For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare | Hacker News Reader

For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare

broadly.vice.com

270 pointslouhike381 comments

Though the submitted article does link to the BuzzFeed articles, it's curious that BuzzFeed isn't mentioned by name in the same way that the NYT and WaPo are...even though in the WaPo case, the WaPo was simply playing catch-up to BuzzFeed's exclusive investigations, particularly in the cases of Drs. Marcy and Ott, which are indepth enough to be interesting longform reading on their own:

- http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/famous-astronomer-all...

- http://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/ott-harassment-invest...

If there's another URL which is a more substantive original source on the same story, we can swap it out. I'm hesitant to do that without having time to read the articles carefully but am fine with taking suggestions.

There is an interesting side effect to these issues that I think doesn't get discussed very often. I try to be as aware as possible of these issues in the hope that I can make sure that I'm not part of the problem. As such I make a concerted effort to give anyone that works for me equal opportunities for advancement, and when in doubt I try to err on the side of the person who's in a marginalized class. I also try to make a habit of publicly recognizing good work that I see from any one in the company, and again I make an extra effort to recognize the work done by those in marginalized classes.

I'm also very choosy in general about who I make friends with, or who I interact with on anything other than a professional level. As a rule, I don't interact socially with women in the workplace. The primary reason is that it's more important to me to not be labelled a sexual predator / harasser than it is to have female friends. (I am married, but I acted basically the same at work when I was single.) There are just too many ambiguities in what is considered sexual harassment for me to feel comfortable putting my reputation on that line.

For example, it's not at all uncommon for me to comment to a male co-worker who comes in to work dressed up more than usual 'looking sharp, man!' or something along those lines. Would that be sexual harassment if I said that to a woman? Probably not on the face of it, but what if she has just (unbeknownst to me) endured harassment from another co-worker about her looks - then I could see my comment adding to the fire. Or what if I without thinking said something that implied that her dress would make her a more valuable employee or help her get that promotion or whatever. So, I just avoid it altogether. I recognize that my position may keep me from being part of the problem but also prevents me from being a part of the solution because I won't be aware of problems or able to offer meaningful support. I'm not sure what else to do.

If you ignore all women socially at work, you're going to end up discriminating against women. People have a strong tendency to select for what they already know. If you have a hiring choice between a theoretically equal woman and an equal man, you'll probably want to select the man because you'd feel safe to interact with him socially. You won't because it's Wrong, but what about all of the little decisions you don't think about so hard? Even if you were outside of management, you'd still be marginalizing the women on your team by your actions -- making an in group and an out group.

It's possible to run so far from sexual harassment you run into sexual discrimination. I don't know if there is an answer to this other than "be a nice person". Not trying to pick on parent in particular, just trying to illustrate how thorny the issues are.

So in our pursuit of equality, men are now between a rock and a hard place: treat women equally, but not too equally; treat them differently, but not too differently - or you will be discriminating.

"Please discriminate: just very, very carefully and very, very skillfully."

In my experience (as a man) all you have to do is treat people with respect and you'll be fine.

There are occasionally times when I enter a room where a woman was alone and I can see that my mere presence is making her very uncomfortable and she feels that she can't say/do anything. At those times I quickly excuse myself with a quick "Hello, goodbye" or something.

This really doesn't seem like such a tricky issue if you're just respectful and conscious of the discomfort of others.

This assumes you have the social skills and awareness of your surroundings to notice when you've made someone uncomfortable.

I'll often go to the break room with headphones on and make tea while I puzzle through some code I had been working on. I'm barely aware there are other people in the room.

> I'll often go to the break room with headphones on and make tea while I puzzle through some code I had been working on.

It's sometimes in those moments when you come across a solution you wouldn't have thought of at your desk. YMMV though.

> This assumes you have the social skills and awareness of your surroundings to notice when you've made someone uncomfortable.

Spot on. I rarely recognize I made people uncomfortable but reading all these discussions I guess I do :-/

OTOH, I try to be nice to everyone, -that way I should (theoretically) have less to worry about.

Respect...exactly right!

I've never had a problem and the respect is reciprocated for 20 years now in my career. I've never had to excuse myself either, if it's only 2 people in the room just start a damm conversation. Talking is really easier than you think.

That's exactly the 'interesting side effect' I was referring to. I try to compensate by 1) not interacting socially with most people at work, especially people who work for me (so there's not an in/out group) and 2) trying to make a conscious effort to have a good professional relationship with people I work with, as far as possible without it becoming social. IE I will have business discussions with everyone, but leave the personal anecdotes and social interaction at home. That leaves me being viewed as a little bit aloof and anti-social, which could be a problem except that I've always been viewed that way anyway so it comes naturally. But yeah, there are traps on both ends of that spectrum and littered through the middle and no clear cut solution.

I think it is pretty safe for a man to socialize with men and women at work, but you have to recognize signals that a person doesn't want to talk to you and find a gracious way to deal with that.

If an adult is unable to recognize those basic signals, what training options are available to get up-to-speed?

> I think it is pretty safe for a man to socialize with men and women at work, but you have to recognize signals that a person doesn't want to talk to you and find a gracious way to deal with that.

Really? Recognize the signals in the single most ambiguous pursuit in human nature?

Unless you're Brad Pitt, some women will find advances unwanted. Others will welcome them. One cannot differentiate that until after having made the, possibly unwanted, advance.

Is socializing the same as making advances for you? I agree, making advances is risky, and you probably shouldn't do it at work, or at the workplace of the person you're making advances towards.

> and you probably shouldn't do it at work

Why not? You spend 1/3+ of your life at work. You are more likely to meet a wider selection of people at work than you are through even your weak social network if you work for a company of any reasonable size.

There aren't hard and fast rules when social interactions come into play. Social interactions are, by nature, ambiguous and have lots of societal context.

Yes, there are bright lines which are obviously criminal, but, below that, it gets very murky, very quickly.

An advance doesn't have to be sexual or flirtatious in nature. It could be as simple as striking up a conversation with someone you've never talked to before or inviting someone out to a group activity.

I think that every person that I regularly interact with socially I have both offended and been offended by in some way. I suspect that that's just part of normal human interaction. But it seems like any offense from a man to a woman can be considered sexual harassment, which I would say makes those interactions dangerous.

Also note that I wouldn't blame women for this issue. It's really the fault of (mostly) men who are aggressively and shamelessly harassing women and putting everyone on edge.

> But it seems like any offense from a man to a woman can be considered sexual harassment

Have you considered that this is not in fact the case.

This is entirely because we have moved the locus of control toward those who may potentially be harassers in an effort to remove all liability from those who may potentially be harassed. This twisted logic means we can never find a real solution, just continue to patch issues in contrived ways that in turn create other problems.

This is also why we are told ludicrous things like "teach men not to rape" - eerily similar to obscenely inappropriate comments like to "teach the poor not to steal" or "teach blacks not to murder"; we have forgotten that progress requires all parties to be elevated.

There are just too many ambiguities in what is considered sexual harassment

Just as there are many ambiguities in what exactly constitutes a 'marginalized class,' which makes your intentionally giving special treatment to certain groups problematic.

I recognize that my position may keep me from being part of the problem but also prevents me from being a part of the solution because I won't be aware of problems or able to offer meaningful support. I'm not sure what else to do.

These are the truly negative and pernicious effects of outrage culture, and what is actually deserving of condemnation. It marginalizes thoughtful individuals such as yourself. Who feel they must constantly walk on eggshells, lest they be accosted by a twitter mob.

Yes individual instances of shitty behavior obviously need to be dealt with appropriately. But painting with hugely broad brushstrokes and marginalizing all men, or all white people, or whoever, as is done in this constant stream of 'think' pieces is terrible for our society.

Not to say there isn't some truth in some of these issues. But another negative effect of these panics, is that people get the message that it is better to err on the side of interpreting themselves as being a victim rather than not. So this constant media bombardment of this sort of thing actually is making whatever problem may be there worse.

>For example, it's not at all uncommon for me to comment to a male co-worker who comes in to work dressed up more than usual 'looking sharp, man!' or something along those lines. Would that be sexual harassment if I said that to a woman? Probably not on the face of it, but what if she has just (unbeknownst to me) endured harassment from another co-worker about her looks - then I could see my comment adding to the fire. Or what if I without thinking said something that implied that her dress would make her a more valuable employee or help her get that promotion or whatever. So, I just avoid it altogether.

I find the best policy is to not make any comments about other's appearance/weight. That topic is a minefield for all genders. There's exceptions to this policy - if you were a manager instructing a subordinate about appropriate dress for work for example. Or asking if there was a special occasion for them to get dressed up for but not commenting directly on their appearance.

I'm sure women appreciate you acting paranoid and terrified of accidentally interacting with them in the workplace.

Please consider reading the following:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-gray-zon...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7407280

I think men like you are a big part of the problem and a frustratingly difficult part to try to identify and combat. I have sympathy for the difficult position it puts you in, but your behavior de facto freezes women out and denies them opportunities to make critical connections that are a big part of the problem. I would rather see a world in which people were pretty meh about coworkers getting hot and heavy together and women and men could talk to each other comfortably than the situation we have now.

Best.

I think your word choice is poor here.

He is a human being with a reasonable position, especially if they have a family to support. I don't think its good to "identify" and "combat" people like this. In fact it seems dehumanizing when what we need is more empathy and understanding to get to root issues.

You are, no doubt, right. But there seems to be no path forward without offending someone. Simply being a woman in a man's world with an opinion seems to set off plenty of people. I do my best to be respectful, but there comes a point past which I can choose to be so respectful of the delicate sensibilities of men that I never say anything ever or I can risk what is often a shitshow no matter how carefully I word it.

Hopefully, the article I linked to says it better. I am the author. It did make the front page of HN when someone other than me chose to post it here. I believe it to be one of the more even handed approaches to the problem space.

> or I can risk what is often a shitshow no matter how carefully I word it.

I assure you, we feel the same way. This is a topic that I'm extremely uncomfortable speaking about, and usually use a throwaway.

I have invested some years of my life in trying to change that on HN. I feel I have seen progress here. I am reasonably pleased with the direction things are going.

I completely identify with the parent here - I'm a male, and I avoid even the appearance of close relationships with female colleagues. To be fair, that's not terribly difficult for me anyhow, as I'm not someone who socializes with colleagues of either gender often outside of work.

After much reflection, I agree that this behavior harms my female colleagues. However, I also believe that it harms my career opportunities in exactly the same manner. Just as they do not have the opportunity to build those closer relationships we me, I miss out on the same with them.

You worry about "putting your reputation on the line" but if you're really behaving like this you probably already got a reputation of somebody who has a problem with women. It will hurt your career in the end.

So maybe you don't talk about yourself at work, have no doubt that others talk about you.

I must admit that I was genuinely surprised by this. I have worked in Astronomy (as a technologist) for over a decade, and I have never witnessed this sort of behaviour. Of course, I am male. There are, however, plenty of assholes in the world including in academia, and I have noticed that universities tend not to want to rock the boat, so I suppose that it is not entirely surprising that these things are occurring.

My wife is an academic (biology). Thankfully, so far as I know, she has never had to deal with sexual harassment. She did have an experience of dealing with an extreme bully during her PhD (who threatened her career and the like; pro-tip: individual assholes generally don't have the power to destroy your career). The university was not at all supportive, but her PhD advisor was, so things generally worked out in the end, but it was a lot of stress along the way. Besides that, she has suffered the occasional subtle discrimination for being a woman or a mother, generally from older males in the field, but all in all, I don't think she would say that harassment is rife. I think she would pin the problems on individual assholes rather than a systemic problem in science. You do need to look out for yourself, however, as the institutions generally won't, and I do find that a bit sad.

Biology is one of the most female-friendly STEM fields out there. I've met female biologists, plenty of them. The article describes astrophysics as 90%, 95% male at many of these universities. I think it's likely that the issues aren't quite as systemic in fields which are a little more diverse, but that doesn't mean the issue isn't a cultural, systemic one in astrophysics.

I get what you are saying; however, I have not witnessed this behaviour (perhaps, because I am male). If it was really a cultural, systemic problem in astrophysics, I feel like I would have noticed. [EDIT: I don't mean to imply that the problem is not real, only that I am surprised and disappointed]

As for the diversity of the field, I believe it is getting more diverse. The gender ratio of graduate students in astronomy is apparently about 50/50. Hopefully, over the next several years the numbers in faculty positions will improve also. I have worked with a great number of highly capable women because as a technologist, I often wind up working with the graduate students rather than the principle investigators.

Astronomy is currently going through a series of very high-profile covered-up sexual harassment cases. Have you not heard about them?

http://www.nature.com/news/astronomy-roiled-again-by-sexual-...

I don't know why you think you would notice sexual harassment happening. The obvious explanation for incidents like the ones we're talking about is that abusers are good at hiding it from the people they aren't abusing!

I realized I wrote a wall of text in response. I'm not picking on you, but I think you brought up a point that I think is really worth responding to in depth, because I felt that way in one point in time, and I've slowly realized how wrong I was.

I used to believe that I would surely notice if I was in an environment that fostered harassment. Over time, I've realized that harassment is a problem, but I was just looking for the wrong things. Harassment doesn't really manifest itself in a way that can be made clear from a single objective measurement.

There is a lot of research about sexism that really reveals what is not obvious to me, as a man, about how sexism affects women:

When talking on the phone in a customer support role, women are more likely to be yelled at.

Men tend to talk for a disproportionately large amount of a conversation.

Assertive women are viewed much more negatively than assertive men by both men and women.

Studies like these made me re-evaluate how harassment presents itself. I used to think that it was obvious, like wolf-whistles on the street. Harassment is more like living in a world where everyone is just a little (or a lot) bit shittier to you. It's a lot easier to ignore, because you've had the same experiences.

As an example, I currently am one of three guys out of 25 people at my current company. We are a non-profit, and we have about 800k constituents, 100k of whom give in any given year. We all field a lot of calls from constituents who aren't happy for whatever reason. In the two years I've worked here, I've been yelled at once. However, the women who work here get yelled at weekly, regardless of their position.

I majored in biology, and took a ton of CS in school. Bio was mostly women, and the CS program had barely a handful. As I look back, I've realized that the women in the programs really needed to present a lot more evidence for any other their proposals than men ever did.

In both cases, it's really easy to dismiss criticisms with the platitude "Those things happen to everyone." They do, but they happen more to women. These little things add up, and teach women that their point of view is easily discounted, even when the evidence is incontrovertible. Reporting sexual harassment, even to someone you trust, is a huge gamble. All of their life experience points to the fact that they won't be taken seriously, especially if the person they are reporting it to is a male. They are way more likely to be seen as not being a team-player for reporting it, even if they are 100% in the right.

Long story short: in order to see harassment, it's incredibly important to listen to what women are saying. It's also really important to listen to what you are saying in response, and whether you are actually listening.

>In both cases, it's really easy to dismiss criticisms with the platitude "Those things happen to everyone."

see the majority of the comments in this post for examples.

> wolf-whistles on the street.

What do you think can be done to tackle this?

One of the my buddies got punched and called a terrorist on public transit laste year. He reported it to public transit authority but they ignored it :\

To tackle wolf-whistles, or to tackle misconceptions about sexism?

I'll direct my answer towards tackling misconceptions about sexism, because I think it solves the problem of overt-sexism, and I believe it also generalizes to issues of prejudice in general. I could write thousands of words on the topic, but for the sake of time and space I'll try to keep it brief.

