The fact that a backlash against self-evidently disgusting behavior needs to 'build' is disturbing.
People have different thresholds where the perceived (or real) danger of speaking out is low enough. For some people, they don't need any backup. For others, they need to see a lot of people talking about it. Most people are somewhere in the middle. The snowball takes a while to reach the bottom.
A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
You assume a company should be all serious. There are way worse stuff in South Park, Monty Python or Naked Gun. The slide is just an attempt at being funny. It may not make you laught, you may find this humor borderline, you may want this should never happen in your company, but it's not shocking that they allowed this in there. What are shocking are sexist actions. Any agressive/unfair action toward somebody actuall…
> You assume a company should be all serious. Except nothing about this is funny, and if you think it is, it only shows how detached you are from reality and humanity. It's like casual racism.
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#23I'd love it if someone with the skills could do a sentiment analysis of all the comments under SV sexism/sexual harassment articles posted to HN, and quantify the amount of denialism versus recognition there is, as well as graph whether there is at least a downward trend in denialism, whether the tipping point mentioned in the article is happening. On this topic I've been disappointed in HN more often than not. HN us…
> HN users pride themselves on objectivity, but sadly much of it is ditched in favor of defensiveness (or the other dismissive reactions mentioned in the article) when SV culture is put under a critical microscope. Can you clarify how exactly objectivity clashes with opinions on fairly subjective matters(e.g. sexism)? Is there an objective standard of sexism that was applied in a rigorous analysis of "SV culture"(wha…
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#24I'd love it if someone with the skills could do a sentiment analysis of all the comments under SV sexism/sexual harassment articles posted to HN, and quantify the amount of denialism versus recognition there is, as well as graph whether there is at least a downward trend in denialism, whether the tipping point mentioned in the article is happening. On this topic I've been disappointed in HN more often than not. HN us…
There is denialism and lack of objectivity going on, but I'm not sure you get what side it is.
Until we see the science, many of us think articles like these specifically blaming the Valley are just tabloid fodder.
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
You assume a company should be all serious. There are way worse stuff in South Park, Monty Python or Naked Gun. The slide is just an attempt at being funny. It may not make you laught, you may find this humor borderline, you may want this should never happen in your company, but it's not shocking that they allowed this in there. What are shocking are sexist actions. Any agressive/unfair action toward somebody actuall…
But those movies are clearly meant as comedy and everyone watching it knows that. Some comedians say things that are accepted because they are comedians and anyone repeating their jokes in public in a setting where it might be taken quite differently than as a joke might get into some trouble for doing so. I really do not see how the two compare..
The US elected a president that "grab them by the pussy". You have real problems. Those slides are not.
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#26Susan Fowler tweeted that Chris Sacca has been DMing her on Twitter, tring to "manipulate" her to stop tweeting about him. This after his blog post claiming to be changing his ways. https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/881198112923987968
Given this, would a message to Susan Fowler, concerning tweets, "That's really gross. And so many people praised him for it! Ew! No!" and "Wait, so: the day before a story is published in the NYT about him being a creep, @sacca writes a medium post about how much he's evolving" asking her to not continue attacking him be necessarily unjustified?
A message that encourages her to direct her energy more constructively towards the real perpetrators could be called manipulative, but if many would find them agreeable, they'd never be posted by Susan, as they'd reveal her to be acting manipulatively.
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#27The biggest issue here is not that Dave is a creep and that he has been let go. The biggest issue is that the leaders of this 500 Startups organization let this go on for years without taking action. Who are the people who let their organization's logo and name appear in this guy's slides together with the words "GET YOU LAID (=SEX)"? https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/dmc500hats/how-to-pitch-a-... It does not matter…
Don't forget this clusterfuck from Mr. McClure http://gawker.com/5985094/tech-bros-google-sponsored-trip-to...
How is that a clusterfuck 'from Mr. McClure'?
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HN users pride themselves on objectivity, but sadly much of it is ditched in favor of defensiveness (or the other dismissive reactions mentioned in the article) when SV culture is put under a critical microscope. Can you clarify how exactly objectivity clashes with opinions on fairly subjective matters(e.g. sexism)? Is there an objective standard of sexism that was applied in a rigorous analysis of "SV culture"(wha…
What's necessarily subjective about sexism?
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HN users pride themselves on objectivity, but sadly much of it is ditched in favor of defensiveness (or the other dismissive reactions mentioned in the article) when SV culture is put under a critical microscope. Can you clarify how exactly objectivity clashes with opinions on fairly subjective matters(e.g. sexism)? Is there an objective standard of sexism that was applied in a rigorous analysis of "SV culture"(wha…
What's necessarily subjective about sexism?
The strict definition of sexism is a mindset, and the only way to reliably determine that mindset is to have a mind-reading device. That means that almost every time we evaluate sexism, we use a heuristic, and choosing which heuristics to apply is necessarily subjective. For example, I find most of the sexism controversies do not have clear indicators of sexism, but I acknowledge that I applied my own opinion to determine those, and opinions can differ.
Since the strict definition of sexism is difficult to apply, it's also possible to use an operative definition and still remain objective. If we could agree to a set of heuristics, a set of measurable actions through which we can objectively determine that something is "sexism", then we could use that to make our judgement calls. However, I don't see such a standard proposed and agreed upon - in fact, the reason the issue is so controversial is that it seems there is very little "standard" about sexism that we agree on, and opinions about it have a lot of variance. I think it's normal for HN users to then express skepticism and criticize an ad-hoc application of rules to slap a label on someone when we can't agree on what that label means.
This is why I was looking for an objective standard to replace the dictionary definition of the word, which HN users agreed upon and then failed to apply when "SV culture" was put under a microscope.
EDIT: reduced repetition and improved wording.
Re: A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You assume a company should be all serious. Except nothing about this is funny, and if you think it is, it only shows how detached you are from reality and humanity. It's like casual racism.
You could say that for most TV, cinema and youtube. We don't all agree on what's funny and what's offensive.