Is this really a problem with Silicon Valley? I think it's an universal problem you'll find in all industries.
I don't see where she says she ever even hinted to the manager that his actions were inappropriate. I suspect a single "cut that shit out, stop acting like a damn teenager" might well have stopped this problem in its tracks. But we'll never know.
I read these tales of woe and wonder why people today lack the intestinal fortitude to stand up for themselves, rather than resigning themselves to the status of "victim".
Good for her. What happened next was that the offender moved on to someone else, and when they found someone who wasn't so confident as your mother, sexually assaulted her.
It's nice that you wonder why people don't stand up for themselves, but you should be careful that people don't accidentally think that you're ascribing blame to the victim. It is interesting that you imply that in previous generations, there were no victims. This does not tally with the evidence I have that indicates that sexual assault and other such crimes have been with us for a long time.
Uh, no, but I can see how your expectations have been molded to believe this is the only possible "thing that happened next".
> but you should be careful that people don't accidentally think that you're ascribing blame to the victim.
No accident. The "victim" shares the responsibility of standing up for themselves. This culture of victimhood has helped no one but Tumblr.
Do you think your mother was so special that a man who attempted to sexually assault her tried it that one time only, on her only? While it's not impossible, the balance of probability very much suggests that a man willing to try this on your mother is willing to try this on other women as well.
As an aside, this is a text interface. There is no need to represent in text exactly what comes out of your mouth. You need not begin your sentences with "Uh".
Why do you place the word "victim" in quotes? Do you suggest that they are not victims?
A sexual harassment is analogous to a situation where a person hits another person, the other person fails to duck/block and gets hit in the face. I really can't see how the victim could be responsible for getting hurt.
The fact that some people have practiced the art of boxing and could have avoided it easily does not change this situation.
Person-to-person interaction is quite different from feeling victimized due to a general phenomena.
I was 'merely asked for a beer' once by a big hairy guy who had stalked me in a public swimming area. And I'm a straight male. I can tell you, sexual harassment is kinda like porn - you know what it is when you feel it.
It also may be that people today don't want to stand up for themselves because they risk that the other party will play victim. There is this other comment which says that if she punched him, she would risk an assault accusation.
Maybe it's the whole "somebody has to be a victim" mentality? Maybe it's lot less clear cut in most cases.
I have to say, I would much prefer women to simply slap the men who do these uncomfortable things. I don't see anything wrong with it. Now if this would escalate afterwards, perhaps then should courts (or other institutions) be involved.
> you should be careful that people don't accidentally think that you're ascribing blame to the victim
I don't agree, the people who think that are the ones making an error, and we shouldn't accommodate them.
How can we have an honest discussion about what is moral and what not, if we have the need to blame somebody? The blame can only come after it is decided what action is immoral, and understanding circumstances. Assigning who is a victim in advance prevents this understanding.
> It is interesting that you imply that in previous generations, there were no victims
I don't think he does, it's the faulty reasoning of yours (as you say in the previous sentence) that leads to conclusion that there is always 100% victim and 100% perpetrator.
> the evidence I have that indicates that sexual assault and other such crimes have been with us for a long time
I agree, that is very much true. But there is also other side of the coin, people (of both sexes!) are taking risks to get good sexual partners, it's just human nature. Ignoring the fact that people sometimes risk (and it fails!) in the interest of declaring somebody a victim does no good either.
I mean, even if you move the boundary of what is acceptable in society (in either direction), there will always be people who will risk to cross the boundary, because that risk pays off. So I am not sure what is bigger involvement of institutions in these matters going to resolve.
It's one of the blind spots of left and feminism (I am leftist), we don't want to hear about people who do take risks (because it's slightly irrational, after all), because our ideology cannot deal with them in any meaningful way.
And personally, I see the mere existence of bosses (and human social hierarchies in general) as a bigger problem, of which sexual harassment is only a symptom.
Yet you instantly have to recognise that you just blamed the victim for not being more assertive, and not being able to protect themself from something that they should never have to deal with - it's not even close to acceptable behaviour.
