He's taking personal responsibility for his actions, openly and publicly. That takes a level of maturity and openness that I know is hard, and I fully respect.
All that he missed, in my opinion, is what his next steps are, and how going forward he can assure that this won't happen again. It sounds like he does have plans, but a good apology goes "I was wrong; here's why/how I was wrong; here's what I'm going to do in the future so that I don't repeat the mistake".
Read through the smarmy "he doesn't mean it" comments all over this thread to see what I mean.
This culture is toxic in the tech community and needs to stop.
It is part of the solution.
It's also a very loud social signal.
ok
Conversely, (again based on my less than complete knowledge of situation) it seems equally rediculous to say that she made unwanted advances to 500 Startups. They were in a social setting and it isn't clear they were hiring for something she qualified for. Should she apologize for leveraging her relationship with his acquintance to use a social situation professionally? Of course not! Dave did a borderline unethical thing in that scenario and based on the NYT article which is scant with details, I'd at most email her an apology for misreading the situation and being unprofessional
"He didn't apologize good enough!"
Totally not a value judgement.
I made advances towards multiple women in work-related situations, where it was clearly inappropriate. I put people in compromising and inappropriate situations, and I selfishly took advantage of those situations where I should have known better. My behavior was inexcusable and wrong.
There isn't any equivocating there. Dave acknowledged what he did was wrong, and took responsibility. I'm not saying he's some sort of great guy for apologizing, and he deserves to face the consequences of his actions. I am arguing that if people sincerely acknowledge their mistakes, and take steps to make amends, demands of "you're apologizing too much/not enough/wrong" are just vengeance and are not actually going to fix the problem in the long run.
So I'm glad he painted a picture.
If you are in a position of power over another person, I would say there isn't an appropriate time. The number of hours you work isn't really relevant.
Put it this way: when is an appropriate time for a college professor (that works long hours!) to ask a student out on a date?
A student generally or one of his students? There is a difference. And not too long ago a professor dating a student that he/she didn't have power over was not that uncommon.
There are a lot of things that are not uncommon, but are still totally inappropriate.
> There are a lot of things that are not uncommon, but are still totally inappropriate.
Sorry! I was responding late at night, and, even though I quoted it, I totally missed tanderson92 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14680337) 's caveat "that he/she didn't have power over", which, of course, totally changes the ethics.
(It still doesn't seem persuasive to me to argue the ethics of a behaviour in terms of what used to be common, since it is still true that a lot of awful things used to be, and still are, common; but my comment was mostly based on a misinterpretation.)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking someone on a date. If they say no? Cool. Yes? Awesome. The act itself is not criminal, actions taken based on that (like retaliation) are.
Demonizing basic human behavior has no place in western society.
Is neither illogical nor slippery moral construct. If you disagree with the rule, you should find better argument then just calling it "not hard logic enough".
On related note, if hiring manager asks for dates regularly, any hired women will be assumed less competent and assumed to sleep her way to success - no matter what her response. It is not like these accusations were far away for good looking women, they are pretty much guaranteed in this setup.
That is not cool.
What's wrong is retaliation based on those things happening.
Ignoring half of the equation to paint women as a unique victim class is disingenuous, and ironically, it is a power move. Topping from the bottom.
HR taking the company's side... A superior leveraging their position to extract concessions rather than engage a person on equal ground... These are universal problems. Twisting everything into a gender issue because of sexuality involves the automatic assumption that a woman's sexual virtue is something special and any other abuse of power is just not as big a deal. A very gender essentialist and conservative position.
As an actual leftie, it should make me sad, but tbh it amuses me to no end in its absurdity. In the name of progressive politics, all sorts of traditional views are being promoted. Men should be chivalrous, women need protection, public shaming is good, morality must be enforced by a clerical class, with everyone else kissing the ring in acquiescence. Bizarre.
As if politics are far more built-in than we want to admit, and freedom and tolerance can become labels for the exact opposite.
