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

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#591

Post by prepend » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #330

jfengel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 othe…

> The court -- rightly -- sets a very high bar to conviction Rape convictions are so abysmally low that there's been a lot of rethinking in feminist circles as to whether the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard -- or even the presumption of innocence -- is fair or just. Some countries have been looking for ways to ameliorate this. For example, in thr USA, college date rape is such a problem that universities are requi…

It seems like 68% [0] of rape prosecutions result in a conviction. And that’s higher than the 61% rate for violent crimes.

So it seems we’re pretty good at convicting rapists, it’s the arresting that we’re bad at. And since RAINN [1] estimates that only 230/1000 are reported to police and of those only 43 lead to arrest and 9 to prosecution. If the ratios stay the same, then if we reported every rape then convictions would increase 4x.

[0] Table 21, as of 2009 https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc09.pdf [1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc09.pdf

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#592

Post by prepend » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #397

JPKab wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mostly agree with the point you're making, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to assume that the jury actually really presumed Gacy innocent at the start of his trial. Like everyone, they were certainly biased toward assuming his guilt in the run-up to the trial. No system is perfect, and humans are fallible. But that's kinda the underlying issue with this entire discussion: if she had gone to the authorities (esp…

> bit of a stretch to assume that the jury actually really presumed Gacy innocent at the start of his trial.

This seems perfectly reasonable to me and juries are explicitly picked so they aren’t familiar with cases before trial. If a potential juror knew of Gacy, they would be excluded.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#593

Post by GavinMcG » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

voces wrote: post #562

GavinMcG wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the definition of victim-blaming. You are going to lengths to imagine a way she is at fault.

I don't even think she is at fault, and I do feel for her. From what I gather she was the victim of some extremely shady and uncouth man, who did make sure he didn't do anything illegal. It is not going to lengths: just a few percent chance it was something more innocuous like that (or someone terribly regretting they did not forcefully say "no", so in their mind they said their thoughts out loud), and it would deman…

If he didn't do anything illegal, then your suggestion that she poke his eyes or break his finger is entirely misplaced. You don't get to hurt people when they're not legally a threat to you.

Never mind how ridiculous a suggestion that is. Do you think maybe she made the rational decision not to risk her safety or even her life by escalating a fight she likely couldn't win?

That's blaming the victim. You can say you don't think she's at fault, but picking at her choices with no consideration of the situation she actually faced isn't "feeling for her."

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#594

Post by Manuel_D » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #490

Manuel_D wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least here in California (and presumably much of the US) the threshold isn't merely intoxication. It's intoxication to the point that someone is incapable of consent. Not impaired judgment or above the legal driving limit, but drunk to the point that they are not even capable of giving a yes/no. If two people are drunk and have sex, evidently at least one of them was capable of consent because they had the capacit…

People have the capacity to initiate all sorts of stupid things when they are too intoxicated to consent to anything legally.

Maybe in the case of financial agreements or other contracts, but that's not how sexual consent works with respect to alcohol. Otherwise, what happens if two people are both drunk and they both have sex? They're both simultaneously victims of and perpetrators of rape?

The above commenter is insinuating that society applies a double standard here: that if an intoxicated man and woman have sex, the former is considered a perpetrator while the latter is considered a victim. That is incorrect, both are treated equally in the eyes of the law. This scenario doesn't happen because if two people had sex at least one was sober enough to decide to have sex. This situation where two people are intoxicated to the point where they are incapable of consenting have sex cannot occur.

Here's the actual law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

> A policy that, in the evaluation of complaints in the disciplinary process, it shall not be a valid excuse that the accused believed that the complainant affirmatively consented to the sexual activity if the accused knew or reasonably should have known that the complainant was unable to consent to the sexual activity under any of the following circumstances:

> The complainant was incapacitated due to the influence of drugs, alcohol, or medication, so that the complainant could not understand the fact, nature, or extent of the sexual activity.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#595

Post by grammarnazzzi » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

quickthrowman wrote: post #510

grammarnazzzi wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This lady seems to have her head screwed on. I don't agree. She did not set her boundaries. She did not effectively communicate boundaries. She did not enforce boundaries. When she doesn't get the outcome she wants, she turns to blame rather than introspection.

Implicit in your post is the idea “Power is equal in every relationship” which is obviously false. This is clear cut victim blaming.

I'm not blaming her. I'm ignorant of any facts. I'm just saying she doesn't seem to have her head screwed on quite as tight as Accacin suggests.

