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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

Following these very visible and high profile falls from grace, in politics, media and entertainment, and high tech, there must be some legitimate concerns that in the near future the Billy Graham rule [1] (or lately called the Graham-Pence rule) will find more followers than before.

Many men in power will instinctually and subconsciously cut out women from their professional lives more than before, to the detriment of women's career advancement. Polls [2] suggest that this isn't a rare position even today. Mitigating this next challenge should be part of the current successful campaign that women and allies of women have been waging today, since even though to some it will be clear that basic attitudes of respect and professional distance will suffice, many others will make a fear-driven overreaction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/upshot/members-of-the-opp...

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I know this might not be a popular opinion. But I've basically instituted a modified version of this rule for myself.

Billy Graham and Mike Pence are definitely not a fountain a good ideas, but that doesn't mean this rule is that bad, despite the nonsense place it comes from.

Whenever I need to have after work dinner/social communication with a female associate after 5:00pm, I just go out of my way to invite another woman so she won't be alone. If that is not an option I will try to make it a bigger group with men and women. I never shut the door to my office when I am with a woman. If we need to have a private conversation, we do walking meetings around the block in public areas.

This may be shutting some women out of the intense bonding that some male colleges have, but I'm not interested in friendships with men from work either, so I don't think I'm being unfair to anyone.

I also don't stand too close to women. I don't ever comment on their physical appearance even if they got a great hair cut. And I don't need to hug anyone I work with ever.

Maybe this makes me a jerk. But I feel like it keeps the relationships I care about most (those with my family) safe.

I don't understand why you think it makes you a jerk, most of what you said I'd simply include simply under "being professional."

A lot of feminists think this denies networking opportunities for women.

The feminists created the environment in which it becomes the smart thing to do.

No, the people committing sexual assault did.

> The feminists

The people who think women should be equal ...

Sure. Just like the communists thought people should be equal.

So in your mind, personal and social equality are equated two things, Communism and Feminism?

Could you explain this?

I'll explain it this way: Both the feminists and the communists espouse equality as a tool to get what they're really after - power.

This is getting crazy. Can we please not do this?

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

i think that to many this is almost comically reductive, if not an outright red herring. (not that 'the feminists' is a super useful term.)

When men openly discuss not meeting with women because of a fear of being falsely accused (which itself is exceedingly rare) of inappropriate behavior or molestation, what are women supposed to conclude?

That they aren't being denied networking opportunities or opportunities to build working relationships?

What is a positive take-away for women from powerful or monied men saying, in public, "I am afraid of meeting with women, so I no longer will"?

For the record, I'm a dude and when I hear men say this, I think much less of them--for being cowardly and shutting women out of industry for their cowardice.

I think we lack empathy. How would we men feel if the situation was switched?

At work we discussed a customer who wouldn't shake hands with women because of his religion. A coworker said that's not sexist and the company should accommodate the customer. I asked him how he'd feel if a customer's religion bars handshakes with white dudes. He looked down and had no response.

What if white bosses said the same things about black employees? People's unit tests are tots broke.

i suppose it depends on there being a similar circumstance. if accusations of interpersonal 'racial harassment' became more regular, you would probably see a shift in behavior with some people going out of their way to avoid 'risky' situations.

The chicken littles claiming this problem exists in the first place are publicly scared they are next. This they admit outright. I'd wager that people making these claims probably _do_ have this as a risk, for good reason.

this mindset seems a bit like a 'if you have nothing to hide...' view on privacy. they're only concerned because they're villains?

You are putting words from a totally different argument in my mouth. Weak rhetoric.

your statement was thus:

> I'd wager that people making these claims probably _do_ have this as a risk, for good reason.

why do you think they have this as a risk? why for good reason? why do you wager this situation?

your phrasing seems like a sneering insinuation, but framed such that you can say it doesn't mean any one concrete thing, should someone respond. this seems like "weasel wording" and it seems disingenuous to reply the way you did.

I'm a woman and I am a feminist.

Unless you are an actor or dancer any sort of touching with coworkers is very inappropriate for all genders, sexual or non sexual touching included. Keeping your work and professional lives separate is just good sense. It's rude to make comments about other people's appearances unless you are very close friends with them. Closed door meetings are sometimes needed but you should never do them excessively or with only the young or attractive, that looks like you're being inappropriate.

Basically, it's just professionalism and should apply to everyone, all genders.

I an friendly with my colleagues but I don't want to be friends with them. I prefer to keep my professional relationships professional and my personal relationships personal.

