Comment by siliconc0w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by siliconc0w | Hacker News Reader

Not saying uber is right or wrong but part of the problem is there aren't any sane rules of what is and isn't sexual harassment - there is mostly just vague case law and public opinion so things are treated 'case by case'. I was told by a HR department that if someone overheard you and misconstrued what you said it still could be harassment even if they don't report to the person talking. No one could agree what was and wasn't harassment when people in the meeting posed several real-life scenarios. I tried to basically explain the ridiculousness and lack of clarity of what they were saying but felt the extreme discomfort in the room and stopped.

You basically have the option of abstaining entirely from any comment or remark that could resemble anything sexual to anyone within physical or digital earshot or be at risk to an uncertain and unwritten standard. Treat everyone as formless blobs of raceless genderless biological matter or else. This is a impossible when when jobs become the majority of people's lives and part of their identity. Sex is a crucial part of human identity and denying it's existence generally isn't healthy behavior or even practical.

You want to make it sound like it's vague what sexual harassment really is.

But your boss stating he wants to have sex with you, I think that's quite a clear-cut case.

It's really not though. The problem only exists because our society has an unhealthy attitude about sex. If we all had a perfectly healthy attitude about sex, the mere admission of the fact that someone feels sexually attracted to someone else would be a nonissue. But the world isn't ideal, and there's a whole host of misogyny, fear, taboos, antiquated traditions, and stupid people. So we have a problem.

Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional. It's not clear that it's sexual harassment, unless he was told to stop yet continued anyway.

> Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional. It's not clear that it's sexual harassment, unless he was told to stop yet continued anyway.

Your boss by definition is in a position of power over you. If they date you (let alone ask for sex in this manner!), they can be seen as exploiting their power over you, or you being treated differently in return for sex. That just doesn't work. It's always unethical, regardless of consent of the employee (who might also be too afraid to say no).

I agree with you:

> Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional.

Is this issue really one that needs to be addressed in the context of this topic? It's not like what she described is remotely one of those cases. Just because the line is blurry, doesn't mean that every case is a shade of gray.

The blurry line creates these scenarios because people aren't provided a clear cut standard to adhere to.

No. This scenario has nothing to do with ambiguous definitions. The ambiguity in the definition of sexual harassment does not leave any possibility for what this guy allegedly did. This is a case of someone flagrantly disregarding acceptable standards for workplace behavior, despite having previously gotten in trouble for the same behavior. You can't say "the line is blurry!" when you're five timezones away from the line, and you've been repeatedly told that you're on the wrong side of it.

It really sounds like you're trying to fit this case to an agenda that's important to you, and you're working against your own interests by doing that. Bringing up ambiguous definitions in the context of a clear cut case discredits the idea that ambiguity is a problem. You'd be better off just accepting that this case is blatant, and saving the arguments about ambiguous definitions for a time when they're actually relevant.

It's certainly possible to construe situations where it becomes very hard to tell what's harassment and what isn't. But those are really mostly hypothetical - the issues that you hear people complain about are usually absolutely crystal clear, such as the allegations in this case (there's simply no way how asking a report for sex in this way is not harassment).

"Anything could be harassment" and "nobody could live their normal life by these standards" are straw men and don't reflect reality much. It's neither particularly hard to tell, nor would treating people properly turn work life into a totally grey and amorphous existence.

Can we just avoid sexual conversations at work? That's a pretty simple rule that negates all the complexities of determining what type of sexual discussion is and isn't sexual harassment. I've sometimes heard the argument that such a notion is puritanical and sterile but honestly I am just not at all interested in sexual banter at the workplace and I feel like nothing of value is lost if I don't have to overhear remarks about sexual escapades, desires, or jokes during the work day.

We can (and I, personally, do) but that isn't a practical standard. Healthy humans are sexual ones and especially when you have younger people working 60+ hours with a close group you will have people talking about sex. That should be expected but the current legal standard doesn't allow for that.

> Healthy humans are sexual ones

In the appropriate context, of which the workplace is not one. There are other places where individuals make an effort to curtail sexual discussion (church, the dinner table, around small children, within earshot of their parents), so I think it is well within the capabilities of healthy young professionals to generally keep sex out of the workplace.

> when you have younger people working 60+ hours with a close group you will have people talking about sex.

