Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower • Hacker News Board

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#231

Post by jobposter1234 » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:10 AM UTC

drostie wrote: post #221

yason wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite different. She had an option to decline. Maybe it would've a very hard choice indeed, both socially and career-wise but she did have that choice. It might be convenient in some cases to broaden the definition of rape gradually but the bottom line is you can not be raped if you are simply able to walk away. It might be harassment. It might be blackmailing. It might be a lot of nasty, disgusting, and even…

There's a much simpler definition of "rape" as "being coerced into having sex that you do not want to have." It, of course, is not the present legal definition of rape. But it's something that's easy to talk about and to use in conversation. In other words, the point is that sex is put into a separate sphere of activity from other ordinarily-pleasant experiences and given a dignity which is not special to those other…

Is sex somehow fundamentally different than every* other act that it should be treated so differently?

* Every. If I used my power at work to make you eat a literal lunch of feces, is that more or less egregious? I know what my gut would say, but why? Isn't the core bad behavior the concept of abrogating another human's free will? Why is sex in this other classification?

Edit: put another way, why is it that being coerced into sex is much worse than being coerced into e.g., murder. Is it simply the frequency? (It doesn't seem like the issue is that the act is against a specific or particular gender/race/hate crime victim group, unless we're differentiating between "straight rape" or "gay rape", which is a moral hazard worth avoiding...)

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#232

Post by JoeAnzalone » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:12 AM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #197

jusben1369 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look through the comments here and in other similar threads you'll see numerous variations on the "what wait? just leave." It's an understandable but wrong response to these situations. It shifts the problem from the perpetrator to the victim. It's similar to asking women to be covered from head to toe so that they can't somehow tempt males. The onus isn't on the male to control his desires it's on the female…

You unwittingly fall into an enclosure filled with angry chimpanzees. A crowd gathers, and shouts "Leave the enclosure, climb out, there's a ladder!" Another crowd gathers and shouts at the first crowd "Shut up. Stop blaming the victim!" Which crowd has your best interests at heart?

Yeah except the ladder leads directly into the shark tank. (Unemployment, retaliation from your rapist, damage to your reputation/resume)

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#233

Post by spinlock » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:21 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #105

golemotron wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that as a heterosexual man, regardless of my financial circumstances, no one could coerce me into giving blowjobs under the threat of losing my job. I'd quit and take my chances. What am I missing here?

> heterosexual man, regardless of my financial > circumstances, no one could coerce me into giving > blowjobs under the threat of losing my job What about the slightly older and attractive female manager asking you to give her a shoulder rub that gets progressively more sexual each time she asks you to do, and that you get progressively more uncomfortable doing? Would you quit the first time she told you she had a so…

Most guys would be down with it. And, most attractive women can get sex easily. Unatractive women on the other hand...

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#234

Post by _bfhp » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:32 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #59

I'm sorry but this is insane. I guess I can only speak to the segment of the tech industry I've been exposed to, but a woman would not be labelled a liability for reporting a rape or an assault, unless maybe it turned out to be false, in which case that's no different than any other industry. I am sure workplace rape and assault happens in every industry, unfortunately, but I've seen no evidence it's more common or a…

It's your word against her's. She has been exposed to the internals of many instances of abuse, either by being the victim or talking to the victims as a woman, so I will be believing her over you -- why shouldn't I?

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#235

Post by bootload » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:32 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #13

bluehat wrote: post #5

I'm really sad this got downvoted off the front page (this article is only one hour old with 9 points, things 3 hours old with 9 points are still on the page). It's cool if not everybody is interested in talking about this, but I feel like the entire point of this article was that making whistle-blowers harder to hear is not good for society.

It didn't get downvoted; medium.com is in a class of websites that get mildly penalized by default pending moderator review. Not a great solution, but the alternative is reams of blogspam and fluff making the front page just because so much of it gets posted. We remove the penalty from solid articles (and typically reset the clock on them to restore a fair time window for upvotes), but it sometimes takes a while befo…

"We remove the penalty from solid articles (and typically reset the clock on them to restore a fair time window for upvotes), but it sometimes takes a while before that happens."

@dang, see how "lack of foo transparency" [0] can trick people into thinking there's intent behind the result ~ https://twitter.com/katylevinson/status/574733784517640192 - working on post.

[0] where 'foo' is moderation, spam filter or some piece of code written for some valid reason.

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#236

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:36 AM UTC

swatow wrote: post #188

Lazare wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So how am I supposed to interpret that claim? As someone using a colloquial term for anything sexual without consent, obviously. Sex without consent is generally called rape; most people don't have any clue about the exact legal definitions. You don't even know what legal jurisdiction OP is in; how could you interpret the word as anything but the colloquial definition? > In the US I don't believe there is any such…

As someone using a colloquial term for anything sexual without consent, obviously. Sex without consent is generally called rape; most people don't have any clue about the exact legal definitions But most people don't subscribe to your consent based definition of rape. I think the majority of people would lean towards the force based definition of rape. You personally might think that rape should be defined as sex wit…

> But most people don't subscribe to your consent based definition of rape. I think the majority of people would lean towards the force based definition of rape.

You are wrong; see for example Wikipedia, which represents a broad agreement of many editors and includes both coercion and abuse of authority as types of rape.

