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My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

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Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#91

Post by joelbluminator »

JPKab wrote: post #27

Jon Pretty sounds like a complete creep and yes, based on this account, a predator. That being said, there is a court and criminal justice system for a reason. While I empathize with the author, and utterly despise the archetype of high-status men who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women, I find the nature of these kinds of posts to be counterproductive. Therapeutic to the author?…

> who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women

In general I don't like it as well because it could lead to abuse as we just read - but that's also not always black or white. In some cases it could be real romance or attraction between two adults, even if one has a higher status than the other (that's of course not what happened in this story! I'm just saying it could be consensual, even if the "high status" person uses his status just to get sex. Movie stars and rock stars do the same thing.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#92

Post by na85 »

pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #54
na85 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How are people still getting away with this kind of abuse? How? It's quite simple, really. You know that phenomenon you see here on HN with big names like Steve Jobs or RMS, or Elon Musk? The phenomenon where people give them a pass for being disgusting, abusive assholes because "he's a genius/luminary/visionary" or because "his contributions to $thing are so great"? It's the same phenomenon with people like Jon Pre…

Alternatively: people diluting the signal, where people bring up serious accusations of rape, and then others show up and compare it to people who are considered assholes by some.

See I can tell that you're snidely implying that I'm falsely equating rape with "being an asshole", which I explicitly did not do.

The phenomenon behind why these people get a pass is the same, even if their behavior is different.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#93

Post by Elof »

JPKab wrote: post #59
908B64B197 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> heard from someone in HR that the charges were false, but "optics" were the reason they had to move forward with his termination. Time to name the company.

A massive company that makes overpriced, low-quality athletic products that double as status symbols, which they manufacture overseas (often using child labor) but then sell for massive markups in the US, Europe, etc. They have an extremely aggressive "woke" presence in their advertising, because as long as you care about social justice for your targeted customers, who cares that "people of color" in the developing w…

Seems like your brother can probably sue for damages if this is the whole story

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#94

Post by marcinzm »

fisf wrote: post #45
melenaboija wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it does

I hope it fits in a courtroom first and foremost.

The crimes were mostly committed in foreign countries of which neither party is a resident and which the parties were only visiting for a short duration of time. Countries whose language the victim may not speak fluently or at all. The chance of getting the local police to care is low and even if they did the cost of flights to testify at trials would be beyond the means of the victim.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#95

Post by nicklecompte »

JPKab wrote: post #27

Jon Pretty sounds like a complete creep and yes, based on this account, a predator. That being said, there is a court and criminal justice system for a reason. While I empathize with the author, and utterly despise the archetype of high-status men who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women, I find the nature of these kinds of posts to be counterproductive. Therapeutic to the author?…

> Imagine a letter like this targeted at you one day, except unlike Mr. Pretty, you are innocent.

“Imagine that you were convicted of murder but, unlike John Wayne Gacy, you were innocent.”

Seriously what is the point of comments like this? False convictions are real and very very bad, but I know very few social justice advocates who are opposed to locking up serial killers. Likewise, the existence of unscrupulous people who make false accusations of sexual assault/etc is a real problem. But that’s a very shitty excuse to trash every public accusation - especially when in practice it is the public accusation that leads to more victims speaking out.

More to the point: Jon Pretty is a notable public figure who has been credibly accused of extremely toxic and disgusting behavior towards large portions of the Scala community. At least some of this behavior is clearly not illegal, merely dangerous and profoundly unethical[1]. Therefore the court of public opinion is the only court that has solid jurisdiction, so to speak.

[1] That said: some of the accusations and the large number of alleged victims merit a criminal investigation.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#97

Post by ivan_gammel »

fishnchips wrote: post #41
api wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this court-of-public-opinion stuff much either and the abuse potential is real. At the same time: what else are people going to do? There seems to be no other recourse. Most people let bullies get away with it because even stepping in as a third party means standing up to a bully. It can be scary, but even if there's no real risk it's still a fucking pain in the ass. Who wants to get into a mud slinging…

Contact law enforcement.

This is generally a good idea and the right thing to do, but cancel culture still exists for some reason. Probably it's because people do not trust conventional justice and do not believe in law enforcement?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#98

Post by merb »

nerdponx wrote: post #16
merb wrote: post #9

first, a small rant: tbf. I dislike the title. the real title is sexual harassment from Jon Pretty a leader of certain Scala Community standups. because the current title actually sounds like it's the whole commnity, but the blog is about a specific guy. --- second I really do not understand, how other people can be so horrible. he basically abused her in a moment where she was really really desperate and I think suc…

> In June, Heather noticed that I was upset at a dinner after ScalaDays. I shared with her about what happened. She warned me to stay away from Jon Pretty. And she wasn’t the only person who told me that. Even though my experience in Berlin was awful, it was difficult for me to accept that someone, who seemed like a good friend, mentor, and ally, could be so selfish, manipulative, and cruel. It sounds like people kne…

> It sounds like people knew about him and didn't do anything. If the community is allowing it to happen, then the community is as much at fault as the sick individual doing the abuse.

well around 2017-2019 I was active in scala aswell (more on the playframework side tough) and I dind't even knew about him until I read the blog. you know just because there are members from scalacenter and lightbend does not mean that the community as a whole wanted to have something to do with somebody like him. You know there are thousands of people going to ScalaDays every year, it's highly unlikely that the majority of the scala community would be happy about the guys behavior and it's also highly unlikely that the majority of people in the scala community knew about the guys behavior.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#99

Post by rodgerd »

jdmoreira wrote: post #4

I have no clue on who this guy is nor do I have any sort of interest in Scala but this is terrible. If this is even remotely true I hope he suffers enormous consequences including being persecuted. How are people still getting away with this kind of abuse? How?

The top comment on this thread is a "what about the MEN?" exercise.

HN is incredibly pro-sexual harasser and anti-victim, along with the broader tech community, sadly.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#100

Post by mirekrusin »

Pfhreak wrote: post #19
jdmoreira wrote: post #4

I have no clue on who this guy is nor do I have any sort of interest in Scala but this is terrible. If this is even remotely true I hope he suffers enormous consequences including being persecuted. How are people still getting away with this kind of abuse? How?

Because people don't believe victims. They insist that somehow they gave consent, or that somehow the assaulter just couldn't have known. Or they blame the victim, saying that "they deserved it" or "they shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place." I guarantee you that someone will post in this thread, if they haven't already, that she should know better than to get an airbnb with a man she doesn't know…

It would be easier to judge if she said that she did not give consent.

You may be right, but you also have to agree that some people will pause before judging definite rape for described situation where girl accepts invitation to sleep in the same airbnb, without anybody else, with single guy, bringing bottle of wine, not mentioning she did not give consent, feeling bad afterwards. From that description it's really difficult to pass rape judgement - maybe it was, maybe not, what we know is that it was creepy at least for her.

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