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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

#701

Post by dragonwriter »

Humdeee wrote: post #249
_qwfv wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been in an abusive relationship? Or seen one firsthand? People can be made to believe all sorts of things that aren't true by charismatic or powerful people. It may take them some time to realize they are being tricked or abused. You absolutely can be told you consented, and trust that person's word, and realize later that no, actually you had not. It's just convenient for the abuser for you to believe…

This article reads like she did not say no as much as she did not say yes, which leaves the reader in a muddled, grey area and unsure of how to interpret anything. Is she consenting, or more specifically, is she explicitly claiming to not consent? It's a very awkward article, leaving readers with more questions than answers at the end, which is never what you want your readers to feel when garnering support.

> This article reads like she did not say no as much as she did not say yes

Yeah, if I beat someone up and they didn’t explicitly agree or explicitly ask me not to pummel them, no one is going to hem and haw about whether or not it was battery or whether it wasn’t because of secret unexpressed consent.

But no, when the issue is battery-that-involves-sexual-penetration, *which legally had the same basic “without consent” factor (except that there tend to be more factors which explicitly negate or make the alleged victim legally incapable of consent), suddenly lots of people have a radically different view.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#702

Post by dragonwriter »

Pfhreak wrote: post #284
Humdeee wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article reads like she did not say no as much as she did not say yes, which leaves the reader in a muddled, grey area and unsure of how to interpret anything. Is she consenting, or more specifically, is she explicitly claiming to not consent? It's a very awkward article, leaving readers with more questions than answers at the end, which is never what you want your readers to feel when garnering support.

Consent is unambiguous and enthusiastic yes. The default assumption is that no consent is given. Not saying yes is the same as saying no.

> Consent is unambiguous and enthusiastic yes.

No, “consent” is, like “intent” on the other side, a mental state rather than an action: it is the active desire for the act.

An ambiguous and enthusiastic yes is outward evidence of consent, though, and it tends to be the kind of evidence without which (or at least, some similarly very clear sign) we would tend not to infer consent to other acts where consent negates criminality, like battery.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#703

Post by solosoyokaze »

djbebs wrote: post #174
solosoyokaze wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not how libel and slander works. You not only have to prove that the statements were false, but that the accuser knew they were false and was deliberately malicious in spreading the falsehoods

I'm aware of how libel and slander works. What you say is exactly what I meant. It's the legal avenue available to those who have been falsely accused.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#704

Post by solosoyokaze »

hulahoof wrote: post #202
solosoyokaze wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there's no such thing as witchcraft but sexual harassment is very real. Victims have every right to speak up. Libel and slander laws are also real. If someone is actually making a false accusation, there's already legal ways to deal with it.

As the parent mentioned, the problem isn't recourse it is by that stage your life is already ruined. I don't think there is a clear answer though, the only moral thing to do is to support the accuser.

I think it's exceedingly rare that there is a false accusation. Not only would the accuser face libel and slander laws, typically the supporters of the accused will put immense pressure on the accuser and also ruin their reputation.

> the only moral thing to do is to support the accuser.

I fully agree.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#705

Post by eecc »

throway98752343 wrote: post #420
faitswulff wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 but especially our boys. Girls and women already learn so much about how to avoid being harmed by men. It’s time for our boys to learn how to become kind men - and for those of us who are men to model that for them.

Boys should be educated, but this will still happen. I cannot believe this guy doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong. We should identify and mitigate high potential threats by public warning, ostracism or legal action. Overcorrect if necessary.

> Overcorrect if necessary.

Hell no, that’s what all our legal systems are not about and there are also provisions against this sort of zealotry.

And rightly so, it’s such a historically proven road to hell and unintended consequences.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#706

Post by cjohnson318 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #413
_f1dq wrote: post #280

There is a lot about the sexual events in this post that, to me, highlights something I feel is important which is: we parents need to get better had having conversations with our children around sex. This girl was feeling uncomfortable and crying but at the same time "didn't think those behaviors were problematic". I can't help but wonder if her parents never sat her down and discussed situations like this and, I ge…

we parents need to get better had having conversations with our children around sex. I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I thought long and hard about this and decided that talking to my children about the existence of sexual predators would rob them of their innocence. I've studied how this works. Sexual predation almost never starts with rape. It starts with myriad instances of boundary violation and disrespe…

Totally agree. As a boy I played chess at the book store. This one man would always have long conversations with me and tell me about all sorts of books. (This was great, I loved reading.) After a number of weeks, he wanted me to go have lunch with him down the street. I felt like this was weird, and said no. The following weekend one of the other men, a math professor at the college, took me aside and said flat out not to hang out with that man, or go anywhere with him. Long story short, predators start by forming a friendship and building trust. If, for whatever reason, your kids don't feel like they can come to you first for things, then they're at a higher risk for predators.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#707

Post by nerdponx »

atq2119 wrote: post #656
merb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've felt for a while now that the way the tech world talks about "the $foo community" is just fundamentally wrong. You can only have real communities as long as the number of people is small enough. Once you cross Dunbar's number, it's no longer really a community but rather a cluster of partially overlapping communities. Maybe the more accurate term would be "society" instead of "community".

It's not just tech. This is how people talk about hobbies, academic fields, etc.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#708

Post by cloudfifty »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #697
cloudfifty wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but what a pathetic tone policing reply to blatant misogynistic garbage about women being inherently "more emotional", "We've tried the 'rawr girl power", and so on. You're just wrong and clearly not worth the energy.

Being held to account for your false accusations is not "tone policing", so please stop gaslighting. I didn't write that women are "more emotional". I wrote they are generally "more emotionally vulnerable". It's irresponsible to make extremely harsh accusations against someone when the analysis that the accusation is based on is sloppy and low-effort. And as an aside, claiming that women are generally more emotional…

Let me suggest this then. Post your initial reply to a forum with a lot of women and ask if they find it misogynistic.

Adults can "read between the lines". Putting all your statements together draws a perfectly clear misogynistic narrative. No amount of deflection by trying to rebrand each point individually will make that go anyway.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#710

Post by adultSwim »

scala__alacs wrote: post #679

I'd like to give a Scala community "insider perspective" on Jon Pretty. Something always felt off about him. Being quite involved in the Scala community myself, I can tell you that the impact of his technical contributions is basically zero. None of the projects he developed along the years has had any momentum (save for one, called "magnolia", which has a modest userbase). He was giving more talks than anyone else i…

Parallels with Jacob Appelbaum
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