You spend the majority of you life in work, and to avoid making friends with some people you spend time with is very isolating. I'm not going to the weekly board game thing because then, gasp, I might make friends!

Imagine if we applied the same standards to school.

I think this attitude is part of the reason why adults have a hard time making friends after college.

Woah, I do not spend the majority of my time at work! For a given week I am awake for approximately 112 hours but I only spend 40 at work, so less than 36% of a given week is spent at work.

During work I am usually too busy, uh, working to really socialize. I mean, I'm friendly, there's water cooler banter, but I've got work to do.

I socialize plenty, just outside of the office with people who aren't my colleagues.

I've personally seen excessive fraternization backfire badly. You also realize, once you've been around the block once or twice, that friends you make at work are very shallow friendships 99.99% of the time.

Here's an argument for boundaries at work: https://hbr.org/2003/12/in-praise-of-boundaries-a-conversati...

>You don’t have time to make friends if you’re out socializing every night with pseudofriends. And on a smaller scale, the same is true in business offices. It is a terrific imposition for a business to ask people to give up their weekends and their evenings for unpaid work. I get these pathetic letters from 70-year-old retired executives who say, “I worked for 40 years in this office, and everybody loved me. They gave me this huge party when I left. And now nobody calls me. What happened?” What happened, I say, is that your colleagues aren’t your friends—and they never were.

Thats too bad, I've made some friends (as in gone to weddings level) from work, and we've helped each other throughout the years. I've also made work acquaintances that I've referenced in the past and we've worked together again as a result. They are great to work with.

I used to be like you, and I found it actually put me back in life richness. After I started seeing another non-work friend making friends from work and inviting them to social things, I realized it wasn't a bad thing to be open to be making friends. Your not going to make friends from most people you meet, just like school, but it is a possibility. I think part of the reason why you find them %99.99* shallow is because you might not be open to it.

It's also quite funny that article cites china, japan and so on as places with more formalized boundaries, where it's pretty much tradition that you go out drinking with colleagues every, single, night and you work a fucking shit ton.

What I'm suggesting is to not be afraid of it. If there is some optional board game night that seem enjoyable, and you like it, go do it! If you really click with someone that you have lunch breaks with on your team, it's not a bad thing! If you don't connect with anyone, there is nothing wrong with that either.

Ummm.... Being invited to a wedding isn't a very high bar of friendship. I've been invited to weddings of people I never even met before, the odd distant relative. Most people invite people they haven't seen in a decade to their wedding. Most weddings are a show and the couple really want an audience.

99.9% shallow is not because I'm not open to it, its been my direct observation from people around me throughout the years. I didn't start noticing it until I was in my late 20s. It's not hard to observe from being around the block a few times.

Drinking with colleagues in Japan is not actually socialization, its just an extension of the office. Its a highly formal and ritualized event even though there is alcohol. It's considered part of work.

I'm not going to board game nights with coworkers because I'm busy playing board games with my actual friends. Sometimes new friendships happen in the office, ok, but I'd like to avoid mixing friendship and business if possible.

1) Making friends with all your colleagues can become a minefield to navigate after a while, uh.

2) You know friendships with people you aren't required to be around are legitimate.

> Unless you are an actor or dancer any sort of touching with coworkers is very inappropriate for all genders, sexual or non sexual touching included.

Weird. So I guess you never shake hands with someone in a business meeting, and it is only appropriate to do so if you are an actor or dancer.

> Closed door meetings are sometimes needed but you should never do them excessively or with only the young or attractive, that looks like you're being inappropriate.

When I worked at Evil Corp, the only meetings I could have were behind closed doors. I worked closely with a female colleague on another team - she was young and attractive, nobody thought it was inappropriate.

> Basically, it's just professionalism and should apply to everyone, all genders.

I can agree to that.

I don't understand why people hug their co workers. That sounds weird. But some of the things on the list are ridiculous.

I'm socially awkward and I still don't have problems having a closed door conversation with a member of the opposite sex. Are you just going to pass on interviewing women because that puts the two of you in a room?

Yeah, that's the only thing on the list that I thought was weird, that's why I said "most." The closed door meetings in all these sexual misconduct stories were really, really egregious and would be easily avoided.

Everything else is just being professional.

I used to be socially awkward, terribly so, and I was never ever afraid of being in a closed room with a woman, because even at the height of my awkwardness I certainly wouldn't 1) make sexist remarks or jokes, 2) stare at her body or, 3) flirt.