Well perhaps they shouldn't. Of course, sex or topics of a sexual nature might come up, just as say, the color of your last bowel movement might come up, but I'd argue that it shouldn't be a topic of regular discussion and that a culture that aims to defer such discussions to a venue outside of the workplace is a good idea precisely because it is impossible to manage the variable spectrum of comfort in sexual discourse among individuals, especially among a diverse workforce (and not just with regard to gender, but also age, cultural and religious background, as well as sexual experience, history and maturity).

> That should be expected but the current legal standard doesn't allow for that.

The current legal standards certainly allow for it, the bar for sexual harassment in a legal sense is generally pretty clear (proving what actually transpired is sometimes a different story), but what tends to be less clear is company policy regarding the fine line between what is permissible and what is inappropriate. I think the spectrum of what is considered over the line varies so wildly that the only sensible approach is "just don't bring it up".

And i'm positing that if we want diverse workplaces we need to graduate from "just don't bring it up" as the only sensible approach or we'll continue to have professions that aren't diverse. Which is most of them. Which is kinda sad.

Actually, the dictionary definition of sexual harassment is quite clear cut. If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually harassing them.

I don't know about you, but most people are quite capable of understanding when an interaction is a) sexual in context and meaning and b) unwanted.

> If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually harassing them.

That's untrue. It has to pass a bar of being "frequent and severe". (https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm)

With your "clear cut definition", simply asking somebody out on a date that you work with is sexual harassment if he/she doesn't want to go.

Which is ridiculous on the face of it, because if you don't make some sort of advance, you'll not know if it's unwanted or not.

The language "severe" is ambiguous, but asking somebody out once to dinner should not be a fireable offense. Telling somebody what you would like to do to them sexually should be.

"Harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision"

Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

"Frequent" and "severe" are definitely not legal terms.

If you ask somebody out to dinner, and they say they're busy, is it ok to ask them out again in a week? Is that frequent?

Everything is context driven, which makes things very difficult to write hard and fast rules about. For instance, it is usually sexual harassment if you link somebody to a page of with pictures of models in lingerie on it. If you work for an online clothing shop, it might be perfectly normal. "Every time anybody rates this item, it throws an exception in the server logs. Is there anything special about it?"

To me there is a very clear difference between asking a fellow coworker out to dinner, and propositioning a subordinate for sex on their first day on the team.

You keep coming up with all kinds of examples, but in real life most people know (or should know) what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.

> but in real life most people know (or should know) what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.

That's a very dangerous statement.

First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people. If you want clear cut rules, you're not going to find it.

Second, these things are culturally dependent. You can go topless on a beach in France and nobody will bat an eye, do so in an asian country and you'll be gawked at, and in any conservative Muslim country you'll be jailed.

Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary sanctions and/or accusations.

>>First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people.

Of course we are. Most people don't go around sexually harassing others. That's why you hear about it when it happens.

>>Second, these things are culturally dependent.

Again not sure how that's relevant. We aren't talking about a foreign employee who was temporarily visiting the company's San Francisco headquarters. If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

>>Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary sanctions and/or accusations.

Last time I checked, saying "I didn't know that was the law" was not an excuse.

You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then don't do it. It's really that simple.

> Most people don't go around sexually harassing others.

A high proportion of programmers are on the autism spectrum compared to the general population. The law should apply to everybody equally, but this sort of thing is extremely hard to pin down. Something appropriate in one situation is not appropriate in another, and it takes discernment.

> If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

We're talking about the law in general, about how it's especially not clear cut and black and white in this case. Your arguments aren't relating to that point at all.

> You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then don't do it.

That is ridiculous. Most people don't know the law backwards and forwards

It's stupid to think that people are responsible for all of the perceptions people have of them, especially people who are on the spectrum, as I have alluded to earlier. Would you just cut all people with social disorders out of any sort of human interaction, because by your logic, they can't do anything?

There is no hard and fast rule, as I have said before. There are standard deviations from the median, and it's hard to draw lines in human behaviour, a nuance that seems to escape many people.

It's not clear cut - that is what i'm saying - ask any employment law lawyer. There is a morass of uncertainty when it comes to this topic. That is partly why this is such a hotly debated issue.

The statute -- at least in my country -- is quite unambiguous [1].

What is difficult is proving that what is alleged to have happened actually transpired (or if cases are not properly investigated).

But this is why we have a justice system. If there is a paper trail, and evidence of repeat activity, as in this case, there is little ambiguity.

[1]: https://employment.govt.nz/resolving-problems/types-of-probl...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com