I think it is important to understand that almost everyone believes they are doing what is best. An individual's worldview is formed over the course of the entire life. It's important to understand that you probably won't change anyone's mind today. A few things that I think are really important to keep in mind:

Listen to what the other person is saying. Ask them about their experiences. They will tell you why they believe what they believe.

Respect the other person. Don't contradict their experiences. Trust them to be a person who is capable of using reason.

Don't take the moral high ground. It's easier to relate to a flawed person, and nobody wants to deal with an insufferable asshole.

Appeal to their intuition. People will outright reject anything that doesn't make sense. You can't throw facts that contradict an individual's life experience and expect them to accept those facts. Instead, tell a story and demonstrate how that situation represents both their position and your position.

Don't use jargon. Don't use the word feminism, racism, micro-aggressions, or privilege. People have their own understanding of what those words mean.

Give them ownership of their own mind. Leave them with tools to evaluate the world. Let them search for evidence for your position and for their own.

edit: I just saw the new line you added. I'd say the person who punched him did a pretty terrible job of handling that. Your buddy probably thinks that the other person was the irrational one, when really both people behaved in a way that was internally rational.

If it happened to my buddy, I'd say something like, "well that reaction was over the top. You definitely didn't deserve to get hit." After giving them some time to blow off steam, I'd follow up with something like "Well, I can kind of see why she was mad though. I know I appreciate [this is where you relate] compliments on my physical appearance, because I don't hear them very often, and I don't feel like I'm always valued for my looks. Women are valued on their looks first and foremost though, so you are kind of reinforcing that belief that they exist as an aesthetic object, like a painting or something."

They probably don't really understand at this point, so I like to flip it around with something that they've personally complained to me about.

That's probably a terrible example. It's really important to relate to people on an individual level.

On the flip side, you will see exactly what you are looking for.

...and right on cue we have this guy

Confirmation bias man, strikes again!

* saves the day?

I understand what you are saying. It isn't wrong to judge the claims of other people with a critical eye. It is wrong when you don't turn the same critical eye to your own views or work. In life, as in science, it is important to design your observations so that they measure what your intend to measure.

Based on your description, it sounds like your wife has experienced a decent amount of harassment. (I include that extreme bullying in it.) When a number of individual assholes are allowed to continue being assholes, and you need to have a "look out for yourself attitude", that is a systemic problem.

I'm genuinely curious what your wife's take is - she may see it a little differently from you.

I always wonder at what point does bullying and the like become genuine illegal harassment? I have worked with assholes who bullied and acted like children, but I dealt with it and moved on. If my wife had worked with the same person does that make the bully's actions now something that is illegal?

I've done some reading on this and it is never quite clear. It seems like if the asshole is an asshole to everyone it is fine. Only if they pick a protected class to be an asshole to does it become a problem.

Presumably the law has the standard for all genders, though in practice they tend to not be gender neutral in their use of pronouns, and courts have expectations of what is acceptable largely defined by traditional gender roles.

I would wish that bullying that is illegal when directed at your wife is illegal when directed at you (modulo gender specific forms). In practice I'm sure it depends on how manly you are compared with her.

I said she hadn't experienced sexual harassment. You are correct that the bullying constituted harassment. I was not trying to say that it doesn't exist; I was just trying to offer my thoughts on the article. The title says, "For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare." I have worked in Astronomy my entire career, but I have not seen it at all (perhaps, because I am male). My wife works in a different STEM field, and while she has experienced harassment, possibly due to her gender, it was not sexual harassment. For the record, I believe the stories in the article, and I am very saddened by them.

My point is that the harassment your wife has experienced may in fact be sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is not limited to harassment of a sexual nature. If the harassment was because she is a woman, that falls under sexual harassment as well: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm

Although the site you linked is titled "Sexual Harassment", it appears to me to be talking about harassment in general

> Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.

Even if I am misreading this, I would rather call it "sexist harassment" to make clear that is not itself of a sexual nature.

The very next paragraph:

"Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general."

This is what the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission considers "sexual harassment". You may not like these definitions, but this is the government's definition of "sexual harassment".

You can define anything to be anything when you're in the outrage porn business, but unrealistic descriptions meant to stoke emotion don't help to solve actual problems, they just make for more outrage porn.

You're implying that the US government is in the "outrage porn business".

Not the gov but you.

The paragraph you quoted says "harassment doesn't have to be of sexual nature" and you are using it to support the claim that "sexual harassment doesn't have to be of sexual nature".

And that paragraph is under the title "Sexual Harassment". It is clear to me that when they say "harassment", they mean "sexual harassment". Otherwise, the sentence would not be under that title. You're free to disagree, but your disagreement has no bearing on the laws we operate under. (Assuming you are in the US.)

The exact paragraph you quoted from section on "sexual harassment" is copy-pasted from section on "sex-based discrimination". And it's not law, but some guidance/advice/faq/whatever.

You are overinterpreting this thing.

I think I am interpreting this thing in a straight-forward manner. This is the part of the government responsible for ensuring equal employment opportunities telling the public that it does not limit "sexual harassment" to harassment of a sexual nature.

I'm, personally, strongly inclined to discount the opinions on bullying and harassment and the like offered by someone who uses the phrase "outrage porn" unironically.

His wife experienced gender discrimination, not sexual harassment.

Interesting. Looking at the kind of things people say in online games, almost every negative comment falls under sexual harassment. Homophobic comments, "you suck", comments about genitalia, neck beards, a comment about the sexual nature for which the person was born from...

About the only type of harassment that do not qualify under sexual harassment is those that insult intelligence, ability to perform a task, and racism.

>almost every negative comment falls under sexual harassment //

This seems like a confusion between using swear/curse words and things being sexual. People swearing often say words that are also used to describe sexual acts by the use is akin to using homophones.

"You wanker!" isn't sexual, for example, unless there's particular context to make it that way.

I understand where you’re coming from, but the same argument was, and is, made when defending the usage of the word “Gay” as a general disparaging adjective. In a way, the people making that argument, and you when making yours, are right in that many or perhaps most people don’t mean anything sexual in using the phrase¹. But this does not mean that it should therefore be OK to call something “Gay” or labeling a person a “Wanker”. Using those words in a disparaging fashion does lead to a normalization and tacit approval of homophobic and sex-shaming attitudes, respectively.

① I once saw someone trying to establish the term and spelling “Ghey” as a non-sexually associated disparaging word.

At the same time, language changes all the time. It didn't mean the same thing when my kids called something "radical" as in my day. Modern culture has a way of burning up useful words, when they become PC unacceptable. Remember when "idiot", "moron" and "retarded" were technical terms with no emotional baggage? No? You were born too late for that.

Its probably different when words that used to be disparaging become less so (wanker, gay). Because there remain a generation that are still offended by them, we should probably lighten up on them especially in mixed company.

> Because there remain a generation that are still offended by them, we should probably lighten up on them

You’re missing the point. That is not the reason. The reason why one shouldn’t use the term “Gay”, even if one doesn’t mean anything actually homophobic by it, is that by using the term, one encourages actual homophobes and reinforces their belief that their hatred and/or fear of homosexuals is normal. You might think that everyone who hears you knows you don’t mean “Gay” as a homophobic slur, but I can assure you — you would be wrong.

> Based on your description, it sounds like your wife has experienced a decent amount of harassment.

It seems to matter quite a lot to people whether harassment is characterized as gender-based or not, and we don't have any apparent evidence that it is.

Though I've never really been sure why being a jerk to someone because they're a woman should be any different than being a jerk in exactly the same way for some entirely different (yet no doubt equally stupid) reason.

Your last question is a good one, and the pithy answer is, because it's against the law. But the real answer is that it's against the law because gender discrimination and sexual harassment (and a single act can be both) are such a systemic problem that we had to create laws to address it specifically.

Which then end up being less effective because they require proving the offender's state of mind.

I'm genuinely curious what your wife's take is - she may see it a little differently from you.

So, I just had lunch with my wife, and she pretty much agrees with my take. She views her main problem as the act of a single, albeit misogynist, individual, and not a symptom of a systemic problem. Moreover, she expressed surprise (like myself) at the suggestion that astronomy is full of sexual harassment. She can't imagine my colleagues or former colleagues being like that. That is not to say that problems we can't see don't exist, of course.

I wonder where I can read about frank male experiences in a female-dominated field, such as nursing, or teaching elementary school.

I have seen women in superior positions comment on the attractiveness of men in work meetings in ways that would get the superior in a lot of trouble were the roles reversed, and then go on to justify and defend it.

My husband has spent most of his career as an association executive, which means he's often the only man in a room full of women colleagues. He's had some eye-rolling experiences. We keep thinking we should start a joint blog.

I've got an anecdote!

Back in college, I worked a part-time job caring for high-functioning individuals with developmental disabilities, in a home health care environment. There was probably one male for every twenty females on staff.

There was an incident where I was working overnight and my manager hadn't filled prescriptions during her day shift (she was the only one with the authority to do so). One of the residents, having not received their medication at the usual time, was having panic attacks. The situation elevated to the point of my having to call paramedics.

I'd followed the chain-of-command. First, I tried contacting my co-workers, but they couldn't help. Next, I called my manager, but she ignored the calls. Then, I tried her supervisor (a man), and he was so angry about a lowly night worker contacting him during off-hours that I got nowhere. This all happened over hours, not minutes; the resident had become violent and was quite ill (not sure if it was withdrawals, anxiety, or both). I was out of options, so I called the hospital.

The next day, I arrived at work where my manager, her boss, and someone from HR, were waiting for me in the office. They had drawn up paperwork outlining the reason for my dismissal. It was sexual harassment. Apparently, my manager ignored my calls because I was infatuated with her and called constantly. The whole fiasco the night before was just my way of getting her attention.

I had never once contacted her at home. I did not like her on a personal level, let alone find her attractive. I was already in a happy/healthy relationship (15 years later, I'm still in that relationship).

This event ruined me emotionally, and was one of the worst experiences of my life. The looks people gave me that day made me want to crawl into a hole and die, I didn't want to leave the house for months.

Another kicker is that I was the only person in the entire company that was licensed to distribute and handle medication; a qualification that I'd picked up at a previous job, that had helped me land this position. In the eyes of the state, my manager should never have been in charge of handling prescriptions. The rabbit hole deepens.

About a year later, I heard through the grape-vine that my old manager had been promoted to a senior administrative position.

Frankly, I'd find it more surprising if you had witnessed this sort of behavior. Put yourself in the place of a harasser. Are you going to say or do something creepy in front of the decent guys you work with? Or are you going to pick a time when you and your victim are alone?

It's hard to notice when there's so few women in a given field. The victims also often don't have an interest in publicizing incidents - most communities are small and you can't risk burning bridges.

I'd also guess the nature of injustices has changed: since everyone has gotten the message by now, they avoid the prototypical sexist comments in groups (not entirely, though. PIs with tenure have little reason to change and I've exchanged looks of disbelieve with colleagues on more than one occasion).

And yet people are getting annoyed by attempts to change the situation. Sometimes, I even understand their frustration with some of the more misguided ideas of postmodern feminism. What's more surprising is the level of hate people can muster for so-called 'swj twitter-activists etc' considering the minimal inconveniences they inflict – I vividly remember the absolute despair a good friend (smart, well-educated, ambitious but conscientious) experienced when she realized that she would never have a chance of advancement in the rather conservative profession she had chosen. As in: the boss-boss told her point-blank 'I know everyone in this business and you're never get anywhere as long as I'm alive. Why don't you go into nursing?'.

> she has suffered the occasional subtle discrimination

That's what we like to tell ourselves. Philosopher George Yancy:

What if I told you that I’m sexist? Well, I am. Yes. I said it and I mean just that. I have watched my male students squirm in their seats when I’ve asked them to identify and talk about their sexism. There are few men, I suspect, who would say that they are sexists, and even fewer would admit that their sexism actually oppresses women. Certainly not publicly, as I’ve just done. No taking it back now.

To make things worse, I’m an academic, a philosopher. I’m supposed to be one of the “enlightened” ones. Surely, we are beyond being sexists.

Yet, I refuse to remain a prisoner of the lies that we men like to tell ourselves — that we are beyond the messiness of sexism and male patriarchy, that we don’t oppress women. Let me clarify. This doesn’t mean that I intentionally hate women or that I desire to oppress them. It means that despite my best intentions, I perpetuate sexism every day of my life.

As a sexist, I have failed women. I have failed to speak out when I should have. I have failed to engage critically and extensively their pain and suffering in my writing. I have failed to transcend the rigidity of gender roles in my own life. I have failed to challenge those poisonous assumptions that women are “inferior” to men or to speak out loudly in the company of male philosophers who believe that feminist philosophy is just a nonphilosophical fad. I have been complicit with, and have allowed myself to be seduced by, a country that makes billions of dollars from sexually objectifying women, from pornography, commercials, video games, to Hollywood movies. I am not innocent.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/dear-white-a...

I investigated Vice for over six months for a book. Their media is so bad I regularly call it a liar's cult.

It should be stated that Vice has no fact-checking process. They also rarely issue corrections. Read everything from them with caution.

Here is an article where I fact-checked two documentaries with links to other fact checks.

https://notvice.com/fact-checking-vice-a-fiction-2d482100116...

Ok, but for this story Vice is mostly recycling facts and stories reported elsewhere. It's a fact that Geoff Marcy was disciplined for harassing women. It's a fact that Christian Ott was disciplined for harassing women. It's a fact that women scientists are speaking on the record about these things.

So I don't see how your comment is relevant to the article we're discussing.

It's relevant - maybe it's not all true, or recycled fact, so the repute of vice is relevant.

Did the article really describe a 'constant nightmare' or was the article more an example of anectdata.

I would argue that demonizing STEM fields with sensational language does more harm than good.

I don't think Vice has a monopoly on clickbait headlines.

I'm not quite sure what you're advocating. The reporting isn't original and the headline is click-bait.

I consider yc news a place for elevated discussion not for elevating BS.

It sounds terrible. And yet working in he unrelated field of IT I haven't seen it.

I have seen a bunch of assholes in high positions though and have to put up with their idiotic demands and abuse.

So when I read these articles I wonder if it's the same people and how they translate treating male workers like garbage into treating female workers like garbage. It's not misogyny; it's welcome to the workforce and dealing with people above you who are neither competent not deserving of their positions and their power trips and borderline psychopathy.

What do you think? Or are there really nice bosses who are just complete assholes to women with zero crossover?

Or are there really nice bosses who are just complete assholes to women?

My friend's ex-boss was like that. All the guys at the company thought he was the best boss ever and all the women hated him with a passion.

The opposite absolutely exists. I've had female bosses, professors, etc. that all the women loved and admired, while all the men agreed she was out to get them.

Are you certain of that? In my experience, women superficially will say glowing and great things about other women, but when the honesty comes out, there's vitriolic hatred.

Women have a far more sophisticated sense of situation-appropriate speech. Men think of it as "two-faced," but it's just Machiavellian maneuvering. When taken at face value, it's easy to mistake women as having great respect and love for one-another.

I get where you're coming from, but I'm pretty sure in most of the cases I'm thinking about. Say, with women I was close enough to that we could have a great time privately talking shit about other professors, yet when it came to the "man hating" one almost all genuinely seemed to like or at least respect her.

EDIT: I was just thinking about how this professor would grade men worse than women for essentially the same answers and realized that you could make a pretty compelling case for early education (which is predominately staffed by women) being biased against boys, and cite the greater number of women that go on to enter higher education as a potential consequence of it. I wonder why nobody raises a stink about that.

The female boss in one place I worked seem to hate all the women who worked under her, but generally loved the guys.