People might've known me as a weirdo who stuttered or referred to Star Trek too much, but no one would ever think of me as inappropriate, simply because I never was, not even close.

In my position if I have to interview a woman (or any candidate), I can talk to her with my team present.

Maybe it would be different if I was the CEO hiring for an executive position, and then I would make an exception. But for white boarding? Even if it were 1 on 1, I don't understand the need to have the door shut.

Privacy makes me uncomfortable anytime in a work environment. I like my home life private, but I'm fine having my work place conversations overheard by others.

Frankly, if the power difference is too great, it's not ethically safe to go into a room alone.

Alone in a room with Putin/Duterte in their homefields, and God knows to what you'd agree. If they coerce you, you might not be believed and, besides, they could have you killed.

Never walk into a room, alone with a dictator.

Or, if you're an 18yo store clerk for American Apparel, never do so w/ the CEO of your company.

And it's unethical to ask a subordinate to expose themselves by joining you, the authority, in such a situation.

... extenuating circumstances aside.

> Maybe this makes me a jerk. But I feel like it keeps the relationships I care about most (those with my family) safe.

Don't be so negative. They do the same things in Boy Scouts now for the same reasons. The net result is a safer environment for leadership and children alike.

Do you extend the same principles to homosexual men? Are homosexual women exempted?

I find it easier to not have to consider the sexual preferences of my coworkers when I'm interacting with them.

Edit: I should add, if someone is going to attack my character, they're going to do it regardless of what I do. I'm not going to go out of my way to prevent that.

Similar to using encryption everywhere you can: it makes the use of it non-suspicious. The last thing I want is for being alone with a coworker to be implicitly suspicious because the new norm is this sillyness.

> Do you extend the same principles to homosexual men? Are homosexual women exempted?

The worry is about him appearing plausibly improper, so their sexuality doesn't matter.

Right, but the implication is that they'd be just fine meeting one on one with another man. That it's only women who get treated specially.

Yes, that's the point. That this paranoia is bad for women. And the paranoia is all about a man with any element of power interacting with a woman. The first party's sexuality is somewhat relevant, but the latter's doesn't matter at all.

I'm sorry, but that paranoia is pure cowardice. If someone in power cannot meet with someone one on one without attempting anything, then they do not deserve to be in that position, full stop.

> that paranoia is pure cowardice

Sure.

> If someone in power cannot meet with someone one on one without attempting anything

Uh, that's not what the paranoia is. The paranoia is about accusations.

And I don't buy that. People who aren't sexual predators don't have to worry about that.

> have to worry

Fear isn't rational.

You can't imagine someone in this situation that's excessively worried about a very unlikely but possible occurrence, and acts based on that fear?

If they're that driven by fear, they do not deserve to be in that position. And if they're that afraid of it, it's probably because they know they're likely to act in that manner.

I have zero sympathy whatsoever for those cowards, and I extremely abhor the implied insinuation that women won't receive opportunities in the future unless they allow themselves to be harassed and shut up about it.

presumably, the rate of male v male harassment accusations is very low (at least relatively), and as such doesn't much play into risk aversion.

I dunno if I’d say that makes you a jerk, but it strikes me as maybe a little overcautious. As with any security/safety issue, I think it comes down to the threat model you’re using. What’s the attack vector you’re protecting against? How likely is it that any attempt on that vector will succeed? What’s the damage if it succeeds? Speaking for myself, it never seems like I need to go too far out of my normal mode in order to keep the whole threat model in check.

The threat model is an accusation. You are toast if you even get one accusation because it is cheaper to just get rid of you even if you are innocent.

Frankly, I think he is not being cautious enough because the term "sexual harassment" has also moved into the realm of disagreement. Maybe you don't like her work and criticize it or maybe you are her boss and not agreeing with her performance. Most women quickly figure the criticism is being levied because he is overtly professional with them and also because they are women. I have had many women come to me and tell me these stories with this line of reasoning.

Most women aren't like this but the threat model the OP is using is legitimate. In 2017, if you get accused, you are done. Your family is done. Just move to Bermuda and retire. It is not something you can recover from.

> we do walking meetings around the block in public areas.

Please don't do this.

Not cautious enough?

Yes, accusations were what I had in mind when I framed it as “threat model” in the question.

    it is cheaper to just get rid of you even
    if you are innocent

Is it? One clearly has some value to their employer. Replacing an employee isn’t free either. It’s also not “free” to add social friction to interactions with one's coworkers.

