Live data from Hacker News

My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

yifanxing.medium.com

401–410 of 779 posts

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#401
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sex was had while she did not consent, she mentions in the fifth paragraph.

Slightly later she writes "I maintained friendship with him for a few months after May, because I was convinced that it was all consensual". I think it is something of a philosophical issue to debate about whether you can think you consented and later determine you didn't. It's also strange to me that it takes months and consultation with a therapist to determine if you did or did not consent.

> It's also strange to me that it takes months and consultation with a therapist to determine if you did or did not consent.

It would have been strange to me.

But I was recently victim of emotional abuse by someone I admired and trusted. And it is not strange to me anymore.

Abusers are sophisticated. Trust is a complex thing.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#402
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cases would be prosecuted if there was evidence to support them. You can’t just punish people without proof. Contrary to popular belief the purpose of the legal system is not to make wronged people feel better.

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.

I am curious. What percentage of all rape convictions would you tolerate being wrong (that is, the person behind bars is innocent) in order to ensure sufficient coverage of convicting the guilty?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

[deleted]

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not from what I have read. It seems like they chose the internet mob as their bringer of justice.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#405
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…

> This is vigilantism -- the same as if you went out and shot a guy who stole your wallet.

Nobody has shot John Pretty.

I don't understand how "justice" says that Yifan has to lie or pretend that she hasn't gone through a traumatic experience. Writing a blog post is not equivalent to shooting someone. Someone truthfully and honestly describing their own life experience is not violence.

And if nothing else, surely she has the right to warn other women and let them make their own decisions about how to calibrate their risk around John.

> I don't think the world is a better place when people use this approach to conflict resolution.

I'm not always thrilled with public shaming, but to argue that people shouldn't be able to speak about their experiences, or that people shouldn't be able to choose who they associate with, or that people shouldn't be able to warn each other about abusers -- that is also a very slippery slope. Especially in a world where the vast majority of rape cases are never reported or prosecuted.

It's just such an extreme position to say that people even just talking about abusers is "revenge". It's like arguing that because courts sometimes convict innocent people that we should abolish all laws. There is a middle ground between attacking someone for a poorly phrased 10-year-old tweet, and arguing that people shouldn't be talking about personal experiences they've had with sexual harassment/rape.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#406
post #59

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…

[deleted]

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#407
post #20

similar stories are emerging: - https://killnicole.github.io/statement/ (edit i see she has added it to the article itself) - https://twitter.com/brianclapper/status/1387115214064193537?... - https://twitter.com/adelbertchang/status/1387090351626723329... there seems to be some coordination here, as this came out pretty much at the same time. https://typelevel.org/blog/2021/04/27/community-safety.html Yifan also link…

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?

I don't want to stir the pot, but as a comment below links, Pretty responded with a statement[0]. He doesn't say this is what happened at all but that's a conclusion one can draw if you just read his statement. He doesn't insinuate it directly but he says they were consensual relationships and the two people are upset about how they ended.

[0] https://twitter.com/propensive/status/1387168037908910085/ph...

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#410
post #337

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?

I'm seriously curious to know what kind of proof you would accept that would make you believe these accusations. I hear your sort of response a lot, but it's mostly from people who won't change their mind no matter what (and will continue to move the goalposts as more evidence comes to light), or set the bar so high that it's basically impossible to provide the proof they want.

not OP and I believe the accusations. but if she would have wanted a) real justice and b) create even more hell for the accused while c) staying out of the firing line of misogynists on social media, and d) get closure sooner because people won't be after her for the next years to remind her, then she should have filed a police report.

Given his situation (see my other comment[1] on why) she could have made his situation much (I repeat MUCH MUCH) worse than what she did. I wouldn't want to know the amount of abuse she now gets because of it and in the months (if not years to come).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962280

Post reply on HN