This seems to be my general experience. Female boss/female employee seems to be the most volatile combination.

To be fair, from my viewpoint, most of them seemed to be actually acting fairly. If a guy had done something similar, any one of them would have ripped him apart, too.

I don't have any explanation.

yea it really depends on the person. I've had female bosses that went out of their way to harass men because they knew they could get away with it (HR didn't believe the men), and I've also had female bosses who were threatened by younger women, and harassed the heck out me.

Yes there are people that act just fine to people they believe are capable or otherwise worthy who are total assholes to those they deem unworthy of their time/effort/care.

Yes sexism really exists and that line of worthiness/unworthiness may be drawn at your genitals.

In many cases this is not pure sexism. Often people have a few 'exceptions' for some highly competent people.

In many cases it's closer to hazing where people can be incredibly nasty to people they think are acceptable targets. And then after a transition treat as part of their inner circle.

Not that I think either are acceptable, but it's important to try and understand behaviors you want to change.

I did say 'may', and I said that for a reason.

> And yet working in he unrelated field of IT I haven't seen it.

The article notes various reasons for this. It gets covered up, abusers are generally cautious about where/when they do it, some people don't perceive it as abuse, etc.

Take Bill Cosby as an example. Decades of consistent reports of behavior (to the point where 30 Rock was making pointed jokes about it years ago), dozens of victims, legal settlements, and he's still got plenty of people who won't believe it happened defending him.

> Bill Cosby as an example.

Rich and wealthy people can cover up a lot. See Michael Jackson. It doesn't mean that child abuse is rampant among musicians.

I also work in IT and I share the GP question. If it's as rampant as some articles and people make it out to be then the harassers are getting very good at covering it up.

They might be good at covering it up. Or you're not actively looking, and so it's not in your sphere of awareness. Or the coworkers to whom it's happening don't trust you enough to discuss the problem with you, and so it's not in your sphere of awareness.

I'm a pretty average straight white dude, but I have seen this happen, right in front of me, at multiple jobs, and absolutely nothing happened except when I spoke up and started something over it. The targets didn't say anything, because the power imbalance (real or perceived; I tend to think the latter, but then, I'm not the one being attacked and made to feel powerless in the first place) was too great.

Unfortunately, child abuse is, in fact, rampant among musicians. Want to try a different argument?

"sexual harassment for nearly over a decade, with student allegations of unwanted massages, groping, and kissing"

I think that is much more than being an asshole. As a straight man, I don't even know if it's possible to make me feel this uncomfortable in the workplace.

I've worked at a company that clearly had a brogrammer, hostile environment vibe, which the people in power were simply not conscious of.

I'm happy to report that over several years, attitudes improved, more women got hired, and the environment became much better.

It took effort and strategic issue framing from those of us who wanted to see change, and it took flexibility from those who decided to become part of the change -- but it happened.

Yes. People exist who may seem like really great bosses and nice people but are also aggressive and entitled with their female coworkers. It is important not to think of sexual harassment as only the skeevy creep who purposely takes advantage of women he has power over (although these people definitely exist too). Women have a right to work without being sexualized at all. Many times it is well meaning, otherwise good people who over step professional boundaries. They don't make an advance expecting to make the woman feel uncomfortable, but that doesn't make it ok either!

> are also aggressive and entitled with their female coworkers.

and more generally any one deemed of inferior status and/or easy to prey on (women commonly being slotted in these categories either way), the number of people who will seem perfectly nice around their colleagues but will abuse staff (e.g. serving or cleaning agents, or secretaries) at the drop of a hat is astounding and disheartening.

Yet something like 30% of office workers have had office romances. Are you going to tell all of those people they should not have flirted?

Depending on the circumstances, asking someone out for a coffee is one thing. Asking them five times is almost certainly harassment.

> Asking them five times is almost certainly harassment.

Yet this behavior is romanticised is popular culture, and has been from the dawn of time up to and including the present: Oddyseus and Helen of Troy, Shakespeare's "The taming of the shrew", tons of Fred Astaire movies, as well as modern movies like "Ghost", "Life is beautiful", "Chasing Amy", TV shows like "Sex and the city"... I could go on. Lucikly I don't need to, since TVtropes has a site dedicated to this character (the "dogged nice guy"). And note that many of these are targeted at, and very popular with, women (who are usually at the receiving end of the initially-unwarranted attention). Apparently this behaviour can walk a thin line between illegal and very very romantic.

Thank you for not linking to TV Tropes. I've lost a great many hours to that site. :)

Yes, it was a deliberate non-link ;)

(Oblig. http://xkcd.com/609 )

It goes both ways. Numerous female pop stars, and in entertainment in general, angling and fishing to steal away the guy from his relationship because she KNOWS they are meant to be together... She doesn't hear "No thanks" and go away.

As I recall it, Odysseus was just one of many suitors of Helen and in fact had to be strong-armed into joining the Greek invasion. Might you perhaps be thinking of Penelope?

(Also "The Taming of the Shrew" is firmly in the "oh fuck no" category of 21st century society)

Eh, I think restraint beyond "don't ask someone out five times, like a creep" is called for. I don't know of you've ever had anything ... distinctive about your appearance -- really thick glasses, unusually tall or short, uncommon facial hair style, hypnotic voice -- but attention, even non-creepy compliments ("your beard is awesome, can I touch it?") get really draining after awhile. Each individual's interest isn't a problem, it's the never-ending trickle that just wears away at you.

It's not just that someone might have to deal with an overwhelming amount of unwanted interest from a single person, but that the aggregated polite inquiries from dozens or hundreds of interested coworkers and colleagues could add up to something overwhelming. It's like littering.

So while being in a relationship with a co-worker may be fine, starting a relationship with a co-worker is tricky. It's like why you shouldn't hit on wait staff or flight attendants: they are there because it is there job. Your co-workers come into work every day for the same reason.

They have a right to, but they can waive the right voluntarily.

If they're flirting with someone who they can fire, or hit with a damaging performance review? (Or an unjustly flattering one, for that matter.) Absolutely I'd tell them to knock it off. The possibility of things sometimes going right in that sort of situation isn't worth the cost.

If this was your friends who worked out, would you feel happy for them or scold them for setting a bad example for everyone else?

I agree that once it has worked out for folks, it's hard to say, "You shouldn't have done that." But aren't there still costs? Everyone else in the company now gets to wonder whether the lower-ranking person's raises and promotions are due to merit or just because they're in a relationship with the boss.

Beyond that, the bigger issue to my eye is that it doesn't always work out. If your boss flirts with you and you aren't interested, that puts you in an awkward position. What if saying no makes them upset with you, or just negatively colors their perception of your work in the future? (Human beings being what we are, it's hard for a negative feeling about someone in one context to be entirely compartmentalized away from our judgement about them in another.)

Also, whether it works out or not: If romantic attachments between supervisors and subordinates are an accepted part of the culture of this workplace, what are the odds that the boss's attraction to you factored into your hire? Are your colleagues aware that the boss is attracted to you? Does that undermine their confidence that you got your position based on talent? Does it undermine your confidence that you got the position for the right reasons? (Might the boss think that you owe them some sort of sexual payoff for the job? There's a comforting thought as you try to do your job.)

I'm not saying that any of those suspicions or worries are justified in most cases! I'm sure that most people do a decent job of separating their work responsibilities and their personal lives, even in these sorts of circumstances. But a culture that accepts supervisor-employee relationships invites this class of concerns in a way that a culture that prohibits them would not. (And maybe my thoughts here really are influenced by thinking about this in a grad student context: Ph.D. advisors have a truly astounding amount of power over their students' futures.)

All of these scenarios are possible but often they are presented as a certainty. This speaks more towards fears and feelings; I'd be interested to see studies that claim most office romances turn out badly.

People are being trained to make these leaps even if there are no facts to back them up. You might _feel_ your boss is treating you differently because she asked you out, but should we all adjust behavior to accommodate _potential_ negative impressions in a lowest-common-denominator kind of way (You seem to agree that we should not...)? These discussions tend to assume the absolute worst outcome regardless of incidence.

Some quick googling suggests 30% of office romances lead to marriage. Even if that stat is wildly inaccurate, it still feels bizarre to tell so many people they should have taken one for the team (not had a relationship).

It feels to me like you're conflating general "office romances" with the more narrow "supervisor/employee romances". I've been focused entirely on the latter (which fits the main topic here: senior faculty members pursuing sexual or romantic relationships with students, often in their own labs).

My reason for preferring an outright ban on supervisor/employee relationships is that they can have nasty effects on the entire workplace culture, that they can be exploitative or feel exploitative, and that based on many reports neither of these effects is particularly rare. Good leadership can't only be fair, it has to also cultivate a belief among employees that it is fair.

Is there a cost to this in lost opportunities for positive relationships? Absolutely. But even the highest-level executive won't have more than a few thousand people declared "off limits" to them by this: surely that's a drop in the bucket compared to the total population of the cities or communities where they live.

I understand; even in the case of "power imbalance" relationships, I'm still asking the question: What is the evidence these are primarily negative relationships for the participants?

When you read about these, the authors almost exclusively present it as the person in the dominant position somehow taking advantage of the other. Are you equal, though, in your condemnation of e.g. the flirty student successfully seducing her professor? This happens. Is your message to her that she has no idea what she is doing, and that she's setting back gender equality by doing so? The answer is usually dodged because admitting the situation happens (both participants being into it) pollutes the desired narrative- That one partner has no agency by dint of the power imbalance.

re: your 2nd paragraph, can you provide some links? You present it as common knowledge. What's the actual incidence of negative outcomes? If it's, say, 15%, that means 85% have positive outcomes, and you want to tell those people to go pound sand. I find that unreasonable.

Years ago, I had intense debates with my mother about the Monica Lewinsky case. I made essentially the same point you're making here: that focusing on the power imbalance stripped Lewinsky of her agency as an adult woman. My mother's arguments that Bill Clinton had too much relative power (and was too much older) for the relationship to be reasonable didn't really sink in for me at the time.

As I've learned more about feminism in recent years, I've found myself thinking about Clinton and Lewinsky again, and I'm much more on her side now. (I still don't entirely buy the age-based concern that she raised.) Even if the relationship was entirely consensual and entirely initiated by Lewinsky and they were both happy about it, that still doesn't mean that it was healthy for the morale of their workplace, for all the reasons I listed before (quite apart from Kenneth Starr). I don't put primary blame on Lewinsky for that (though as an adult she ought to have known better): as the "boss" in the situation, it was Clinton's responsibility to turn her down, at least until he was out of office or she no longer worked for the federal government.

As for the flirty student seducing the professor, it takes two to tango. Speaking as a professor who's been pretty clearly flirted with at least once, I can tell you that I had no trouble at all indicating my lack of interest. I'm not condemning her for "setting back gender equality", but it was blindingly clear to me as the person on top of the power imbalance that anything other than a professional relationship would absolutely call my objectivity in the class into question. (In that particular case it didn't help that our broader conversation that day was about her concerns about her grade, but I would have had the same issues even if she'd had a solid A.) If a pairing like that were truly meant to be, the student would be welcome to come back and make a proposition after commencement. In the meantime, I can assure you that having my undergrads be "off limits" romantically doesn't feel like an undue burden on my love life. (Admittedly, I've been married the whole time I've been a professor. But the point still stands.)

Re: your last paragraph, about my 2nd paragraph: The original article that this whole thread is responding to is literally a collection of quotes and stories from women who found this sort of environment miserable and want it to change. If that's not enough for you, I don't think me Googling to find you more examples is likely to change your mind.

It is ridiculous for outsiders to stick their noses into consensual relationships engaged in by adults. If I were Lewinsky or any other woman you might theoretically be addressing, I'd be highly annoyed at your patronizing "Oh honey, I know you wanted to but he should have saved you from yourself" kind of attitude.

Clinton morally erred by breaking his vows to his wife, but if we set that aside, he did not do anything wrong by the simple act of having sex with Lewinsky. Let's assume, though, that the power differential argument _is_ valid- Who _could_ he engage in a relationship with, being President? Not politically powerful women, because his power is always going to be greater. Maybe other world leaders only? Only world leaders in the G8? He has no peers.

The student/professor example has a few _practical_ concerns regarding why you might want to avoid that situation and you've laid those out, and I agree. But ethically there would be no cause for objection unless actual grade massaging was occurring. That's not a given. In other words, appearance of impropriety is a practical objection, not an ethical objection. I'll zing any professor for taking advantage, express or implied, of one of her students but I will not automatically assume something shady is happening without evidence.

Anecdotes are not data. If we can show that the majority of these relationships are negative, that's a stronger case, but still not worth blanket-ruling the exceptions out of existence.

At best you get a relationship with an improper power dynamic embedded in it. I can't imagine any workplace would even allow that to continue.

I would ask why the hell you're presenting such a rare and convoluted scenario as something that we should be treating like the norm.

Mature adults stop flirting when it is clear the other party is not interested.

Office romances are fine. Even in the military, relationships between coworkers are accepted. It’s part of life. What’s not accepted is hitting on or dating your subordinates. One, it’s inappropriate since the subordinate may feel forced to comply with the advances for the sake of his or her career. And two, even when it works out and isn’t harassment, team dynamics are about to go into the toilet. Who gets the next promotion? Who gets the next good deal assignment? When the boss is dating one of the team members, any decision will be suspect. The whole thing is entirely unprofessional. An office romance between consenting coworkers is different from harassing/dating people you have power over.

We are in a bad way when one's subjective "feelings" determine the order of the day. There is a POSSIBILITY that one might FEEL they owe something (regardless of the reality)... So therefore, we need to guard against what may very well be an outlier case by restricting what the majority of people who do not have these feelings can do.

if your bosses are groping you sexually, then they are sexual harassers, it doesn't matter what gender you are. If by "their idiotic demands and abuse", it's asking you on dates / groping you / etc., I wouldn't really classify that as "welcome to the workforce", it's harassment.

That's not harassment, that's assault.

> So when I read these articles I wonder if it's the same people and how they translate treating male workers like garbage into treating female workers like garbage. It's not misogyny; it's welcome to the workforce and dealing with people above you who are neither competent not deserving of their positions and their power trips and borderline psychopathy.

I think what the issue is when it comes to the male boss/female employee dynamic is those power trips frequently take on a sexual dynamic in private.

> What do you think? Or are there really nice bosses who are just complete assholes to women with zero crossover?

I know one manager I used to work with who seemed nice but literally every single hire he has made has been an asian female.

He also was the only one besides me with an office with essentially no windows. [i.e. You close the door, no one can see in.] However, I never close my door for that reason while he does so all the time.

I think that was a lawsuit waiting to happen and I've said as much. However, my concerns were basically ignored since the one who confided in me that he does that sort of thing was terrified of losing her job since this was the third job she has had in 2 years [She is extremely attractive and had a similar problem at the previous jobs she got out of college]. She started carrying pepper spray instead.

I think what the issue is when it comes to the male boss/female employee dynamic is those power trips frequently take on a sexual dynamic in private.

Dominance is messily tied into sexuality. This plays out in school locker rooms and boarding school dormitories.

I know one manager I used to work with who seemed nice but literally every single hire he has made has been an asian female.

So what? In itself, this shouldn't be a significant factor. Please explain this: Do you think for some reason that asian females are somehow more enticing or vulnerable? Just how large a sample size are we talking here? Is his department a dozen asian women? Twenty?

> So what? In itself, this shouldn't be a significant factor.

1) He is clearly hiring based on a fetish he has.