Accacin suggests that sharing a plausible story is proof of wrongdoing. I don't think so. I'm ignorant. Accacin is ignorant. Everybody on this thread is ignorant of the facts.

I'm saying that Jon Pretty shouldn't have his livelihood and career destroyed by ignorant people and an accuser who admits to having her own set of issues.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#596

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #387

joshuamorton wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't actually say that. The article cited[0] is a review of analysis from ~1980 to 2005. If you restrict yourself to only analysis that don't count cases involving alcohol as false reports, the number drops to 2-3%. The article also notes that false reports are usually different from real reports, important among these facts is that false reports are often attention seeking, and so are examples of what society…

This doesn’t seem very scientific. You can’t determine if someone is lying based on them “seeming like an attention seeker or not” deductive reasoning in a legal system demands “beyond a shadow of a doubt” certainty before convictions are made. Also no it’s pretty cut and dry: if you punish someone who is innocent under ANY circumstance without reviewing the case under a very critical eye you might as well throw out…

The point I'm making here is that you're too hung up on the criminal justice system. No one is talking about criminal punishment except you. We extrajudicially punish people who are innocent all the time. I was suspended in school for getting stabbed. Professors make entire classes retake a test if there's the suspicion that a few cheated. There are all sorts of extrajudicial punishments that happen, all the time, to innocent people, that we collectively don't give a shit about.

Why are you taking a particular stand here about a person who probably did a thing that's much worse than the average thing that results in extrajudicial punishment, has so far received absolutely zero consequences, and is unlikely to receive many beyond his decision to no longer speak at conferences? Like why die on this hill when there are so many other forms of worse extrajudicial punishment that happen every day?

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#597

Post by CryptoPunk » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

I think what's possibly needed is a return to a more traditional relationship and dating culture.

In the past, if a man had a dalliance with with a woman and she got pregnant, he was expected to marry her.

Now we expect women to have to be responsible for their own decisions the way men are, but women are generally more emotionally vulnerable than men, due to their more compassionate and less aggressive personalities, and are more easily manipulated as a result.

Therefore it may be up to men to not abuse that.

This was the assumption in place in the past, which is why young women often had chaperones present during close interactions with men, and why the 'marriage if pregnancy' responsibility was placed on men.

We've tried the 'rawr girl power, women can do everything men can do' culture, and the result is scores of women being used and taken advantage of because they were not capable, emotionally/temperamentally, to be their own advocate in sex and dating interactions.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#598

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:24 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #472

analognoise wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this remove agency from women? If two adults get together, fly together, get a room together, drink wine together, have relations... Then we're supposed to say that consent can't be given because the woman is drunk. But they're both drunk. Isn't it essentially the patriarchy to say that a woman can't make that choice? Like if they're equals and they're both drunk, why do we blame the men? Because they aren't…

At least here in California (and presumably much of the US) the threshold isn't merely intoxication. It's intoxication to the point that someone is incapable of consent. Not impaired judgment or above the legal driving limit, but drunk to the point that they are not even capable of giving a yes/no. If two people are drunk and have sex, evidently at least one of them was capable of consent because they had the capacit…

[deleted]

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#599

Post by nawgz » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #402

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.

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?

This is a false dichotomy to propose. My claim is that the police - notorious domestic abusers, rights violators - are failing to collect evidence from women coming forward with rape allegations. Given the time-sensitive and trauma-riddled nature of such things, it is not a simple topic, so even without attributing malice, it is clear police are undertrained (here and elsewhere).

I wrote a bunch more and gathered some links, but Hacker News is telling me to slow down. 6 comments on this thread since 2pm, wow such spam

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#600

Post by sixstringtheory » Wed, Apr 28, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #542

sixstringtheory wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife told me something a while back about how girls are often taught from a young age to be "sweet" and to defer to adults who demand their affection. I can't remember if it's something she read or came to herself upon examination of her youth. I can see the way that this idea on boundaries can grow to adulthood to having difficulty strongly advocating for oneself. The philosophies you laid out resonate strongly w…

I made sure my demands were reasonable and gave them options. If they didn't want to bathe that night, they had to pass a sniff test. If they didn't want a haircut, they could grow their hair as long as they wanted so long as they kept it clean. For eating, I made healthy foods available that they liked. This worked really well. One son has two conditions that can land a child in in-house hospital treatment for avers…

Thanks for your responses :)