Robert Scoble and Me
medium.com
medium.com
Yes, this. The antidote to bad men is good men. It doesn't help to tar all men with the same brush for simply being male.
Once she was outed as a victim, the hate mail, the barrage of nasty questions, the endless accusations took, such a toll on her. Eventually, she took her own life. She’d just never been able to put it all back together after that.
This is one reason a lot of women stay silent: to protect themselves or other innocent bystanders, not the perpetrator.
The demonization of either rapists or victims is what makes the subject unapproachable, and doesn’t let anyone intercede to get abusive people the help they need, much less the victims.
This is an excellent piece and I am so glad she wrote it. My utmost respect for this incredible lady.
I'll add that there are plenty of otherwise good men who might do bad things when shitfaced or on drugs, and I can't help but worry that separating men into bad and good doesn't acknowledge the very real risk of good men forgetting that they can do bad things too.
(of course this applies to people in general, not just men)
Pithiness and nuance are not friends. My preference overall is to focus on good vs bad behaviors, plus best practices, without drawing larger conclusions about individual moral worth.
But honestly I'm a bit baffled that you'd disagree that 1) good people do bad things, and 2) alcohol has a whole bunch of properties that increase the likelihood of an otherwise 'good' person doing a bad thing. It seems blindingly obvious to me.
Or am I misunderstanding you and is it more about the 'excuse' thing (on which we're definitely in agreement!).
It's not an excuse, but it can explain uncharacteristic behavior.
I am of the personal belief that a person's actions determine who is good more than their desires. If a person walking through a gas station has a fleeting urge to steal a candy bar, that wouldn't make them bad in my eyes unless they actually steal it. If a person in the middle of an argument gets an urge to shove the other person but they suppress it, that shows discipline and maturity.
I agree that it would be ideal if nobody had bad urges, but I think it's definitely good that many with those urges are able to control them.
Regarding the urge to rape, it seems more useful to examine the underlying foundational desires. The primary desire that ends in rape is usually one for power or control. Often in a person who feels that they lack these things elsewhere in their life, to such a degree that they make the terrible decision of extracting this feeling from another person via a heinous act.
The secondary driver is sexual / procreation. Often, we have the desire to have sexual contact with an individual who doesn't currently have reciprocal feelings. Our pure biological drive is to procreate with every attractive mate (just look at other primates.) Our social contract enforces a set of parameters that prevent the strong from forcing themselves upon the weaker at will.
Within this framing, we can look at this from a more nuanced perspective. Every person will at various times in their life desire both control (even if just as a proxy for security) as well as sexual contact.
I think this gives some weight to the inhibition argument. If all people have these desires within them, those who are more powerful than others have a responsibility to keep those desires in check to the degree that the social contract dictates, or risk being punished by the society.
If alcohol or other substances dampen their inhibition to a degree that the desires above outweigh the threat of consequences from the society, then they do present a danger to other participants. I don't think it's about good vs bad people, but the decisions people make and the (dis)incentives enforced by the social contract. There is a subtler case where the inhibited presence may allow a perpetrator to more easily convince themself that a nonconsenting encounter is consenting, because human communication is imperfect, and even more so when we impair our faculties.
(I am not in any way condoning this as an excuse, but this argument seems to be made in the defense of most rapists who are high enough up the social ladder to be entitled enough to make it seem remotely plausible, and is particularly damaging to the survivor as it tries to paint them as complicit, at fault, or even fully in the wrong.)
As an aside, it seems that women in the society are finally having a moment in which to gain additional power as a group and hopefully create greater consequences for rape within the social contract. They have been treated as second class citizens in this for most of recorded humanity. It's an encouraging development for sure.
If you know you're going to fuck up, there's no point in saying "it's just willpower, I won't do it this time", because that doesn't work for alcoholics or heroin addicts or paedophiles and it won't work for molesters either.
What is an "otherwise good man"? Someone who generally most of the time doesn't do horrific things? What a meaningless construct - you are the sum of all of your actions, all of your choices.
That includes the choice to get into a state where you behaved badly even if you would not, whilst sober, behave in that way
Oh, they say, but it's so out of character for him to have done that. What rot.
I would address one point in the piece around self-defence:
I looked at him, keeping a blank expression, and said “I am.” I had learned this attitude after many years working in tech, that knowing how to deliver pain and putting everyone on notice that you would, was a way to avoid harassment... I realized if he reached for me again I could pull him forward, bounce his face off my knee, then drive it into the ground.
While I'm relieved that the author of this piece was in a position to stop anything further happening, this is unlikely to work in most circumstances when confronted by someone who is substantially larger and stronger than you. It doesn't serve anyone to ignore that men are (on the whole) stronger than women -- and ignoring that (especially in the case of attempted assault) only risks being in a threatening position with the odds in the attacker's favour. The first piece of advice any self-defence student will hear is (and I'm sure this is obvious), try to keep a safe distance from harm when it is possible to do so.
The other thing I would add, and I expect to take quite a bit of rage for saying this, is that Robert Scoble should have the same opportunity that was afforded to Weinstein and McClure to come forward and either own up to or refute these claims. This is NOT me casting doubt on this story (for the record, I believe this happened as described, and is utterly abhorrent), it's simply that these accusations are so damning both personally and professionally, and of such significance, that I think the accused should be given the opportunity to address them.
Ideally these matters would be settled by the judicial system and not the court of public opinion, but there are a multitude of genuine reasons (some stated in the piece) as to why this cannot really happen with a scenario like this (for the record, I believe the author was right to speak up) and no matter what may or may not happen in the judicial system, some mud will stick regardless. Again, I'm not defending Scoble or this behaviour, I just think the accused should be given a chance to address the allegations before being marched to the gallows - and I'm scared of what it says about the rest of us if we don't allow for that.
On a side note, I had no idea this problem was as widespread as it clearly is, and it's disgusting. I can't imagine what it must be like to be assaulted like this once in a lifetime let alone more than that, and clearly there's a lot of work that needs to be done to stop this happening in future, and harsher visible punishment of attackers when it happens as a deterrent.
I can't speak for Robert, but he went to alcohol rehab a year back or so and when he did, confessed to doing a lot of bad things and not remembering most of them. I would be surprised if he didn’t own up to it.
has to pepper it with such a generous dose of disclaimers about not taking sides with the accused.
I do hope that over time people are able to have a rational discussion on such subjects without needing these disclaimers for fear of damage to their own reputations.
My thoughts: "let's not rush to judgement with incomplete information, that's why we have a system for handling this".