2) They were hired to replace male, white, african-american, or hispanic members of his department over a period of ~2 years. The area is almost entirely a white and/or hispanic population so there is no way this is coincidence.

3) The odds of a guy rolling the same 20 sided die 12 times and always coming up with the same number is highly improbable. Roughly 5% of the applicants were female and Asian. I somehow doubt the most competent were always in that 5%.

4) Its a baker's dozen (13).

1) He is clearly hiring based on a fetish he has.

That's a pretty strong, even in terms of your analysis. Would you have thought he had a fetish if all of his hires were black men?

> That's a pretty strong, even in terms of your analysis.

You do understand the probability of the strongest hire in 12 separate rolls of the die being female and asian is absurdly small right?

We are talking thousandths of a percentage point here. The odds of that being a "natural" distribution is absurd.

Similarly, I know from one of them that he has engaged in the sort of sexual harassment behavior I'd expect from a guy who hired on a fetish.

> Would you have thought he had a fetish if all of his hires were black men?

If one of them mentioned sexual harassment and he was living in an area where they were a single digit percentage of the population? Yes.

You do understand the probability of the strongest hire in 12 separate rolls of the die being female and asian is absurdly small right?

We are talking thousandths of a percentage point here. The odds of that being a "natural" distribution is absurd.

There are a bunch of places that hire out of whack to the natural distribution of the population.

If one of them mentioned sexual harassment

That's much stronger evidence in combination. But I think it's weird you led with the population distribution in your account, not the reported behavior.

> That's much stronger evidence in combination. But I think it's weird you led with the population distribution in your account, not the reported behavior.

I wasn't expecting someone to argue that it was reasonable to have a homogeneous population of hires on a gender/race axis.

> There are a bunch of places that hire out of whack to the natural distribution of the population.

I've never encountered one IRL that was homogeneous of a female minority hired by a white male.

Can you provide examples of this happening on the scale you state?

Can you provide examples of this happening on the scale you state?

I find it telling that you were assuming I was talking about female minorities. Reread.

Why don't you provide examples rather than insisting I read your intentions in vague statements?

I was discussing the context of my comment, not the world in general.

So once again:

Please provide examples where homogeneity on both the gender and race axis occurs so frequently this could be considered a reasonable event?

And the boss is attracted to that gender?

EDIT:

> There are a bunch of places that hire out of whack to the natural distribution of the population.

That is what I was talking about xD

Please provide examples where homogeneity on both the gender and race axis occurs so frequently this could be considered a reasonable event?

I never made such a claim. I'm not sure what you're going on about, as I essentially agreed with you a few comments ago. Reread. Check yourself, specifically the conclusions you are jumping to.

What a strange comparison. I have had my fair share of less than stellar bosses, but just by virtue of being male none of them tried to touch me, invite me to a date or told me to wear sexier clothing in order for the client meeting to be more successful.

Yes, it can very well be that the same people are treating male workers like garbage and treating female workers like garbage, it's just that when you are male, this mistreatment is restricted to the work place and non-physical, which makes it far less intrusive (I would guess... I am male so it is hard for me to really relate with women in such situations, but I do know that I would freak out if my boss would try to touch me!).

> Or are there really nice bosses who are just complete assholes to women with zero crossover?

That's an unnecessary dichotomy. A third possibility is that there are asshole bosses who have additional tools in their arsenal when it comes to harassing woman employees.

I agree with a lot of the other responses, but also keep in mind that academia has a very different structure than what you're used to. Individuals tend to be less able to move around, particularly when they are grad students. That tends to give others more power over them.

I know some past male coworkers who were general assholes to both men and women. But out of those, the women got it much worse. Like in the article, these men were often in some kind of "good ol' boys" club - friends with important people, etc. So yeah, it happens (IT/CS field).

I don't see how this make a difference. Workers shouldn't have to accept abuse and poor treatment from others. Saying that someone treats everyone equally poorly too doesn't excuse their behavior. If we can effectively fight against jerks in the workplace by making it a fight against misogyny in the workplace, that seems better than the current situation.

In the present day and age, where PhD supervisors are given massive amounts of power over their graduate students, such incidents are all too commonplace.

Put more institutional safeguards on the process of awarding doctoral degrees to protect both sides of the inequality.

I wonder, and this me genuinely wondering without an assumed answer, if some of the issues we're seeing with gender inequality in 'traditionally male dominated' lines of study and work might be due to the type of people drawn to those fields.

I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization?

Another thought, and anecdotally, I played multiple sports in high school and aspired to play college football. When I walked into a CS or advanced physics class in high school and college I was the something is not like the rest; sauntering in at 6'4", in a cutoff t-shirt and sweats having just come from practice or lifting weights. There were multiple times where when I screwed up I was called a dumb jock, or something like that. If I was instead a woman, might they have just called me a dumb girl? Now they are being misogynistic for sure, but couldn't you attribute it to the fact that they pick out the difference between you and them and attack on that? Isn't that what most groups do in a "you don't belong, you're not our kind" kind of mentality? I shook most of it off pretty casually because I could look into myself and a) be sure I was just as good, if not better than the majority of 'them', and b) I knew I could physically destroy them and it made 17-22 year old me smile inside.

As a Type A, incredibly outgoing and social individual, I've been reminded many times of how annoying I get to a lot of the people who studied with me and work with me because they are very typically not. Growing up with one foot in nerd life and another in jock life (taking the non-pejorative easy to describe route with nerd and jock) it was very clear the group social difference between both sides of my friends. I, frankly, had a much easier time fitting in with the sports oriented/popular crowd and felt almost, hesitant, maybe, in larger groups in my CS/Physics studies. It was a weird, unnerving feeling for someone who spent most of his life dropping into social situations and just rolling with it. It was almost as if I was communicating at a _just_ different enough baud rate that we could work together, but it was taxing for a long time.

I could imagine if I was a woman who maybe couldn't draw on their physical dominance to provide a sense of safety, how much more stressful those years would have been.

> I'm not going all men's rights or saying anything is acceptable but if you took a (painfully?) stereotypical set of physicists, technologists, etc. they would probably be male, on the autism spectrum/socially awkward in general, and likely have spent the majority of their time around the same types of people (smart, socially awkward men/boys). Could part of it be from social cues they may not have learned along the way since they likely spent a good portion of their time out of the 'normal' stream of socialization

If this were some sort of low-budget situation comedy, maybe, but we're talking about the real world here. Go read about, for example, Geoff Marcy:

"""“He would stroke my arm or my neck while going over information, standing very close,” Borland told BuzzFeed News. He would also play with her hair or brush up against her with his legs, she said, “often resulting in his crotch touching me.”

Because Marcy was a vocal supporter of women in science, “it was contradictory in my head that he could have bad intentions,” Borland said. “But at the same time, it just felt so uncomfortable that after a few times I had to tell him to stop.” """

(note I haven't read the buzzfeed article as I've been following this story on astronomy blogs such as http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2016/04/sexual-harassme...)

I want to be clear that I'm not brushing off the incidences or saying they're in any way acceptable. It's more of a thought exercise asking why these guys think the behavior is acceptable. Why are they doing it in the first place? Are some of them just predatory, knowing it's not acceptable and think they can get away with it? There are certainly plenty of examples in all fields where people in a power position think they can simply get away with it due to the resources available to them.

I've worked with, and hired, plenty of women and it's never crossed my mind to behave that way, not ever. Is it because I've not ever felt that I had the power to make the problem go away, ignoring what I know is right and wrong? Is it because I went through 'normal' socialization channels growing up? Is it because I do not feel socially awkward in different environments that would allow me to court a woman in a more acceptable fashion? Is it because those 'normal' socialization channels helped me figure out (even through trial and error growing up) what an acceptable fashion even is? Are 'normal' people just wired up to innately feel how an action such as touch could make the other feel in a given context? One of the hallmarks of autism spectrum is an inability to read social cues for example, so if people in these fields have a pre-disposition to be on the spectrum, is it possible this plays a factor?

Hearing the victims' descriptions of what they had to deal with genuinely makes my skin crawl, and that's why I floated the questions/ideas in the first place. I can't put my head into a place where I could see why these guys would do it, and I'm wondering if the general wiring of the types of people that gravitate to and achieve in these fields might pre-dispose them to socially abnormal behaviors like this. Are the incidences of this type of behavior greater than in other fields, say teaching, that have historically been more equal or female lead? If so, is it because the intent is generally predatory (in that the offender generally knows it's wrong and doesn't care), or is it that they don't get how wrong it is?

Again, going back to an anecdote of being in both social circles... One of my best friends from my CS studies at university was a delight one on one, or in the small circle of our group of CS friends. But whenever he could gather himself to come to a party that was filled with pretty much no one like himself he had no freaking clue how to behave. A lot of female friends said he creeped them out- stared too much, said weird stuff, etc. No physical violations by any account I can recall. I asked him about it one day and his response was pretty much what I expected: he had no freaking clue how to connect to these people, women in general scared the shit out of him, and he shared no real social point of reference with my other friends that would allow them to connect.

It's personal experience like that that makes me wonder if some of it is attributable to wiring/social disconnects, not just pure predation. Again, their actions whether with bad intent or out of ignorance are no more acceptable and do not magically inflict less trauma to these women. I'm just wondering aloud if there exists some common thread that might explain why this might happen more in some fields than others.

These harassment cases are so mysterious to me. What kind of men think this sort of behavior is ok? I mean, I would like to help somehow, but I don't know anyone like that.

The kind of men that have gotten away with it for years and even then kept their jobs (unlike the women they targetted)?

Snark aside, I just wonder why I don't know any men like that in my personal life. The problem seems quite widespread after all.

Is it possible that you do know them, but don't know who they are? After all, if you're a guy, you'll never be the target of harassment - and if they do most of their harassing one-on-one, you may ever witness it, either.

I'm a guy and have been subject to sexual harassment.

Now, I'm also bisexual, and I get that people want to be forward. It's called a mating signal for a reason, and that area is fraught with misunderstandings on both sides.

Well, I went in to a bar with my wife and a guy friend (of both of us). He's gay. We tried a relationship with him prior, but distance/timing meant it wouldnt. So, we were up visiting and going to an event, and he was the one showing us around town. Sooo, we walk in the bar, and it's a gay bar. No biggie. And then my friend starts showing me off like I'm his.... It took me a few moments to understand what was going on. And then I had upwards of 3 drinks offered in quick succession. One guy put his arms around my shoulders, while another grabbed my ass. It was a gay bar tending for what's called "Bears" (I'm also 6'5")... but there was some sort of soft-core underwear porn of skinny guys on huge monitors.

It was probably one of my worse experiences. And if anything, it was indicative of what women more routinely go through.

Is it possible that that's typical and accepted behavior at that bar? If it's a gay bar, frequently attended by bears, with literal pornography playing on the walls, I would expect the social interaction there to be different from my neighborhood bar - which is a friendly place where my wife and I bring our kid on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

It sounds to me like your friend was being an asshole by a) not informing you of what sort of place you were going to, and b) by strongly signaling to the other folks there that you did know what type of place it was, and were a willing participant.

I'm not saying you weren't harassed, by the way, and I'm sorry you were being treated shittily. But it might be like getting splashed in the first three rows of a Sea World show - if you don't know it's coming, it's shitty, but some people go specifically for that experience.

Of course. The 3 of us were intending to get a drink or two at a bar in the course of the evening. I also occasionally go to a GLBT bar locally, so it's not out of the ordinary to go to one up there. He also told us that it was a gay bar, and we were initially OK with it.

Also to note, that I and my wife are bisexual and polyamorous (although with each other currently).

What did floor me was the signalling to other patrons that I was his in some capacity. Honestly I didn't have a clue what to really expect, as its very even keel at the local GLBT bar (mating signals are up front, simple no means no - probably due to being in a liberal college town).

And no, someone showing interest in me, be they male or female is cool :) Talking dirty? That's fine, until/if I say no more. I understand that and am flattered. Assaulting me... not cool. Liberal with words, and conservative with actions is usually how I handle mating signs.

I think you'd be surprised. Guys don't really brag anymore about their sexual conquests to friends (at lease, IME). But given the chance, guys who seem totally cool, and non-sexist, will change at the drop of a hat.

You're just amazing, that's why! So amazing! Or maybe they hide it well. Or you're just lucky. Or you're just clueless.

Maybe it's not actually that widespread? I mean, you always hear about the negative things and never about the positive things. That just the nature of life, the positive things are expected so they don't get mentioned.

One asshole will harass 3-5 women over a career. Women make up ~15% of the workforce. Half of women are harassed.

To get to those figures, only ~2% of men need to be assholes.

This is why it's so important for the few men who see it happen to never let it go or brush it under the rug.

You might, they just aren't doing it to you or around you.

I'm male but I have the benefit of being surrounded people of various genders who talk openly about stuff like this. I can only conclude that a great deal of everyday sexism and sexual abuse can be near invisible to men.

Some things can be hard to believe, because, being indentified as male, one tends to see the civil sides of most men.

My advice is to generally be more observant of people in social situations, like parties, lunch hours etc. Especially in corners, corridors etc where they may assume not to be overheard.

Sometimes, venues, clubs and flats have their own geography of fear where some women feel a need to actively measure up space in between themselves and other people. If you have friends who may be subject to this, try asking. At the right occasion.

Especially a SO may be a good place to start if you want to hear general experiences. It can be as simple as "common sense knowledge" of whom you don't want to be stuck with smoking a cigarette on a balcony at a mutual friend's house party or family get-together.

I think the problem is often that we do, we're just not cognizant of it. A lot of sexism is so normalized that the edges of more destructive behavior (jokes and the like) never signal to other men that someone is abusive or demeaning to women. I've had to learn be conscious my self of not indulging casual manifestations of these attitudes, in the same way that "casual" racism is no longer socially permissible.

"Casual" racism and other forms of regressive bigotry are still quite permissible. In the Bay Area, there are people who think it's okay to ascribe an inherent inferiority to someone stemming from age, race, cultural background, religion, or even to what hat they wear. This is done both in the name of fighting political correctness and in the name of "social justice."

It's even considered the height of sophistication of many here to jump to conclusions about your politics and morality based on subcultural markers. I find this shockingly anti-intellectual and the whole atmosphere disingenuously hateful on both sides.

You almost certainly do know men like that in your personal life. They're just not creeping on you. Abusers and harassers are typically VERY charming to folks they're not abusing, which is why women tend not to speak up - because we know from plenty of bitter personal and secondhand experience that the response is going to be, "But he's such a great guy! You must have just misunderstood what was happening."

> What kind of men think this sort of behavior is ok?

The kind who think that the real world is just an extension of the school playground.

Interesting point. And why isn't it? Why is the 'real world' run according to some narrow set of safe-and-happy rules that insecure people make up? Just being 'devil's advocate' here. Sales people know, you get what you negotiate, not what you deserve. Anything else is a fantasy. Extend that to every facet of the working world, and you have the 'school playground' all over again.

One would hope that when you have left the school playground and entered the "real world", you have developed enough sense of empathy and social skills to understand the long-term benefit of treating people with respect, ie how you would want to be treated yourself. We do spend much time and effort drilling this into infants after all.

Those who don't, ie who find it ok to use/abuse others (or can't stop themselves) for personal profit/pleasure, I would term social freeloaders.

It's sad that this seems to extend to middle age in some people. And that grown-up institutions need processes to deal with problems that should have been sorted out in kindergarten.

...and that, I would say, is the real world. We have to deal with it. Short of rounding up and executing all the sociopaths that never learned empathy.

I put it a different way:

Everyone else is just furniture in their world.

