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Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

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Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#21

Post by komali2 »

ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

> and white men in particular

It's difficult for a man to experience sexism at the level a woman does for the same reason that it's nearly impossible for a white person to experience racism.

Going this out of your way to "defend" white men is in direct opposition to the cause of feminism and fighting racism for a simple reason: centrism favors the status quo, and the status quo is still in 2020 that a baby born in America white and male is among the luckiest babies in history. They don't need defenders like you. They're good.

> I know HN is filled with white knights that are ridiculously enough are okay with sexism against men so let the downvotes rain upon me.

I downvoted because of this bad faith portion of the comment. I'll eye roll whenever someone says some shit about white men being, lol, oppressed, but on this forum there's an expectation of actual good faith conversation. It's obvious from this portion of your comment that you're not looking for that. It seems to me you threw yourself into the midst of a relatively socially liberal forum, found a pole to climb, and are now trying to martyr yourself up there.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#22

Post by dudul »

SandersAK wrote: post #14

Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book. 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…

> For example, in this very thread

Can you provide quotes and/or links to examples?

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#23

Post by scott_s »

commandlinefan wrote: post #5
lordleft wrote: post #2

That first article she wrote, exposing the culture at Uber, was profoundly upsetting and an important moment in the history of our industry. Kudos to her for standing up to one the most egregiously hostile work environments I've ever read about.

I remember reading that post and being surprised how little of it was actually sexism (the only thing I saw that qualified was the thing about the shirts), and how much of it was just maltreatment of programmers of all types. But I guess if you have to slap the label "sexism" on it to get it to be taken seriously, we take what we can get.

The sexism I see in her post: Upon joining, her manager sexually propositioned her; a subsequent manager sabotaged her performance reviews and attempts at transferring to keep a woman on his team; they gave leather jackets to SREs as a gift, but would only get jackets made for men (I think this is what you refer to as "the shirts"); she recalls many emails that she does not describe; HR claims she is the problem in all of her claims; she was threatened with firing over her claims of sexual harassment, and they backed off when she pointed out that was illegal.

Those are the instances. What that tells me is that it was a deeply sexist system.

See: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#24

Post by devchix »

Traster wrote: post #6

>“I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a large company, one with a sizable human resources department,” I feel like someone needs to run an education campaign on what HR is and who it works for. HR is there to protect the business. They aren't there as some moral arbiter. If you reported sexual harassment to HR you are going to be part of an equation - is it better for the business…

This aphorism that HR is there to protect the company -- I hear it all the time and it's terribly cynical, while also probably true. Why must it be this way; asked another way, why do we accept that it must be this way, that every time we engage HR it must be with the understanding that they are the adversary. Why go to HR at all, why even have HR, why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office? Why can't HR be what they purportedly say they are, with all the videos and the role-playing and the seminars that everyone hate-attends yearly?

Back to the article - I'm always sad and surprised that there are women doing the work of defending bad actors by attacking the whistle-blowing women. From the article:

> "One woman called Fowler, claiming to be a PI working on a case against Uber; when Fowler got off the phone, she discovered the firm the woman worked for pretty much exclusively helped companies discredit people who’d been sexually harassed or assaulted."

cf. Lisa Bloom in the Harvey Weinstein case, it's damning as Bloom vociferous claims to be on the side that believes and defends the women accusers.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#25

Post by andrei_says_ »

ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

Are you trolling or are you unaware of the thousands of years of men and institutions treating women as property, as objects of desire or status, as cheap labor, and the fact that these attitudes are still very much in place?

Cry me a river, women's rights movements and feminist culture push back against this millennia-long oppression and some men don't like losing their right to treat women like sh*t.

Show me the 80% of corporations where most of the top earners and decision-makers are women, where women speak 80% or more of the time and where men earn 75c on the dollar women earn. Along with governments consisting of female lawmakers legislating men's reproductive health and not vice versa.

Until then sexism stands for institutionalized and cultural oppression of women.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#26

Post by catalogia »

devchix wrote: post #24
Traster wrote: post #6

>“I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a large company, one with a sizable human resources department,” I feel like someone needs to run an education campaign on what HR is and who it works for. HR is there to protect the business. They aren't there as some moral arbiter. If you reported sexual harassment to HR you are going to be part of an equation - is it better for the business…

This aphorism that HR is there to protect the company -- I hear it all the time and it's terribly cynical, while also probably true. Why must it be this way; asked another way, why do we accept that it must be this way, that every time we engage HR it must be with the understanding that they are the adversary. Why go to HR at all, why even have HR, why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office? Why can't HR be wh…

As far as I can tell, 'HR departments' that advocate for the interests of workers rather than the company exist, and are called 'unions.'

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#27

Post by raxxorrax »

dangus wrote: post #12
ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

This reminds me of an incident on a bus recently. 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…

> is 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.

Since we dropped collective punishments a longer time ago, this statement is false.

On the contrary, it a big problem on the topic of racism.

I would escalate that argument any time.

edit: it is additionally false, because "the person in question" hasn't been oppressed. So the statement is flawed in numerous ways.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#28

Post by ViViDboarder »

ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

What you’re describing is an opposition to affirmative action policies. The general intent of actively considering more women (and people of color) for speaking and leadership roles is to examine biases that prevented us from considering them in the first place [1]. It also helps normalize and set role models for newer employees or students.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/break-the-future/2016/12/20/thi...

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#29

Post by komali2 »

dudul wrote: post #22
SandersAK wrote: post #14

Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book. 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…

> For example, in this very thread Can you provide quotes and/or links to examples?

Turn on the ability to view flagged comments and scroll down.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#30

Post by danso »

commandlinefan wrote: post #5
lordleft wrote: post #2

That first article she wrote, exposing the culture at Uber, was profoundly upsetting and an important moment in the history of our industry. Kudos to her for standing up to one the most egregiously hostile work environments I've ever read about.

I remember reading that post and being surprised how little of it was actually sexism (the only thing I saw that qualified was the thing about the shirts), and how much of it was just maltreatment of programmers of all types. But I guess if you have to slap the label "sexism" on it to get it to be taken seriously, we take what we can get.

This is the typical maltreatment you experience as a programmer?

> After the first couple of weeks of training, I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird. On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.

Or this?

> When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR.

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