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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

#31
post #27

Jon Pretty sounds like a complete creep and yes, based on this account, a predator. That being said, there is a court and criminal justice system for a reason. While I empathize with the author, and utterly despise the archetype of high-status men who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women, I find the nature of these kinds of posts to be counterproductive. Therapeutic to the author?…

I don't like this court-of-public-opinion stuff much either and the abuse potential is real. At the same time: what else are people going to do? There seems to be no other recourse.

Most people let bullies get away with it because even stepping in as a third party means standing up to a bully. It can be scary, but even if there's no real risk it's still a fucking pain in the ass. Who wants to get into a mud slinging competition with a predator? Or get a harassment lawsuit? If someone is willing to harass other people this way, they will certainly harass you this way.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#33
post #9

first, a small rant: tbf. I dislike the title. the real title is sexual harassment from Jon Pretty a leader of certain Scala Community standups. because the current title actually sounds like it's the whole commnity, but the blog is about a specific guy. --- second I really do not understand, how other people can be so horrible. he basically abused her in a moment where she was really really desperate and I think suc…

"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept" applies here. When a good community permits bad actors, it is no longer a good community.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about it, but this starts to look a bit like public lynching.

no, a lynching is a murder by a racist mob this is a community realizing that John Pretty is a predator and deciding that they don't want a predator in a position of power frankly, it's weird as hell for you to be confusing those two things

not me or you are to judge this, we don't know the details, it may as well be that he is completely shit partner and not much more than that, which is not unlawful.

do you think after those posts his scala/programming/whatever he's doing career won't suffer? he's dead in many professional circles regardless if he's jail material or not.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#35
post #27

Jon Pretty sounds like a complete creep and yes, based on this account, a predator. That being said, there is a court and criminal justice system for a reason. While I empathize with the author, and utterly despise the archetype of high-status men who use their status within programming communities as a tool to target women, I find the nature of these kinds of posts to be counterproductive. Therapeutic to the author?…

> heard from someone in HR that the charges were false, but "optics" were the reason they had to move forward with his termination.

Time to name the company.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#36
> I don’t remember how much I drank. I don’t remember him drinking. But I remember feeling uncomfortable when he made advances on me. I felt being taken advantage of that he had unprotected sex with me when I was intoxicated. Nothing felt right. I remember panicking and crying.

I don't want to victim blame here because this guy sounds like a grade A creep and predator. But does a person not have some responsibility here to not get so intoxicated when alone with a member of the opposite sex in a private space? Because sometimes the person is consenting at the time and then regrets it later - and then proceeds to ruin the other person's life by accusing them of taking advantage of an intoxicated individual. I just find this whole area very slippery about when consent means consent and when it doesn't - especially the way sex, alcohol, and drugs are so intertwined in our society. I rightly or wrongly think you have to have some responsibility for putting yourself in such a vulnerable place where you are not in the right frame of mind to resist advances or make sensible decisions. Am I wrong about that?

I don't know if she gave consent, and again, I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, based on her story, age, etc. I just want to discuss this whole business of consent while intoxicated on which I do not have a clear opinion.

Re: My experience with sexual harassment in the Scala community

#39

I have no clue on who this guy is nor do I have any sort of interest in Scala but this is terrible. If this is even remotely true I hope he suffers enormous consequences including being persecuted. How are people still getting away with this kind of abuse? How?

This is also the community that brought us, for example, the Fantasyland Code of "Professionalism," a code of conduct that rivals the GPL in how unpleasant I have found it to read and piece together what is going on...
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