Many people take advantage of others when they think they can get away with it. Not limited to workplace or men.

Can someone explain to me what "nearly over a decade" is supposed to mean?

It means a writer is trying too hard.

It's a nice way to make the reader think 15 when the reality is 8.

Nearly a decade, e.g., "9 years".

Then "over" makes no sense, right?

or it could mean exactly a decade!

'over' can also be used to indicate something took place throughout the whole timespan. Short form of 'over the course of little less than a decade'.

Presumably it should have been "over nearly a decade".

So "a decade" :)

No, "throughout nearly a decade", as allannienhuis says.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520368

this:

> Universities, Mia notes, have protocols for dealing with complaints of sexual harassment

seems part of the problem. sexual harassment should be a 'go straight to police' offence, not a hr reprimand.

if the problem is as widespread as it's made in the article, it cannot correct from within.

Many forms of sexual harassment are not crimes. Some forms (physical assaults, extensive stalking) are, but something like repeatedly asking a subordinate for a date isn't something the police would be able to intervene in.

And then there's the other problem that even for criminal sexual harassment police may or may not be willing to help (the humongous backlog in unprocessed "rape kits" being but one concrete evidence of the latter)

> ...unprocessed "rape kits" being but one concrete evidence...

The size of the "backlog" is an impressive number, but it was my understanding that it is primarily due to policies that lead to collection by default - regardless of actual need. Like when the perpetrator of the crime confesses, or when the DA determines that the rape kit isn't evidence of rape. Collecting by default makes sense as it is a time sensitive issue, but there are plenty of good reasons not to process the kit. If you think that processing should be done by default that is one thing, but lack of processing certainly isn't "concrete evidence" of police apathy.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2015/...

> Forensic experts at the Michigan State Police have been helping to clear the backlog, with the help of millions of dollars in funding appropriated by the Legislature.

> Worthy said Detroit's kit-testing initiative has identified 2,616 suspects — including 477 serial rapists — and that 21 convictions have been secured. She said 106 cases are actively being investigated and 1,350 cases are awaiting investigation.

Like I said, the numbers are impressive, but they don't really provide much information. Look at the way that sentence is structured: those "identified", were they previously unknown? I think the 21 convictions is the only real meaningful part of that story - because the meaning is unambiguous. While it is a shame that a rapist can run around free while evidence is in hand, (21 / 11341) x 100 = 0.19%. Not nearly as impressive as "11,341 examples of why cops don't care!".

> not a hr reprimand.

Not to mention chance as good that the victim will get reprimanded as the culprit. HR's purpose, whether it's in universities or in private companies, is to protect the employer. That's who pays their bills and that's who gives the orders.

If a complaint makes the employer look bad and the easiest way to make it go away is to sink the victim, that's exactly what HR will do.

The only department less moral than HR is internal affairs, and most companies don't get to have one.

It's not useful comparing Universities and private companies in these cases. In the United States, Universities behavior on discrimination and harassment is subject to Title IX and the government can investigate and audit how a University handles and performs in these areas.

The view that HR is only their to protect the employer is a dubious or nebulous, maybe both. The function HR plays will vary by organization, but even with the cynical view that they only exist to protect the organization, protecting the organization also means protecting the organization from lawsuits, government sanctions, etc. from improper and illegal behavior.

> In the United States, Universities behavior on discrimination and harassment is subject to Title IX and the government can investigate and audit how a University handles and performs in these areas.

That's a purely theoretical point, as numerous revelations in the last few months/years have proven Title IX to be mostly toothless and at best implemented to the letter rather than the spirit.

> The view that HR is only their to protect the employer is a dubious or nebulous, maybe both.

That HR's job is to protect the employer is neither dubious nor nebulous.

> The function HR plays will vary by organization, but even with the cynical view that they only exist to protect the organization, protecting the organization also means protecting the organization from lawsuits, government sanctions, etc. from improper and illegal behavior.

Of course it does, but as I mentioned HR will tend to do that the simplest and most expedient way possible, silencing the complainer is a common way to do it. Employees and victims should not generally assume HR is their friend or on their side. HR may side with them, but that's a very different thing than being on their side.

This is the sort of thinking that leads to people calling 911 for disputes relating to McNuggets. Calling in armed mediators is not likely to improve your situation.

it was a short-hand for all the nuances applicable, I think I just badly translated a local way of speech

It's the sort of thinking that gets abusive people who commit crimes public criminal records (or at least records of a series of accusations) instead of slaps on the wrist which forever remain private so they can continue their abuse.

The other alternative, calling in University-owned mediators who have no incentive to help you and every incentive to "just make it go away" will almost certainly not improve your situation -- as described in detail in the article.

> ...people who commit crimes...

While sexual harassment is terrible, it isn't a crime. There are a lot of terrible things that aren't crimes. A push to criminalize it would have the opposite effect of what the proponents desire: the definition would be severely narrowed and companies would likely have a lot less exposure to litigation.

Actually, fortunately you are incorrect here. While certain kinds of sexual harassment are not criminal, groping is certainly a crime.

I'm pretty sure threatening to destroy someone's career to force sex is a crime. If you succeed, it's rape which is quite a serious crime.

Even if you just file a report, it's important to establish a pattern of abuse for when the person inevitably crosses the line and goes to court. This is far more serious than chicken nuggets; the fact that people are willing to liken it to something like that is very troubling and indicative of how deep the problem runs: many people don't even see it as a problem.

Describing an assault as sexual harassment is ridiculous. That is like describing a murder as impolite driving... that resulted in the flattening of a person who you happened to want dead.

We are talking about different things here, and conflating them isn't going to help anybody.

It's okay for words to have wide and general meaning. Assault can mean flicking someone with your middle finger. It can mean saying something threatening. Sexual assault is a kind of assault. Barfights and brutally beating someone all count.

Similarly with sexual harassment. It doesn't mean exactly what you have in your head at this particular moment and nothing else no matter what anyone else says. Look it up if you care to and you'll find its definition is quite broad, especially the way it's used in general conversation. Nobody is suggesting locking people up in jail for saying bad words -- it's an absurd strawman, though it's quite an effective way to derail the conversation and avoid having a real discussion.

The article is about the climate of abuse and sexual harassment of women in astrophysics departments. Groping, specific comments, threats, general comments. Everything from flirtation to repeated unwanted advances to actual assault. That is what we are discussing, so when someone says women should go to the police to report the crimes described in the article you need to assume they are talking about the crimes described in the article.

> Look it up if you care to and you'll find its definition is quite broad...

I'd think that my awareness of the broad definition would be made clear by my repeated warnings that criminalization would narrow it.

> Nobody is suggesting locking people up in jail for saying bad words...

Well the poster that I initially replied to was pretty explicit about getting the police involved, as have a few other people here. So I'm not sure if your point is that I should be more charitable and assume that when someone says "sexual harassment" they don't mean sexual harassment, or if your point is that police should get involved but somehow leave the whole threat of violence thing at the door.

> That is what we are discussing, so when...

That isn't what I was discussing, and you replied to me, so you must be referring to yourself with the royal "we". I'll be more charitable and assume that people don't mean what they say, but I'd appreciate it if you'd extend me the same generosity and assume that I've chosen my words carefully.

Sexual harassment in the US is usually a civil matter. You don't call the police because it's not a crime in and of itself, so they can't do anything about it.

Sexual harassment can include crimes like sexual assault and stalking, so in those cases you should definitely call the police.

Because sexual harassment is comparable to a dispute relating to McNuggets?

Yes, because there are special snowflakes who find anything and everything offensive/sexual harassment and the like.

I have mild autism and am less than welcome in most civil interactions. Do i get to sue everyone and bitch about everything everyday? That would be a NO.

Disclaimer: I do not condone any really disruptive, actual harassment like touching/real verbal abuse.

>Yes, because there are special snowflakes who find anything and everything offensive/sexual harassment and the like.

Let's just ignore it then because they're probably imagining it.

>Disclaimer: I do not condone any really disruptive, actual harassment like touching/real verbal abuse.

But you don't seem to give a shit if it happens.

Yes, directly comparable when your metric is criminality, perceived imminent violence, or any other thing that the mass of the public expects cops to respond to.

I don't think that you're quite conceptualizing the issue in the right way. This isn't necessarily about rape or sexual assault (though even those can be hard to get the police to take seriously). There's a huge range of behaviors that can make work awful for someone that don't rise to the level of criminal behavior.

This is about, say, a guy who could torpedo your entire career with a couple of phone calls making it clear that he'll be Very Disappointed if you make a big deal about him giving you a back rub when he thinks you look stressed. (Maybe you'd object, but last week you put up with it when he put his arm around your shoulders during a lab meeting: at the time, it seemed like he was just trying to comfort you about some buggy equipment. After that, will the rest of your lab think you were okay with this stuff? Did he take that as a signal that you were interested? Maybe it's best to just keep putting up with it and not risk getting on his bad side and flushing your career away. Oh, hey, looks like he just decided that your shirt is "in the way" this time.)

[If you're wondering if a scenario like that is realistic, I based it loosely on the pattern described here: http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/05/fed-up-with-sex..., which it turns out was in fact directly inspired by the repeated behavior of Geoff Marcy: http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-long-con.html]

> sexual harassment should be a 'go straight to police' offence, not a hr reprimand.

Police requires evidence and it's often much harder to prove in criminal court than in civil cases - just look at the different OJ Simpson trials.

When you walk to the HR office you don't need any evidence at all and the judge is sometimes a 25 year old HR person fresh from university. That's a much lower bar to pass than going to the police and meeting a judge.

Sexual harassment in the workplace is so much more than what is strictly illegal. It may not be possible to make it illegal to look at someone in the wrong way, but there's no law against that being written to your HR file and having an impact on your future career.

Many (but not all) types of sexual harassment in the workplace aren't go to the police illegal in and of themselves. I know someone who was fired from his job for saying something extremely inappropriate and sexual to a coworker. Did he deserve to get fired? Hell yeah. Does he deserve criminal charges? Hell no.

This is why any talk about women being "naturally" less gifted at hard science, or naturally drawn to other fields, is B.S. You'd have to get to a level playing field first, before you could even evaluate that type of claim. (Neil deGrasse Tyson has made this same point.)

There's a long-standing overrepresentation of women in solar astronomy. Why? It was previously thought unthinkably inappropriate that women should spend the nite in the observatory alone with men. So, to do astronomy many were pushed towards daytime astronomy, which pretty much restricts you to study the sun. Even today solar astronomy is largely dominated by women, demonstrating that historical biases propagate into the modern day.

It's disappointing to think that female astronomer's fear of sexual harassment is well-founded and persists to this day.

It's amazing that sexual harassment (or any kind of harassment, really) can survive the era of the cell phone recording? Allegations of misbehavior carry far more weight, once there is a recording that can tickle people's sense of voyeurism and outrage.

> It's amazing that sexual harassment (or any kind of harassment, really) can survive the era of the cell phone recording?

In some jurisdictions it's illegal to record someone without their knowledge or permission, so the victim of the harassment can get nailed to the wall for trying to gather evidence to support their case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_recording_by_civil...

Do you have an example of when this occurred?

I'm going to guess that the penalty for that is a slap on the wrist compared to what would be recorded.

Many states forbid recording without consent.

Most states also forbid sexual harassment.

On a civil law level. Wire tapping is a criminal offense.

At the same time, the DA that attempts to try that case would be crucified. Especially if the harassment was bad.

Or, your harassment suit will fall apart, because you're an admitted felon, and obviously can't be trusted. There's a reason why nobody actually does this.

"...At the time of the survey, Berkeley had two women to 17 men, while MIT had three women to 11 men. At Harvard, there was only one woman compared to 12 men...."

The amount of working female astronomers at a given institution seemed woefully small. One sexual harasser in the bunch could harass 100% of the women. It's hard for me to believe that universities have a monopoly on a-hole men. What seems more believable is that they don't lay down the law like the rest of societal business institutions.

This sounds as bad as investment banks. Why are schools so behind the times? Accounting firms and Advertising agencies are cleaning up. Why are universities staying with the banks?

Is tenure part of the problem? That it's so hard to fire people for bad behavior?

Or is it that academic prestige is "Winner takes all" so schools choose to protect those who give them their reputation?

What's the legal jurisdiction of the ISS? Is it split by country of origin of the separate modules?

On a more comical note, I wonder if "worldwide copyright" applies after escaping the worlds atmosphere...

It's about astronomers, not astronauts.

I think you've confused astronomers and astronauts?

Oh duh ... My mistake for writing as I think rather than after!

To answer your question though, maritime law largely applies in space.

My brother-in-law worked for Fox's online division at one point, his contract had a clause with wording like "Employee agrees that this contract is legal and binding throughout the entire universe."

Yet people find it hard to understand why some people might be somewhat offended by a shirt with scantily clad women during a press conference.

Things do not happen in a vacuum and pretending like nothing is wrong isn't going to help anyone get anywhere.

The guy wore the shirt to a celebration after working with those co-workers for 10 years. It wasn't intended to look "professional" and I'm pretty sure none of those co-workers were offended. The reason the shirt was a bad idea is that it was easily misinterpreted by people watching the press conference.

Edit: I didn't see it at the time, but this article exactly reflects my perspective on the thing. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/why-a-sh...

Edit2: I agree with bunnymancer's comment as far as it goes. But I don't think the shirt is a very big problem. It would be almost insignificant if it weren't interacting with the big problem we already have.

A shirt that depicts women as objects or objectized women is just plain wrong. I do not care about the celebration.

It's art. The shirt was also made by a woman, for what it's worth.

Nude paintings are also art, but if you hang a couple in your office, you'll have a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Really? I would fight that lawsuit tooth and nail. Neo-puritanism makes my blood boil.

That is also one kind of lawsuit where your personal assets will be on the line if you lose.

Regardless of what you think of Puritanism, don't sexualize the workplace.

Nabokov's Lolita is also art. Lester the molester is also art. Invalid argument.

Have you actually read Lolita.

Yes, I found it quite interesting but deeply disturbing. You can rest assured that I'm not the only one: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2005/12/lolita_at_5... https://101books.net/2011/12/15/lolita-inside-the-mind-of-a-...

You do realise the shirt was given to him by a female colleague/friend right?

So what?

If a black friend gives me a shirt with the N-word on it, that doesn't mean I should wear it at work.

Context is key. I haven't followed this shirt brouhaha in any serious depth but I assume that all of his colleagues and management saw him wearing the shirt before he delivered his talk. AFAIK it became a problem afterwards. So, if you (not me) want to equate a shirt with female characters on it to a shirt with the N-word on it then, yes, if the workplace context was right why not wear it at work (e.g. I'm thinking an indie record label or similar environment with black, white, whatever people working together as a tight team and a black friend of a white guy bought him said t-shirt).

Ultimately, it's up to the guy wearing the t-shirt to make a judgement call as to whether doing so would offend or not offend his friends and colleagues. So: context, relationship with everyone else at the place he works at, balanced sensitivity etc.

If he honestly (not deliberately) makes the wrong call, he should apologise and everyone should move on. Work is a place for adults, not children on a lynching party.

If you're white, and your black friend gives you a shirt with the N-word on it, they aren't your friend.

These guys are probably friends.

http://realfunny.net/picture-3097-these-two-friends-wearing-...

They probably don't wear the shirts to work.

It was a friend, rather than a colleague, that made and gave him the shirt so they may well be unaware of how it would be percieved by his colleagues when worn in this context.

> so they may well be unaware of how it would be percieved by his colleagues when worn in this context.

