Uber board member cracks ‘inappropriate’ joke about women at company event | Hacker News Reader

Uber board member cracks ‘inappropriate’ joke about women at company event

washingtonpost.com

85 pointsInsanity47 comments

The new culture at Uber is off to a running start. At least he apologized but seriously, this kind of thing at a meeting "aimed at addressing the harassment of women and other unprofessional conduct within the company"? Totally tone deaf.

I'd be skeptical of calling it a "new culture." When you make apologies and changes based on external pressure instead of true understanding, the problems won't actually go away.

Yes, that was my point in an earlier thread. Institutions have a lot of inertia and even if you change all of the management the old habits will remain until that inertia is overcome. This can take a long time.

Yeah, though hopefully it was a public teaching moment as to the kinds of "microaggressions" that women face every day. Even ones accomplished enough to be on the board of a multi-billion dollar company.

The "joke" occurred shortly after Arianna made a "white men" "joke". I doubt he would have made his comment if she hadn't first made a similar comment that prompted that sort of kneejerk retort among two colleagues on familiar terms who are both at least two or more generations removed from the average tech worker. Arianna is 66 and Bonderman is 74.

https://youtu.be/b4q-WwXgYHU

That said, the comment was still inappropriate.

If your response to a biased remark is another biased remark you should not be in a position of authority.

"My goal was to increase the diversity of the board, much though [sic] I love my white male colleagues" Then she starts talking about diverse hires on the board. Not sure how it was a joke. I don't think anyone would have raised an eyebrow at that. It wasn't derogatory at all.

It seems to me like the primary reason this turned into a big deal is because of context, not the remark per se. Not only was it at a large meeting where they were supposedly going to improve on the issue of how women are treated there, but it interrupted the only female board member. So, that is why this has turned into drama. It speaks volumes wrt the level of lack of respect for women there and just how deep it runs.

It just makes it an easier target that the remark was about women. But I am guessing this would have become news even if he had said something else because the point is "We are gathered here today to talk about how we are going to up our game and treat women with genuine respect...let me show you exactly how much respect I have for women by interrupting the only female board member to kind of mock her and the entire agenda we are discussing."

That is my read on it.

Since this has come up in the thread, I'll put this out there. While this would be an inappropriate comment regardless of whether it's true, it's also based on a unsupported and probably false generalization: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4488.

support: "In the collaborative setting, 37 female and 42 male master’s students worked to complete a graded assignment in 12 hours. The researchers found that women tended to interact more with each other, especially in long conversations."

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/do-women-talk-mor...

Thanks for the citation. I'm not sure whether to regard it as contradictory, given that it slices contexts more finely.

The strange thing is that the same comment has been used in support of gender equality. In Iceland, where every board must have at least 40% representation for each gender, they interviewed some female CEOs, who said something like, "Men are selfish! That's how we got the financial crises. Women will look out for the good of the group. It's in our DNA."

Aggressive feminists are overrepresented because it takes a special kind of woman to even want to compete in aggression and sometimes sociopathy with male CEOs...

Are you assuming that only women can be feminists? Historically that is not true.

Here's a nice introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_and_feminism

Wow, what a damn idiot. I mean seriously. I just can't think of any way to paint this as ok! I've already uninstalled Uber and tell my friends to avoid it like the plague but this just takes the cake. They really think people are going to take their "investigation" seriously when they act like this?

What the hell is wrong with these people?

To them it's normal. If you haven't seen any different then it can be very hard to get rid of your instantaneous embarrassing responses.

I worked for a short period at a large US bank branch office in the Netherlands. The stuff that got said there about the women working there when they were out of earshot (and sometimes within) does not bear repeating. It's only in the last decade or so that this is (slowly) improving but workplace harassment is on the order of the day and I won't hold my breath until it is all behind us.

Top two uber execs step aside because of claims of misogyny

Ariana Huffington lays out course corrections

David Bonderman: "Yah but fuckn' women, amirite?"

This got flagged off the home page pretty quick.

To anyone who did not bother to read the article, the comment was something along the lines of "adding more women to the board will ensure more talking."

The remark wasn't directed at an individual, wasn't harassing, wasn't despairing, wasn't sexual, wasn't crude, and definitely wasn't in any way malicious. I realize it's trendy to get offended now-a-days (one word? three?), but come on. Seriously? This is what we've been reduced to getting worked up over?

To be honest, the context of the meeting makes this extremely tame joke kind of funny. I have zero problems with this and am actually a little salty I spent the time to type this reply about a non-story.

"Women talk so much, am I right?" is a sexist statement, and it's particularly egregious when interrupting a fellow (edit: female) board member at an event announcing the new, non-sexist culture of the company.

Also, the person he was interrupting was Arianna Huffington, the only woman on the board.

Why do you interpret it as being negative? It might as well be a positive thing?!

I guess it depends a lot on the context and how it was said/meant.

Whether or not positive and negative sterotypes are used are kind of besides the point, its the fact that a stereotype was used at all. Let me give an example, if you say im a jew so I have money, os that negative or positive? Even if you think its positive, the fact that the stereotype is validated implies that other stereotypes are true.

Now this particular joke is pretty tame, certainly. If he wanted to he could have add the qualifier " more talking, bringing more perspectives to the table" or something. But the way he said it could have been interpreted as a stereotype, and therefore is problematic

Thanks for your reply, good point!

i appreciate it when people do that instead of just downvoting - which doesn't exactly stimulate communication :) (It would be cool if downvoting on HN would only be permitted if also commenting...)

That is not how I interpreted talking and couldn't understand why everyone was so offended. Now I get it, thanks.

>[As a man], I have zero problems with this and am actually a little salty I spent the time to type this reply about a non-story.

Added additional context to your statement.

Why is the question you are asking is "Why are we getting upset over this?" instead of "Why do people say unnecessarily sexist jokes that aren't actually funny?"?

The assumption that a woman is not capable of holding that opinion is sexist.

I'm not making that assumption. The only assumption I'm making is that the parent is a male, which is based on Hacker News demographic and the type of person who usually makes these arguments.

Fair enough.

This was a mistake, but it is only outrageous in the context of the company's past misbehavior. It does make it clear just how difficult it will be to move past their present issues, though.

It's a sexist comment to make in any situation.

It's just ESPECIALLY glaring during the meeting about sexual harassment.

It is hard to judge if this was inappropriate without knowing the context. It can be seen as a positive thing to have more communication or "talking" if the board has more female members. It also depends on the guy's relationship with people present. It can be considered a joke if they were on friendly terms. I think journalism can be put to better use than reporting a non-story like this.

Edit. After knowing this was in all hands meeting I think it is inappropriate.

> It can be considered a joke if they were on friendly terms.

It was a company-wide meeting. Wikipedia says they have 12,000 employees, so I doubt he's on friendly terms with all of them.

Actually it's inappropriate regardless of the context. Don't make bias jokes. If your friends make "your people" jokes, they're not your friends.

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