My fears: "I don't want to go down in a fiery nosedive into oblivion with the accused because people wrongly thought I was taking their side."
My inner-monologue: "I'm a coward for using so many disclaimers, but I can also see the need given how sensitive this is for the victims. I guess I see both sides, but 'I see both sides' is a loaded term now thanks to the other guy."
Rationality is hard in 2017.
I also felt compelled to mention that I've witnessed men making what I have felt are creepy comments / moves on women and they've actually worked (in that they received positive responses from the woman).
Life is complex.
Yes, it is complicated. But, the receptivity of some women mostly goes to show how deep the problem goes and how pervasive it is.
You don't know if it's "working" because she's trying to keep him at ease til she can dash for the door, or why.
See shitty, harassing, abusive behavior, call it out. For too long, we all let this stand. No more.
Risk your job, risk short-term awkwardness, risk whatever because the women in the world deserve better than being targets while we stand around like cowards.
Some peoples creepy can be another persons turn-on, but if the guy involved takes too much offense at you interceding, it's probably something she should know about before she takes things further.
I've interceded before, e.g. an instance where two girls at a club seemed to be "surrounded" by four guys bringing one them drinks (the other one was refusing). It could have been family or friends, in which case they'd have told me, I'd have felt like an idiot and apologized. But it looked odd and looked like they were being cornered while the guys tried to get them drunk without drinking much themselves.
When approaching them it quickly became clear one of the girls were dead drunk and her friend was scared of both the four other guys, and now me (for what she knew I might have come to join in), and tried getting her friend away from both. So I placed myself between the four guys and the girls and blocked the guys until the more sober friend was able to drag her drunk friend out of there. I don't know the story - it could have ended well without me, but it also couldn't, and the fact the guys were getting agitated made it clear I did the right thing (they didn't dare do more than try to push me out of the way, given that there were big bouncers near enough to see, though not near enough that I wanted to leave the girls alone long enough to bring one over).
But I've also asked girls if they were ok, and gotten told, that yes, the guy is her boy friend, and to kindly leave them alone (sometimes with distinctly ruder wording), while the guy stood by and let her deal with it.
No harm done by asking, and seeing the guys not have a problem with me checking if the woman in question is safe is in itself a good sign.
I know that if anyone came up to my girlfriend to make sure she is safe when out, I'd be happy to see someone looking out for people, not feel threatened, because I have nothing to feel threatened about, and because I'd hope there are people like that around if she's out with girlfriends without me and someone tries anything.
I have to admit that I've never had the guts to directly intercede in a situation like that, although fortunately I've not seen many where I'd have considered it (more down to my lack of social life than these things being rare). It can be very difficult, especially if you are a young man without much relationship experience. It feels presumptuous and rude to intervene in other people's lives when you aren't sure how bad the situation is and what their relationship is. As I mentioned in another comment society is so so bad at giving people any kind of framework about how to begin relationships. If there are other people around who are also not intervening then that tends to reinforce the idea that it must be normal, acceptable behaviour. Even when it isn't. Older men have an important role in setting an example here.
As you say, there are ways to try and help without direct confrontation. Get between the man and the woman to give her a chance to walk away. If you think something really bad is possible then stay in the room and don't leave them alone.
I read an article by a woman a while ago talking about how older men in her life had subtly intervened in these kinds of situations to help her out, and how she hadn't realised at first. I wish I could find it now.
But not everyone feels able to, or not everyone are strong enough to be able to fight off an attacker.
And sorry, but it's not always going to be possible for bystanders to tell if you're able speak for yourself and choosing not to, or if you're terrified of someone.
In this case, note that the article involves lengthy attempts at escalating concern and attempts at defusing the situation during which it is clear that the first woman is too drunk to know what's going on. After which Quinn takes direct action. In the former, the person in question clearly was not able to look out for herself (that's different from whether she the following morning, after having sobered up, would have liked things to continue), while nobody else had to stand up for Quinn.
Nobody is saying we should step in instead of you if you're able to take care of yourself. But we also shouldn't stand by and let you get assaulted if your for whatever reason isn't in a position where you can. And that's not about gender - women shouldn't stand by quietly either.
I do agree with you in the limited extent that it could have been worded in a gender-neutral way: Guys can be victims too. It's not specifically about helping women, but about stepping in if someone might be in distress or are unable to meaningfully consent to something.
It's not actually about “the female image” at all. The ”say something” thing is, to the extent it's about gender image at all, about the male image, particularly what is normalized by and for men.
It's about the fact that a culture wherein for many male gender image involves disregard for female agency, consent, and concern is unlikely to be changed as effectively if the only condemnation of the manifestations of that attitude come from the people whom it disregards.
If there were an epidemic of men in public spaces bullying other, smaller men, I'd be saying the same thing in a different context.
People who look like you, if there's a lot of them being assholes to some outgroup, call them out. That's the general rule. Make the world nicer by reinforcing niceness where others can't.
Right now it's women and the #metoo stuff.
Tomorrow we can go back to talk about race.
And on and on and on.
It's really easy to laugh when kids are laughing but we must take notice and act on these things because they learn bad habits early.
Do you think he should do that even if at personal harm to himself (physical or otherwise but mainly physical)?
There's a guy in my hometown, whom I've worked with in the past, he's a pretty talented and prolific playwright, actor and director who's been at the centre of the local theatre and filmmaking scene for about 20 years now, and he's also a sexual predator, as anyone who's worked with him can attest to.
The day before yesterday he made a long Facebook post under the #metoo hashtag basically confessing to his sins apologizing profusely, and promising to never do it again. Today he got fired from everything that he's involved with. The apology was career suicide.
The fucked up thing is that, just like Harvey Weinstein, everybody knew what he was up to, it had going on for years and while it made everyone uncomfortable people just looked the other way. Opening up about it is what ruined him. Honesty is the best policy something something.
I'm obviously not familiar with the exact situation, but I'd be willing to bet money that he had received word that it was going to become public and the apology was an attempt to appear proactively remorseful and to circumvent the consequences resulting from the forthcoming publication. (In other words, the "apology" was not the precipitating action.)
This all happened in less than 24 hours. If he hadn't made the confession I'm not sure he would've lost all of that.
To be clear, I can't blame the people who fired him. They probably felt relief that they could finally stop working with him.
As the article said, we shouldn't demonise these men. But that is hard. It's not in our nature as humans. It's hard for us to look with compassion at an aggressor.