Do exploitative power imbalances fade into political and economic background noise when they're "only" about money and/or hierarchy, and no dating or sex are involved?
Do "uncomfortable feelings" around dating and sex have a paradoxically privileged place in this discourse, over "uncomfortable feelings" caused by more overt forms of verbal, financial, political, or legal abuse - and if so, why?
It is horrifying that world leaders and public figures use this kind of excuse, which is supposed to somehow give a pass, and then we see it trickle down to the man on the street.
Really, the public figures should be prosecuted and made an example of, so that is the example for the average man. Anything less is unacceptable.
Our legal system is not forgiving of people that make mistakes.
"I accidentally fell asleep at the wheel and killed someone" = manslaughter = prison.
What this person did is very wrong, and everyone who does it should be punished, regardless of their obscurity/fame.
One does not go up to someone you owe deference and include the word "fuck" specially given the kinds of allegations and confirmation, in your apology. Understand social convention and understand respect. It's like he's apologizing to one of his "bros".
I was out drinking with friends from my University course, back in the day, and made some statement like "uh, well don't be fags about it" - a hangover from my days at a boys only secondary school where "gay" was the most common term for bad and "fag" was the most common insult.
Now, I have no issues with people's sexuality and would never want to offend anyone - but I was drunk and years of using the term as a generic negative insult just lead to me using the term habitually. The issue was, it wasn't just my close friends, but a larger group of people I knew less well.
One of them made the point that he was Bi and didn't appreciate the comment, and I wanted to curl up and die - instantly I had to try and explain myself and apologise. How I acted didn't represent my views, it isn't who I want to be, and it's not how I'd want to interact with anyone. I put that guy - and anyone else there - in a shitty situation and while he was fortunately understanding, and spoke up about it, someone could have just heard me and felt a bit of rejection from the world.
Now, you can argue about the sincerity of this guy's apology, and how possible it is to repeatedly do something and do the things he did in the context he did, etc..., but there comes a point at which if the message is good - which this apology is - it's a flat statement that his behavior was wrong, flat out, which is the right place to start from at least, I think you have to give some level of benefit of the doubt.
People do fuck up. Consequences for that are fine, but you have to try to give people routes to hold up their hands and reject things they did, that has value.
To note, obviously my usage of the terms during my schooling years was just as wrong, but I was a child and it's harder to judge myself at that age because of the environment and lack of knowledge I had at the time. Something I still regret deeply though - it must have been incredibly hard to be gay with so much constant negativity surrounding it in that environment.
I'm sorry, but this does not make sense to me. Of course what you said and how you acted represented your views at the time. It wasn't who you wanted to be, but it was who you were. You absolutely used the term fag as an insult and you meant it.
I'm posting this not to judge you or be self-righteous about it, but in the hope of gaining some understanding. I have seen it happen far too many times: a person's racist/sexist words go viral on social media or in the press, and they reflexively publish "That is not my view or a reflection of who I am. Everyone who is close to me knows this". This disassociation puzzles me greatly. How is it that you have the conviction to do/say something and then disavow it when challenged?
I fully agree, however, I think that's just your views slipping out. You might not want to be that way, but you are that way, possibly because of how you were raised or some other factor you didn't have control over. Saying "that is not a true reflection of who I really am" seems ingenious to me.
Likewise, at the time, I could have replaced "fag" with "dick" with no qualms at the time. It was an insult, and it's meaning didn't matter to me. (Until I was reminded of it's meaning and harm I was causing, which made me stop using it).
I guess I'd describe it as - I'd become desensitized to the meaning of the term and used it not expecting it to cause any harm. You can say that surely it's obvious that it causes harm, but it wasn't obvious to me until the described moment that I was propagating this negative idea of homosexuality. When I did notice that, I stopped.