Wasn't the controversy more about how the shirt was perceived by randos on twitter, not by his colleagues?

Yes, rando astrophysicists on twitter:

https://twitter.com/astrokatie/status/532509765989965824

Was that person his colleague?

You do realise that a woman can be wrong about women's rights, right?

This is an under-recognized point. Women can definitely undermine women's interests.

Do you find it wrong in general or wrong in a professional setting?

In general. Women should not be shown as objects, prices, decoration, etc... It is bad for all the women and puts us the men in a false superior position.

That's interesting. What do you think woman who do this or desire to be viewed like this?

I don't think you're going to convince anyone by just stating what your view is. Give some reasons or something.

I have to give a reasons to why a shirt that depicts naked women is wrong?

Well, yeah. (Also they're not naked.) Heck, there are Bibles that have pictures of naked women in them. Are you saying women aren't allowed to be naked, or no one is allowed to make pictures of them, or they should only be photographs and not fantasies, or what exactly?

Objectification doesn't really apply to a still image. The whole trope was initially about women in media being the object of the male character's conquest. Essentially the women were turned into nothing more than props.

A t-shirt depicting scantily clad women may be in poor taste and likely isn't professional, but doesn't really contribute to the objectification of women. Women are allowed to be sexualised (just as men are), the line is drawn when women are subjugated to only that role (which, again, we witness in some media, games, movies, TV, rarely books).

You're just moralising right and wrong and then using objectification as some kind of trump card, no matter how little it applies. Men are allowed to wear t-shirts with half naked women on them, it isn't inherently sexist, just tacky and unprofessional (in my opinion).

The view that you, as an individual, bring to the world, is exactly what makes the world the way it is. That's why a shirt is a reflection of a reality. Now it is a shirt, tomorrow it is a perfume advertising image. The next day it is a man who thinks that the woman he is married to is his belonging.

That's actually the view academics such as philosopher Martha Nussbaum bring to the world.

See their definition of objectification here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions

As you can see, doesn't apply. A static t-shirt image of any sort is always an object but never objectification, because it lacks the context it would need to be more.

Objectification was never about naked Vs. clothed. It was about how women are treated and viewed as individuals. It is about autonomy and being more than a 2D prop for male character's use.

You can be naked and still have a great deal of personality, story importance, and be respected by both male characters within the medium and the writers. See Game of Thrones. There is an absolute ton of nudity in that, and yes, there is objectification (e.g. background sex) but the show gets a pass because female leads are given a great deal of importance, autonomy, and respect. They're nobody's props or objects.

Sexual objectification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification#Sexual_...

> Objectification doesn't really apply to a still image.

What the what? Care to elaborate on how that works?

An image is literally an object. It's not a woman. Objectifying an actual woman would be more clearly immoral. Objectifying a shirt - which he literally, legally owns - is not necessarily a problem.

> Care to elaborate on how that works?

A fully clothed women in a still image still has no personality, no interactions, no lines, no inherent character. A still image is within itself a prop or an object.

So criticising a still image for objectifying women is inherently both true but also completely redundant. Everything in a still image is static, it is an object, plants, animals, women, men, naked, fully clothed, they're all objects.

The term "objectifying women" (as a negative) originated from turning women into objects or props in situations where they wouldn't otherwise be so. So for example, you take a female character, you remove all of her lines, put her in sexy clothing, then have the male characters stand around and talk about how sexy she is. That's objectification, they've literally turned that women into an object or prop for male character's use.

Calling all sexual images of women "objectification" is simply an overreach. It also doesn't make rational sense when applied to women who couldn't have dialog, personalities, or interactions such as a still image on a t-shirt. It is pretty hard to have ANY women or man on a t-shirt who isn't an object.

You can call it "distasteful" (likely true) or "inappropriate" (again, likely true for work) but you didn't, you called it objectification which it objectively is not.

There is a problem with only thinking logically about such issues. Humans are messy and not entirely rational creatures. We're constantly seeking dominance over one another and weird emotional games come into this. No one wants to be reduced to an emblem. No one wants to be subject to a stereotype, even a positive one. In the end, we all want to be genuinely related to as people.

Strong signals of dominance, emotion, and sexuality should be experienced consensually. The reason why the "bro" stereotype is so annoying, is the apparent insistence on the others around them to feel or act a certain way. The reason why politics and political discussions are so unpleasant is that dominance instincts are brought to the fore by necessity.

I think a truly consensual society should be without the feeling of witch-hunts. I'm not sure if that's possible for human beings, though. Maybe Mao was right, and "All power comes from the end of a gun." In the end it's all the hegemony of one "tribe" over another.

I think brudgers's advice is excellent, and I would encourage you again to take it. I hope this doesn't sound too pushy, it's just a suggestion.

It is an excellent advice. Made by someone who writes for a living. However, the comment system is not made to make us all agree about everything. My concern is about the restriction you put in a unconscious way to your opinions when there is dissent. Is this a kind of censorship? A very sofisticate one?

I don't see the point in expressing your opinions on this forum if you don't care whether anyone agrees with you. If you're not interested in connecting with the readers and influencing them, why not just keep it to yourself? What are you accomplishing by posting here?

I really do care if the 'audience' agrees with me. What I'm trying to understand is why I have to restrain myself just because I think that I might not be under the most popular line of thought or going to arise some controversy. No one deserves downvoting for expressing its line of thought even if it is an unpopular one. I would never downvote anyone for expressing its beliefs in a proper manner.

In a more general note about the downvotes about sexism: https://medium.com/@sh4ka/sexism-and-hacker-news-6678897fccc...

Demonstrates that context is everything.

Do most of the people reading this thread think it is sexist?

There is no excuse for these type of behaviour, none.

I do not know much about their workplace but I think you are assuming too much when you say you are sure his co-workers were just fine with it. I worked in academia and startups all my life so I am used to seeing casual shirts being worn but that was way too much. We do not hang that kind of pictures around the office. We do not want people to look at that kind of pictures in the office. Not just in the office also in any work related function. How can you claim that nobody in his workplace was offended when he is walking around with pictures that would be offensive in any other form?

I'm not positive. But that would be between them and their employer. I think it's odd that I can't find a quote from any of his co-workers (men or women) about the issue. They are the only ones who would have standing to complain on a normal day without news cameras around.

Edit: found the video I was looking for. NASA made this one two years earlier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KnTpm9Y77E So, still speculation, but we do have some idea of attitudes at NASA.

After reading the OP's linked article, do you see why his female coworkers may have been reluctant to openly and publicly complain about his shirt? "Mia" isn't the woman's real name. She talks about the threats of backlash to her career she has received.

In a forum dominated by men, under-socialized men because they have few female co workers, there is a lack of understanding and sympathy for anything less than groping. Last time I was on here, HN users defended their right to make dick jokes in the work place.

Dick jokes in the workplace are ok. Serious question, why wouldn't they be?

They aren't if someone has a problem with them.

Because there are plenty of jokes you can tell that don't refer to genitalia?

While generally I would tend to avoid dick jokes in the workplace, primarily because they're not particularly professional, it's a poor argument that they are not appropriate because 'someone has a problem with them.'

In a large workplace, 'someone' will have a problem with any joke about any topic.

Which is a great reason for why you should keep edgy humour out of the office. In the US, we value the right to make a living in a hostility-free work environment more then the right to say whatever you want at work.

So long as the joke isn't putting down someone (could be bullying), any joke is ok IMO.

I agree with you when you say that any joke is ok. When you choose the right environment it is ok to make a funeral joke, but not in you grandpa's funeral, you see where I'm going? You can not make jokes about different sexes in your workplace. You have to draw this line. It is very innapropriate. (This is said by a particular who believes that the only line in humour should be traced by oneself)

Because they tend to give the message to women that "You're an outsider here."

I think keeping jokes about genitalia and other sexually explicit topics out of the workplace is a pretty reasonable line to draw. The problem isn't that dick jokes are categorically offensive, rather, the problem arises because, when this type of behavior is permitted, there is always someone lacking social intelligence or boundaries who takes it way too far and creates a complicated ambiguity regarding what type of dick jokes take it too far. The office isn't the place to tease out the nuance of what is appropriate comedy.

Personally, as a straight male, I'd be pretty uncomfortable if my boss was making jokes about his dick. Just sayin'

I never really liked the the logic that the rest of us can't do a certian thing because there are some other people can't be trusted. Here's a thought, instead of messing with every guy or girl for an innocent joke, just you know, deal with the person who takes it too far?

My point is that determining what constitutes "too far" is fraught with ambiguous subjective analysis. Who is the arbiter of what is too far in terms of comedy? Pretty much nobody has an issue with "an innocent joke" by definition, but sexually explicit comedy often tows the line of "innocent" (which is usually what makes it funny), and attempting to disentangle the clever sexual comedy from the inappropriate sexual comedy is a pandora's box not worth opening in the workplace. Just keep sexual jokes and commentary to yourself in the office.

> My point is that determining what constitutes "too far" is fraught with ambiguous subjective analysis.

Well true, but I think we have a massive problem with getting outraged for the sake of being outraged. I actually can't fathom why so many people were able to find themselves getting upset over the floppy disk comment. I suspect that we're mostly just sticking up for "someone else" because it's the right thing to do when in reality, the someone else doesn't actually exist.

> Just keep sexual jokes and commentary to yourself in the office.

I'm Scottish and asking me to behave myself is culturally insensitive. ;)

Make this a rule : "no dick jokes at work",

Watch as the scope of what constitutes 'work' creep.

Well, it is personal experience but the most sexual jokes I've heard in person in the workplace came from women. And I found them rather funny.

But to each their own I guess.

Do you understand the difference between women making sexual jokes and men making them?

Something along the lines of:

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

? i.e. the context of men doing it is different, because men are violent/threatening/etc.

If so, I can assure you many consider this line of reasoning as unfairly demonising men. If not, can you explain to me the difference?

And now you lost me.

Why is it different?

>> Do you understand the difference between women making sexual jokes and men making them?

No, I don't think in sexist terms.

Women aren't excluded. And environments with no women in them aren't excluded either. An employer can be held liable if they don't take action to prevent an environment where employees are getting offended all the time. So a single joke probably isn't a legal issue, but a workplace that is "intimidating, hostile, or offensive" can get you sued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_work_environment

Under-socialized men? Sorry, but who are you to judge exactly? Super-socialised I assume?

> Last time I was on here, HN users defended their right to make dick jokes in the work place.

So, the place isn't an echo chamber of your own opinions? "HN users" differ in their opinions, all healthy online communities should.

That was the first thing I thought of when seeing this article's title, too.

Here, for reference: https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pic...

The stupid shirt controversy trivializes real issues. This article is about actual cases of sexual harassment and even assault. People don't take it as seriously because now sexism now mostly means people getting offended at silly shirts.

I clicked on the article honestly expecting it to be something trivial like that, and was alarmed at the seriousness of it.

I've only seen such behavior in 2nd or 3rd world countries, like in some eastern block countries or the US, never in the developed world.

It's disgusting.

Ask Women: What counts as sexual harassment?

Is it "Let's go out this weekend?" or is it a comment about body parts below the neck, or is it physical?

Why not ask a lawyer instead?

A woman's or a man's lawyer?

Since when do lawyers segregate their practices by gender?

My comment isn't about gender. It's about the fact that the same lawyer can prove that you, whether you be a man or woman, victim or criminal, guilty and non-guilty at the same time. Depending on whose side the lawyer is.

Google this "divorce lawyer for men," granted it is marketing ploy.

Fair enough. In this case though, both sides of the aisle will give you the same legal advice.

Today I want to know what women think (and maybe sympathize), not the law.

Sexual harassment is harassment. I don't mean to sound trite, but it's literally true.

Politely asking a peer out on a date, ONCE, is not harassment. Even though it might be a little uncomfortable in the moment, that can pass if everyone acts professionally regardless of the outcome.

Examples of harassment include:

- asking someone out on dates repeatedly, even if they've already said "no"

- propositioning someone for sex--different from asking out on a date in that it is more sexually explicit

- subtly or not-so-subtly suggesting that you have leverage over them--for example, a boss asking out a direct report and mentioning that their performance review is coming up

- making repeated comments of a sexual nature or about a person's body, i.e. "wow Suzie you look so hot in that dress" (if that happens ONLY ONCE and never again, that's not likely to be harassment, but those sorts of things very rarely happen ONLY ONCE)

- putting the other person into uncomfortable situations--following them into the bathroom, following them to their car at night, stopping by their home unexpectedly, etc.

- pointless, uninvited touching or rubbing--like walking up behind a colleague and starting a shoulder run without asking first (and respecting "no" if that's the answer)

- if you want more examples, just read the Vice story linked at the top here

- asking someone out on dates repeatedly, even if they've already said "no"

There's some kind of weird disconnect in our society here. I've been in the position where I've asked a colleague out to a movie, but she gave a plausible sounding excuse each time. I stopped asking when she finally definitely said "no," but she did so with language that made me feel like she thought me a rapist. No means no, but white lies should not be held equivalent to "no."

If she really wanted to see the movie with you, but she actually had to take her dog to the dentist, she would have counter-offered a time and date.

She was trying to brush you off, hoping you'd take the hint, without appearing confrontational. It obviously didn't work. You continued with the unwanted advances, and it made her uncomfortable.

This is the unintended consequence of a lifetime of hearing that men are dangerous and might kill you. Threats are everywhere, says the media, constantly.

... And so do individual women. In this thread, even. Are they all lying?

Are our only choices: 1) Violence against women never occurs, and 2) Most men are barely contained threats?

I actually ended up asking her what was going on, specifically, "Am I bad at taking hints?" At that point, I should think a simple yes would have done fine. Making someone feel like a rapist for believing what is said or failing to correctly second guess is just weird and oppressive in itself.

> Making someone feel like a rapist for believing what is said or failing to correctly second guess is just weird and oppressive in itself.

It is unfortunate and I sympathise with your hurt feelings, but I think this is just something you should take on the chin.

Double standards and requiring second guessing based on gender is as harmful now as it was in the 50's.

For you, the wrong response to your question causes harm to your feelings.

For a woman, giving the wrong response to an obsessed creeper can cause harm to her career, her body, or her life. (Yes, I am quite aware that women can be creepy and violent. No, it is not a frequent power dynamic in the office.)

It would certainly be nice if we could be honest all the time, but you are demanding far too much in this bargain.

Think about it another way, if a girl asked you out and you didn't want to go out with her, what would you do? Sure, some of us, like some woman, don't really care and will just shut it down, but many of us would just make an excuse so we're not outright rude.

Either way, learn by being told, or learn by using empathy, if she doesn't counter offer it was a no. Once you've had your 3rd no, you're that creepy guy fyi.

Think about it another way, if a girl asked you out and you didn't want to go out with her, what would you do?

I'd give a straight-forward answer to a fellow adult, assuming she or he will take it in a rational and mature fashion. I certainly wouldn't say anything that could be confused on the surface with, "I would, but I can't."

Cool. You've now crippled the a girls self-esteem, where as using the nice way would give her the ability to lie to herself whilst making sure to never ask again.

You've now crippled the a girls self-esteem

I find this weirdly Victorian. I should treat grown women as fragile flowers that can't take a straight answer?

Which is the same way they treat you. I don't think it's my fault this escapes you but I must admit, it's neither really based on logic nor efficacy, it's a social thing.

Put more emphasis on "I want to avoid an awkward situation" and "I don't want to hurt their feelings" less on "but people are adults" and you're pretty much there though.

> lie to herself whilst making sure to never ask again.