He very likely was going to be fired either way; the public apology was likely his attempt to avoid being fired.
From the OP: He was artistic director of a local theatre, and he came under fire from them, which is what prompted the public confession/apology[...]
His fall is a signal that abuse isn't tolerated anymore from people with his stature.
There's as yet no suggestion that those actors were aware of the context of their endorsements.
Really. Interesting. So you claim that e.g. The New York Times was weaker than a studio head?
Sexual deprevity in Hollywood has never been a "secret", but it doesn't help if your "stars" -- which are then promoted to soft politics propaganda work -- are shown to be individuals that tolerate anything for fame and riches. And equally, it doesn't help advancing various social engineering projects if the heads of studios that push JUNK to your children are shown to be sexual predators.
The actual question of interest here is what is being covered up that throwing Weinstein under the bus got the green light.
No, being a creep was career suicide. Making an apology is not the suicidal act, that's just a last-ditch effort to get ahead of the shit storm that the rumor mill says is coming (oh, did you think he apologized out of a sudden sense of remorse?)
EDIT: ya know, after some thought, I find the statement I quoted to be ridiculous. Because the implication is "see? He tried to do the right thing and it got him fired!". That, of course, is bullshit. The person fired hadn't tried to do the right thing for a long time, and that is what got them fired. Apologizing wasn't "the right thing", apologizing was an attempt to get away with it again.
This raises an interesting question. If you know a shit storm is coming is it more advantageous to do:
a) Get ahead of the storm (as you say) or
b) Wait until it hits and then apologize profusely and say and do all the right things?
Seat of the pants I say 'b' is better. First under the 'better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt' (there is a chance the storm won't hit) and second because most people will think you came out upfront because of the obvious reason of 'get head of the storm' and so it won't mean anything anyway.
Option "b": do it right, and I might believe you. Don't hide behind "I apologize if anyone was offended", at least try to sound sincere. "In these recent days it has come to light that I'm a scum bag. I'm sorry. Now, some will say that I'm only sorry that I got caught. Those people would have been absolutely correct two days ago. But as I spent the last 48 hours reflecting on the the charges brought against me, for the first time I realize the genuine pain that I have caused...yada, yada, yada."
Shed a tear, say it in the right tone of voice, you might pull it off. And, as you mention, you might not ever need deploy option b if you're lucky.
One thing though as someone who gets paid a great deal to negotiate for others I think that would be a mistake. Reason is you don't negotiate for the other person. Hard to explain but that is how that strikes me. Very possible there are people that won't think that. And now you are putting the idea into their head when they hadn't thought of it. [1] And those that thought of it won't care (is my guess).
[1] I am reminded of when I was younger and was looking at a house on a main street. The real estate agent said to me (and my fiance at the time) 'and you know street is no big deal there is a big yard in the back so you don't have to worry about your kids playing in the front and the traffic!!'. Well you know we hadn't even thought about that at all at that point!
Yes, it's better than remaining silent (and continuing). But it's still far worse than never having done these things in the first place.
For an employer who didn't already know, the net result of such a confession is obviously to see the person in a worse light than before, and firing them makes sense.
Foo Camp was fantastic both years I went, and the O’Reilly crew has worked hard to make things better. We still have a lot of work to do.
We must all do better, and continuously seek to do so.
In the short term, there is clearly value to outing commonly-known 'secrets' such as this one, in this and many other industries.
More importantly, it is necessary. Going on a creep witchhunt has too many risks of blowbacks.
And this tweet from Tim O'Reilly https://twitter.com/timoreilly/status/921124414418182144
There has to be a better way for you to argue your position than hand-waving away the gravity of a suicide. If there isn’t, maybe that should tell you something.
If the result is the worst possible one way (suicide and perpetrator walking free) then the other way at least might have resulted in a better outcome. Reading anything beyond that into what I wrote is just plain wrong.
I don’t see how the above comment relates to your comment I responded to. You seem to be moving on from the ‘hand wave’ comment.
Call the cops. Get these guys sent to prison. That does a lot more than blogging vigorously about one’s displeasure.
Victims largely don't want their school to call the cops when all they want is their attacker to be kept away from them.
Again, there can be severe and lethal consequences for the victim when their identity is made public.
If some guy was smashing people's laptops, this would be an obvious option on the spectrum of ways to handle it. But here....
Granted, this also means attention to the victim, and given how society treats people making these claims it can be an extremely scary step forward to make for them, on top of the experience itself.
In an ideal world where calling the police does not invite greater danger, yes.
In days of yore such stuff would appear in the media only after having been looked at by lawyers and multiple points checked and necessary evidence and statements were gathered. Now, I know the old media is not very popular any more, and that precisely this gatekeeping behaviour has also led to some of the problems we now have (it's clear that many in the media had a good idea what was happening in Hollywood) but all it takes is an otherwise credible person to have a bit of an 'episode' and somebody's life could be ruined forever -- either the accusee or the accuser, and possibly both.
The particular trap referred to in the parent is an easy one to fall into, and it may seem like a good way of avoiding a defamation suit ("I didn't name anyone so how could I have defamed them!) but in UK law it certainly is defamation if there are only a small number of obvious possibilities. If only one person is accused, but there are two identifiable possible offenders, you have defamed one of them for sure.
Its not a good look to rush in and presume guilt or innocence either. That's what the courts are for.
He often blogged out of ignorance on trending topics (TechMeme, anyone?) yet always got that traffic and those backlinks - one of those people that believed that if you spoke loudly enough what you said would magically both become important and true. It worked for him though, that I remember.
He was a bully then and I'm not surprised to hear he still is one now, but presuming that this article is true I'm very sorry to learn that he didn't contain his behavior to online only.
What I remember hating the most was just how successful people like him - and there are plenty - are at being popular. It just felt so unfair how this unintelligent bloke managed to con everyone into thinking his opinion mattered, got himself invited to all these exclusive events, and was somewhat of a mini-celebrity for no discernible reason at all. He wasn't someone you wanted to call out or cross because he never hesitated to fire back with all guns at anyone who gave him any flack and you didn't want to be the person everyone woke up to find shredded to pieces in their RSS inboxes the next morning.
I wisened up at some point and tuned him out. I stopped trying to blog about how his latest piece was inaccurate and unsubscribed from his feeds, realizing he simply wasn't worth it, and, to be honest, that it wasn't a game I could win. The thing about people like him is that they largely live in an echo chamber. They don't really matter. If you can tune them out and cut them out of your life, you won't be missing a thing. And if enough people do that, then they lost at their game. I imagine there are a lot of people that saw this headline and hadn't a clue who Robert Scoble even was - that wasn't the case 12 years ago. Bullies fade.
