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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

#361

Post by faitswulff »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #340
faitswulff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are victim blaming. Men aren’t wild bears, they’re human beings who should be held accountable for their actions. How drunk someone is around another human being has nothing to do with the perpetrator’s culpability.

Without being too flippant, I'd like to point out that we do actually hold wild bears accountable for their actions. There was a news report last week about a bear shot somewhere in the US because it had attacked someone (it seemed to have been trying to guard a particularly valuable food stash).

The point is that many comments here are assuming that men lack the agency to keep themselves from assaulting people. That lets the men off the hook. To your example, if we blame the bear, we should blame the man, as well.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#362

Post by anon_tor_12345 »

skrowl wrote: post #342
voces wrote: post #326

Since the pattern is so similar, I now recognize this as a form of harmful #metoo activism. - Attack entire community, not individuals - Court of Public Social Justice - The charges amount to unwanted advances being made during a social interaction where that would be acceptable -- not sexual harassment, nor illegal behavior. Compare https://medium.com/@kristianlum/statistics-we-have-a-problem... Make the problem abo…

All for a "he hugged me", not even anything sexual

>I felt being taken advantage of that he had unprotected sex with me when I was intoxicated.

At least read the article before being dismissive.

Imagine being 20, getting raped, and having randoms on the internet completely invalidate how traumatic it was because they think you're just meming. Like damn and we wonder why women struggle in tech.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#363

Post by kelnos »

dbg31415 wrote: post #288
js2 wrote: post #113

Yes, of course she should have contacted law enforcement, but she was in a foreign country, intimated and young. And law enforcement still fails women: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/how-po... In an ideal world, the criminal justice system works. In the real world, it's a patchwork system that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/09/17...…

It's not that I don't believe her. It's just such a slippery slope. This is vigilantism -- the same as if you went out and shot a guy who stole your wallet. We don't trust victims of crimes to dole out punishments. Justice is tempered by due process, checks and balances, proportional response, all that. So I believe her, but I don't think the world is a better place when people use this approach to conflict resolutio…

> Justice is tempered by due process, checks and balances, proportional response, all that.

That's the ideal, but in the real world justice is pretty lacking.

What other action would you suggest she take, right now? What authorities should she go to? Does she need to get on a plane back to Germany and file a police report three years after the fact? Another commenter noted that this specific thing might not even have been illegal in Germany when it happened (but is now).

Even if there is no legal remedy, is this the sort of thing that we want to continue to happen in our technical communities? If not (and I seriously hope not), then what do we do to neutralize these sorts of people?

So what's the alternative? She just shuts up, gets no closure, and we allow a serial manipulator and probably rapist to keep trolling the Scala community for new, vulnerable victims?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#364

Post by JPKab »

BurningFrog wrote: post #271
lukasb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than 1% of rapes lead to felony convictions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than... Same article notes that between 2-8% of rape complaints are false. Worries about false rape claims are wildly overblown.

The number of fake rape complaint surely depends on how they're treated. If an accusation only has effect if it's proven in court, there will be few of them. If you can destroy someone's life by a mere accusation, false accusations will be very common. Also, just a threat of such an accusation will be very powerful.

You're on point with this.

I think we can all agree that the accusers in the Salem witch trials couldn't have been telling the truth, unless they were hallucinating (there's a theory that lysergic acid in grain could have caused hallucinations, but its weak and not proven).

Let's just agree that none of the women executed in Salem were actually practicing black magic. Why were there so many accusers claiming they were? I mean, false accusations are "exceedingly rare" and accusers "gain nothing".

Yeah, people in the 18-35 demographic, to quote Bill Maher, "are the favored advertising demo because they're gullible." They don't know anything about human nature either.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#365

Post by _qwfv »

mirekrusin wrote: post #253
mirekrusin wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that she doesn't mention she didn't want it, said "no" or anything that implies not giving consent.

> There was another time that he insisted on having intercourse regardless of me saying I didn’t want to. Insisting doesn't mean doing it, does it?

In English, it can mean doing it. "I wanted to split the check, but he insisted on picking up the bill." For instance, could mean that the person paid the whole bill or that they are putting up a strong resistance.

It's unfortunately ambiguous.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#366

Post by dimgl »

voces wrote: post #326

Since the pattern is so similar, I now recognize this as a form of harmful #metoo activism. - Attack entire community, not individuals - Court of Public Social Justice - The charges amount to unwanted advances being made during a social interaction where that would be acceptable -- not sexual harassment, nor illegal behavior. Compare https://medium.com/@kristianlum/statistics-we-have-a-problem... Make the problem abo…

Agreed 100%. One of the few levelheaded responses on this thread.

On top of everything you said, which I agree with, I’d also like to see less of these kinds of posts on Hacker News...

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#367

Post by joshuamorton »

suifbwish wrote: post #359
nawgz wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think a crime as endemic as rape which is punished at vanishingly low rates indicates innocence of the perps instead of a fundamentally flawed justice system, starting at the point of evidence collection? Even after seeing those very evidence collectors, the police, flaunt their duties and the law repeatedly? Interesting.

The idea of someone being able to accuse someone else of a crime without evidence should terrify anyone who believes in freedom and democracy. Rape, murder, or any other crime.

What does that have to do with this article? Are you saying that the OP has requested this person be criminally convicted?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#368

Post by emilsedgh »

noobermin wrote: post #57
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'm sure what your brother faced is terrible but how exactly does this relate to the story?

It was an example of how this method can be abused comparing to the criminal justice system.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#369

Post by tester756 »

colecut wrote: post #272
epicureanideal wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes character assassination is coordinated. I personally only slightly increase the probability of something being true when multiple accusers come forward. I still want to see proof. What if a bunch of your ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends got together and decided to ruin your life with accusations?

"What if a bunch of your ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends got together and decided to ruin your life with accusations?" This just pretty much does not happen without reason, and I think it is safe to say that if it did, you are probably a terrible person.

>This just pretty much does not happen without reason, and I think it is safe to say that if it did, you are probably a terrible person.

oh c'mon, it's insanely naive, let's dont try to push narration that those things do not happen

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#370

Post by noobermin »

Pfhreak wrote: post #350
noobermin wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. The crime here seems to be rape and the use of power to extract sex from another. That's the problem. I don't see how sharing an AirBnB is by itself a problem. In light of everything else, it fits a pattern of manipulation, but it by itself isn't harmful.

She would not otherwise have been able to attend. She is able to attend specifically because of his "generosity". This wasn't something she proposed, and when she tried to bring others into the arrangement he pushed back, insisting it was just the two of them. So yeah, sharing an AirBNB isn't necessarily bad, but in this case specifically it appears to be predatory.

Oh, my bad. I missed that part. I didn't know he pushed back on others sharing. That's clearly to get them alone. Thanks.
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