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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Because men founders deal with sexual harassment (that they don't cause to others) often?

That is not the point. There are two ways to view the problem: it is either a women's problem, or a people problem that dissproportionantly affects women. By framing it as a womens problem, you are turning it into an issue of identity politics, with all the pros and cons that come with it. (eg, stronger solidarity from the in-group, at the expanse of alienating the out-group, as well as the growing backlash to identity politics in general.)

Also, even if relativly rare, we do not want to needlessly ignore male victims.

Harassment is a problem that affects people in common, and men specifically and women specifically. Harassment against men versus women shares many things in common, but is not exactly the same. For example, a man who is harassed might have to contend with other men saying "why are you upset some woman is interested in you?" Conversely, a woman will often have to deal with harassment while already dealing with the challenges of being a distinct minority in her workplace. When you frame the problem as a "people problem," you excise discussion of the dynamics of its specific incarnations.

It's like how sickle cell anemia can affect anyone, but particularly affects African Americans. Obviously it's important to look at the problem at the general level. But no prudent biologist would ignore looking at the disease in the context of African Americans specifically, out of a misguided notion of race blindness.

Dunno. Who would be interested to work alongside or for someone who abuses his power to harass women? You'd think that many men would prefer politeness and professionalism over a fratboy outfit. You have to establish boundaries with the alpha oaf, at times you feel ashamed for someone else's behaviour or need to apologize and so on. If you frame the issue as a "women's problem" you ignore these aspects, and they shouldn't be ignored.

It has not at all been my experience, at any point in my career, no matter which group of men that I've worked with, that passively observing a man exhibiting or talking about aggressive sexual behavior has been a dealbreaker.

That's not to say harassment and abuse aren't dealbreakers for the men I've worked with; for most of them, it is. But it has to be spelled out for them. A victim has to speak up about it. It has not been my experience that men surveil each other to ensure that their sexual behavior is appropriate or benign.

I had a similar response to the controversy over the Trump Access Hollywood tapes. Jake Tapper was talking to a Trump surrogate who claimed that the tapes were just "locker room talk". Tapper, aghast, said something to the effect of "not in any locker room I've ever been in". My response (to myself, quietly): Jake Tapper, you are full of shit.

Obviously none of this is good stuff! It's just important that we try to be more self-aware about it.

At a previous company, I worked with someone in a recent highly-public sexism scandal (if I said who or where, I would no longer be a genericpseudo).

I knew that the person was extremely brash and was told that they indulged in "locker-room talk", though I didn't personally observe any harassing behavior. I didn't speak up about what I heard. I wish I had. I wonder, and worry, if anything as bad as what happened at their next company happened at the company I worked at. I'm really uncomfortable with the odds that it did.

There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about.

There's not really any value in having that sort of chat with anyone in a professional context.

I was a robot club nerd so the concept of locker room talk is foreign to me. But now as a grown up, I can't say that I've ever felt unable to connect with another man because I can't make a sexually aggressive comment about a coworker or mutual acquaintance.

Note that the "sexually aggressive comment" can just refer to a plain "sexual comment" (which changes the whole sentence's meaning).

And it's labelled "aggressive" because of several centuries of hardcore religious puritanism leaving their mark on all aspects of US culture. Sex is naughty. Sex talk is aggressive.

You don't have to be a puritan to think that comments that disrespect others' boundaries ("grab them by the pussy!") are aggressive.

Only we didn't speak specifically about such talk here.

The parent said "There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about".

And this was immediately taken to mean "aggressive sexual comment".

Religion strikes again!

This specific problem is a womens' problem. That doesn't make it gender politics. The number of women VCs is so small that there's no power imbalance to wield. What we're talking about here is individual assholes using the power of their "group" to take advantage of women. If, theoretically, a man were harassed by a woman investor she's being an asshole. But he can move on the other 9 investors who aren't women.

It's similar to police and citizens. Police who commit crimes are wielding a different power than individuals who commit crimes. It doesn't discount the crime, but it is a different problem.

It's not though, I've been on the receiving end of similar bullshit from a gay individual that made lewd suggestions around funding. It's a problem of people not respecting boundaries. My comment isn't belittling the women at all, it's in fact supportive of them and against any type of harassment. However, the notion that I am a male recipient of the same circumstance appears to be valued less based on comments. That's a problem too.

I think what one of the other commenters wrote applies here:

> Speaking of one group is not ignoring the other. Nobody said that sexual harassment against men is okay. It's okay to recognize that social norms affect the genders asymmetrically and structure language around that.

If I knew you, I would just as soon support you in outing the guy who made lewd suggestions to you as I would support any woman I know in the same situation. But at the moment it does disproportionately affect women.

Speaking of one group is not ignoring the other. Nobody said that sexual harassment against men is okay. It's okay to recognize that social norms affect the genders asymmetrically and structure language around that.

Engaging in identity politics opens up pandora's box :).