This is really what boggles my mind. There are so so many people who are "independent consultants or innovators or specialists" but don't code, don't do product management or sales or any other of the core things that businesses do. Yet people somehow listen to them as though they are experts - despite having no expertise or hands on.
I'd love for someone to explain why and how these people get to be well known.
"There's a sucker born every minute." – P.T. Barnum
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." – H.L. Mencken
"Bad money drives out good money." – Thomas Gresham
I'm still working on a fully generalised expression of Gresham's Law, but the basic form is that it operates as a complexity constraint based on the realised returns on complexity within a given market, or the differential across multiple markets.
"Bad money drives out good" is the mechanism that if, in a single market, coin of high specie content and low specie content circulate together and at the same face value, then the high-grade coin will be preferentially withheld from circulation due to its greater intrinsic value. If there's not sufficient coin for all commerce, this need not be all the high-grade coin, but it tends that way.
In multiple markets, if there is a foreign demand for the specie itself, the good coin will seek that (higher) foreign compensation and actually depart the country of issue.
In politics, as Mencken expands the idea, the problem is that within a majority system, the winner of a popular contest will be the candidate who appeals to a majority of voters. A sophisticated candidate who cannot be understood by the common voter is at a marked disadvantage.
In manufacturing and entertainment, assuming a mass market and either winner-take-all or economies-of-scale dynamics, again, you'll find that the offering which is simple enough to be accepted and understood by more (perhaps with a boost from advertising) will do so. There are other dynamics, including the "Market for Lemons" (Ackerlof) which can enter into that -- Mencken pressages that with his mention of David Harum in his essay -- Harum is the title character and horse-trader of a novel and film of the same name, from which the concept "horse trading" entered the vocabulary. (In a pre-industrial time, "horse trader" occupied very nearly the same occupational niche as "used-car salesman", for much the same reasons.)
And, again to government, given multiple jurisdictions, and a potential range of laws graded by strictness, so long as the individual is free to choose the relevant jurisdiction, then a race-to-the-bottom dynamic results where the least-strict regulatory environment dominates, absent any corrective influence. This noted in divorce laws (Nevada, later Alabama, ultimately no-fault in most states), environmental and labour regulations, company incorporation, and international ship registries ("flags of convenience") being typical examples.
(Also thanks for the spelling fix on Mencken. I always forget the 'c'.)
http://amomai.blogspot.com/2008/10/hl-mencken-bayard-vs-lion...
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
"I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have."
The full speech in which it appears is interesting: https://web.archive.org/web/20060827111102/http://www.michae...
I hope the response to this story is lasting and harsh enough to send a message to other sexual abusers. If Scoble's career is ended by this story, I think a clear example of 'sexual abuse ends careers of the powerful' would do a lot to reduce this kind of behavior in the future.
If this blows over after a few news cycles, women will be worse off.
Today it's AR this, AR that, secret company X has AR that will REVOLUTIONIZE EVERYTHING in 6 months then when it passes 6 months it's "oh well they're still working on it. I mean he said FOR SURE a clear or see through iPhone would be announced in 2017. How does that even make any sense? He later claimed they were still working on something like that.
It's essentially a way to be famous for being famous and offering nothing of value to anyone.
k.
Your general comments about how some people are experts at making themselves appear important ring true in the games industry too, we have a bunch of “journalists” talking about things they don’t understand at all and it is extremely depressing for the development teams that our customers listen to them so keenly.
What is your definition of intelligence? Some would define it as the ability to effectively take advantage of the way things actually are in the world to achieve your goals.
By that measure, people like Scoble are highly intelligent: they see the way the world is and do the things that grant them status and wealth in that world. The same is true of politicians, successful executives, and others that know how to "play the game".
One can have a genius-level IQ and achieve nothing at all because of an unwillingness or inability to play that game. Intelligence isn't worth much if it isn't pragmatic.
Complaining that you'd like people and the world to be different, to allocate status more "fairly", usually won't get you far. Although hopefully exposing the abuses of these people will change things for the better.
In 2003, I was unemployed and trying to each myself VB.net. I emailed him a question, and he replied to me. I was kind of surprised to get a response.
This obviously doesn't excuse what he has done, but I was grateful to him at the time.
As members of a community/industry we have a collective responsibility for what goes on; for our own behaviour, for the behaviour we let men get away with, and for supporting victims.
I don't think I've commonly seen that claim, aside from an "all lives matter"-style dodge used to try and derail conversation in tech e.g. "tech has this problem" "not just tech", the original claim was never that the issue is exclusive to tech, only that it exists in tech.
How does that make it any less than "a problem in the tech industry"? There's no "only" implied in "it's a problem in the tech industry".
Give you profess to be "bemused" that people call it "a problem in the tech industry", it seems you either believe it's not a problem at all, or it's specifically not a problem in the tech industry.
Good on you, but that does not change that this is very much the way your original statement comes across as.
> I'm just not convinced that it is a problem particular to tech.
Cool cool cool, I happen to agree with that, and even think that — assuming it's even possible to objectively quantify the problem — there are probably other industries much worse off than tech (as oft-repeated, the "casting couch" has been a long-standing "joke" in movie and TV).
However expressing that statement in a discussion following from witness testimony about the problem being observed in the tech industry helps fighting the problem… how?
At no point does the article state that the issue is exclusive to the tech industry, and your comment is the highest-rated one which infers one such claim, the next one (by user Spooky23) merely asking about it.
In my opinion lots of folks tend to infer the "only" because it helps them avoid uncomfortable thoughts.
A similar example is responding to "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter". Nobody was claiming that all lives shouldn't matter. The claim in the case of BLM is that black lives seem to presently matter less. That claim makes people feel uncomfortable so they subconsciously reframe it into being something unreasonable.
In this case, it may be that men in tech can feel better about themselves if this is a universal problem. If men in tech are just "typical guys" that eases the insecurities plenty of us have about being outsiders or social misfits (speaking for myself, obvs). On the other hand if it's a bigger problem in tech than other industries then suddenly those anxieties around other-ness are amplified.
If you re-read my comment you'll see that I didn't suggest you don't think there's a genuine problem.
My point was that people in general seem to frame situations in a way that causes them the least cognitive dissonance. That's natural human behaviour.
