol is served.

I'm also talking about keeping the device in your pocket as you would your wallet or keys... or more like a swiss army knife.

You may never need it, but if you do, you'll be glad it's there.