As best I know, this has never happened to anyone in / near my social network. That leads me to believe that this isn’t something that happens very often in the general population (unless I’m an outlier). And if it’s so rare, then it doesn’t seem to be worth going out of my way for.

Are you confident that you have enough value to your employer that they would be willing to write into your contract that you cannot be fired for a harassment claim until it has been proven in court (as Bill O'Reilly had[1])? I would guess not, and there are few people at any given company that could say that.

[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-08/o-reilly-...

This works till it doesn't. All it takes is once.

Raw statistics are worth internalizing, but in an era where a slip of the tongue is enough to hang you (socially), it's worth being overcautious.

Say you have an employee who is being considered for management. They allegedly said some pretty nasty things to another employee. When you interview their colleagues no one will corroborate the story. Do you think they will still seriously be considered for management? Nope.

There are plenty of people who have become managers after verifiably saying nasty things to other employees.

> You are toast if you even get one accusation

Except that's not what we're seeing; we're seeing one spiral into historical many. It's not a witch hunt, it's a reckoning.

Exactly what happened to a buddy of mine. Super fast tracker at wall street investment bank. female junior analyst could not cut it in the 80 hour work week, rough and tumble world. One month before review season, she cries "harrassment". he gets whacked, she survived another few months until the employer finally came around to understand she was sub-par. Could have ruined a career if he wasn't such a superstar and bounced back hugely. Story could have been a lot worse for him. Don't work with, hire, or mentor women is the message being clearly sent.

> we do walking meetings around the block in public areas.

>> Please don't do this.

Can you please explain? Walking meetings are quite popular in my network. I thought this is a pretty safe trend.

What's your insinuation about being alone with a woman being unsafe? That you don't trust yourself not to do something inappropriate or that you don't trust the woman not to make up a false accusation?

When you go shopping do you take a chaperone so as to keep yourself out of a potentially unsafe shoplifting situation?

We're all always adjacent to a potential crime or difficult situation. But we're not supposed to live in fear of them.

> What's your insinuation about being alone with a woman being unsafe? That you don't trust yourself not to do something inappropriate or that you don't trust the woman not to make up a false accusation?

it's not an insinuation, it's risk mitigation.

I am not worried that if I'm alone with a woman I will suddenly become a monster. I'm also not really worried about false accusations.

What I'm really worried about is keeping myself out of situations where mutual feelings of physical attraction develop. This could lead to situations that threaten my work and family.

I had an uncle who was a Catholic priest. They are not allowed to spend time alone with nuns, and I think its the same idea.

Back to your analogy.... I don't bring a chaperone to the grocery store to prevent myself from shoplifting. But I definitely bring my wallet. I also try to shop AFTER dinner rather than BEFORE, because when I shop while hungry it completely changes my buying behavior. I view this as the same thing.

I want to provide fertile ground for the type of relationships that I want to have, and make it difficult for the kinds that I am avoiding to even get started.

This clip is relevant to today's issue. Men can accuse just as easily.

American Beauty How to Quit a Job With Kevin Spacey

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

Easy fix: just apply the same rule to men and women.

If you don't do that, then yeah you're a jerk.

"I don't ever comment on their physical appearance even if they got a great hair cut."

Why is that? I'm not American so I don't understand, is it because of self-defense against allegations or because you see it inappropriate?

Either way, I think you guys are a bit nuts over there, avoiding normal human interaction between genders, or people in general, is the solution?

Compliments on physical appearance can signal some type of sexual interest.

I give PLENTY of compliments throughout the day. But I keep it limited to someone's thought's, actions, attitude, and quality of work.

You guys are crazy over there if you're afraid of "signals", whatever that means.

How do you let someone know that you are romantically interested in them?

Basically I try not to do anything that would be confused with one of those things.

And in a zero tolerance corporation, you could still be whacked after decades of service, because someone says so.

These seem like reasonable precautions that don't disproportionately affect womens' access to your time and expertise. They probably help some women feel more comfortable as well.

I understand the fear of men being accused of harassment and losing their career over a he said, she said. However, the stories coming out recently look nothing like a he said she said. I'm not aware of any the recent allegations being based on two professionals meeting alone for a professional discussion and the woman accusing the man of harassment. There seems to be a lot of invitations back to hotel rooms, or numerous, numerous women claiming groping and outright sexual assault. The facts on the accusations here are not public, as far as I'm aware, so I can't speak to this allegation specifically. But to imply that men need to not have normal business interactions with women to protect from this doesn't seem to match up with the facts here and sounds like FUD that does a disservice to women who deal with real harassment.

