My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community • Hacker News Board

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#131

Post by jfengel » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

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?…

The problem is that only a tiny percentage of harassers and rapists are ever convicted. The court -- rightly -- sets a very high bar to conviction, and police and prosecutors often won't even attempt it unless the evidence is overwhelming.

You're concerned that this is stacked against you, but the courts are stacked against the victims. So it doesn't really suffice to decry the one problem without addressing the other.

So perhaps you can see what it looks like to many women when you say, "Hey, I'm sorry this happened to you, but this bad thing happened to my brother, so _shrug_". Did your brother go to the courts and police to address these issues? It may been unlawful termination.

There is a large domain of behavior that is either nebulously legal or difficult to prosecute but which makes our communities much, much worse. It's counterproductive to tell the people victimized by that to stop talking about it. The solution is to go forward and find ways to set up our communities to protect people. And that can't mean just asking victims to accept that.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#132

Post by marcinzm » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

ivan_gammel wrote: post #97

fishnchips wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Law enforcement is not perfect and these crimes are often hard to prove in isolation. So worst case you go to law enforcement, they talk to the perpetrator but do nothing, and then the perpetrator mostly destroys your future career. A lot of downside and risk for the victim. You can look at the film industry for numerous famous examples of victims being blacklisted in retaliation.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#133

Post by Graffur » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

I don't know who he is, who she is and I don't care about the scala 'community' too much, especially the types that give talks at conferences.

The writing is like a story that is missing pages. Surely the law needs to be involved here?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#134

Post by ksm1717 » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

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?…

Very tactful. You should respond with this story in real life when someone tells you they were sexually abused.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#135

Post by TheCoelacanth » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

kbelder wrote: post #62

ezluckyfree wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, a lynching is a murder by a racist mob this is a community realizing that John Pretty is a predator and deciding that they don't want a predator in a position of power frankly, it's weird as hell for you to be confusing those two things

The similarity is that both are mob actions, done without legal charges or rules of evidence. I'm not defending the guy specifically; I have no idea whether he's a guilty scumbag or a persecuted innocent. But even jerks deserve a certain amount of due process before punishment. Maybe she's the scumbag? I don't know, and neither do you.

A lynching is done by a literal mob. This is being done by a metaphorical mob.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#136

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

fishnchips wrote: post #84

I have no interest in Scala and never heard of Jon Pretty nor his accuser but the accusations are of a criminal nature (either rape or slander) and it feels like as a society we've long developed more reliable tools and systems to deal with such matters.

[deleted]

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#137

Post by JPKab » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

nicklecompte wrote: post #95

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 pe…

John Wayne Gacy was convicted in a criminal court of law, with rules, where he was presumed innocent until proven guilty.

You attempt to draw a connection, but it's a false analogy out of the gate.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#138

Post by UncleMeat » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

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.

My sister has been raped. The officers laughed. My wife has been harassed. The officers wrote some things down on forms and did nothing.

It achieves little.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#139

Post by jmcgough » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

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?…

I can empathize with your brother's situation. That kind of thing is horrifying for anyone to imagine.

With that said, creeps like this continue to proliferate because the courts only do anything in very rare cases (Cosby or other serial abusers). It typically only hurts people who were abused, not helps - it can take years to go through court, and in this situation because it's across borders there's likely no court to file with.

People come forward in blog posts because it's often their only reasonable way to try to hold someone accountable and warn other potential victims.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#140

Post by solosoyokaze » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #129

nicklecompte wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pe…

Someone should coin a law for this phenomenon: Every single time a ~~woman~~ victim makes a public statement like this, in the comment sections a man must be discussing false accusations or the court of public opinion. I don't think I've ever not seen this. People who are abused are damned if they do, damned if they don't. edit: removed specific gender edit2: I'm not trying to be inflammatory here. This is a phenomen…

It's also a completely false argument since there's libel and slander laws. If the accused was innocent, they would simply sue the false accuser. That they don't says everything.

The barrier and punishment for coming forward as a victim of sexual abuse, rape or harassment is great indeed. Questioning every case is ignorance of existing laws setup to handle any false accusations.