In this case (and this is semi-educated guesswork on part) I suspect men in tech will much prefer to frame this as a problem with men in general than a problem with men in tech specifically. A problem with men in general is less uncomfortable than a problem with men in tech.
This will manifest as a gut feeling that's then rationalised, rather than a conscious thought process so please don't take it as an accusation of low intelligence, morals, or character. It's absolutely not.
I brought this up because you were being vocally skeptical but not bringing evidence to the table. Maybe you have evidence to base your opinion on and this isn't an instance of the thing I described, in which case apologies.
Actually, apologies either way, it's tough to have your motives examined like that regardless of whether your behaviour fits this description.
I'm really sorry to hear that this happened to Quinn, and many others apparently. I believe sanctions should be very strong. I really hope they are, it seems to me like this man should go to jail.
Anyway, I hope Quinn Norton gets all the support, kindness and apologies, she deserves. And that Scoble finds the catharsis he needs.
He's apparently stopped drinking so hopefully he stays sober.
I hadn't heard of Scoble for years so I googled "scoble abuse", and the first result is something he supposedly wrote about being groomed and abused by his coach while he was a kid (http://archive.is/AN19H). Can't find the Facebook post this suggests was written by Robert and I don't know anything about the website it was posted on. But if it's true, then it gives you a way to trace back how Robert Scoble became an abuser. It also reflects on his substance abuse issues and if true shows that society fails to help victims and puts them on a path to become future perpetrators.
> abusers of all varieties tend to realize the mileage they can get out of saying, “I’m abusive because the same thing was done to me.” — Lundy Bancroft, "Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men"
While alcohol has caused me to overestimate my dancing abilities or to tell a friend things that I regretted later, it has never made me say things that I did not believe or made me do things I knew were wrong.
Sorry, but alcohol is not sufficient to explain groping or Mel Gibson's rants.
Some people have repressed thoughts, feelings, etc. that they might act on when dis-inhibited. I recall one coworker being drunk and going from happy to angry repeatedly and another one pouring out his heart to me about his unhappy marriage. I discarded those events and never asked them about it, but I imagine that if this is what happens in a purely vocal way, then someone drunk acting in ways they only didn't before because they were sober means there are deeper issues only hidden and controlled by the rational mind prevailing during sober times. This is why those that went through something like the 12 steps become fearful of getting drunk/high again, since they recall their destructive side. Some people have "demons" they only release if dis-inhibited by being drunk or irrational due to a primal instinct in control.
This means some people should never drink at all.
The whole reason that Quinn got involved was that there was a drunk woman making out with a drunk man and the sober people standing around thought that the woman had so much to drink that she could not distinguish between right and wrong.
I didn't learn about the UploadVR (where Robert works) drama from May before today, but I'm genuinely curious and want to ask if someone who has witnessed harassment at work like that can shed some light.
http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/05/uploadvr-sued-for-sexual-...
I know pop culture sexualises everything and fails to educate on matters of sex at the same time, but commenting on your female coworker's body in a meeting with others and saying you have to excuse yourself to go masturbate is something I never heard of happening in even the most dominantly male places.
How prevalent is this in the workplace? I mean, sexual attraction is a natural and sometimes useful thing to have, but humans are defined by not acting on each and every primal instinct.
Where do people acquire those behavioral patterns? Bad influence in the family or fraternity? Or is it porn consumption and subsequent belief that everybody is submissive when you're the boss (UploadVR executive)? I guess what I'm asking is what kinds of all-male activities to avoid if I don't want the bad influence.
To use the parent comment's example: almost everyone will be more willing to dance or sing really badly, or maybe kiss the wrong guy. Only a tiny fraction of people commit crimes under the influence.[0]
But you aren't completely wrong: Criminality just has a very low prevalence, so even if alcohol were to double it, it'd be rare to see. But from my experience it seems to be a very specific effect, making some people rather aggressive, for example, while having absolutely no such effect on others.
The difference just seems to be that some people have traits of aggressiveness, and alcohol stops them from controlling it.
Is that an excuse? Legally, it sometimes is: If you get blot-out drunk and shoot your wife in the head trying to reenact Wilhelm Tell, it's not murder, because no intent.
At that point it all depends on what you could reasonably expect yourself to do when drunk: If this is your third wife and the third Apple you missed, it starts looking quite different.
In this case, it appears Scoble had a history of such behaviour. Not only was he possibly behaving similarly even when sober (see the anecdote from her talk at the beginning), he had the chance of protecting people by avoiding such situations altogether.
[0]...although my singing may qualify [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Vollmer#Death
I'm not sure I agree that 'the influence' does not correlate with criminal behavior, but perhaps you're right.
But even if you're right, I'm convinced that inebriation does correlate strongly with crossing lines. And it's still the case that in many cultures and environments, a lot of sexual misconduct is not considered a crime, but merely 'blurred lines'.
I hope that changing this 'culture' will go a long way towards curbing even the very drunk from some of this (apparently) systemic kind of misconduct.
You saying that is meaningless.
This was life-changing. I now simply say "That was inappropriate" when somebody says something discriminatory or "This is inappropriate" when there is something on going. I'm not an SJW, I don't make a big deal of it and I don't give speeches, I say the phrase and move on. But it's simple and powerful and, frankly a little depressing, because at some point you're saying it pretty often and realizing that, as a white guy, I don't have to deal with this crap.
I was also kind of depressing to realize how much I had been marginalizing both the amount and impact of this behaviour that hasn't directed at me.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/woman-accuses-robert-scoble-o...
I wonder how many more will come forward in the tech Industry. The Weinstein saga did open the gates.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble/posts/1015578291863465...
Huh, scheduling your crisis management for maximum views (as opposed to getting out a statement ASAP to control the narrative) is a new one.
I have heard above incidents like this from women that I’m close to either by relation, personal friendship or professional relationship. But not from my accountant or teacher friends.
Anywhere I’ve worked has had zero tolerance for bullshit like this, as in you will be put on leave and terminated or banished from the premises. Maybe that’s unique?
You just hear about it more in some places than others.
However unpleasant (to put it mildly) we need to go through this process and clean our act. I always saw tech as a forefront of human thought, so clearly we need to be better people.
That is all.
What I am trying hard to understand is human nature. How can a person protest online harassment and turn around and harass another person at a party? I think fame, alcohol and drugs change a person for the worse. Lot of things to ponder about in your article.
I realized I was part of the problem that night — a woman’s safety in her career environment shouldn’t require credible threats of violence.
