“But he does good work.”
medium.com
medium.com
I agree that it's hard to find black and white in accusations...but I'd argue that even the judicial system leaves more than enough gray to argue over. And because of that, I don't believe that things are ever as simple "if something is wrong, file charges" -- just like it's never as easy as "if you love someone, put a ring on it."
I'll likely have the privilege of never having to file charges for rape, but once I had to file charges as a victim of armed robbery. Even though I had plenty of evidence, in hand and forthcoming (Android location tracing)...I had a hell of a time convincing a detective that I wasn't faking a robbery for insurance purposes, just because I wasn't clear exactly what block i was on when it happened. I can't even fucking imagine what it is like convincing the system that sexual assault (or even harassment) has happened, but I imagine the friction is enough to deter people from taking necessary action until it's too late. It seems that some of these victims are able to talk themselves out of thinking that a colleague truly did wrong, and when others step up, they realize their mistake in being quiet.
-----
Robbery doesn't really make for a good comparison here:
- Did you fear for your own physical safety (e.g. that the thief or their friends/etc might retaliate) in reporting the crime to the police?
- Did you known the thief? Did you have friends in common, or did you work together? Will you possibly see social retaliation from the thief's allies for reporting their behavior?
- Does everyone involved, including the thief and the police, agree on what defines acceptable/legal behavior, or are you going to be argue with the police and others that just because you wore a sexy dress didn't mean that you "wanted" someone to steal your phone?
The robbery experience is comparably simple for the victim and yet even for that, filing a report and being believed was difficult. Therefore, it makes it completely believable that filing a complaint for something like sexual assault would be undeniably hard for many people, in many cases.
That said, it was still comically annoying to convince the detective. I was asked if I had been drinking (yes). I was asked why did I walk home before going to the police station (because without a phone, I had to get on the Internet to look up the nearest police station). I was asked why I didn't call 911 on a pay phone (...because, it literally did not occur to me that pay phones still work...?). I was asked why I walked from Chelsea through a "lively" section of town (Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village), a place known for prostitution, when I could've taken a more direct route (because it's a nice night, and I literally get lost everytime I wander off the grid in the West Village).
To say that the detective didn't believe me is an understatement. He actually accused me of soliciting a prostitute, and that my "lost" items were a result of me getting in over my head with a savvy prostitute.
But I didn't feel terribly offended because I knew I had evidence that could place me at the time of the incident, and other hard facts, such as how the robber ended up using my Netflix account to watch "Prison Break" in the days following the robbery.
A rape victim has none of that assurance. Even if the rape kit comes through, unless the rape is stranger rape, the rape kit does not contain hard facts about consent or intent. All those questions that were asked of me are going to be asked of the victim...except with far more difficult insinuations. After I told my roommate of my interrogation by the cops, she proceeded to tell me of her friends' similar stories...such as how a (female) cop was insistent on asking the victim why she would ever invite her friend (the accused) up to her apartment for tea.
And then there's the difficulty of answering those questions after having recently suffering the physical and emotional trauma of being raped. I have no idea what that feels like; my attacker was a jerk but otherwise left me unharmed.
look at what the police asked the victim in the recent stanford rape case! it's baffling. https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-let...
women who wear feminine or even sexual clothing and make-up aren't "sluts who are asking for it". they're not asking for unprofessional flirtation or jokes, and they're certainly not asking for bullying, disrespect or aggression. i'm not talking about dress code nuance. i'm not talking about whether someone is making destructive decisions or simply different decisions. i'm specifically talking about how femininity is used as an excuse to diminish and over-reach, as an excuse for those with power to project their desires and discount the will of those without. how one person dresses or behaves doesn't justify someone else being an asshole. and yet that is exactly how we make women feel when men cross boundaries, whether it is a rude joke or a physical violence.
the only other time i can think of clothing mattering in a crime is when black people are murdered and somehow it is justified because hoodie :-O
more generally, notifying authorities about sexual harassment or rape is extremely difficult - culturally, not just logistically. because of rape culture and the normative masculinity of most people in power, eg management and police, victims face aggressive doubt. people who speak up often face serious retaliation (bullying, asked to move locations rather than asking the aggressor to move, seen as a problem, stigmatized, etc), which can be even worse - professionally and emotionally - than the incident itself.
Casually telling people to shut up and file a claim reveals deep ignorance. In the Bay Area for example, we've recently had issues with police texting each other homophobic slurs, being involved with an underage sex worker, asking "shaming" questions of a rape victim, and of course being acquitted for murdering unarmed black and brown people. These are just the news-reading ways in the last 12 months that might lead someone to have less trust in authority, to think that maybe those with power aren't on their side.
One's parents, one's friends, one's experiences in the world - they also tell some people that police are not on their side. Daughter, always find a populated, well lit place to pull over at night if a police car flags you to stop. Son, you are black, so when the police pull you over for no reason be calm, be the bigger man, white people are taught to fear you, to see you as an "angry violent black man", so be extra small, don't draw attention. Child, you were born here like your friends, but your parents don't have papers, if you come home from work one day and we are not here it is because they found us, don't draw attention.
Having "the law" on one's side is a privilege. If someone can expect to call the police and have their problems taken seriously, they have a privilege. They don't need to feel guilty -- all of us on HN have some kind of privilege, eg access to the internet and reading and writing -- but they do need to acknowledge that not everyone is the same as themselves. they're not a jerk for having access to the police. but they are ignorant for not thinking about the challenges and differences others face, and then telling people they're doing it wrong for not shutting up and choosing an "easy" solution. have some compassion. be supportive. that's what it means to acknowledge privilege.
Skimming, the first conversation with law enforcement is when a deputy informs her she had been assaulted.
(None of that is meant as push back about reporting being difficult, it's just that in that case law enforcement didn't do anything baffling, they rendered assistance to someone who needed it and prosecuted the obvious crime)
> being involved with an underage sex worker
I've seen others argue, and I agree: there's no such thing as an "underage sex worker" or "child prostitute" -- terms that have been used for some time in the mainstream press. The correct term is "child sex trafficking victim" or the like. The point is that minors cannot legally consent to sex, so legally they must be victims, not criminals.
I don't know about the specific incident you're referring to, but if by "involved with" you mean "participating in the victimization of", I hope there were very serious consequences.
How would rape problem ever get fixed if there are no cases and no time served?
It's a probiel when crime is blamed on "rape culture" rather on a concrete person. That's like accusing everybody but the perpetrator.
Making IT community resolve rape cases instead of specific authorities is counterproductive too. I doubt we're good at it.
Have you ever had a software system with a bug that only appeared in integration tests, or production environment? Every individual component satisfied its contract tolerably well, or misbehaves but in a way that isn't detectable locally, but the system as a whole has emergent misbehaviors. That's a real problem, not imagined.
See also: Tragedy of the Commons, where bad things happen even when no one individual is clearly solely responsible.
That's the problem. That's why our rights, freedoms and safety (real one, not theatrical) are taken from us, bit by bit, and we're unable to do anything.
Happens for a decade, slowly but surely, before my eyes.
We've got to spend some effort on defense, every one of us.
When you have a bug in integration tests, you shuffle your interactions while it gets fixed. When you have Tragedy of the Commons, you rework your social system until there's no more any Tragedy.
