Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

21–30 of 407 posts

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

#21
I don't know what it's like to be raped or sexually harassed, but I am frequently amused at how skeptics think it's so cut-and-dry to just report the issue. This came up in Kelly Ellis's public revelation yesterday that she had been sexually harassed at Google.

The Twitter thread starts here:

https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/574092972624490497

The following is Ellis's statement, and then one of her more earnest "Oh really?" critics:

Ellis: Rod Chavez is an engineering director at Google, he sexually harassed me, Google did nothing about it. Reprimanded me instead of him

Twitter user: That's a very serious allegation. Hope you have evidence to back it up.

Ellis: Lol already dudes going, "where's the proof?" Do you expect women to wear wires whenever they're sexually harassed? Trust women.

Twitter user: there is a difference between questioning and accusations. I'm not calling her liar. Just requesting evidence...In general, to have been a victim of a crime, and not seeing the offender be punished must be awful. But there is a reason...we have the right to a fair trial. We all know the consequences of letting random people on the Internet serve justice.

Again, I've never been raped. But the last time I made a criminal complaint, it was when I was robbed of my phone at gunpoint a few years ago in New York. Granted, I acted quite foolishly...not having my phone, and not having used a payphone in years...My first instinct was to continue heading home, which was about 6 to 7 blocks away, so that I could lookup the nearest police station and walk over there...not realizing I could dial 911 anywhere, or at least go into the nearest storefront. So that bizarre behavior led to me getting quite the grilling from the first detective to respond, who outright accused me of making up the story because I didn't want to admit that I had a rough night with a hooker who robbed me of my belongings (apparently it's weird for a man to walk alone through Greeenwich Village at night)?

Anyway, long story short, no big deal. I knew I had plenty of evidence that this happened to me, including having tracking software on my (Android) phone...and while that was my first time being a victim of a violent crime, I've had enough experience with cops (being a former cops reporter) to understand where the skepticism was coming from, and also, to know that it was pretty tame compared to what other victims get. That said, if that was the treatment that I got, for an extremely cut-and-dry kind of crime (not too many debates over what constitutes armed robbery)...can you imagine the process that a rape victim has to go through? Or in the case of Ellis, someone who experienced non-criminal sexual harassment? Reporting a crime or a violation isn't as simple as hitting a button, it always consists of a non-trivial process (for me, besides the 4 hours of waiting for and then talking to the detective on the night of the incident, I missed a couple days of work to go to the station, fill out paperwork, do more interviews, etc).

To use the parlance of today's times, there's considerable "friction" in reporting an incident, regardless of the complexity of the issue. Whatever your stance on "is sexual harassment a prevalent problem or not?", at least recognize that the reporting of such a problem is easier to think about than to actually do.

edit:

To elaborate a little more...in my situation, the choice to report a crime was pretty obvious: I want my phone back, and also, the robber is obviously in the wrong. Quite frankly, I don't think I would've gone to the cops had it been a midnight phone-snatching (it's New York after all)...but since the robber escalated it by introducing a weapon, can't really just ignore the incident.

From my understanding, a rape or harassment victim does not have even remotely such an easy decision. Besides the emotional trauma, there's a huge amount of plain confusion -- rape/harassment is almost always perpetrated by someone who knows the victim, and sometimes someone the victim considered to be a friend. If a friend randomly punches me and takes my phone, after the "WTF was that about?" that I'd go through...I'm not even sure I could just go straight to the cops...Maybe my friend was drunk? Or pulling an elaborate prank? I'd at least want to call him (or email him, since he has my phone). And I guarantee that unless the punch caused serious injury to me, the cops are going to say, "WTF is wrong with you and your friend?", not immediately put out an all-points-bulletin to arrest my friend. And even if he's clearly in the wrong, think about all awkwardness in your social network that comes when the cops do arrive and arrest your friend...and we're not even at the indictment phase yet.

So again, just making assumptions, but when the crime is as controversial and "he said/she said" as rape or harassment...the decision to make a report does not at all seem like an easy one.

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

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly had a similar question in mind. The phrases "raped by a colleague — not just once, but several times over months" and "female colleagues told me later that he raped some of them, and in much the same way my attacker had raped me." got me confused. Rape is defined as "unlawful sexual intercourse", is there a movement towards broadening that definition to encompass other kinds of sexual assault? Or am I bein…

"is there a movement towards broadening that definition to encompass any kind of sexual assault?" Not that I'm aware of (and I'm relatively familiar with the feminist activist community and current feminist writing). I read it to mean she was raped by a colleague, not that she was sexually assaulted by a colleague, though either would be inexcusable and should be subject to the person being fired. But, again, in a wo…

I asked a honest question and did not accuse the author of lying. I really can't get my mind around such violence being common in the workplace without the attackers suffering any consequences. I'm astonished.