Edit to reply to swatow since I've hit the reply limit: that's a good article and I hope you read it carefully and think about what it says.

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#237

Post by code_reuse » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:40 AM UTC

unepipe wrote: post #104

golemotron wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word 'rape' is being re-defined now. The definition is being expanded far beyond what we called rape 20 years ago. Feminists are trying to do this in order to call attention to sexual harassment, but it is backfiring. They will dilute the term to the point where violent rape is no longer seen as the uniformly more serious offense that it is.

Forced oral sex is considered rape. This isn't feminist redefinition. You think if a gun is to your head and you give a blowjob that is sexual harassment? Think about someone who has a family and needs their income, and what this kind of situation puts them in.

It puts her in a stressful situation because now she has to contemplate things like going into debt while she takes the time to secure another job. Or if she doesn't have any credit then she would have to lean on her husband, or an extended family member, or worse of all end up living on the street and putting her children into foster care. She would have to calculate her odds of how likely that situation would be to transpire and whether or not it would actually expose her or her children to physical danger.

What if the woman knows that her rural grandparents or great aunt would probably look after the kids while the mom was looking for a job (perhaps living in her car part of the time) ? In that case then what you're talking about is not a threat of violence, what you're talking about is a threat of having to leave the so called middle class lifestyle and fall into a diminished or poverty-stricken lifestyle.

It's a horrible thing to have to contemplate because and the lower you fall in the socio-economic todem pole the more physical dangers you're exposed to during the course of everyday living, but that doesn't mean her situation is the same as rape

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#238

Post by peteretep » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:41 AM UTC

spinlock wrote: post #233

peteretep wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> heterosexual man, regardless of my financial > circumstances, no one could coerce me into giving > blowjobs under the threat of losing my job What about the slightly older and attractive female manager asking you to give her a shoulder rub that gets progressively more sexual each time she asks you to do, and that you get progressively more uncomfortable doing? Would you quit the first time she told you she had a so…

Most guys would be down with it. And, most attractive women can get sex easily. Unatractive women on the other hand...

    > Most guys would be down with it

Sure, at first. And who's to say that the young associate in the original story wasn't originally pretty flattered by the attention from the partner? Successful, powerful guy in the law firm, let's say he was also confident, good-looking, and well liked.

And one day, you're not in the mood - it's been a stressful day, or you've just had a difficult work appraisal with the person in question. And you get called in to the office, and the boss says "You know what, my shoulder hurts again. Get to it! You've gotta make a good impression after that shitty appraisal! (smiley face)". And it crosses a line to where it's no longer really consensual, but what can you do? And over the next few weeks, it becomes more and more sexualized, more and more about the power play, and you become increasingly distressed, unhappy, and don't know how to pull the plug, because this person holds significant commercial and social power over you...

And hey, you can't talk to your coworkers about it because "most guys would be down with it", and you know that Bob, your friend the dev-ops will laugh and say "You're pissed off that you're getting some ass off her?" and you certainly can't tell the girl you started dating three weeks ago, and who you'd really like to be faithful to...

    > most attractive women can get sex easily. Unatractive women
    > on the other hand

Nobody - male or female - 300lbs overweight or with a dripping facial sore - relying on male sexual discretion has any difficulty getting laid as long as they're not choosy.

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#239

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:43 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #59

I'm sorry but this is insane. I guess I can only speak to the segment of the tech industry I've been exposed to, but a woman would not be labelled a liability for reporting a rape or an assault, unless maybe it turned out to be false, in which case that's no different than any other industry. I am sure workplace rape and assault happens in every industry, unfortunately, but I've seen no evidence it's more common or a…

> but a woman would not be labelled a liability for reporting a rape or an assault, unless maybe it turned out to be false

This is the crux of the matter and where most men run into trouble with this whole discussion.

Let's say she comes forward and accuses a coworker of rape. The coworker denies the allegations and says she's lying to punish him for some work-related disagrement, or because he turned her down for a date or something. She doesn't have any recordings or physical proof. It's just her word against his.

Now what?? Well if you want to get a sense of what typically happens, take a look at this thread, in which multiple men are spending thousands of words debating the fine points of what exactly is bad enough to count as "rape", and why didn't she just quit, etc.

Basically: when there is not solid proof, guys tend to stick up for each other--and there are way way more guys in tech than women.

That's why she would fear being ostracized.

Re: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower

#240

Post by peteretep » Mon, Mar 09, 2015, 4:44 AM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #140

rayiner wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story from a friend of a friend's law firm. Young associate worked for this partner. Over the course of months, he coerced her into giving him blowjobs. Eventually she quit. 1) Why is this rape? Because coercion doesn't just take the form of physical violence. 2) Why not report to the police? Because it's mutually assured destruction. Even if you bring the guy down, you'll be known as the woman who called the police…

I think what horrifies me the most in these stories is that, once someone is in a situation where he/she is coerced in a position to have sex, there is basically nothing stopping an escalation in abuse. If her boss found her attractive enough to want a blowjob, why won't he progressively try to get as much as he can get away with ? She was not in position to refuse the first step, she won't be in a better position to…

Slightly more insidiously: she may have given enthusiastic consent to the first step, consent may have dwindled on subsequent steps, and she's still in just as shitty a position regarding refusing further steps, except now she has the problem of being taken seriously by people who think she lost the right to withdraw her consent along the way.