Sure, the people who experienced Appelbaum's harassing behavior could've spoken up and possibly averted the alleged rape by having him kicked out on the basis of his unpleasant behavior alone.
However, it's not easy to get someone kicked out based on allegations of behavior, especially someone as high up as him. I mean, that story of bureaucracy and shit rolling downhill is as old as civilization. And it's not all upside to have an organization where people get kicked out via accusation and internal arbitration alone.
Let's assume that some of this abusive behavior warranted official action via the courts (criminal or civil). But those who critique Violet Blue and her allies overlook an obvious problem: if you report a crime to the cops, they now have the authority to get all in your emails and other organization business. Giving Violet Blue and her friends the benefit of the doubt that they are true believers in the Tor project...I find it exceptionally easy to sympathize with how they were able to rationalize not going public about Appelbaum earlier. It's bad enough to cause emotional rift within an organization, no matter how justified...but to risk destroying an organization that you believe is saving lives and protecting freedom...yeah, that's kind of a hard thing to risk taking to court, even for black-and-white crimes.
True, a victim will face the emotional hurdle and trauma. The system is unfeeling.
People these days mostly avoid confrontation. Going to the police is confrontation by proxy, and when it takes convincing to get them to take action, a beaten down victim has quite a battle to face.
The world is unpleasant, it will always be so, it will always be full of suffering. We strive to do our best as a people to improve our lot in life, but that doesn't mean lowering your defenses. Always advocate peace, always prepare for war. Many rely on the system or 'it won't happen to me' mentality as to why they don't or won't protect themselves. You shouldn't have to train in self defense but you must. You shouldn't have to be aware of the situation, but you must. You shouldn't have to note the exit signs in an enclosed structure, but you must. You shouldn't have to cover your drink but you must. You shouldn't have to blend in so as to not draw attention from a threat, but you must. Our world is dangerous, we like to think it isn't, and it's so much easier to tell ourselves that we're a victim and deserve sympathy than to ask ourselves what we could have done to prevent this and defend ourselves. We want someone else to do it for us. A higher up, police, lawyers... do it yourself, defend yourself and your friends.
With the police, the entire process for reporting many of these issues revolves around convincing them to do their job. Or rather, convincing them that your problem is important enough, or else an easy enough case to make, that they should devote time to it rather than other crimes in the area.
And then you say "Going to the police is confrontation by proxy"? That sentence, at least in any civilized part of the world, is complete nonsense. The reason why we have police, ideally, is to reduce the number of confrontations by making the cost of both crime and of escalating violence swift and clear. The job of courts and the police is to prevent vigilantism, as well as to protect people. It does more to prevent additional violence both because most criminals (who aren't the best in society) know that you don't try and take on the police and because it keeps the people being hurt by crime from lashing out and escalating.
And then you go on this victim blaming "you must train on self defense" nonsense? If you live in a war zone, or a really rough neighborhood and you can't count on the police, you might have a point. But for most people crime happens rarely, and nearly all of the time there's no way to prepare for it unless that's all you do with your time. Maybe that's how you want to live, but for me and most other people, that's alot of mental and emotional energy to spend on something that isn't likely to happen.
> These are causes, not just jobs or consulting gigs. They are symbols for fighting injustice, and crusading for those at risk of exploitation. Their reputations are fraught and fragile. To attack a person in them is to attack the movement. They are also male-dominated organizations, in the male-dominated realm of hacking, where very few of the men are willing to accept that their hacker heroes, team bosses, and conference buddies might be doing really, really fucked up things to women.
Above was the passage that struck me the most and seems like the most contributing factor for Jake's inexplicably long tenure. When you are constantly under attack by the powers that be it might seem rational to brush aside accusations against one of your most prominent members and plow ahead. Obviously this was a disastrous decision, both for the women involved and the organization.
EDIT: a word.
anyway, i don't care what "league" this guy is in. wouldn't want to be around behavior like that.
> what about the reality where Hitler cured cancer, Morty? it's best not to think about it.
What seems ever clearer to me though is that many of the organizations/movements we look up to employ and attract certain kinds of people amongst which you'd probably find quite a few psychopaths as well (maybe even more so with "causes").
Do we need to fight fire with fire?
If so, how can we keep our "beneficial" predators (?!) in check (?!?!) insofar as to steer them towards "just doing their job" by concentrating their pernicious powers on the psychopathic bodies (people, organizations, skynet..) we need to be fighting?
If not, let's all level-up and fend them off - people involved with "causes" especially - hierarchies and secrets are the breeding ground for psychopaths as per Hintjens "Power Pyramids vs. Living Systems":
Anecdotally, I've met/heard of lots of creepy guys (almost always guys) at these sort of highly motivated ideological groups. There's a strong in-group/out-group thing going on.
I assume far right groups can be similar, but I've never been involved in one. Also it's less interesting, since they generally don't jump up and down to be called feminist.
"When harassment, sexual or otherwise, requires a cost-benefit analysis, you have failed."
Last I checked everything was just vague accusations, has this changed?
The convincing turned into trying to pull her away
physically, grabbing at her hands. I locked my arm with
hers, and put myself in between her and Jake. All while he
was trying to reach around me, while he was telling me to
let go.You can debate whether digital-only -- but nonetheless involuntary -- stimulation fits the legal definition of "rape" in this or that jurisdiction, if you want. But if so, you'd be splitting hairs.
Reading threads like this (including the flagged comments) is that any wonder?
You are saying, "it just concerns me how bad they're working to make this guy out as a rapist when no one has put their names explicitly to actual penetration, as opposed to mere sexual assault."
That's basically exactly what I was looking for actually. Must have missed it. Thanks.
I'll stick to commenting on technical topics... This has just been a mess. Try to ask some questions and you just get slagged around here if you're not 100% up to speed.
Thanks though.
> Tor Project’s director went on to tell Wired that someone was indeed raped, that the project is working with legal, and that she “absolutely believes” the victim.
The Wired story is this: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/tor-developer-jacob-appelbaum-...
There's no name, but you have the potential for a legal case to be brought up. And, at the very least, you have the Tor Project's executive director, Shari Steele, publicly endorsing the rape accuser's actions.
That said, it's not nothing for Violet Blue (or anyone) to detail the harassment allegations that she has, one of which has at least a named witness (the editor of WIRED). Just because repeatedly telling your colleague that you'd like to fuck-them-oh-please-why-won't-you-fuck-me isn't technically rape or something that can be elevated to a criminal charge [0], that doesn't mean that it's not abuse that warrants kicking someone out of an organization.
Besides Violet Blue, Nick Farr wrote a lengthy post alleging non-sexual harassment against Appelbaum: https://medium.com/@nickf4rr/hi-im-nick-farr-nickf4rr-35c32f...
[0] Sure, that kind of harassment probably violates a criminal statute, technically. But that's not the only criteria...you also have: what the detective believes is criminal, what the district attorney believes is criminal, and even what the judge/grand jury feels is criminal (because the judge/grand jury can override the district attorney if they don't feel the charges are supported by evidence), before a criminal charge is official.
And even though it's not criminal, it is definitely not legal in the workplace. The employer has an obligation to not allow this type of behavior to go unchecked.
Seems to be pretty textbook (not just "in theory", but "as applied in practice") criminal harassment; the only reason that it normally wouldn't be subject to criminal action is because usually between work colleagues, the fact that the threshold for workplace civil liability for sexual harassment is so much lower than that for criminal harassment in this area would result in workplace action resolving the problem before it reached a criminal level (or without anyone feeling the need to escalate to involve police even if it had reached the level it has.)