I could understand saying she wasn't part of the solution, but to me "part of the problem" makes a non-zero contribution to the problem. What she did was at worst neutral, no?
It's similar to what I teach the kids: He started it doesn't make it right, you know it's not ok to hit your brother.
What she did was what she felt like she needed to do at the time. What she's doing now is second guessing it, and trying to turn it to a generally more positive approach on all sides in the future.
At worst. I'd argue it was strongly positive.
There are definitely many of those in the comment threads on Eric's blog. But are you saying that ESR is himself one of those? Because I've seen no evidence of it myself.
[Edited to remove the 'gun nuts' bit, because ESR proudly self-identifies as same; it was the racist / MRA thing I was questioning.]
The best evidence is all over his blog and Google+ account, but I refuse to link to it. Google for "esr", "Is the casting couch a fair trade?", "low IQ" and "Blacks are lazy" yourself. You're probably going to want to take a shower afterwards. ...Unless that kind of stuff appeals to you.
I _do_ disagree with his 'casting couch' position, though, and will post there to that effect.
Or, from a different post:
"... The minimum level of training required to make someone effective as a self defense shooter is not very high... unfortunately, this doesn't cover the BLM crowd, which would have an average IQ of 85 if it's statistically representative of American blacks as a whole. I've never tried to train anyone that dim and wouldn't want to."
Here, or we can just do this in bulk:
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/780839196231630848
Fun fact: these quotes come from just one ESR comment thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disengaging_from_an_abuser_usi...
I'm subscribed to his blog, I've chatted with him on email ... perhaps I'm missing something here?
I mean, it's possible I was mistaken, and he is in fact racist. Certainly the casting couch post is wrong, and I plan to call him on that.
But I don't get your position here at all.
Then, there's the really-not-as-smart-as-he-thinks biologism trying to explain "why women are different than men". It's actually funny how there's this never-ending supply of people posting those arguments, promoting them as some sort of intellectual revolution, completely unchanged from ESR's heyday (early 80s?) to today's google-memo-writers.
Re. McVeigh, do you mean http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/reflections-on-mcveigh.html? Because that doesn't seem like a defense of McVeigh to me.
From the article:
> This seems to me like a way to avoid facing the really hard questions. Questions which begin with this one: where and when and how did Timothy McVeigh learn to think of taking the lives of innocent women and children as acceptable "collateral damage"?
http://www.agjohnson.us/glad/is-affirmative-action-racist/
"But the most important reason to reject the argument that affirmative action is racist is that it ignores what racism actually is. The whole point of any racist practice is to preserve and enforce the privilege – the dominance and unearned advantage – of the dominant group by systematically excluding and oppressing members of the subordinate group. This has never been the purpose of affirmative action, either in theory or in practice. It has been just the opposite – a modest attempt to shift the odds away from being so heavily loaded in favor of whites in an environment that is still overwhelmingly white dominated, identified, and centered."
Actually, I'm not totally confident that ESR is really a racist. I think it's possible that he might just be profoundly, narcissistically insecure. The more you read him (I've read every ESR G+ post, every ESR blog post, and every ESR-authored comment on every ESR blog post for the past 2 years), the more you come to realize the truth that every kind of person that is not ESR is somehow intrinsically flawed, while ESR himself is one of the most important people on the planet, almost singlehandedly (if you don't count Dave Taht) responsible for the security of the Internet and of revolutionary movements in Iran, plugged directly into the most sensitive sources in law enforcement (wait 'till you read what he's learned about the Las Vegas shooter; it'll change forever what you thought you knew about ANTIFA, BLM, and Islam).
I think it might be tough to reckon with that kind of overwhelmingly disordered view of the world, and that white nationalism and mens-rights-ism and similar ideologies offer him a mental framework in which his weird belief of himself at the center of the world might just make sense.
I'd be sad, except, seriously? Fuck that guy. In the eye socket, forever.
ESR's schtick: He's always trying to show off how intelligent he is by making a totally outrageous asinine statement he knows isn't true and is totally offensive, and then trying to prove he's so clever that he CAN justify it through mental tricks, verbal gymnastics and gerrymandered taxonomies. He does it again and again. Every one of his posts is just like that.
And his minions eat it up, because he appeals directly and systematically to their prejudices and hatred.
So technically, in a certain sense, no, he's not racist, because he doesn't believe a fucking thing he says. He's something much worse than racist: Eric the Flute is a Pied Piper of racism, someone who feeds and thrives from other people's racism, sexism and hatred.
Hmm, can you think of anyone else who's mastered this technique?
I'm reminded of this post: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6839. Here he declares himself the most famous programmer ever. Even by his own criteria, notch of minecraft fame is significantly more famous.
When I knew him during the 80's, he would go on and on ad nauseum about his beloved "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle NetNews Reader" and how so much better than every other netnews reader. But he never collaborated with anyone, and he never released it under any license. Much more Bizarre than Cathedral.
For your next act, will you clean up a breached nuclear reactor core by hand?
I think the thing about the hindbrain and the fecal people probably settles that although it is older than 2 years.
† (he knows this because his Kung Fu instructor, who consults with "the Feds" on "counter-terrorism", informed him of this --- this is presumably a different source than the one that reliably informed him that Iran had dispatched a death squad to kill him)
If you're right about that position - about firearms instruction - I'll gladly apologise, and withdraw my support for ESR as a non-racist.
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833
Also, and with the maximum sincerity it is possible to imbue an HN comment with, from the bottom of my heart? Fuck that guy.
Since duncan asked for citations:
Here's ESR having a tantrum and throwing down the gauntlet during Russ Nelson's "Blacks are lazy" scandal that embarassed OSI and rocked the open source community: he insisted OSI get into a mud-fight against political correctness, and he called people in the open source community who disagreed with Russ's "Blacks are lazy" blog posting "fools and thugs":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Russ_Nelson#Blacks_are_la...
Note that although Russell withdrew the article, and admitted it was badly written, Eric S. Raymond is on the record as having defended it by accusing people asking Russell to step down as being "fools and thugs". Note that "thug" has been called a "dog whistle" term for "n*gger".
https://aattp.org/thug-just-a-dog-whistle-for-n-word-says-nf...
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/New-OSI-Presi...
Eric S. Raymond wrote: “The people who knew Russ as a Quaker, a pacifist and a gentleman, and no racist, but nevertheless pressured OSI to do the responsible thing and fire him in order to avoid political damage should be equally ashamed,” Raymond said. “Abetting somebody elses witch hunt is no less disgusting than starting your own.”
