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Comment by zymhan | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad people are coming forward about this. Predatory men contribute to the culture of toxicity and hostility towards women in tech, and we need to toss the bums out of our industry.

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I'm glad too. Female friends have shared disturbing stories about advances by professors, supervisors, buyers, and others with influence over their lives. I mean, "sexretary" was a cliche, a few decades ago. For the most part, they were testing for potential victims.

I'm guessing that this could become a substantial purge.

The interesting thing is that this is also going to change the status quo, in perhaps unexpected ways. There's no doubt the vast majority of these claims are true, yet there's also no doubt that this is really ratcheting up the concern of many employers about the possibilities when being alone with female employees. And then social events, most of which involve alcohol, are going to ramp that concern up to 11.

It's possible that this is already happening to some degree. One of Ellen Pao's complaints against Kleiner Perkins is that females were not invited to some social outings with the other partners/execs. As this becomes a more serious issue, and like you - I am expecting an ongoing purge, the status quo is going to be shaken in ways other than taking out the trash.

Reminds me of https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/30/mi...

I don't see why it should greatly affect group events. Because there are so many witnesses. But working lunches and dinners, yes. Not to mention those all-nighters in hotel rooms to tweak presentations.

> and we need to toss the bums out of our industry.

So in other industries it should be fine? If not, we should be filling prisons with these people.

> So in other industries it should be fine?

What an odd thing to take away from that statement.

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