So what might technically be criminal might not really feel like harassment, just a massive misunderstanding...it's only when more and more people speak up that the "misunderstanding" explanation becomes hard to believe.
That said...there is one other factor specific to Tor project that I would have to guess most definitely dampened the enthusiasm to level criminal charges, no matter how justified: bringing in cops means bringing in people who will search your phone and the accuser's phone (and email, and so forth). There's no way even the most harassed person at Tor Project could go the cops without a lot of personal turmoil and doubt.
I don't really agree with the quote. Harassment can be too loosely defined.
> "It was a close call as to whether his benefits outweighed his liabilities."
I disagree with this one more strongly though. I mean from the author's writing, this guy was off-the-charts.
http://w3.cultdeadcow.com/cms/2016/06/cult-of-the-dead-cow-s...
In this case we've seen a group of women publish a statement saying "Appelbaum never treated us like that" [0]. Well, it's nice that he wasn't a jerk to absolutely every woman he ever met, but that really doesn't prove anything at all. (At least the statement is fairly carefully worded so as not to dismiss the possibility that Appelbaum harmed others... but I still have to wonder if it was a good thing that they published it.)
I see no dichotomy whatsoever. In fact, I would even say that individuals and organizations that pursue a "higher calling" (in this case, freedom from governmental authority) are more willing to sacrifice some less-valued members for the higher good – as evidenced by statements like "But he does good work".
Besides, not everyone who belongs to an ideological organization is in it for the ideology; some are there for the power and influence they can achieve from rising through the ranks. Judging by the descriptions given in this article, Jacob Appelbaum appears quite power hungry and manipulative.
There isn't an easy answer here.
The leaders of the Tor community were shown evidence they considered to be sufficient to boot this guy. It's a community they lead, they get to decide who is welcome. You want to start your own community and welcome him with open arms, you go right ahead.
That said, yes, they do lend a lot of legitimacy to this claim, but it just concerns me that no one has publicly put their name on a rape allegation and nothing has been taken up legally.
There's the problem of false accusations, but I think there is enough "evidence" with this many coming forward (and many non-anonymously) and that Tor kicked him out too.
However, the blog post discussed here nor anyone in the thread has suggested that that should be done so I'm confused why you are fixated on it.
You slide right past my assertion that the Tor community must be able to decide who is welcome in the Tor community and refer to a nebulous "privacy community" now. Is the "privacy community" even at issue? I don't know what that is. If there is a group called the "privacy community", then yes, I agree, they should decide who is welcome in their club.
As far as I know, he's not being prosecuted. The only rights he acquires from not being prosecuted are that he won't go to jail. Right? He doesn't have any automatic right to join my club, your club, or the Tor community's club.
What, it's better to let him go out and hurt others than to take it public or legal?
I also do not understand your obsession with alleged rape. If it turned out that rape part was not true, but others were, would you see Applebaum differently?
I sure as hell wouldn't.
There's a major difference between someone making some offensive comments (even repeatedly) and someone committing violent crime.
There was no physical harm, but I was shaken enough to quit on the spot when the manager told me he would not be fired.
Here's why the difference gap is smaller than you think: I can never be un-scared from that event.
There's good reason why these crimes are differentiated in the laws of every country around. The effects are not remotely comparable and to suggest that they are is quite offensive to victims of real violence.
As someone who has worked with victims of long term harassment (of both sexes) and have therefore seen up close such effects, I find offensive your implicit statement that psychological violence is somehow not real violence.
I think this is a reasonable assumption.
However, that doesn't change the fact that if nobody officially stands up and makes use of the legal system, a predator will go unpunished....and quite possibly hurt others.
Unless one is hoping that vigilantism will take care of the problem, but that's rather horrible too.
There were laws in the US prohibiting revealing the identity of the victim in a rape case, but they got struck down as unconstitutional -- there's still a strong cultural norm in the media of not announcing it.
It's also a good idea. Being raped is bad enough; if the bar for consequences for your rapist becomes "I have to loudly announce my rape to the world", that's even worse.
This can be viewed as a web-of-trust situation. The raped person told the leaders of the Tor project, who believed them. You can now either wait for possible criminal charges that might be going on behind the scenes, or you can trust the Tor leaders.
As to his guilt, I don't know. Half of me thinks he could well be a slimeball that's guilty as charged. If that's the case, then he needs to go to jail. But the other half of me remembers that there's 'women in tech' organisations that have been accused of framing technology leaders for sexual assault just to marginalize them. That's why I want to see some due process and some real evidence.
Yeah, right.
1. This is Jacob Appelbaum: he consistently went over the head of procurement when ordering new paper for the printer. He's been fired.
2. This is Jacob Appelbaum: he's a sleazy pickup artist who's raped at least one person, threatened others and made female employees' lives a living hell. He's been fired.
One of these things is not like the other.
> The standard for dismissal as an unpaid official of a private nonprofit organization is lower than that for prison.
Well, quite. But as soon as you accuse someone of a criminal offense, then they're entitled to use the legal system to defend themselves. Violet's point is that the community needs to stop this from happening again which I have to agree with - if the accused is indeed guilty. But she cannot just charge ahead and demand sweeping reforms before determining whether he is or not.
> Subject could always set up his own networked privacy tool? OK, maybe that's a stretch... b^)
No - Subject needs to answer these very serious charges in front of a judge so that he can either a) clear his name or b) be locked up to protect others from his predatory behavior.
Just what kind of absurd anti-feminist conspiracy theories have you been reading? Are you honestly suggesting that this many of Applebaums colleagues are evil conspirators hell-bent on destroying an innocent man's life? I think you could do with some Occam's Razor and a moment to think about your attitude towards sexual assault and power.
Eric Raymond's post on the subject here - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907 - clearly accuses the Ada Initiative of framing technology leaders for sexual assault. I chose to Listen and Believe him. What's the problem?
> Are you honestly suggesting that this many of Applebaums colleagues are evil conspirators hell-bent on destroying an innocent man's life?
No, I think there something to these allegations. But the problem is the environment has been salted and soured so much recently that when a high profile person accuses someone of a sexual assault that took place years ago, my automatic reaction is that they're lying. That's why I want to see due process including cross-examination and lengthy jail terms if he's guilty.
> I think you could do with some Occam's Razor
Ok, how about this then? Three separate women accuse a media personality of sexual assault. He is tried. On the stand it turns out each one of the women was lying - he had proof that it was consensual. I was 100% convinced before the trial he would be convicted. I mean come on: three separate witnesses? Each with a similar story? Occam's Razor right? Nope.
> a moment to think about your attitude towards sexual assault and power.
I think it's extremely healthy: someone accused of any crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty as part of a due process.
Without an impartial investigation, we on the outside know nothing but what has been alleged.
No, accusations are labelled as false all the time; genuinely baseless accusations are much rarer.
False accusations of sexual harassment do, in fact, happen (and, should a general perception that they do not occur become widely recognized, it would be reasonable to expect that that alone would make false accusations more common -- the general acceptance of the belief "no one would lie about X" encourages lying about X.)
baseless accusations are much rarer.