How is this a good thing? It just confuses people.

You are making it sound like it's actually his fault that he kept asking until she actually gave a definite answer.

Worst than that, some people would call that harassment and chastise me and others for victim blaming, just stating a simple fact: She should have said no.

I wonder how many of these cases get into the statistics about harassment when it should just be considered simple human interaction up to the point she gave a definite answer: "No". It's quite simple, you can even make it nicer with: "Sorry but I'm not interested".

If after that he keeps pushing, then yes, it should be considered harassment.

I don't necessarily think that it's his fault... But try asking 100 random people on the street what it means when you ask a girl out and she responds that she is busy, and she does not suggest another date. I'd bet that at least 98 of them would say that is means she is not interested, and she is letting you down nicely. I'm kind of surprised some men don't understand that.

Guys do. Some people (men and women) are just very clear cut and they do not try to understand the subtext. They say what they mean and they expect the same. They are usually thought of as arrogant.

Using a straight-up "no" can turn it into an outright confrontation, which can be pretty dangerous if the guy isn't the type that will take "no" for an answer.

Once I gave a guy a simple-but-polite "no" in college, and he responded with harassing emails/repeated phone calls/stalking/etc for months.

Once during an internship, a superior cornered me in my office after-hours, blocking my exit and declaring his love for me. I could've said "no", but I was alone and cornered and in a very vulnerable situation, so I stammered over excuses about being really busy with work right then and thanked God that my internship was ending in a few days.

I wish I could just say "no", because most men would be civil and bow out and appreciate the straightforwardness. But I have no way to know in advance which kind of person any given guy is going to be.

Using a straight-up "no" can turn it into an outright confrontation, which can be pretty dangerous if the guy isn't the type that will take "no" for an answer.

On what basis should men be treated by-default as if they are, "the type that won't take no for an answer?" Wouldn't it be parsimonious to try the "no" and see what happens, in that case? How about we're all treated as emotionally secure, professional, rational beings until we show otherwise?

But I have no way to know in advance which kind of person any given guy is going to be.

The thing about growing up where you are literally one of only a dozen asians for a 50 mile radius, is that the sociopath racists sometimes come out of the woodwork -- sometimes even to be your "friend" then really let you have it when the time is right. That doesn't entitle me to automatically assume everyone is going to be one of those jerks. Nor would that be a productive stance to take.

How about some "evidence based" life in principle, not just when it suits one's agenda? I should be treated with according to my deeds and evidence of my character. Not according to statistics attached to an attribute I was born with.

I reiterate:

"I wish I could just say "no", because most men would be civil and bow out and appreciate the straightforwardness. But I have no way to know in advance which kind of person any given guy is going to be."

It's erring on the side of caution because I fear for my personal safety. I wish it weren't this way, but surely you can empathize with a desire to protect oneself, particularly given negative experiences in the past?

I can empathize, which is why I can also empathize with being "profiled." I know that from both sides. I also know what it's like to be objectified as an emblem or symbol or any number of things less than human. However, the long term and just solution to prejudice can't be more prejudice. Social norms which "profile" me based on an attribute I was born with can't be socially just.

I also have no way of knowing in advance which white person is going to attack or denigrate me next. (Of all those incidents in my life, it is that "group" which is most prevalent.) Should I interact in a way which assumes any of them might at any time?

> On what basis should men be treated by-default as if they are, "the type that won't take no for an answer?" Wouldn't it be parsimonious to try the "no" and see what happens, in that case?

It would be parsimonious, and on average, it would work out. The problem is that the cost of being mistaken is high enough that it's worth working to avoid the worst-case result rather than optimize for average-case results. Does that make sense?

Using a straight-up "no" can turn it into an outright confrontation, which can be pretty dangerous if the guy isn't the type that will take "no" for an answer.

While it is not evident a guy will take a no worst than a girl would, I agree that a straight "no" will always lead to an unpleasant outcome.

I think this is true, but it's important to understand that there is more to harassment than just missing a few hints.

I'm sure she was annoyed, but that doesn't, by itself, make the situation harassment. He can easily recover now by simply acting polite, pleasant, and professional with her--essentially, acting like it never happened. That's hard, but the right thing to do.

If he retaliated--by treating her badly, talking shit about her to other people, trying to harm her career, etc.--that would be a clear step into harassment land.

Yeah, it feels unfair, but that's life. People get annoyed at each other all the time in a typical workplace, often for reasons that seem unfair. Everyone is still expected to act maturely and professionally.

If the socially awkward male stereotype is to be oblivious to hints and the way your actions are interpreted, then the socially awkward female stereotype is to be misinterpret and overanalyze everything people do and think you're being very clear with your intentions when you really aren't. This is something I've seen repeatedly in many women, in their interactions with everybody in all kinds of situations, yet people rarely comment on it the way they do the bumbling male nerd.

My theory on why tech seems to be an outlier in terms of gender-related disputes (other than that stories about it generate lots of clicks) is that rather than being an environment of "evil misogynistic geeks wreaking havoc on well adjusted females," it's really an environment of developmentally stunted socially awkward people all around, a perpetual comedy of errors of oversensitive idiots overreacting to bumbling fools.

Or maybe even not a particular time and date, but "maybe sometime next week?" or "I'd love to, but I'll have to take a rain check". Those are both "yes in principle"; anything less than those is "no".

I would not call it a "weird disconnect". It's just very awkward to give a flat-out "No" when asked out, even when the two people are not coworkers. When it comes to asking someone out, there are three answers: Yes; Yes in principle, but I'm not available then, how about next Tuesday?; all other answers are No. She was probably frustrated that you weren't picking up on this, and probably did feel uncomfortable that she had to keep rejecting you.

If sounding like "yes in principle" is the goal of your speech, then how can one reasonably expect to feel violated when that speech is taken as "yes in principle?"

I like "no means no" as a principle. I wish everyone stood up boldly for the right to say "no." Do this by boldly saying no. The right to say yes but really mean no is something else entirely, and is corrosive to the right to say no.

The answer is only "yes in principle" if they counter-offer with a specific date. Otherwise it's no. These are standard social-norms, not specific to work. Asking someone out is stressful, but being asked out is also stressful. I think it's unreasonable to assume that people who are being asked out should automatically have to assume the awkward social burden of providing unequivocal rejections. Once you learn these social-norms, it's not hard to navigate with them.

The fact that trying to sound like "yes in principle" while not satisfying that in a detail is just weird on the face of it. If it's a social norm, it's an illogical and out of whack social norm. Grown women are just as rational and emotionally tough as men. If you claim the task of saying no is too much for them, I don't buy it.

I think it's telling that in contexts where consensuality is even more immediately critical, the social norm is for direct and clear communication.

awkward social burden of providing unequivocal rejections

It's unreasonable for people to assume the awkward social burden of subtle second-guessing, with the consequence of being labeled as a deviant if you don't. How is that any less unpleasant and corrosive than women having to second guess how they dress, or be thought of as a sexual target? Both of these situations needlessly eschew clear communications for illogical reasons, and hold starkly severe consequences for not adhering to them -- way out of whack with the cost/benefit analysis of avoiding a little "awkwardness."

The goal is not to sound like "yes in principle" because they usually don't say yes, they typically say "Oh, I can't, I'm busy, I have to meet a friend for dinner".

I have also been gender neutral in my pronouns because I'm a guy, I've been asked out by women I did not want to go out with, and it was awkward, and it would have felt worse to just say a simple "No, I'm not interested". But she picked up on that just fine. My point is that there really isn't much second-guessing required. If they say yes, then you're good. If they counter-offer with a different time, you're still good. If they say anything else, that's no.

This would be viable if it were clear, codified, and widely accepted. It's not universally accepted. I've also been in situations where I properly took the information as literal, and this was the right thing to do.

I associate this degree of social/mental gymnastics with Victorian England or the antebellum South, not rational people in 2016.

> This would be viable if it were clear, codified, and widely accepted. It's not universally accepted.

Given the number of people directly disagreeing with you here, I think you need to reevaluate your premise.

95% (arbitrarily) of people will not give you a straight no. Even "Sorry I am not interested" which is honest can come of as impolite. I think saying "I am flattered, but I am not available" is clear and leaves room for a peaceful interaction in the future, or at least to ensure the other person does not leave hurt. When rejecting others it is very important to think of the pain it took them in the first place to approach you. If anything I can respect their courage.

I agree with you. I understand it clearly when someone does not give me an alternative day. If they say "So sorry, I am busy Thursday," I politely answer "Awesome. Let me know when you are free and I'll make time for us." This way they know IF they change their mind later they can reach out.

Honestly everybody would win if guys and girls told the other person "I am flattered, but I am not available." It may hurt a little in the moment (because ego), but short/mid/long run you always thank them for saving you time.

Except for women, the worst case when we say "no" isn't "someone gets his feelings hurt and goes away"; it's something like this: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/usanow/2014/04/25/connect...

or this: http://mic.com/articles/133535/yet-another-woman-has-been-ki...

You know, you sometimes say really brilliant and insightful things, like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520762

And then you say something like the above and I shake my head and wonder how both sentiments can be expressed by the exact same person. Do you not see how your other comment applies to the situation that you find personally frustrating? Do you not see how unreasonable it is to expect all women to just give a straight up "no" instead of a polite excuse?

I am pretty forthright and I find that just straight up telling men "no" is all kinds of problematic. If just saying "no" worked and solved my problems, wow, that would be heaven.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on sexual harassment: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm

I am curious of why is it everyone here is so eager for this to be true?

Several people so far have posted that they have never seen such a thing in the field, and a number of people (outside those fields) responded that they must be blind.

The last 9 out of 10 of these types of stories ended up being exaggerated to such an extent that it became clear that they were all fabricated to get views and to drive agenda.

Pretty obvious from looking at the points and age of this posting that some people have flagged it.

I hope some admins are considering removing those flags. Users who flag a post like this shouldn't really have flagging privs.

> Users who flag a post like this shouldn't really have flagging privs.

I agree with you that the article is focused on an important topic (and I did not flag it), but I don't think you can easily make that one-to-one link between article flagging and poor judgment (or what ever negative trait would justify revoking of flagging privileges). People may have flagged the article because of some issue they had with the accuracy of the text (though it all seemed accurate to me). Or maybe they flagged it because this topic has received some attention previously on HN and the flaggers thought this article didn't bring any new information to the discussion (plausible, since most of the specific cases discussed were already in the news). There could be multiple reasons for flagging this article, not all of which are objectionable.

I think flags shouldn't work after submission's score gets past some threshold. Real flagworthy crap doesn't receive hundreds of votes.

An alternative explanation for sudden drops is the "flame war detector", which demotes stories that are attracting more than a certain ratio of "discussion" to upvotes (and possibly other factors).

With more comments than upvotes, that might be the case here: http://hnrankings.info/11519205/

> "Until recently, we have tiptoed cautiously around these discussions for the most part" [Mia]

Looking for feedback from women on this one: why would one tiptoe around this issue, rather than shouting it from the rooftops? It seems so counter-intuitive.

One reason: It's dangerous to shout it from the rooftops because a lot of people will accuse you of lying. Being branded a false accuser can be fatal to your career.

As it should since being falsely accused would be even worse for your career

"These people are bullying you, and you're being polite back to them."

I think this pretty much summarizes something that should be transmitted to all women in these sort of situations.

I never knew BuzzFeed wrote exclusive longform (and interesting) content. Thanks for mentioning it.

They do quite a bit of it and fund it through their fluff and click-bait. It's actually a similar model to a lot of traditional broadsheet, just applied to the web.

BuzzFeed has a crazy amount of real, good journalistic content. I wish they used a separate domain name for their real journalism so I wouldn't have to take the "real article or clickbait" gamble every time I click a buzzfeed.com link.

It would probably be counter to their revenue model if they had a separate domain for serious journalism.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bigstories is the best place to find their longform stuff without having to wade through the quizzes and clickbait.

BuzzFeed has a startlingly good line in actual serious journalism these days.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11519919 and marked it off-topic.

Btw this comes up every time a substantive Buzzfeed article appears on HN.

Damn, sorry for the trouble :(

I've been a prof: Academics is awash in non-objective pushing and shoving that, yes, affects careers. In academics, even high end universities, a lot of the nasty behavior of middle school is still alive and well. Added to that is grown up politics, professional jealousy, professional competition with sabotage, and, also, no doubt, sexual harassment as in the OP.

I can't speak first hand about sexual harassment because I'm a normal male and never knowingly harassed a female. But, gee, right, there were some times: (1) I was chair of the college computer committee, and she was in the administration and invited me to her office to talk about computing. She leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on her desk aimed at me so that I could see under her skirt and said "My husband and I have an open marriage". Well, my wife and I don't. (2) I was a consultant, say, an applied statistician, in a computing center, and a new prof on campus in sociology with some survey data came to see me about processing the data. She started talking about finding things in her data and said that she was "looking for sex". Then she kept saying she was "looking for sex". Gee, those women were trying to harass me sexually? No, I didn't have any "nightmares"!

Similar things can go on in parts of business.

My mother used to say that a young woman should carry a six inch long, sharp hat pin and be prepared to insert it into any man who got too fresh. We're talking an old story. Maybe I should start a Web site to sell long, sharp hat pins with some instructions on usage.

If we could get rid of all the sexual harassment, then we will discover that, once have some good work, others afraid of losing out in competition will start to fight back, with whispering campaigns, sabotage, gang behavior, etc.

I saw one female prof have a nice little tactic: She never said anything about her research. So, she never gave anyone any hint about what she was doing. Then, suddenly, in one 12 month period, she published five nice papers in one of the best journals in the field. Presto. Bingo. In a baseball analogy, she had hit a home run, or call it a grand slam, had rounded all the bases, and was home free. Five papers in one of the best journals one year? Tough to fight with that, i.e., whispering campaigns mostly won't work. BTW, I was the faculty member who proposed hiring her -- her qualifications looked good to me.

Is being a prof a nice job? Not very.

For one, it's super tough to get paid well enough to buy a nice house and do well supporting a family. Even if get tenure, that doesn't mean that your salary has to keep up with inflation. It can seem better just to be in business, e.g., start and own a successful business, where actually make some money and can accumulate it for some real financial security.

Second, really, to get very far in academics, have to pay close attention to money anyway -- have to get grants. So, can begin to feel like are in business anyway.

Third, in business, it's fairly easy to know how to keep score -- the units are dollars. In academics, we're talking numbers of papers, numbers of invited talks, numbers of journal editorships, number of dollars of grant money, prestige, number of citations, etc. So, it's tough to count and/or compare. For a successful business owner, the criteria are simpler to count and compare -- e.g., a bank statement or, if you will, an account's report.

I have always felt protective of girls and women, and I hate to see them have "nightmares" over anything. But, honey, and I say this out of 100% affection, caring, and respect, out in the real world, there is lots of pushing and shoving, and there still will be even without men trying to kiss you, knocking on your hotel room door at 3 AM, sending you suggestive messages, etc.

Or to borrow from and paraphrase E. Fromm in The Art of Loving, "For humans, the fundamental problem in life is responding to the anxiety from our realization that alone we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society. The first recommended solution is love of spouse." Well, honey, and, again, I mean this with full affection, caring, and respect, one of the "hostile forces of society" is the nearly eternal force of men pursuing friendship, affection, sex, domination, etc.

For such men, part of the solution is a ready supply of clear, loud statements "No. Stop. Quit.". For more, there is that long, sharp hat pin. For more, be in a public place and scream. For more, be with some girlfriends.