“Personally, I wanted to fight this on principle,” Raymond said. “Russ resigned the presidency rather than get OSI into that fight, and the board quite properly respected his wishes in the matter. That sacrifice makes me angrier at the fools and thugs who pulled him down.”
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/769730601872044032
We could go on for quite some time about women if we really wanted. Or we could just look to the front page of his blog, where he's posted a long, arduous defense of "casting couch" sexual harassment.
Jesus fuck. You read that stuff regularly??! I would throw out my blue highlighter after marking that up. I haven't read any of his filth in years -- he's gotten much worse than I remember. It looks like he's metastasized.
Maybe Iran dispatched a death squad to kill him, as revenge for the time that he threatened Bruce Peren's life. Wooooooooo!!! Be careful: you can laugh yourself to death reading his blog.
Having read through the material posted, though, it's clear he supports the idea of racial profiling and similar; literally judging individuals in part by their membership of a racial group, which is the very definition of racism.
I'm in the process of penning a blog post which will go into this in more detail, and which I'll invite him to comment on. I like to think (Don Hopkins' fearful warnings to the contrary) that he is a mostly reasonable person who could be convinced to change his opinion.
It will also contain a strong rebuttal of his points around agency and consent in the casting couch article, which are dangerously wrong.
So yes. With the caveat that it applies to only a subset of his stated opinions on race - I apologise and withdraw.
Have you also written a strong rebuttal of his racism too, or are you going to let that slide? Is it your opinion that ESR and Trump and Hitler are not racist and shouldn't be taken to task for it, because only a subset of their stated opinions on race are racist and incorrect?
Precisely where do you draw the line where that subset of someone's stated opinions being racist becomes intolerable -- 10%, 50%, 99%?
Is it perfectly OK with you if Scoble and Weinstein and Trump only sexually assault a subset of the women in their respective industries?
Categorizing people who disagree with you as irrational is in itself a behaviour that has no place in rational discussion.
To attempt to explain it: One of my criticisms of Cheryl Yeoh is that her BATNA wrt to sexual harassment was that she has a black belt. So, I think she did not feel compelled to try all that hard to make sure to avoid trouble and misunderstandings. She felt safe, even if the worst came to pass. I think that was a contributing factor to the incident in which Dave McClure sexually assaulted her. *
That does not make Dave's behavior okay. It in no way excuses it. But if you take the position that women are simply victims who have no power at all to influence the social environment in which they participate, I think you do more harm than good.
Most discussions of "rape culture" assume that only men can do something about it. It assumes that only men create "rape culture" and only men can work to stop it. This is an incredibly disempowering way to view women. I think it actively reinforces the problem in insidious ways.
That said, I am totally okay with Quinn Norton successfully enforcing her boundaries with Scoble by stating clearly and unequivocally that if he touched her again, she would break his nose. He was drunk. She had just met him. He was in the midst of trying to rape another woman, then sexually assaulted Quinn at first introduction in spite of witnesses. This was not a situation where more polite, respectful measures were going to work.
But I also understand her mixed feelings about expressly seeking permission from the organizers to break his nose, should push come to shove.
(Edit: In case you did not know, I am female and very open about being a rape survivor.)
* https://cherylyeoh.com/2017/07/03/shedding-light-on-the-blac...
I blogged about it. I can point you to that series of posts if you are interested. I don't intend to rehash it at length here.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/search?q=yeoh
Edit: plus this http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/not-drinking...
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1015578381743465...
Screenshot: https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/921265767282221061
We aren’t learning a damn thing about consent. We are learning there is a huge segment of men who flagrantly don’t care about it.
Who is it?
He knew just enough about the technology he covered to convince non techies that something was cool I guess.
I know he's publicly stated before that he had a drinking problem and was seeking help for it at one time.
Sad to see he's actually one of these toxic people.
It sounds like drinking, along with being "a star" went to his head. That's the only way you do something like that and think it's ok.
I think you will hear lots of women come out about this guy. I wonder how much of this occurred while he was married?
He was mostly an evangelist for Rackspace. His biggest claim-to-fame is the infamous Google Glass Shower pic: https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4333656/larry-page-teases...
How did everyone get home from the last happy hour the team had? Who shared taxis? Do you remember who shared with who? I certainly didn't. I was pretty drunk and what does it matter anyway? Well, turns out that after one night one of the managers shared with a subordinate and made a totally inappropriate move on her. Turns out he has a habit of doing it. I had absolutely no idea.
The point is that it happens to women everywhere, also (and perhaps even mostly) in ordinary settings where other oblivious men think it couldn’t possibly transpire.
I mean, women get sexually harassed on trains. You've never ridden a train?
That's the take-away from this discussion.
Watching on Twitter, the #metoo hashtag scroll by with probably 80% of the women I know and respect joining in...yeah, I know it's prevalent but it's still shocking to see, not just prevalent, but nearly ubiquitous.
Back to your parties, odds are it's happening and you're simply not aware of it.
If you go to conferences about ‘boring’ things, there might not invite people like this.
What worries me
It's like what we're seeing in Hollywood where actresses have been talking about how most of the harassment immediately stopped once they had the career stature to fight back and were thus no longer safe targets.
As an overly-protective older brother to two sisters, I've been practically ready to raise fists at anyone who's treating women in a slimy way since I was a teenager. Unfortunately, this instinct has been an almost complete waste of energy - it never comes in handy.
I've concluded that the predators/creeps are very, very careful about how they go about it. They can sniff out guys who have a sense of propriety and they can play the part of a good guy unless they know they're absolutely in the clear.
Why Google Glass Will Be A Hit. The High School Girls Love Them.
https://soundcloud.com/scobleizer/why-google-glass-will-be-a...
Let's destroy his career. Everywhere he posts, remind people that he's a sexual abuser.
Hopefully, if we can proverbially put his head on a pike, it will scare other potential abusers from committing crimes like these.
EDIT: Wow, seems like this post is making the rape apologists feel insecure. It's raining downvotes.
>I’m very mixed on this. I believe if we don’t provide paths of redemption for badly behaved people, we enable abusers as much as we do by remaining silent. I also believe we need to talk about these things plainly, and we need to seek to help and elevate the victims.
>The demonization of either rapists or victims is what makes the subject unapproachable, and doesn’t let anyone intercede to get abusive people the help they need, much less the victims.
I think fear is the only emotion sexual abusers will be deterred by. If the treatment of Scoble doesn't make other powerful sexual abusing sociopaths fear for their livelihood, they won't change their behavior.