It's a fine line that mostly relies on knowing my own intent - and I make no reservations in stating that whatever my intent, I know I caused harm at the time and I actively worked to ensure that I don't use "gay" and "fag" in that way, because it does have those effects.
Instead we've created a culture where the only logical move is to deny deny deny even in the face of overwhelming evidence because the only thing the modern left hates more than "creep" is a loser.
Moving past the judgements regarding the sincerity of his apology, it'd be interesting to learn the various constiuences' ideas of acceptable outcomes at this point.
The cynics in this thread (myself included) are not the target of this self-flagellation.
I suppose he felt this 'public seppuku' was necessary because a) he was called out by name in the NY Times article and b) he wanted to put it on record that the woman he hit on wasn't rejected from his company for rejecting him. I suspect (b) is the true motive, and without a certain level of self-flagellation it wouldn't be socially acceptable to state that fact.
He may mean what he says but only time will tell. Currently is all talk.
But, I really appreciate it. In many situations, as you can see from other threads here, there is doubt in a lot of people's minds whether there's really a story here, whether the person was wrongly accused, whether it's as bad as people make it out to be, etc.
In this case, he's making it clear that, yes, he really was the wrong party and really did wrong things. I think we should take his statement at face value, and be thankful we have an example of a clear-cut wrong, so anybody who is unsure just how bad the harassment situation really is can point to this as an example.
However, I certainly agree with you that he should apologize to the actual people he wronged, more than to the world at large.
About the public seppuku question, maybe for a while but nah, for some reason everybody loves when other people discloses a hidden dark side and face public ashaming. Is something about being a social species, probably. We love gossip.
Business narcissism is a matter of making much of one's own achievements.
Sexual narcissism is a matter of making much of one's prowess/attractiveness (and being tone-deaf to what, to everyone else, would be obvious signs of disinterest on the part of the other party).
Narcissism in disgrace is a matter of making much of one's own mistakes, and one's own suffering. I realize the following is reaching a little bit, like your high school English teacher, but: Notice who appears (twice) in the title.
It reads like an apology on the surface, but it feels more like bragging and attention seeking.
Setting aside the fact there's nothing to prosecute in most of the cases, I'm curious why you think making examples of people is more important than punishing them in proportion to their offenses.
If you ever find yourself in this person's shoes (innocent or guilty) you have nothing to gain by this sort of public display of remorse/sepukku as others have called it.
This type of angry, vitriolic, hate-filled-person will condemn you no matter if your apologies are sincere or not. The only logical move is to deny, people like the poster above will never believe you anyways but they're unwinable anyways.
As long as leftism rules the cultural zeitgeist apologizing for bad behavior will never be enough to matter.
Why do you think he is apologizing? Do you really think he is sorry or just sorry he got caught? I'm sure he is sincere, sincere that he feels bad that he got caught and is now suffering the consequences. This is just like the murderer who cries crocodile tears during sentencing.
Occam's razor. A devil does not become a saint overnight.
I do agree that an apology under these circumstances is not ideal, but what should he do, exactly? Dig a hole and jump in? Not respond at all? Just say it is true and leave it at that? Any response is going to be subject to dissatisfaction from some part of the mob that we are all part of.
I think the key is to realize that at some point in your life, you were the devil, whether your transgressions were subject to public scrutiny or not. Have some sympathy for the devil and do not be the one who casts a stone.
Sarah posted on twitter that other women have reached out to her claiming similar behavior.
https://twitter.com/sarahkunst/status/881004317674577920
> I think the key is to realize that at some point in your life, you were the devil, whether your transgressions were subject to public scrutiny or not. Have some sympathy for the devil and do not be the one who casts a stone.
In regards to his apology, I thought the qualifiers were offensive and it made me think he was being insincere. I see your point about the pitchforks and mob mentality and I see how my original comment can contribute to that.
That said, I also fee that as a society we have to emphatically reject this type of behavior, especially perpetuated by people with power/influence/resources against those without. We jail people in this country for far less.