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/25/local/me-false25
Nobody knows how many guys are rotting in jail because they ran across a vindictive (or just plain crazy) woman who can keep her story straight.
Can I check how you're defining "false accusation"? There are several different definitions.
EDIT after downvote: The different definitions include "nothing happened and the alleged victim made it all up", but also "it happened, and the alleged attacker actually did it, but was found not guilty, and so in law they're innocent and thus the accusation is false".
Clarifying which definition is being used helps conversation.
I don't really care. For all its faults, due process in the West is still a whole lot better than the alternatives.
> There are ways of getting to accountability and rehabilitation and justice that don't have anything to do with filing charges in a court of law.
If these allegations are true, Appelbaum is clearly someone who needs to be locked away from society for decades in my opinion and no-one can arbitrarily claim that authority. The important word is 'if'.
> Start with looking up "restorative justice" and "restorative justice rape" for example, to read about approaches that have worked.
Great. Let's find out if a rape happened first. Because it didn't happen at Duke Lacrosse, it didn't happen to Emma Sulkowicz, it didn't happen at the University of Virginia, it didn't happen to Nicola Osborne, Elizabeth Coast, Katherine Bennett, Cassandra Kennedy or Linsey Attridge.
I'm not just talking about incidents of poor conduct.
It's also the fact people are exchanging insults and serious accusations over blog posts.
It's not like the observers have the facts and evidence to make fair judgements on these matters.
The whole trial by social media is really embarrassing to the profession.
If you see behaviors like this and let it happen, you're complicit ... if you're in a position of authority (someone's boss) and you let it happen, you may also be criminally liable.
But it's far worse ... what I hope is a small minority of bad actors are defining the definition of male in our culture. Since there's an even smaller number men who are willing to speak out against them, and an ocean of those who don't want to be involved in the middle, only a mere whisper of voices are countering those who, to be honest, tend to be the loud-mouth, misbehaving misogynists. It's time for the gentlemen to step up their game.
<PROCLAMATION>
If you're being harassed, sexually or otherwise, within my earshot, I will take action to stop it. I'm not offering hugs of consolation but rather to stand between you and the abuse. I will protect you (potentially a stranger) as I would a member of family or any of my close friends. Those of us with spouses, daughters (and sons) want safe places for them to work too!
I originally wrote "If you're a woman being harassed ..." but realize there are many cases where a bully is harassing someone who shares their gender. And in the corporate world, there are always predators taking credit for others work (according to recent studies, it's the psychopaths that rise to the top).
I've had a long career in technology, and in theory have enough of a reputation that I can afford to spend some political capital. I think the younger men who are "just starting out" have a bigger voice than they realize, but they need to band together. Let's take back the organizations that have degraded to this point ... when there's nowhere left for people like Applebaum to work, I still won't feel sorry for him.
What's it going to be boys? ... are you willing to step up your game? To behave like men? Or better yet, to become a real gentleman?
</PROCLAMATION>
As another older guy, also happily married, I agree completely.
That said, as someone who hasn't observed behavior like this while in the industry and certainly doesn't practice it....God, I'm tired of being painted with a broad brush (in general, I'm not implying that smoyer did so) and told that I'm part of the problem.
The finger-waggling can get quite grating if you're just trying to do your best day-to-day without being a dick to anybody. I suspect there are quite a few guys in the same boat who don't have issues with anybody due to their gender, race, religion or sexual orientation but are dealing with "chastisement fatigue".
Edit: What, I'm the villain for agreeing with the parent post but complaining about being painted with a broad brush? What the hell is wrong with some of you?
If you really haven't observed it, you're either not dealing with a large number of people per day, or you're ignoring the issues around you. In my experience, this behavior is pervasive.
There are a million reasons why it's hard to stand up for yourself in the face of abuse, and one of the biggest is feeling isolated and alone in your problems. So, if you ignore the problem because you're "just doing your best day-to-day", you are part of the reason that the situation is not getting better.
Who says I'm ignoring the problem? I've agreed that there is a problem. My point is that there's a lot of us out there being lumped in with the real bad guys, and that gets old.
There is a vast difference between being the source of a problem and failing to help stop a problem. Still, the only way to minimize the effect of the first group is to make an intense effort not to be in the second.
I don't see behavior like this either. I'm fully in favor of standing up against it, but I'm lucky in that I don't work in an environment where this seems to be happening much. I'm sure abuse happens, because it happens everywhere, but if I don't see it I can't really stand up against it. It's one thing to proclaim loudly. It's another to take action. I personally don't have anything to take action against in my current environment.
It feels weird to be quoting myself but I definitely agree with you ... I'm (finally) making this a proclamation because I don't want to be painted with that broad brush either. And I think that there's a very quiet majority of males who feel this is wrong but are unwilling to call it out.
I'm a WASP male and find there are multiple ways I can be vilified. I'm NOT owning that. If the view of men is going to change, the majority of us need to be speaking out against the abuse. There have been a couple instances where I've overheard the broad brush strokes you've described and pointedly asked "are we all that bad" ... you'll see back-pedaling and sometimes an admission that it's (also) a generalization.
Secondly: this kind of "as long as I'm not doing anything wrong it's fine" attitude is precisely what the commenter was calling out as being not enough.
Downvoting without explaining only stifles communication and smugly reinforces both sides' viewpoints. A downvote IMO should only be used if the comment is brazenly off-topic, offensive, or factually incorrect.
As for the second part, someone could be a true angel but never witness any harassment and never have the chance to bring an offender to justice - does that make them a better or worse person than someone who had?
I think the parent's point was that if people just got along and didn't cause these kinds of problems we wouldn't have to suddenly shunt souls into categories: "offender";"victim";"witness";"white knight";"silently complicit"
And so on.
Don't rock the boat? Don't be a narc or a buzzkill? Get a sense of humor?
I did not say at all that one should stay silent in the face of adversity.
Counterfactuals are fun.
Social norms can change.
are you willing to step up your game?
What are you doing to counter the blatant misandry in current harassment laws? To wit, you wrote "If you're a woman being harassed ..." this is a blatantly sexist question. What if you are a man being harassed by a woman?
What misandry in current harassment laws? Please cite the specific laws containing misandry, and identify the specific source of the misandry in the law.
There's certainly an inconsistency between two laws there, but it's hard to see that as an example of misandry, and, since neither of the laws involved is a harassment law, harder to see it as misandry in the harassment laws.
Of course, I was also conditioned (thanks Disney) to want to be the knight in shining armor who comes to the aid of the damsel in distress.
So while I intellectually know it applies to everyone, I felt safe admitting that my original sentence contained some stereotypical ideas. And while we're at it, I know plenty of girls and women who could kick my butt - those ladies that fall into that category can feel free to be my knight in shining armor if they see me being harassed.
A funny story from my high-school days - our sociology class was assigned to perform an act that fell outside the social norms. I spent a few hours one day opening the doors for anyone who entered our local mall. One woman (who still went through the open door) asked me if my parents would be embarrassed that they'd raised such a male-chauvinist pig. I have no idea where it came from but my response was "They think they've raised a gentleman - if you'd held the door open for me, I only would have said 'Thank you'". Why is it that I often only think of the clever thing to say minutes or hours after the moment has passed?
There is an interesting convergence between feminists and conservatives, in that both seek to demonise and curtail male sexuality as much as possible. They do it for different reasons though.