Men have a more difficult time obtaining social, emotional and physical intimacy with other people (in both romantic and platonic contexts). For the purely romantic context, there is a huge disparity in the required effort to obtain intimacy in a romantic relationship.

Women can obtain intimacy and have a very successful romantic life without making any advances at all. A man will have a very unsuccessful romantic life if he never makes any advances.

Society fails men on the social/physical/emotional intimacy front.

These are natural, primal needs have huge consequences on happiness. This lack of intimacy naturally causes men to seek intimacy in sometimes inappropriate contexts and situations.

Since a large cause of the behavior is the failing of society, it may be prudent to give higher leniency to men for these situations. The intimacy gap should at least be acknowledged whenever identity politics are brought up in these situations.

> A man will have a very unsuccessful romantic life if he never makes any advances.

#NotAllMen But seriously. I'd like to talk more about this in a different setting. This sentiment rang true for me before I got out of high school. After that, it mattered much less.

> Society fails men on the social/physical/emotional intimacy front.

We failed ourselves. This article rang all too true. https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/megasahd-the-lac...

This is a common view point, and it is false. There's a fixed amount of attention that can be directed towards certain issues. Accordingly, paying attention to certain issues is ignoring others.

In fact some definitions of attention define it as the ability to ignore unwanted or unneeded things. In general, I do think it is correct to focus on a specific, salient example of harassment, that is, women's harassment than the abstract. Just as I think it's better to focus on sexism or racism rather than "discrimination"

My original response doesn't ignore them, it was my additional commentary adding that all founders shouldn't have to deal with it. The discredit to the response itself is evidence that one side weigh more sway based on gender. No one should have these types of issues.

Right, and that should be obvious to any reader. My point is that this is an issue that is asymmetric between the sexes. Acting like it's not just makes it seem like we're trying too hard to ignore genders when they exist and affect us.

>There are two ways to view the problem: it is either a women's problem, or a people problem that disproportionately affects women.

Well, it's the latter to a huge degree. Which means that by framing it as a "people's problem" in general (without the qualification) it is misrepresented.

From what I have seen, this is more about who has power. Men tend to have more power than women. When the roles are reversed, women will sexually harass men.

We need to work on coming up with ways to create a world in which power is less likely to lead to this type of abuse. I think that starts with generally having healthier attitudes surrounding sexuality.

It's not just power. Men and women have somewhat different distributions of personalities. Women, on average, are more willing to try to smooth things over rather than engage in explicit conflict.

If you flip the genders, then on average, abuse of power will cause outright conflict sooner rather than after it has built up to completely unacceptable levels.

I'm a woman. I feel strongly that it is nigh impossible to clearly determine how much of gender difference is really due to innate biological tendencies and how much is due to social crap shaping the genders differently.

A cousin of mine commented on being a Navy recruiter and calling his wife to come sit at the office because of teenaged girls showing up at the recruiting office and trying to hang on him. He was very worried about how this would be perceived and he did not know how to turn them away. He was over 6 feet tall and scared of what these "little girls" would do to his career. The only effective solution he could find was to call his wife and have her in the office when they showed up.

I really think it is far more complicated than most people want to believe. Seeing the world in black-and-white, simple terms is just easier to cope with. But it usually is not an accurate assessment of reality.

> I really think it is far more complicated than most people want to believe.

So do I, and thanks for bringing some balance to the discussion. I noticed Mr. Calbeck's apology makes it sound like the situation is simple and not complicated.

In our present culture, men rarely report sexual harassment or domestic violence, believing (correctly) that they won't be believed or will be expected to endure (or enjoy) it. And direct confrontation often leads to male victims being charged.

I disagree, and think that what's more illuminating is what happens if they DO report it, and the tone of which they report it. Of which this is not very far off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6uvv1aS5_I

I am in no position to watch your video, so I am not entirely sure what your point is. But given your bald statement that you disagree with the above comment, I will note that I was romantically involved at one time with a man who had been sexually abused by a grown women when he was about 13. Not even his best friend knew. He had all kinds of serious personal problems.

Men do tend to hide it when they are the victims. There is substantial evidence that male victims of sexual assault have an even harder time coping in the aftermath than women, in part because it is seen as emasculating and they face bigger challenges than women in getting some kind of meaningful support if they try to tell anyone.

It seems to me that you've just proved my point by openly stating that you expect male victims to enjoy it, but perhaps I misunderstood what you intended to imply with the link to that video.

LMFGTFY: http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2011/study-finds-gender-differe...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201505/...

About 20% for men and 50% for women.

Your comment could also be interpreted as most male founders do sexually harass others. I'm not sure that's what you meant.

The reality is that a small percentage of people constitute the majority of bad behavior. Be it harassment, or criminal activity in general. The counter-part is that the majority of people don't really cause trouble....

so saying "men harass" would be wrong. Saying "the bulk of harassers are men" is more correct.

>so saying "men harass" would be wrong. Saying "the bulk of harassers are men" is more correct.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at.

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