Indeed, one of Fromm's other recommended solutions is "membership in a group". It's easy to remember the TV ads for the TV show The Babysitters Club with six or eight very pretty teenage girls walking on a sidewalk close together with each girl trying harder than all the others to be in the center of the group -- it was herd formation, and the TV people believed that it was credible. So, right, females tend "form herds", look like herd animals, and with good reason: They have more safety in a herd, as a member of a "group". So, right, form groups via Twitter, Facebook, fora, one to one e-mail, face to face, etc.

E.g., it was totally clear to a girl I knew of 12, and one of her girlfriends of 11, each about 100 pounds, that they would feel much safer with me, 6' 3" and 14, if they were together and in a public place instead of alone with me in private. Since those girls of 11 and 12 knew about the safety of being in a public place and not alone instead of in a private place and alone, I'm sure the women of the OP can understand that. So, use that tactic.

But, still, honey, that's not nearly the only problem you will face out in the real world. And, again, notice Fromm's first recommended solution -- "love of spouse". That is, have a good marriage with a good husband.

Honey, for a lot of the problems you face in the outside world, sexual harassment is one of the easiest to deal with because (A) it is relatively easy to prove (e.g., smartphone and message recordings), (B) in its more serious forms is very definitely seriously illegal, i.e., you can hire a lawyer, and (C) there is the solution of that hat pin, or just your long, sharp fingernails. But for whispering campaigns, jealousy, sabotage, gang up behavior, etc., defense is more difficult.

Honey, definitely you should protect yourself, and you do have some strong means. But out in the real world some guy trying to get too close to you is not your biggest problem and not what any nightmares, if there are to be any, should be about. Honey, relax; you are overreacting to the wrong thing.

This is what "being part of the problem" looks like.

For "being part of the problem", look at yourself. You are profoundly confused, mixed up, misled. The women in the OP are suffering, from "constant nightmares", and I gave them some powerful, difficult to obtain, wise, helpful advice.

Advice like "say no" and "stay in groups" is neither difficult to obtain nor helpful. (And: "carry a hat pin"? seriously? this is the 21st century here)

Your response makes no sense, is not a reasonable or rational response to what I wrote.

E.g., "say no" and "stay in groups" is VERY helpful.

Of course that advice is not "difficult to obtain". Neither is advice to keep breathing, but all the advice is helpful.

But much of my other advice and descriptions of the real world of work is very helpful and difficult to obtain.

Given your response, maybe you need a remedial course in reading comprehension -- try a US community college.

More likely, you are angry, at me, personally and for no good reason. So, likely you are lost, confused, mixed up, and misled.

Yeah, this dude is creepy as shit and if i knew him in real life i would keep as much distance as possible between him and me. I feel really, really sorry for his wife.

"Honey"? Who on earth do you think you're talking to? Please tell me this post is performance art and not the way you actually talk to women in your real life.

Again, over again, yet again, one more time, once again, this time just for you, I clearly, clearly, clearly, more than once, clearly, very clearly, fully unambiguously, said, fully clearly, right there,

"... honey, and I say this out of 100% affection, caring, and respect"

And I said "honey" with "100% affection, caring, and respect".

100%. Clearly.

> Please tell me this post is performance art and not the way you actually talk to women in your real life.

I wrote this post here in this blog for just the right reason, to be helpful and in response to the OP. The OP was all about personal, feminine, intimate things, and "constant nightmares", and I responded in a corresponding way. That is, the women were having "nightmares" and, as men, we are supposed to be and should be concerned, to be protective, to have sympathy and empathy. And I do, and did, and so posted here.

My response was fully appropriate for and corresponding to the content of the OP -- fully.

Or, again, once again, over again, the OP was about some intimacy and correspondingly so was my response.

For "in your real life", the OP was not much like what women would talk about in real life around an office, which is the professional context of the OP, and neither is my caring, sympathetic "honey". For my post here, there is nothing, nothing, Nothing, NOTHING wrong with "honey" -- instead, "honey" is fully appropriate, affectionate, what one would say to a daughter, sister, niece, or any girl or women having "constant nightmares".

Your response is not against the content I included. You said nothing about my content. That content is not easy to discover, and I posted it to help those OP women with "constant nightmares". My content should help them a lot. I know some things about anxiety in women -- what I posted should help, a lot. E.g., as I posted, I've been a prof and seen a lot in academics, and also in business, IBM, GE, FedEx, and more, and only a tiny fraction of readers here at HN have the advantages of that background to post in response to the OP here. What I posted should be seen as darned helpful. But, you are attacking me, me, personally, not the content of my post, and based on your assumption of something about my behavior in real life and not in my post.

You are extrapolating for no good reason. You owe me an apology and a retraction of your attack.

My response was fully appropriate for and corresponding to the content of the OP -- fully.

I realize you are certain of this, but I'm equally certain that a vast majority of those who would write the original post would consider your suggestions to be "part of the problem". Perhaps they are wrong, but from their viewpoint your response is indistinguishable from parody.

And I said "honey" with "100% affection, caring, and respect".

Assume that we were discussing a post by a older male African-American software engineer lamenting the impact of racial discrimination on his career. Then assume that you kept addressing him as "boy" while proclaiming your sympathy for the "plight of the Negro condition". Although possibly well-intentioned, this is how your response strikes others.

But, you are attacking me, me, personally, not the content of my post, and based on your assumption of something about my behavior in real life and not in my post.

No, 'ksenzee' is offering you valuable feedback on how a majority of working-age Americans would view your approach. It's not extrapolating to actions beyond your post, merely reacting strongly and negatively to the sentiment you express. You clearly disagree, but this doesn't make it an attack, just a major difference in world view.

> Then assume that you kept addressing him as "boy" while proclaiming your sympathy for the "plight of the Negro condition". Although possibly well-intentioned, this is how your response strikes others.

I grew up in the Old South: Addressing a US Black, "boy" is always an insult. Since growing up, I've seen a lot of the US: Addressing a woman in distress, e.g., "constant nightmares", affectionately, "honey" is quite appropriate with nothing wrong at all.

For your

> It's not extrapolating to actions beyond your post,

clearly my

> You are extrapolating for no good reason.

was in response to the ksenzee

> Please tell me this post is performance art and not the way you actually talk to women in your real life.

So, the ksenzee "extrapolation" was

> the way you actually talk to women in your real life.

Of course not. Again, yet again, once again, over again, one more time, the OP was not 'the way the women in the OP would talk to people in an office in real life' but was, as I said, over and over, intimate and my post was in that context and similar and also not as in "real life". That is permissible without being too personal due to the OP and the anonymity -- I was not addressing any particular woman.

> this doesn't make it an attack

Some women are suffering in their attempts at professional careers, and I gave them quite a lot of advice to help them in their careers, fairly carefully written, with good information, not easy to discover, e.g., can be attacked and sabotaged from jealousy and competitiveness from doing the work well, and, net, the attacks cost me five points at HN. I was attacked.

The attacks were personal, against my person, and not against the content of my post. That is, the attacks were essentially "for thinking and writing the way you did, you are a bad person". In particular, for my advice to the women, there were no responses at all. So, the attacks were aimed not at my advice but at me, personally.

<rant> A strong suspicion is that the attacks were because the attackers believed that I was violating some of the norms of politically correct gender equality. On that issue, I will note that, as I explained, I, too, was sexually harassed in a professional, office, academic, employment setting. But, of course, as a man, I didn't get "nightmares". And I will quote E. Fromm, The Art of Loving: "Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same." Right, they are "not the same" -- women "deserve" equality of respect but are not "the same", that is, not 'equal' in all things. E.g., we don't have women playing in the NFL. So, 'gender equality' can't claim that the genders are equal in all respect, e.g., we don't have women playing in the NFL. And, as we can clearly see from the OP, the women are complaining about being sexually harassed while men also get sexually harassed by women and don't complain, that is, there is sexual harassment going in both directions, but the women complain and the men don't -- men and women are not being treated "the same"; full 'gender equality' doesn't hold.

With full 'gender equality', the women in the OP have nearly no grounds for complaint. But I believe that the women very much have very strong grounds for complaint so can't accept the politically correct gender equality fully. So, I am setting aside what is politically correct and being very sympathetic for the suffering women. So, for the way I am treating the women, 'gender equality' would be a big step down for the women. I don't want that big step down for women. So, I tried to help the women. And, in this goal, I was treating women with lots of extra compassion and caring, was being protective, e.g., called them "honey" and was attacked for that. In my post, my record on women was clear -- I was the prof who recommended hiring the woman who did so well. Also, elsewhere my record on women in professional careers is clear: My wife and I both got Ph.D. degrees, but she went to graduate school first, and financially I put her through and she didn't put me through. And during our marriage, until she died, essentially all the money money put into the family checkbook, which she carried, was from me, in particular, from my work, and not from work or anything else from her. So, for my wife, 'gender equality' would have been a big step down. Finally I will quote an expert on US society: "In the US, women are privileged characters." The expert was correct: In US society, in many ways, women are treated much more nicely and gently, with much more in sympathy, empathy, and compassion, than men are -- no small thing and no joke. And I believe that that is just as it should be. Why? Simple point -- men don't have babies.</rant>

Addressing a US Black, "boy" is always an insult. Since growing up, I've seen a lot of the US: Addressing a woman in distress, e.g., "constant nightmares", affectionately, "honey" is quite appropriate with nothing wrong at all.

I think that's the point of disagreement. Is it ever appropriate to address an adult "woman in distress" as "honey" if you are an older male and not in a relationship with her? Similar to "boy", whether correct or not, many (most?) Americans, particularly younger, currently feel that it is never appropriate.

If your parents and grandparents were also from the Deep South, there is some likelihood that they would call a young black man "boy" without necessarily intending offense. The argument that eventually won out is that regardless of intent, such language is belittling and inappropriate. I think the change was for the better, while also accepting that often no harm was intended.

I was in elementary school in North Carolina in the late 70's, and there was still an "unreconstructed" older generation who proudly clung to an "outdated racial terminology" -- some in spite, and some on the theory that they meant nothing wrong by it. Perhaps at the time they were right, perhaps they weren't, but clearly current society would argue against such usage.

I'm asserting that regardless of your intent, your use of "honey" (and defense thereof, particularly the "protective" aspect) is parallel to the way that "boy" (presumably, depending on your age and culture) strikes you. A web search for "honey sexist" will give you a summary of the current consensus.

The attacks were personal, against my person, and not against the content of my post.

To the extent that your choice of phrasing is part of the content, I think it was mostly about the content. I'd guess that 'ksenzee' (who from other posts I think is female) was genuinely asking if your post was parody. You are probably right that the implication was "if you think that's socially acceptable you would be a bad person", but I think it really was in the context of "but surely you can't think that".

(I personally agree with much of your rant about the inconsistencies of "equality", but this may be because I'm probably midway in age between you and much of the rest of the HN audience. I will note though that your wife's opinion on whether 'gender equality' would have been a "big step down" is an important factor to consider.)

> I think that's the point of disagreement. Is it ever appropriate to address an adult "woman in distress" as "honey" if you are an older male and not in a relationship with her?

Again, over again, one more time, yet again, here on HN I was not addressing any particular woman. Instead, there was full anonymity on both sides. So, there was nothing personal involved. I used no names and, really, know no names of the women, and the women don't know my name. So, what I wrote was not really personal. I never claimed or suggested that what I wrote would be appropriate to say directly from a particular man to a particular woman in a real office, employment context; guessing or concluding that I was so suggesting was an unjustified "extrapolation" and, likely, some hypersensitivity to some of the attitudes of political correctness. So, clearly one should take what I wrote as what a man would tell his wife, sister, or daughter.

In our society, in a case of such anonymity, such use of honey is common. E.g., Trump says in public that he "cherishes women". Well, maybe he does. But that is not the same as him walking up to a particular woman, one of thousands at his rallies, and saying "I cherish you". Everyone knows this difference.

On my parents, my mother was born and raised in Ohio, and my father, in Upstate NY. He met my mother in Ohio, and they got married in Ohio. My father went to the Old South because that is where his employer wanted him. My parents had no sympathy at all for the racial norms of the Old South; my ancestors are from England and Germany, but I hated those norms of the Old South and got the hack out of there ASAP. I'm in NYS and don't want to go back to the US South. My mother's approach was clear: Since she did work, she hired a maid for some of the house work. The maid was Black. Mom was sure to make the maid's US Social Security contributions. That was extraordinary.

> Addressing a woman in distress, e.g., "constant nightmares", affectionately, "honey" is quite appropriate with nothing wrong at all.

No. No it is not. Jesus christ. You do not get to call a woman you don't know "honey", "darling", "sweetie", "sweetie pie", "sweetheart", "sugar", "baby", "doll", "angel", etc. If you do know her, you better either be her father or mother, or significant other. I don't care if you're from the South. I'm from the South. Fucking stop it.

I think you intended for your writing to be punchy, but it ended up just being hard to follow. I'll pick a passage at random:

> Then she kept saying she was "looking for sex". Gee, those women were trying to harass me sexually? No, I didn't have any "nightmares"!

Is your second sentence actually a question? It sounds more like a statement that was accidentally punctuated with a question mark rather than a full stop or an exclamation point.

Your third sentence doesn't make sense. Who said anything about nightmares? And why is "nightmares" in quotation marks? Is it supposed to be a euphemism for something else?

Overall, I give your comment a 3/10 in terms of readability. Try tightening it up, and make sure that the sentences you're writing actually make sense and are contextually appropriate.

> Is your second sentence actually a question?

Basically, yes. It was a rhetorical question in the sense that the reader now gets to ask that question as I had to to myself at the time. And, of course, the answer is, "Yes, she was she was asking me to have sexual intercourse with her". So, one could say that I, in this case a man, in a professional, office setting, actually also an academic one, was being asked for sexual intercourse so was being 'sexually harassed'. So, as in the OP, I should have "nightmares"? Well, I didn't. So, I was sexually harassed in a professional, office, academic, employment setting and had no nightmares. So, by implication, we have: "Women, note that, in public, office, professional, academic, employment settings, men get 'sexually harassed', too".

> Your third sentence doesn't make sense. Who said anything about nightmares? And why is "nightmares" in quotation marks? Is it supposed to be a euphemism for something else?

The third sentence makes perfect sense: I was being sexually harassed, by a woman, but didn't have "nightmares". And the word 'nightmares' was in full, double quotes because it was being quoted from the OP, which was about having nightmares from sexual harassment.

> Try tightening it up

It sounds like the jump from my second to my third sentence was already to large, that is, my writing was already too 'tight'.

Bleating.

While in general it can be true, it's not necessarily the case that everything in the article is 100% true. We don't know all the details.

My first reaction: Oh boy, apparently far too many people take the dating advice of phyiscs "god" Richard Feynman far too seriously and don't seem to be able to accept if this doesn't produce the stellar results he predicts in his book.

Also a good read on this: http://mathematigal.com/home/2014/7/14/feynman-is-not-my-her...

Maybe in America... where people (which includes scientists) don't really have a social life. Anyway, if America becomes too hostile for scientists, I'll be happy if Europe and Russia become more attractive to people who don't want deal with bullshit and lawyers.

Most Americans don't really have a social life? News to me...

It's news to people who don't know better...

We've brought over the years more than 30 developers from Eastern Europe some 8 years ago here in Southern California. Nobody wanted to stay for more than 3-6 months even though they got better pay here and no expenses to worry about - company lunches and dinners, nice company cars, nice spacious company houses, etc. On the contrary, when they go back to Western and Central Europe to work for clients, they didn't want to leave!

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