Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

This one white guy told a black guy trying to get on that there was no more room on the bus, which was generally true, but it could have definitely looked like (from the tone and wording) that the white guy was talking down to him.

The black guy got very upset and claimed that the white man wouldn’t have said this to a white guy, and wouldn’t have said this if the bus was full of black people instead of the mostly-white and Hispanic bus in this instance.

Both parties involved escalated, argued, and made the situation worse.

At the end of the day, the original offender didn’t say anything overtly racist, but it’s also true that the black man’s points may have been factually accurate as well.

I guess, the reason I tell you this story is that:

1. I believe you are not correct to say that the majority of sexism is directed toward men. That is ridiculous. That’d be like the black guy on the bus being told that the majority of racism is against white people. Puh-lease, that does not pass the smell test. There are entire pieces of the English language that are used to accuse women of being less capable and stable (the linguistic root of the word “hysterical,” or the term “baby brain,” and a lot of others). If sexism in the tech industry is mostly against men I’d love to know why only 20% of women bother to enter that field and where the remaining 30% went.

2. Going along with point one, there is almost no response that the white guy could have made to resolve the situation. His people have been oppressing the person in question for centuries, so he’s not really in a position to be able to honestly say that he isn’t being racist or generally isn’t. There’s a saying goes that you make your own bed, and that’s what white people have done: made an entire race not trust them implicitly. This is entirely the white people’s fault. Back to the Uber situation, that’s what men have done, made the workplace so bad for women in the past that women are now fed up and can’t trust men, and they are justified.

3. Your use of of escalation is not helpful. I know you cited a bunch of sources but that doesn’t make the spirit of your comment any less inflammatory.

It’s amazing to still see the ramifications of her work today.

For example, in this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community. It’s a special sort of myopia dressed up as factual rational discussion but her work exposes that sentiment for what it is: fear of change, fear of women, fear of losing power over women, and the insecurity of emasculated men who work in power systems that encourage them to kick down.

> Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.

Management was sexist and the structure was kept unchanged and unchecked by HR. The jackets event, in addition to others mentioned in the post, are an extension/demonstration of that behavior.