Social conservatives believe sexuality should be channeled into nuclear families because stable monogamous nuclear families are best for society and also best for the individuals involved. Without conventional families they belive فتنة (Fitna) will rule.
Feminists OTOH do so for altogether different reasons, indeed they loath the stable monogamous nuclear families.
For reasons that are beyond what can be easily discussed in a HN post, feminists have won this battle for now, and use social conservatives as enforcers, something the latter don't realise because they fundamentally don't understand that they are being taken for a ride. In the long run social conservatives will win though, because they have way more children than feminists (male and female). Feminist attitudes will simply die out.
However, it is this small group that will always keep the flame of liberalism alive.
It is quite normal to stage a partial rebellion against one's upbringing, it's part of the normal process of maturing into an adult. However, that tends to fizzle out when one's own children arrive. To be sure, there will always be those who do not follow the parental path. My contention is that they will remain a minority. Especially in the future when their lack of offspring will be extremely apparent. Feminists will be looked at with bemusement like the shakers today.
If the world population growth doesn't stop one way, it will stop the hard way. You can only fit so many humans on this planet.
Feminism is sometimes seen as an evolved reaction to overpopulation.
> In the long run social conservatives will win though, because they have way more children than feminists (male and female). Feminist attitudes will simply die out.
You know the film Idiocracy? It's a hilariously satirical scifi story based on the premise of "intelligent people reproduce way less than stupid people, therefore intelligence will die out".
Which is a very funny idea, but it's just not how selection works.
Your example is doubtful for slightly different reasons. Historically, the selection pressure on pieces of information (Feminist attitudes) has always been strongly tied to the reproductive ability of the medium it is embedded in (people). However, that is changing, information is getting loose, first as artifacts, writing, but today it even has forms of agency (computing). The world population will stagnate, which also factors into it. Spreading your genes used to be, but really is no longer a guarantee to also spread your ideas.
Or maybe look at it the other way, if things work the way you describe, where did Feminism come from in the first place? How could it ever gain mainstream traction in an environment filled with reproducing conservatives? It's a bit absurd. Also, if the process you describe only affects "the long run", what's stopping Feminism from popping up over and over again in the short term?
I base my prediction that feminist will die out not so much on abstract theories of information transfer and evolution, but on what I observe in the world.
where did Feminism come from
this is a really interesting point worth investigating. i don't have research on hand to link to (though it's fresh on my mind from reading Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist), but my understanding is that sexual harassment and rape are grossly underreported. false positives is not a huge problem. false negatives are.
by talking about false accusations you are placing greater importance on the suffering of the fewer people who are falsely accused compared to the suffering of the greater people who are falsely silent.
that's fine to intentionally value this, but do consider how this parallels rape culture and the protection of aggressors over the safety of victims. (for offenders, like priests who abused children, become repeat offenders)
as for the fact that men are also harassed and raped, and that male-male and female-female harassment and rape also exist: these are big problems, too, and the silence of the victims is even more complicated, for it doesn't follow the usual victim norm. people want to be heard. they want their problems to be seen and resolved. thus i contend that being heard is the greater problem. not false accusations.
my understanding is that sexual
harassment and rape are grossly
underreported.
Recent media scares from the mattress girl to the UVA rape hoax to "Joey" [1], not to mention financial incentives (e.g. alimony in divorce cases), are exactly helping to convince me otherwise.
Historically, lynching was often justified by references to rape of some damsels ... Are you suggesting that these cases were anything but false accusations?
[1] http://wjbf.com/2016/06/15/facebook-post-gets-shared-thousan...
Chivalry is dead, and women killed it.
What a relief.
> and women killed it
Good on them. Let's send all gender roles into the past with other relics like dowries and stonings, where they belong.
The way I have learned it is about doing the right thing while avoiding reward or recognition.
The thing that drew my attention was the public comment he made about giving head. Because why would anyone want to work with a person who behaves like that? He probably knows how to pick an audience, but the real explanation came at the end of the article:
"People like Jake can be found in other places (...) Wherever power imbalances, hero worship, and secret-keepers intersect."
And those are places that independent people like to avoid. And that might be an explanation for why so many people never heard of stories like that in their surroundings.
I've been rebuked for trying to "step up my game" and getting it wrong enough times that I no longer trust the concept. I'm done second-guessing which particular people want/need help in particular moments and which don't. It's patronizing as hell. I'll help those who ask and I'll make it easy to ask, but I'm done making people's choices for them.
rape is torture. for some it is worse than murder.
sexual harassment is aggression. for some it is worse than being punched in the face.
how would you feel if someone at your work murdered or punched someone else?
how would you feel if there was a systemic cultural inequity such that 1 in 3 people could expect to be murdered or punched at some point in their life?
ps - the opposite of rape (bully) culture is nurturance (support) culture.
I think a lot of well intentioned folks are in this category. I don't think it's helpful for those folks to be skewered (ala extreme social justice style) for their difficulties. But with that said, it's the sum of their difficulties and those of society at large that may create room for these kinds of situations. I mean, for a very long time, we as a society had ethical arguments for slavery. I don't think it's beyond reason to think that later generations will look at the way survivors of sexual assault are treated by society the way we look at how slaves were once treated with society: shame and wonder at how anyone could let that happen, and yet an uneasiness at realizing that in the context of the historical period, it makes total sense. Humanity is capable of some really unsettling things.
I don't know the details of this particular case, and I would hope (although even courts have difficulties with this) that justice is found in the courts. But I must say, the allegations make my stomach churn precisely because they don't seem unrealistic. I've heard stories and seen folks do things like this with the brazen presumption that no one would stop them. Sadly, they can be right to some extent. I've done what I can to put those situations to a stop (you can only really do it if executive leadership is on your side and also not rotten in the same way the toxic individual is), but the fact remains -- it's a problem, even if it's sometime subtle and hard to notice or do anything about.
[0] https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/the-forest-for-the-trees....
Five years.
Regardless, my intuition is inclined to accept his guilt, not that I, or almost any of the internet commenters, are really qualified to pass that judgement.
But when these cases arise, I can't help but think how easy it would be to manufacture a rape scandal, especially against a charismatic man, especially if they're a creep. I would think that security-minded people would be the first to realize this, but alas. Every time there's a public reaction like this, with the accused being fired and publicly shamed before any rigorous investigation even begins, we show potential defamers that the strategy works. It's a hard problem, because we want to support victims, but we can't ignore the fact that the accused could be the greatest victim of all.
We have to postpone judgement in cases like these, until stronger evidence emerges, else we risk creating an environment where everyone has to live in fear of false scandals. We can't let that get in the way of reporting on the case, but at least we shouldn't give any credance to crap like the "skewering" article refuting Appelbaum's denial [1] (what statement of denial would have convinced the author?) and we shouldn't be respecting statements like in the Wired article [2]:
Shepard also says she’s spoken directly with one of Appelbaum’s alleged victims, who told Shepard in February of this year that Appelbaum had raped him or her. “Sadly… I think it’s the damn truth. He’s a charismatic, socially dominant manipulator,” Shepard writes to WIRED. “I absolutely believe the accusers.”
He's a charismatic, socially dominant manipulator, therefore he raped this woman? Does muscularity implicate someone in a mugging? The fact that you spoke with someone who spoke with an alleged victim and they were convinced, is meaningless, considering how many people are convinced of Appelbaum's guilt without knowing almost anything about the case.