Total scorched-earth ostracism seems like it would have more impact than any other option.
That's seriously uncharitable, and a clear (multiple) violation of the site guidelines in a thread that has managed to mostly stay above that. Please don't post like this here.
The site guidelines are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Everyone commenting on HN should follow them.
As per sexual harassment, even after Weinstein most women will keep quiet. It's a much better career move, unless their attacker is on the ropes. (Unless he's outed he can not be in the ropes, I know).
Many people with money and power do feel entitled to everyone, not to just those that go after such men.
Do women react to alcohol differently? It seems like our culture and our legal system treat an inebriated woman differently than an inebriated man when assessing a situation. It seems like if a woman is wasted and making out with a guy "consensually" she is being victimized because she cannot consent when she is drunk. But what if the guy is also inebriated and he cannot consent or decipher consent. I, for example (I'm male), would have to be extremely drunk to PDA like that in a professional setting. Even then it's hard to imagine. What if it's just two really drunk people hooking up? Is it one of those "I know it when I see it" situations? This is fine for me, but it seems like it is only applied with women being the victim and a man being the aggressor. Maybe that is because of the natural sexual dynamic of the onus being on the male to seduce the female. By saying that the woman had no control because she was inebriated, but Scoble did, aren't we denying the woman of her agency? Unless of course Scoble plied her with alcohol/drugs a la Bill Cosby?
To be clear, and this goes without saying, I am NOT condoning Scoble's actions, I really don't know anything about Scoble other than this story but from what it sounds like he has a pattern of transgressions, including a completely inappropriate groping of the author in this story.
I'm also not trying to deflect off of the serious issues at hand here, but the other comment threads are doing a good job of covering those.
But I also don't think I am "victim blaming" either. Unless we grant that women inherently have less agency than men. Now this Scoble situation might have been a black and white case, but it seems to me there is a lot more grey area in these situations than we let on as a culture, and I am just wondering what the "rules" are.
In general, I'd say men are more like cars and women more like bikes. Whether nature or nurture, in my experience men are clearly more aggressive, and clearly stronger.
They also seem to be more inclined to have and pursue a single obsessive goal (and perhaps especially when that goal is intercourse). But I'd say that's less clear and perhaps untrue.
(In Dutch there's the saying that "you have to learn it on an old bike", where 'it' is sex and an old bike is an older woman)
No.
>It seems like our culture and our legal system treat an inebriated woman differently than an inebriated man when assessing a situation. It seems like if a woman is wasted and making out with a guy "consensually" she is being victimized because she cannot consent when she is drunk.
>But what if the guy is also inebriated and he cannot consent or decipher consent.
If the woman is initiating the contact, then it could be argued that she doesn't have consent, either.
>What if it's just two really drunk people hooking up? Is it one of those "I know it when I see it" situations?
In this case, Scoble proceeded to aggressively grope the author in between going after the clearly too-drunk-to-consent woman.
>This is fine for me, but it seems like it is only applied with women being the victim and a man being the aggressor. Maybe that is because of the natural sexual dynamic of the onus being on the male to seduce the female.
I think this is a correct interpretation. I also have trouble thinking of examples of times I've ever seen where a drunk (or sober) woman went out of her way to aggressively pursue a male, drunk or not, consent or not, and anecdotally it's much much much rarer. But in those rare cases, would still not be okay.
>By saying that the woman had no control because she was inebriated, but Scoble did, aren't we denying the woman of her agency? Unless of course Scoble plied her with alcohol/drugs a la Bill Cosby?
Holy shit this is scary. This is perilously close to "she shouldn't have lowered her guard" or "she was basically asking for it" or "it's essentially her fault for getting too drunk to resist." And thus, you're dangerously close to victim-blaming. It's not "denying agency" to factually state that someone could conceivably become so drunk that they are no longer able to willfully consent. "Denying agency" is a dressed up way of accusing the victim for not being strong-willed enough to know what she wants when she gets drunk, instead of recognizing that it's everyone's right (or agency) to enjoy themselves at a party and get inebriated without having to worry that your mental wits and physical fight ability are 100% about you throughout the entire evening, lest an aggressive man approach you and take your slurred protestation as consent.
>Now this Scoble situation might have been a black and white case, but it seems to me there is a lot more grey area in these situations than we let on as a culture, and I am just wondering what the "rules" are.
Is the other person so drunk that a reasonable observer would recognize that consent is extremely unlikely to be truthfully given? Then don't. That's a very easy rule. If your target requires significant enough alcohol to "deny their agency" or "let down their guard" or "consent" with you, then it's not true consent. And it's not a win. It's gross and disappointing and regrettable and predatory and frequently illegal.
I've seen it happen, including to me, not often but I would not describe it as rare. It often takes more the form of being aggressively suggestive rather than physical violence but it can still be inappropriate: indecent exposure is a crime in many places.
When it’s physical violence, it’s a little confusing because the men were generally stronger and better coordinated (more sober) so it looked more like drunk-management than a threat.
But to answer your questions, which I believe are made in good faith, here is my view (not a legal one!). If you can't decipher consent, then you don't have one. If you have a reason to believe you might not have gotten it if the other person was sober, then that is assault too. If you are not in condition to be able to make such assessments and still proceed, you should be held accountable like drunker drivers are.
I am not saying sipping a bit of wine should immediately disqualify you from sex, but it should be off the table if any one of you gets drunk to the point where their judgement is noticeably impaired.
Sex of a persons involved doesn't matter in consideration and abuse happens to both sexes, but clearly to women more often.
Yes, actually. Women metabolize it differently, plus size matters. Men are typically larger than women. They can handle more liquor and be less drunk. So a hetero couple that are consuming alcohol together at the same pace typically causes dramatically greater impairment for her than for him and more quickly.
Alcohol is the single most common date rape drug and is a factor in the vast majority of date rapes.
Additionally, highly sexually aroused women lose certain cognitive functions. This is not true for men. I strongly suspect this element is a significant factor in many social norms that establish different expectations for male and female sexual behavior.
Women literally have their judgment impaired by high arousal. I think this is part of why society as a whole is pickier about the need for women to pursue more cautious strategies when choosing a sex partner.
I did not know that! Do you have any references at hand?
I think we have plenty of male examples where that is not true.
I'm a small man and most of my too-drunk experiences involved keeping up with bigger men who often also drank more. And that wasn't a conscious thing. I just automatically followed their drinking behavior, except I couldn't handle it.
Made me LOL. Especially the latter part.