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

#23

She was raped several times over several months? What on earth? Why isn't this being reported to the police? There is a whole department of law enforcement (funded by our money) that deals precisely with issues of violence. Just use it instead of blogging about your troubles.

There are many many reasons why women don't report rapes to the police.

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

#24

She was raped several times over several months? What on earth? Why isn't this being reported to the police? There is a whole department of law enforcement (funded by our money) that deals precisely with issues of violence. Just use it instead of blogging about your troubles.

> There is a whole department of law enforcement (funded by our money) that deals precisely with issues of violence

Or, you know, can't even be bothered processing DNA samples from rape kits.

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

#25
post #23

She was raped several times over several months? What on earth? Why isn't this being reported to the police? There is a whole department of law enforcement (funded by our money) that deals precisely with issues of violence. Just use it instead of blogging about your troubles.

There are many many reasons why women don't report rapes to the police.

Look. That's fine. But one cannot complain about a problem all the while ignoring the main solution system that we have to address that very problem.

The alternative is what many feminists seem to be doing these days, which is "I wish men were nicer..." That is borderline stupid. The world will never be a perfectly safe place. You have to report crimes, and hold people accountable, and use the mechanism for corrective justice.

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

#26
post #13
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…

I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that. Thanks for telling me!

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

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is there a movement towards broadening that definition to encompass any kind of sexual assault?" Not that I'm aware of (and I'm relatively familiar with the feminist activist community and current feminist writing). I read it to mean she was raped by a colleague, not that she was sexually assaulted by a colleague, though either would be inexcusable and should be subject to the person being fired. But, again, in a wo…

I asked a honest question and did not accuse the author of lying. I really can't get my mind around such violence being common in the workplace without the attackers suffering any consequences. I'm astonished.

Apologies for misinterpreting your intentions. In my experience, denial is a very common response from men when faced with this kind of story. It is disappointingly common among men in tech, in particular.

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

#28
post #7
post #3

The title with punctuation: Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready To Call Somebody a Whistleblower I found it intersting, but there is a part I couldn't really understand. Does she define rape as an aggretion and not just grey area sex? Because as I understand it it would fall under criminal charges, not 'sexism', most of the time there would be physical/tangible proofs attached to it, and the police arres…

It's dangerous to go down the path of talking about "real rape", which is kinda where you seem to be going with this. Most rape is not "real rape" according to the rapist. Most rape is date rape; the rapist finds a target who is too intoxicated to meaningfully consent (and wouldn't consent when sober), or the rapist is in a position of power over their target (such as a manager with an employee), or they simply don't…

I have a hopefully helpful objection to the use of the word "rape" to describe anything other than "violent rape": While I understand the need to put a strong word to describe the perversity of the offence (which surely isn't less than "violent rape"), the obvious problem is "date rape" and similar are sadly not very well-known. So, when you just say "rape", many tend to think about a related but somewhat separate problem. Being a well-defined criminal offense, "violent rape" has established solutions. "Date rape" and "'can't say no'-rape", not so much. So it becomes only natural that people would tell you to go to the police.

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

#29
I can't help but think this is a problem in america and not a problem in tech. Over here (UK) I've never seen or heard of anything like this.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and I've just never seen it.

Either way, it's not on and it needs to stop

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

#30

She was raped several times over several months? What on earth? Why isn't this being reported to the police? There is a whole department of law enforcement (funded by our money) that deals precisely with issues of violence. Just use it instead of blogging about your troubles.

Why isn't this being reported to the police?

That's pretty much what the entire article is about - the risks of taking this before a court or even just bringing it up internally in a company; the potential damage to reputation, career and wellbeing can outweigh the slim possibility of justice (and it is a slim one, because often there are no witnesses). Just talking about this would be a huge decision for anyone, let alone bringing charges against a former manager or colleague. Here are some of the bits you seem to have missed:

They worry that they will be seen as liabilities for the rest of their career.

Realistically, only bad things happen to the whistleblower.

People who don’t believe you will consider you an enemy and call you “traitor” or “attention whore,” but never whistleblower, and people who haven’t bothered to research enough to form an opinion will call you a “liability.”

People are going to pass you over for jobs because they think you might stir up trouble.

Courts of law are not the solution to this (or at least not the only solution), a massive change in the way we view women in the workplace, and a recognition that there is a problem with sexism in tech are the solution. That starts with taking accounts like this seriously and listening to what people have to say, not dismissing them with tired excuses about taking it to the police instead of boring you with it.

Post reply on HN