I am not unsympathetic to your point, I just kinda wish some consequences would start arising for the seemingly endless tide of entitled pricks who either don't care or don't know any better.
You and every other commenter seems to think I don't understand that. Not sure why.
Is your attitude that it's acceptable for these people, who do not push the problem onto someone else, to be sexually assaulted? If it's not acceptable, why is it incorrect for the victim to seek help? If I were burgled, I would seek help. If I were mugged, I would seek help. Why is it incorrect for me to seek help if I am sexually assaulted by a manager?
Furthermore, given that my employer has a duty to ensure a safe workplace, why should I not upbraid my employer for failing in that duty, or advise them of the problem so that they can correct it? If I saw a dangerously loose carpet, I would tell them. If I noticed some buzzing wiring, I would tell them. Why should I not tell them that one of their employees is sexually harassing people?
In a normally common-sense forum here, I'm kind of amazed by the number of comments here that go straight to the nuclear extension of the other's point. Can we assume that we're all against sexual assault here and have a bit more charitable discourse?
That phrase has lost meaning. Listing things the victim could have done differently or better is nothing but exploration of the causal chain. Blame in any logical or legal sense accrues only to a proximate-cause rule-violator kind of party.
Seriously? There's a difference between assigning blame and saying what could be done better. If I tell you that you should maybe next time lock your car after it was stolen, I still believe that the actual thieves are to blame.
My mother worked in the oil industry in the 70s and 80s, and these are the exact things she would say. (talk about male-dominated industry!)
Heading off to HR only sweeps the conflict under a bureaucratic rug and never really deals with the problem effectively.
Todays office culture is so toxic, and I fear it will get worse as "trigger warning" and "safe places" graduate from college campuses to the workplace.
Rather, just be a stronger person and call out the bastard to is acting the fool.
It's great that your mother felt confident standing up to abuse. Not everyone does — and someone early in their career, knowing that their entire life trajectory can be affected by their boss's reviews and networking, is going to feel different than, say, an established figure in the field or a worker at a union shop who can expect their support. The author of this article appears to have gone to Google directly from college and it's only reasonable to worry about jeopardizing your first big job by leaving quickly.
The other thing to pay attention to is the nature of the abuse. It's easy to reject some guy who makes a crude leer in front of witnesses. Her former boss was apparently more subtle than that since he managed to get at least one female coworker to take his side excusing his behavior.
That's not an accident - the men who do this kind of thing usually aren't the crude street-harassers of stereotype and are smart enough to pick women who are more likely to be vulnerable while leaving as little clear evidence as possible.
You could spend less time assuming I didn't read everything. The attitude of "saying she should stand up for herself, at least once, before going to HR" is hardly "condemning".
That is not the attitude you have been espousing. 

Again, it's great that your mother was able to successfully break a barrier. That doesn't mean everyone will also have success as easily using the same approach or that it's ever reasonable to dismiss someone else's life experience because you think they should have been more confrontational despite knowing so little about her situation and the power dynamics involved.
No, it doesn't, and I never said it did. But you can only succeed at the things you actually attempt.
And of course, she didn't publicly tell her "tale of woe" because at the time she wouldn't have just one guy telling her she shared the blame for it, but the whole society. So she suffered in silence. Which is great, because it allowed everyone else - even years later - to pretend it didn't exist, and that people were just braver and stronger, unlike the kids these days.
Interestingly enough, the author of the article never calls herself a victim or uses the word at all. Sure she was scared, and yeah we don't know what she said to her manager. But she's talking about her feelings about being sexually harassed in a very public forum, subject to all that comes with presenting your viewpoint on the internet. She's encouraging others to speak out about it, presumably to find the "intestinal fortitude to stand up for themselves" that you find so lacking in people today.
She's also gone on to co-found a company. That doesn't sound like a victim to me, or a tale of woe.
I don't think sharing your feelings about being sexually harassed means you're acting like a victim. Quite the opposite. You're pointing out that this happens, and that if it happened to you then you're not alone, and it's not ok. There's strength in empathy.