[1] https://medium.com/@frabyn/decoding-jake-appelbaum-9fa75d060...
[2] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/tor-developer-jacob-appelbaum-...
I think this is an interesting concept and needs to be brought more to light.
The poster seems to go out of her way to frame all accusation against Jake Appelbaum as a setup to discredit him. She even begins with an apology that claiming that wikileaks and Assange are worthy of excusing him. Bascially, 'but he does good work'...!
The text analysis reaslly outlines just how far people are going to try to drown and reject any allegation. Violet Blue's post contains dozens of precise allegations, with employer, locale, people and precise situations. Many of the incidents she describes can be verified, his getting fired and the emails. Yet, we're being served the same 'but he does good work.'
Social engineering is still the easiest, most successful approach to breaking any security infrastructure. Intelligence agencies have a long history of using sexual-antic-related blackmail as a lever against their opponents.
But if nobody cares, it becomes somewhat more difficult to apply the lever.
"I want to be clear: the accusations of criminal sexual misconduct against me are entirely false."
"I’ve dedicated my life as a journalist, activist, and longtime member of the Tor Project to advocating for the transparency of public processes and to speaking out about the necessity of privacy, security, and anonymity. These are ideals that I will continue to uphold, despite the vicious campaign that is currently being waged against me."
This guy spent two years in foster care when he was a kid. That kind of adversity, in my opinion, rears character.
KR: I'm not a criminal; I've never even been convicted of a felony in this state!
BB: That's an oddly specific phrasing.
I knew a guy in college who had some aspects of this guy's behavior and was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder (tragically, he fully embraced his condition), but I only have an armchair knowledge of psychiatry and I'd be interested to hear what somebody with experience has to say about it.
http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths
Edit: I neither know the accused nor the writer of that piece, I just wanted to share that there's lots of layers to reality and that this book was eye-opening to me in that regard.
Hopefully anybody with experience will know better than to diagnose someone over the Internet based largely on hearsay.
The rest of this article is quite thorough, and this topic certainly deserves more public discussion of what went wrong and what should be done in the future. Obviously this episode should unsettle those who have concluded that the claims are true, and even those who are uncertain should take a look at how these issues circulated for so long without being brought to a head.
The Snowden comment, though, confused me. Appelbaum accepted an award on his behalf, but as far as I knew that's about the extend of it. CCC and Assange have been tied into the community for long enough to have heard these things, and I can understand the comment about how they should have vetted Appelbaum.
Snowden (to my knowledge) had no real connections in this community, and Appelbaum only stepped up to bask in his glow once he was in hiding and largely restricted from 'vetting' others. There might be questions about why no one else who knew the claims stepped in, but barring more evidence I have trouble with the claim that Snowden has something to answer for.
I don't want to push too hard on one off-hand comment in a much larger piece, but I've already seen this used as ammunition to discredit Snowden: "If his actions are so good, why did he have anything to do with Appelbaum?" It seems like a bad meme to spread without some explanation of why he should have known about as-yet-unpublicized accusations.
Who is that referring to? Is the audience supposed to know, or was that in inside reference
> When harassment, sexual or otherwise, requires a cost-benefit analysis, you have failed.
The actual criminal allegations should be settled in court.
Of course, a fake-ass "anarchist" like Applebaum might file a civil suit for a well-deserved ass-kicking, but that's still sunlight.
However, perhaps something about this works better when all parties are in the same "community", in a sense. The situation under discussion seems to fit that mold.
_Who_ decides what calls for more than a sharp rebuke?
But, then again, I'm not saying we should kill anyone or even damage them permanently so I'm not sure it is fair to take the statement to that extreme.
Did every single person -- every victim, bystander, and authority figure -- deftly slink away or obediently succumb to his forcible coercion?
Maybe I'm just a violent individual with anger issues but I would've had no problem with physically correcting his behavior.
So, again, this was basically personal power within an in-group. It can happen in literally any in-group, because it's a social dynamic, and social dynamics don't follow the ethos of an organization, they follow human heuristics.
The "stories" make for juicy reading, but the details of this case aren't special. Jake's is one of the most blatant, obvious, ongoing examples i've heard of, but similar situations happen in a variety of ways, usually far less obvious. Since the hacker scene is very much an exclusive in-group of outsiders, this kind of person is much more accepted there. But you'll still find these kinds of situations everywhere.
I think it is a very valid question. How, as an employer, as a community, can we make sure negative or abusive behaviour is dealt with correctly?
But if that person says, "Can you help me? Bill Smith is harassing me." Now they've got my attention.
In this case I don't know what the exact dialog was, but if you want help be sure to ask for it and state clearly why. People will respond more proactively.
However, Macrina's story mentioned in a different article[0] sounded very very strange to me. I simply don't understand how Macrina, a working professional adult, can follow that kind of logic. To me it simply sounds like she made a mistake and now regrets it.
[0] - http://gizmodo.com/another-woman-has-accused-jacob-appelbaum...
It rings very true and does not sound like the kind of story someone would make up for attention.
- making it explicit up-front that the behavior described is considered unacceptable by the community, which would help victims know that they have the support of the community
- publicizing a way of reporting inappropriate behavior
- setting up some kind of group governance for acting on reports
All of those things seem incredibly helpful. And I'm sure I've missed some.
I'm convinced that the student handbook prevents non-sexual harassment of staff, and it's equally true that police and HR are the go-to contacts for that type of incident.
The employee and student manuals are the applicable codes of conduct. It's true that the workplace owns the problem now, and that there can be a pattern established (and one for myself as well), but come again about the incredible helpfulness! The world isn't black and white, and groups value peace, but they also value money and presenting a united front. The often value the latter two more than the peace of a fellow at the bottom of the totem pole.
Sounds like you had a bad experience: I'm sorry to hear that. Imbalance of power is never fun… :-(
Seems like there is a ton of twitter drama surrounding this, which I tend to avoid so I'll leave it at that.
We got statements from the accusers. We got statement from the accused. We got statement from people who are not victims but claim to speak for them (ie prosecutors). We got people who are neither the accuser nor accused, but instead talks in favor/against a conviction (ie lawyers). We got a jury, ie all the comments here on HN and articles on media platforms. All that is missing from a real court is the unbiased judge who can specify the rules and finalize a judgement.
For those 100+ comments in here, particular those that make a direct or implied judgement, do you think we should replace the court system by articles like this? The current justice system has problems. It requires time, energy, and often capital from victims. Sometimes the guilt gets away. Sometimes the innocent get locked up. There is a lot of fear of not being believed. A lot of self-doubt. Privacy is lost for both the accuser/victim and accused/perpetrator. Social relationships can be destroyed, and risk of retaliation is high. Trial by media really sound as a tempting solution, and all we need to give up seems to be that of a impartial judge and the rules.
notes: Its fun to see the up and down votes in real time. 1->4->2->5->1->3. The Zero replies make for a interesting discussion.
It's because prosecutors understand factors to legal victory that clothing, drug use, prior relationship with defendant, and other things like that are relevant.
