The TED talks empire has been grappling with sexual harassment | Hacker News Reader

The TED talks empire has been grappling with sexual harassment

washingtonpost.com

58 pointsdenzil_correa22 comments

The Atlantic published an interesting piece a couple months ago titled "Power Causes Brain Damage": https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/power-c...

It purports that Henry Adams wasn't so off the mark when he proclaimed that power is "a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies." The breakout quote here:

"Subjects under the influence of power, [Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley] found in studies spanning two decades, acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view."

The high profile cases surrounding sexual abuse recently seem to indicate that the problem is systemic. It represents an illness of society, humanity, or a factor of both that we can only insulate against by understanding the root of what is causing the issue and how to work against it. It's not as simple as: Louis CK, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and crew are evil.

It's also not as simple as the perpetrators are "ill." There is a society that's setup to encourage this behaviour. Now I suppose the question is, do you put more emphasis on training people on what sexual harassment and assault is (I don't just mean boring corporate compliance seminars, but training from the time you're in pre-K to graduating college). Or do you view it in general as a problem with power, and realize that society needs to be organized in a less hierarchal manner?

"There is society that's setup to encourage this behavior."

Is that accurate or is it the opposite? It seems to me that much of this behavior is the animalistic mating strategies of males. Thus society is discouraging this behavior..

Strangely, while males harassing females is strongly discouraged, in western (as apposed to say Islam) female preening behavior which is basically the female equivalent of "sexual harassment" is perfectly acceptable.

Arg. The alt-right trolls have poisoned conversation to the point where I almost reflexively down-voted your comment, but I think that what you say is somewhat reasonable. Do you think that merely "preening" is sexual harassment? I know that it is considered sexual harassment if a man "moons" a female, so I guess by that same logic, much of the clothing woman wear and or don't wear could be considered "sexual harassment". I don't feel harassed simply by the looks of others, however. Do you?

Wikipedia defines sexual harassment as "Sexual harassment is bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors." [1] This is an ironic definition to me as a male. The times I have felt sexually harassed were when I felt that a woman asked for a reward in a sexual way, for example, asking for help using sexualized mannerisms, voice, body-movements. Exactly the opposite dynamic to the sexual harassment defined by wikipedia.

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

A big aspect of sexual harassment is whether there is an asymmetry of power in the relationship, so if those women asking for help in a sexualized way were your boss then that could be categorized as harassment. If you were random strangers then they probably feel they have to act that way to get your attention, which could be either insulting or flattering depending on the situation.

There is no indication that the TED attendees were taking advantage of a power differential. So it would appear that we are working with multiple definitions.

Society certainly enables the behavior, and pieces of society encourage it unfortunately. Hypothetical... if I owned a large film production company, in order to deter these abuses of power I would a) have better contract clauses to get rid of people that were taking advantage, b) limit the opportunities for people to take advantage of others (via chaperones or accountable assistants), and c) communicate the policy to new employees and auditioning actors so that they can better assess if someone is breaking the rules

Breaking news: people who like attention and power also like to abuse their power.

The question is: who are the ones abusing their power? The alleged perps, or those who are claiming to be victims?

Is that an honest question given the revelations of the last month?

That this post is flagged is a shame. It's a shame that speaking about sexism is still being treated as a political stance by many.

Idk how to feel that it's Gretchen Carlson of all people driving this.

I guess that’s a real Gretchen question...

These sexual predators have been operating and been enabled by others for a long time, seems like you need all the help you can get to expose that.

Finally, a type of celebrity scandal that appeals to the current generation

Mass Hysteria

I thought HN had rules about not allowing flame-topic political posts.

This isn't really a political post.

It's telling that some think it is.

1. Sexual harassment is illegal (in the workplace) since the 1960s. Law is inherently political.

2. where lines should be drawn in society is very political. Sexual harassment lines are no different.

3. Washington-post is a political news org

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. ... When you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

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

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