I avoid women in my professional life as much as I possible can. My work is in politics, and if I absolutely must work with a woman, I do all I can to make that interaction as open, transparent, documented, and inclusive with others as possible. You will never catch me alone in an office with a woman. I know colleagues who refuse to even interview or consider women for positions because they are afraid of anything that might be said or implied later, and becoming a liability.

The breadth of thoughts you allow yourself is limiting your mind.

Yeahhhh, so refusing to interview or consider women for positions is very much against the law in the United States. Might not want to do that.

Yeah, well the laws in the US have become so convoluted, if they want to get you, they'll find something you are guilty of. Same as Orwell and Huxley predicted.

I think there is always a chance that a sociopath will plot to ruin your life for no perceivable self gain. A tiny, tiny chance. I’m skeptical of the actual efficacy of such strategies, like the “Pence” rule, but the main point is that designing your whole life so as to minimize the attack surface for sociopaths is completely insane. It would be like never leaving your house so as to reduce the chance of dying in a terrorist attack. And better not meet with any men either, as men can also accuse you of groping them, amazingly enough.

In many ways it seems like the Republican campaign against “voter fraud” or similar: a solution so obviously in search of a problem, that one seems sure there must be some ulterior motive.

These guys are all pretty obviously guilty, so I don't see the need to worry. Just follow two simple rules and you'll be fine:

1. Don't sexually assault / harass anybody.

2. Maintain clear boundaries with anybody you have a position of power over - even if it seems completely consensual you just can't hook up or have a romantic relationship with them.

That's easier said than done. Sexual harassment is used as a weapon, but so is the accusation of harassment. I do not put it past women to fabricate these things to get their way. The danger is just too high because as a man, regardless of the accusation, or circumstances, we are guilty until proven innocent. It takes an enormous amount of evidence to clear a man from a wrongful accusation made by a woman. There's just too much risk to even take a chance.

What's easier said than done exactly?

I am not sure SFJ is guilty. Basically, he was overly critical of ideas and pitches he received. The opposing party had their feelings hurt which they attribute to them being female.

Well given that afaik nothing has been said publicly, there's not much to discuss, but I doubt that he would have been ousted from DFJ without a reason.

It is of course possible that this is DFJ freaking out and cutting him loose despite his innocence but that is not the most likely explanation.

Witnessed firsthand Jurvetson say wildly inappropriate thing to female VC he literally just met. He remarked about her necklace that it looked like a choker and did she also have "a ballgag"? He also used to flash a slide in his standard pitch deck, which he presented all over the world, about the impressive "software" at DFJ. The slide would show a photo of all the young female exec assts. He would then pause and smile to an audience of predominantly men. Usually it wouldn't get any laughs; not sure if anyone really appreciated the joke. Steve is a brilliant visionary but clearly has some difficulty understanding right from wrong behavior. On some level I feel sorry for him but I unhesitatingly believe DFJ ousted him due to the mountain of evidence they uncovered during their investigation.

Who is it that 'must' be having this 'legitimate' concern? Even in the poll and wikipedia page you cited, the primary driver for the concern is sexist beliefs of a religious nature, not some response to recent high-profile accusations of misconduct.

    many others will make a fear-driven overreaction.

This. The actual risk involved here (job loss due to fraudulent accusations) must be so tiny as to be negligible.

I'm not convinced the risk of job loss due to false accusations is negligible, but it's hard to see how actually trying to make friends with people would increase that risk.

It’s just a rough intuition/guess of mine. I tried to think about anyone I’ve heard of (in/near my social network) who’d lost a job due to any accusations at all. Two came to mind, both with smoking-gun evidence. Even if I knew five people who were dismissed on claims alone (which would still probably be a mix of true and false claims), that’d still put the fraction at well under one percent.

Humans don't work by actual risk and rather by perceived risk.

Or reputation insurance products pick up, anybody interested?

Asking for a VC

I think we then need to cut those people out. If you're not professional enough to be able to meet with anyone one-on-one, and not do anything, then you don't deserve a position in leadership.

> and not do anything,

His point was: "... and not fear to ever be accused of anything,"

And if you're that afraid, you need to ask yourself why.

There are some terrible people out there that will lie to get what they want (c.f. borderline personality disorder, sociopaths, etc.). They exist in large quantities in the business world.

I've been on the receiving end of false (non-harassment) accusations and it sucks. I now take precautions to prevent that from happening again and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that BPD or sociopath women would use false harassment accusations to achieve their means.

Every action has a reaction. SJWs beware.

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