Your mom sounded pretty tough and she undoubtedly dealt with a lot of BS, but I'm certain she would have appreciated someone telling her that that BS was not ok. That's not being a victim or being weak, that's just being human.
But over time she told me that it really wore her down and made her feel negatively about work. Even if people were stronger historically, it didn't mean that the environment was ok, or that it didn't really bother them.
So, yes, it is a problem in Silicon Valley - and ignorance of the severity of the problem is a large part of the problem (you'll find a lot of research on sexual harassment in other industries but very little on tech and SV in particular).
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20071018041054/http://www.sexual...
Edit: The way the page is written makes it hard to understand what most of it actually means, but if I interpret it correctly 50% of 65% of 60% received sexual advances from a superior more than once. So about 20% had experience of a boss failing to take a hint.
"The owner of the company I work for approached me in the car park and asked me to dinner, I said to ask again nearer the time"
Fortunately for Bill Melinda went with option 2. Had she gone with option 1... Unfortunately the problem is that it relies on the other person, which is why many places have policies about this sort of thing.
If you consider even a single unwanted sexual advance to be harassment then you get silly conclusions which I expect you don't endorse. For example, I've been "harassed" repeatedly by fatties and gay guys in the past few weeks - they approach me and go away when I display disinterest. Pune and Bombay are so unsafe for men!
> The EEOC has defined sexual harassment in its guidelines as:
> Unwelcome sexual advances ..
> Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment
It's right in the first two lines - what am I missing?
It would be an extremely narrow definition to attempt to carve out unwanted sexual advances, especially from a superior, in a workplace not being sexual harassment.
Right, this is why I stopped reading the article after the first sentence and flagged it. One-off unwanted sexual advances are not only not sexual harassment, they're specifically exempted by law from being so.
edit: To make it clear, I definitely didn't witness incidents like kissing and lap sitting.. but more subtle ones might come under my radar.
Nobody's blind to that. Most of the time it's just that nobody wants to get involved in cases like that. For all one knows ones could be accused of doing nothing about it. So people prefer "not to see" and "not to know", just like in blatant cases of racism at work. So it's not blindness , it's just individualism.
> but I'd guess Eastern-ish Europe would be worse
Why just Eastern Europe ? I'm French and sexual harassment is an endemic issue. Same in Italy. We might have stronger laws against it but good luck when it comes to proving it happened in a court of law.
Eastern Europe for example has much less of a glass ceiling problem but gender roles are stricter and but racism and homophobia are orders of magnitude worse.
In the Dutch workplace (where I'm from) homophobia is for example much less of an issue; but racism is still pretty ingrained and while there are less strict divisions in gender roles but the glass ceiling for women is much stronger.
That leads to the other side of how toxic this is: if you're harassed, how do you know who's safe to tell? It's probably safer not to tell other men if you don't want to risk finding out that they're part of the problem or just unsympathetic without unrealistic levels of proof.
In that case it was jokes that I don't think had any malice but would definitely look bad in front of HR.
Speak up! Diffuse situations in the moment when you can, provide private feedback when needed, make corporate complaints when necessary.
You don't have to go to Eastern-ish Europe for that. I've spent some time in offices around London over the last couple of years and I've found that it's much more likely to witness sexually-charged conversation in the IT workplace than here in the US.
It would be interesting to see if the data supports that statement. Is there less sexual harassment in education or medical professions where women are the majority ? According to my experience, I don't think so.
It's like saying that everyone who abandoned a certain film halfway says the film is bad and concluding that most people in general hate the film: your data points are coming from a group who almost exclusively hated the film in the first place: they're not representative of the entire population.
https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/dissent-unheard-of
If you're still unconvinced, you might want to start examining your own sample bias.
As I re-read the paragraph I just wrote above, I can't feel but be amused by your suggestion that I should examine my own sample bias despite your blind defense of your own; in other words: your presumption that somehow yours is "better" or "truer".
But I can see we're unlikely to make much progress on this front.