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

Nobody argued that that isn't rape, but that's because you've folded in what sounds like a physical threat. "Kick you out right now and you can live on the street" sounds more violent than "have sex with me or I initiate divorce proceedings".

The question is whether there's a distinction between economic coercion and rape. rayiner argues no, it's just as coercive as "pulling a knife", but most state laws (I believe) do have distinct definitions of sexual extortion. It's still a felony, so it's really bad, but not quite as severe. I think that probably reflects the truth of a spectrum of coercion from knife-to-throat (class A felony), to lose-your-job (class E felony), to divorce-with-financial-consequences (sad but not criminal). That's the slope one can slide down if we don't have clear tiers and definitions along the way.

Dude. From the article:

I had a boss once who knew he was sexist (also homophobic and transphobic), but was trying to get over it. He said some incredibly dumb things, like offering to have a company meeting at a strip club. He genuinely had bizarre concepts of what’s appropriate and inappropriate behavior. He was ashamed of this and really trying to improve. Listening to him quote the sexual harassment seminars was the saddest bit: on one hand he was really trying, but on the other, everything he was quoting made absolutely no sense. I frequently found him putting so much effort in where it didn’t really matter, like obsessively counting how many times he had asked a man vs a woman to carry heavy equipment. He always seemed overloaded with things to remember about “not being sexist” and afraid to get something wrong. It seemed almost heartless to risk getting him in trouble.

On the whole, however, I don’t hold against him all the inappropriate things he did. The best I could do was kindly remind my boss when something made me uncomfortable, but he always looked panicked when I did. I didn’t want to get him in trouble; in fact, half of my comments to him started with phrases like “you know people are going to take it the wrong way if they hear you saying that.” I wish my male peers had helped him more in this regard. I feel they could have done it without making my boss feel like he was being directly threatened with a huge HR complaint. It’s a real shame for our tech culture that there is no way to get somebody tutored about what is and isn’t appropriate without also landing them in deep trouble.

And yes I think with a larger family you're less likely to have men thinking its OK to corner a woman in office, because they'll have better upbringing. If you want to change culture the best chance you have is the educate your children because of all people they will be most receptive of your perspective.

Thanks for the snark anyway, I deserved it because I see family as a good thing to have, and as such I'm a rapist. And thanks for derailing the points OP and I were making. I deserve to be hanged by the side of the road, by social activists like you (according to your profile).

But it can become rape, pretty easily if you are a person in power which sadly often means a man even if he isn't the boss.

I'm not quite sure I follow. My reaction was to the article was shock, when I read that she was raped repeatedly. Then, like most people, I assume, the question that springs to mind is: how can that happen? It violates a lot of assumptions we have about civilized society.

One way of making sense of it is determining that an unlawful act wasn't committed. Then, yeah, you can't call the cops, it's not "really rape" (according to the law), and it's terrible because there's no recourse without destroying one's career.

I'm not saying that's what happened to the OP. Just explaining why the definition of rape matters. If it was legal rape, then we're left wondering even more why going to the cops wasn't an option. If it wasn't legal rape, then it's much more difficult.

(And in case my writing wasn't clear, I'm suggesting that a $500 bar tab could be called a mugging, if you didn't willingly pay for it. But the law wouldn't consider that a mugging. So if someone meant a colleague pulled a knife on them repeatedly, then yeah, the response is "what about the cops"? Whereas in the bar tab scenario, I can " see the issue " of no recourse. Same way that you might sleep with someone because you felt you had to, but the law wouldn't consider that a rape.[1] I'm not saying this is what happened to the OP, at all, just responding to your questioning of why HN would discuss the definitional aspects.[2])

1: This is further aggravated by some people thinking rape is over claimed, perhaps in response to other people suggesting that two drunk people having sex means they taped raped each other. And by extension, that means people on permanent medication, who are never "sober" are always being raped. Totally unrelated to the OP, yet a driver of rather useless discussion.

2: And I probably am terrible for saying this, but I just don't tend to empathize with such stories much. The huge amount of suffering in the world overall (let alone the disgusting implications of MWI) has numbed me. Plus the situation described is not very relatable to me. While I experienced the outrage when personal (eg when something happened to my daughter), other accounts tend to provoke a more... distanced reaction. Having nothing to contribute or say regarding the actual problem, I'll respond to branching topics like yours. Terrible as that is, perhaps that's another explanation for the type of discussion you find here. And I'm probably not the only guy on HN with similar feelings, maybe.