Speaking descriptively, the job of the police is not to act as some neutral 3rd party of justice and investigate all claims of the truth in proportion to their merit. It is the secondary job of the police to set up cases for the prosecution without regard for defense interests. It is the primary job of all agencies ever to manage organizational credibility, robustness, and scope.
how is that reasonable? maybe we should ask what she claims and what he wore.
but wait, what clothing indicates whether someone is a rapist? tshirts and tatty jeans? polo shirt? suit? of course clothing implies nothing.
why does her wearing "sexy" clothing -- to say nothing of "sexy" being all about the male perception and desires, as if her own clothing can't be worn for her own reasons -- imply anything about her desire for sex?
> "isn't it just as/more important that they correctly figure out who the victim is?"
if you're only asking men their opinion, and believing whatever assumptions you want to make about women based on their clothing rather than their word, the system is already tilted towards men getting want they explicitly want, and women not being listened to.
i'm not saying believe rape victims without scrutiny. i'm saying have a little more compassion and support and actually listen to their words as much as you listen to the man's words, and care about their clothes as much as you care about the man's clothes.
The police and justice system wish to know these facts so they know the strength of some legal narrative and what counternarratives can be supported. Wearing sexy clothing fits a narrative of consensual sex. Sexual injuries fits a narrative of sexual assault. Drug use damages the credibility of any party. Prior relationship with defendant can fit narratives about the likelihood that someone might agree to sex.
These are facts that defense will ask, and it's best for the prosecution that the police ask first on their terms to control the progression of fact discovery, as opposed to letting the defense ask first on their terms.
Why not be interested in what the man was wearing? Maybe because the prosecution, in anticipation of defense strategy, thinks it won't matter. The job of the police is not to act as a neutral 3rd party to the justice system, proportionally investigating claims on the strength of their merits. The secondary job of the police is to set up cases for the prosecution, even if it's unfair to the defense. The primary job of the police, and any agency, is to establish its own credibility, robustness, and scope as an agency. Note that I am speaking descriptively, not prescriptively.
I agree that victims are often doubted because of drug use. (I think that's an error by police; instead of doubting the victim they should be treating the victim as a vulnerable person who was more likely to be abused)
But can you show me any examples where a rapist who claimed he had consent was doubted because he had been using drugs?
It feels as if the doubt only goes one way.
Imagine a situation where the government doesn't ask first, and instead defense asks first on their terms. That's incompetent.
If a woman is raped, and the guy claims it was consensual, do you think a woman should be able to point out that, "if I had any intention of sleeping with him I wouldn't have been wearing those underwear?" Or should that piece of evidence be excluded because clothing is never relevant?
The second question is of course, does it even matter what intention people had? Maybe it should not be the police job to determine which person is more believable, but rather just write down the statement of the accuser and the accused, and collect any evidence that a prosecutor might find valuable in their decision to either pick up the case or not.
The third question is then, if police would have a policy to investigate anything reported, will there be enough resources? How much added taxes would be needed to have a 100% impartial police whose only duty is to investigate and deliver reports to prosecutors who then do the judgement on whom to believe.
If someone walks into a bank wearing gloves and a ski mask in the middle of a hot local summer where that's decidedly uncomfortable clothing, are you going to assume nothing at all about their intentions? Would you think it wildly unreasonable if someone else did?
In a inperfect world we instead use clothes to signal intention and to read that intention rather than just talk and make judgement based on evidence. A police that had infinitive funds, I would assume that clothes would just be an item in a otherwise long report, something that the prosecutor can use to form a informed decision.
People are human, and sometimes they are complicated, and can do good and bad at the same time.
What on earth are you talking about?
> If people do something wrong, they should be punished, but banning them from community entirely seems a little medieval to me.
He should be in jail, there's nothing medieval about separating a rapist from the community.
Anyone who introduces people to you by lying and saying you give good head in a business context is absolutely someone who needs to be completely ostracized, this is an abusive person with some serious disorder who should have been fired the first time that happened. That is not ever OK.
Firing someone because of their behavior does not require a court of law (though they can challenge it in court). Banning someone from a community function does not require a trial, nor should it.
If you act like an asshole, don't be surprised if people don't want to be around you. That part of the situation is not a matter for the courts. The rape, however, is a matter for the courts.
Has he been convicted of rape, or is an article on the internet good enough evidence for you? There is a good reason we have courts a justice system.
Now, let's say that person comes to me and asks for $2000. I know you loaned them money, so I ask you, and you say 'Well, he didn't pay me back, and I don't think he's a good risk.'"
Given that, I can react in two ways.
A) "Huh. Good to know. Thanks for the heads-up."
B) "You never took him to court, and he was never found guilty. Stop accusing him."
It appears that you're requiring the evidentiary standards of a court of law that can imprison someone, when the actual punishment here is removal from a specific social and professional sphere.
Two different standards of evidence for two different spheres of influence.
Specifically, this: "When harassment, sexual or otherwise, requires a cost-benefit analysis, you have failed."
And this: "When someone harasses, humiliates, discounts, abuses, threatens, stalks, takes action to harm someone, no — they do not do good work."
> He should be in jail, there's nothing medieval about separating a rapist from the community.
Assuming he is a rapist (he hasn't been convinced), then yes, he should be in jail. But even then, he shouldn't be entirely prevented to participate in coding on Tor or political activity or whatever he was doing.
> Anyone who introduces people to you by lying and saying you give good head in a business context is absolutely someone who needs to be completely ostracized
I disagree. I don't think a person like that should be completely ostracized. Yes, he should get a different job, something that perhaps requires less social skills.
Let me ask you, in practice, what are you going to do with all those ostracized people? If you're American, I am not surprised with your views - that's the way how you got the largest prison population on the planet. But I don't think it's a way to run a civilized society, I am sorry.
A case of Hans Reiser came to my mind. I don't think he should be ostracized and prevented to commit any new code in his life (assuming he wants to), and he is a murderer. Or that we should reject ReiserFS or its concepts in jest. I am sure there are many other examples from history.
Forgiveness applies after someone is accountable for and have changed their behavior; it has no relevance here.
JA was not essential for Tor's continued survival as a project and a movement. They chose the convenience of a good developer at the cost of his victims. Are you going to personally tell the victims that their sacrifice was worth it, because Tor is better than ever?
Probably not, I don't know any of them personally.
> They chose the convenience of a good developer at the cost of his victims.
That's one interpretation. But maybe the community around Tor decided that these accusations are independent problem, which should be dealt with by the police and justice system. I am not part of that community, so I cannot tell them how to deal with it; they should have freedom to decide for themselves. Yes, maybe they will make some other members unhappy in the process.
Suppose the illegal act in question is a little different. It gets revealed that famous person in OSS project cheated on taxes. Should there be a call trying to ban him from working on OSS? Should everybody denounce his work? Or should he just get his punishment and continue with whatever he was doing?
They can and do have the freedom to decide for themselves. Right now they seem to be deciding that this guy should be excluded because it's better for the community.
Some people struggle to understand when it's okay to exclude others, presumably because they were excluded at some point and found it hurtful. Sometimes, though, the person you are trying to include is hurtful, and the rest of the community suffers as a result. By excluding a hurtful person, you include others who are driven away by the hurtful person. You might think that you're giving the "choice" to everyone by keeping the hurtful person in the community, but you aren't. The people driven away by the dangerous, hurtful, or just plain abrasive people don't have the choice to participate in a healthy community. So long as the community chooses to include hurtful people, they choose to exclude the people victimized by those hurtful people.
I have friends who were really into tabletop gaming (e.g. Warhammer 40k). They used to go to the gaming store to play with other people in the gaming community. They stopped going because a number of the players there were assholes. They were abrasive, and made creepy remarks toward women, and generally made it unpleasant to be there. New people would show up to play a few times, have a bad interaction, and stop coming. Other people also stopped going because of this, which meant the assholes were an even bigger piece of the community. Eventually my friends stopped going entirely because the community wasn't fun to engage with anymore. Including the assholes drove away too many of the good community members. Including the assholes hurt everyone else.
> It gets revealed that famous person in OSS project cheated on taxes. Should there be a call trying to ban him from working on OSS?
This is entirely different, because in the case of Appelbaum, the community is (allegedly) being victimized. If he'd cheated on his taxes, no one would likely be calling for him to be excluded from the community. If he were repeatedly stealing from his co-workers wallets? Yeah, there would probably be a call to exclude him because he's toxic.
You think that if this guy literally raped people he should not be excluded from the community he exploited and damaged? What the fuck, dude?
If the stories coming out about this guy are true, then he is dangerous. He should be excluded from the community, not as some sort of vigilante punishment, but to keep others in the community safe. If you know someone has a pattern of hurting others and you choose to keep enabling them, then it's your fault, too.
Hans Reiser is an interesting comparison because he didn't murder his coworkers. It's one thing to say "everybody deserves a second chance". It's an entirely different thing to say that everyone deserves a second chance with the very same people they victimized. Do you think Reiser's in-laws are morally obligated to invite him to their holidays once he's served his time?
Duh, no, and I already explained my position in other comments. Perhaps I should have written "society" instead of "community" in the original comment, that would have been clearer. Any community should be free to shun him, or not to do it. And community which doesn't shouldn't be called out for not doing it.
Your question is a little loaded, because you assume that the community feels it was damaged. But maybe it doesn't.
I don't think anyone here has actually proposed that Appelbaum be excluded from society as a whole. It is, however, perfectly legitimate to tell people/communities/society, "Hey, be wary of this guy. He has a history of abuse."
> Any community should be free to shun him, or not to do it. And community which doesn't shouldn't be called out for not doing it.
It's absolutely reasonable to call out a community for not doing the right thing. If a community is enabling members to do terrible things, they should be called out. If a community is enabling abusers, or sheltering thieves, or otherwise hiding unethical or criminal behavior, it's perfectly correct to say, "Hey, you're an accomplice to the crimes you're enabling." To say that no one should call out the Tor community for enabling Appelbaum is to say that no one should have called out the Catholic Church for hiding child molestation.
> Your question is a little loaded, because you assume that the community feels it was damaged. But maybe it doesn't.
Clearly at least part of the community feels that Appelbaum has done damage.
Well, that's how I read the original article (it's an appeal to all tech people to shun him) and some of the comments.
> If a community is enabling abusers, or sheltering thieves, or otherwise hiding unethical or criminal behavior
But we don't know if he was criminal. It's a matter of justice to decide that.
In any case, I meant my original quote assuming that the person gets actually punished if they are found guilty. If they have been punished for their deeds, why should any community be necessarily required to add to that punishment?
> To say that no one should call out the Tor community for enabling Appelbaum is to say that no one should have called out the Catholic Church for hiding child molestation.
It's not the same. Tor community is not preventing criminal investigation. It's perfectly OK to call out community for interfering with justice (since they are part of the society). But it's not OK to call out some community because it doesn't do extra punishment to people who we consider morally bad. (Also, the Catholic Church case has another dimension which is hypocrisy.)
Tech != society as a whole.
> But we don't know if he was criminal.
We know he's an abusive person due to the multiple incidence described in the article which included specifics that can be verified. That's enough to get him shunned regardless of any criminal behavior.
> But it's not OK to call out some community because it doesn't do extra punishment to people who we consider morally bad.
You're confused, what he's doing is not merely morally bad, it's directly abusive to people, i.e. it's actually bad regardless of any loose morality, there are victims. He's victimizing people with sexually abusive behavior in public, this isn't a simple matter of "morals" being different.
You're reading selectively. I also mentioned abusers and unethical behavior. You overlooked that because it doesn't fit into your "justice system" narrative.
> But it's not OK to call out some community because it doesn't do extra punishment to people who we consider morally bad.
Yes, it absolutely is. The problem here is you're worried about punishment when you should be worried about the community. Shunning someone is partly about punishment but it's also largely about protecting the community. It is perfectly right to say "hey, you have predators in your midst and it's hurting some of your community members while you look the other way." The Catholic church issue is extremely relevant because it is the same scenario at a higher level of severity. Predators preying on the weak should be called out, and if the community doesn't do it, they should fully expect those outside the community to do so.
Your concerns here are especially nonsensical, though, because it's actually community members calling this guy out.
I see this as a variation of a NIMBY problem. If you consider community as a sort medieval thing, which needs to be protected from outsiders at all cost anyway, it's a perfectly valid strategy to deal with abusers by shunning them out.
But modern world is not like that. The abusers have to live somewhere in the society, and if they are not allowed to interact with others, you will get a bigger problem. And arguably, USA applies this strategy the most from all developed world, and it is a cause of considerable problems.
And I am saying again, what I specifically disagreed with was the call to other groups to shun him.
I'd be interested in hearing how allowing someone with a consistent pattern of sexual harassment continue to participate in the community will result in anything other than more of the same.
To be clear, shunning this guy from the community isn't likely to result in him being a homeless criminal. He has marketable skills and clearly people have in the past ignored his behavior because it was beneficial to business. He can undoubtedly find a job. What he might not find after this is a position of power and influence, which is a good thing. (Of course assuming the accusations are largely true.)
But isn't this what the OP argues against? That nobody should consider him having good skills because he is a harasser?
And regarding him having "position of power". I actually wish no one had a position of power, ever. I would even argue that the whole concept exists to facilitate sexual selection, and that's the reason why many people (of both sexes) will want it to exist.
Regarding power, I don't agree with your assessment. Positions of power exist to provide social structure. Yes, positions of power are relevant to mating, but humans would have power structures even if we started reproducing asexually. If you put a dozen people in a room and ask them to accomplish something, leaders will emerge, because the alternative is disorganized, undirected, and wasted energy.
There are studies that indicate that the "natural leaders" will be predominantly men, because of intervention from both sexes (both sexes see by default dominant women as worse than dominant men). And I don't think alternative is necessarily wasted energy, for example democracy is a pretty good alternative. It's hard to say what would happen if we were asexual, but maybe we would all readily agree on having democracy.
This guy should be in prison for rape. But even disregarding the actual illegal things this guy has done, his other behavior alone disqualifies him from interacting with others in the community, esp. as a community leader.
On the other hand, it's up to the particular community (or employer) to weight the situation. I don't think doing something illegal should mean that every community should shun you, and it seems to me that's what the article calls for.
Allowing him to go to events and parties is literally putting your attendees in danger.
Another similar case comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski_sexual_abuse_ca...
This is not a court of law. If I am running a private event, I can ban people for whatever reason I feel like. And "this person has made multiple people very uncomfortable because of the things he said or has done" seems like a pretty damn good reason to me.
I hope you appreciate the irony.
Tolerating his behavior sends the message that it is okay to behave that way in that community and that if you want to be a part of the community you'll simply have to endure his toxicity.