Hacker News Reader

I really wish your experience was unique.

A colleague was groped. She didn't report it. It would have likely diminished her future prospects. A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers. She just had to laugh it off. Women at a previous employment reported not being taken as seriously as men in meetings, and being passed over for promotions in favour of less qualified men. A friend reported sexualized posters of women up in the office. In the chat of my company, a sexualized video of women was passed around.

I'm trans, so my challenges are a bit different. I try to hide the fact that I'm trans during interviews. A lot of people are uncomfortable with trans people (26% of Canadian men are uncomfortable moving next to one), and with interviews to see if I'm socially a good fit, that can end it. I actually changed my name to an androgynous one as to not out myself. I get misgendered at work by people who do it on purpose. I also get touched inappropriately by a coworker.

In all cases, what can you do to challenge these things without being seen as "the crazy one", "too sensitive", "party pooper", or whatever? Without hurting my finances? It's shit.

Thanks for sharing. Everytime I've tried to challenge others' behavior towards me, I've ended up the villain...

Yah. One thing I learned works are men who aren't recipient to the behaviour standing up.

There was an employee like that at my last job who would speak up. Not forcefully. I was really appreciative of what he was doing. He was treated pretty awfully, and ended up quitting.

A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers.

I’m a geek and don’t know the first thing about dating, but doesn’t at least one of the parties involved need to receive an unsolicited request? Isn’t that how it works?

Work isn't the place to proposition people for a romantic relationship. At all times, but especially when there's a power dynamic.

When that happens, along with a gazillion other little things women are disproportionately on the receiving end of, it has the effect of dissuading women from pursuing their career in the industry.

This is wrongheaded. Work is a fine place to find partners because you are likely to be educated similarly and have similar life goals. You have to be mature in how you handle it though. One of the women I probably loved most in my life I met at work.

Marriage creates a legal protection between partners which as far as I know is stronger than the employer/employee relationship, so the company is rational to be uncomfortable with such situations in competitive situations where court is plausible. Part of the big money game is playing by more restricted rules.

Sure, but finding partners at work is fine.

> A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers.

It's a little ambiguous in how this is worded whether the same person asked multiple times, or if it was multiple people each asking once. BUT in the former case especially, if you get turned down for a date please respect the other's wishes and do not keep trying, especially at work. It's not cute or charming, it's just disrespectful.

In turning down someone, make sure to make it clear that you don't want to go out with them. "I'm sorry, I don't date co-workers" or "I'm sorry, I'm not interested" or something similar. If you say, "I'm sorry, I'm busy that night," you may very well get asked again. If you don't make it clear and you get asked again, it may happen again until you make it clear. After the third or fourth time, maybe someone will get the hint; but, it's always better to jus be clear about it.

If it is a setting where asking is potentially problematic -- like work -- it is best to either broach the subject more delicately or don't ask unless you are confident you know the answer is yes.

Just asking cold calling style is not the only option for approaching such things.

If it is a setting where asking is potentially problematic -- like work

This is cultural, no? I mean, I have a personal rule of never dating coworkers, but I have friends elsewhere in the world where this isn't such a strange notion.

I worked at a company where co-workers dated and even married. It wasn't against the rules as long as one did not have power over the other at work.

Nonetheless, I was asked for a date by a senior programmer in the department I had been hoping to transfer to. This helped kill my hopes of having a real career at the company and helped me make my peace with just leaving the company shortly thereafter.

Some people know how to navigate such situations effectively. Some don't. Culture may help skew those percentages one direction or the other, but I think certain settings introduce inherent problems that need to be accounted for and navigated around. Working together is one such situation.

This helped kill my hopes of having a real career at the company and helped me make my peace with just leaving the company shortly thereafter.

Merely curious, was the working relationship between the two of you already strained/tense? Said another way, were you already planning to depart from the company before the senior programmer asked you out?

I did not have a working relationship with him. We worked at the same company, but we never worked together. I was already expecting to leave for unrelated reasons.

I have a certificate in GIS. In the 5+ years at that company, he was the only person who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it. It never crossed his mind that I might have IT ambitions or that my technical training might have value for the company. He just saw an attractive woman, and that was it. This helped convince me that the company was simply not fertile ground for a serious career for me.

My department was a pink collar ghetto. I had no desire to remain in an underpaid pink collar job and use the company as a means to marry well. He no doubt made at least 3 to 5 times what I made.

Ah I understand a bit better now, thank you! Interestingly, I am an IT person with GIS ambitions, heh. Good luck to you regardless!

> He just saw an attractive woman

Attractive sexually or intellectually?

Not cool. Please don't.

According to various surveys, 10-30% of long-term relationships in the USA started when the people met at work. The downsides can be considerable though, since you have to go to work with someone you turned down/turned you down.

And tech has the additional problem that women are under-represented so they get propositioned a lot.

> don't ask unless you are confident you know the answer is yes.

I don't know about the US, but where I come from you never know that the answer is yes until you ask. Unless you are approaching a prostitute.

The request usually won't be _explicitly_ solicited, but there are other cues you can pick up on (ie flirting). Of course people can read general friendliness as romantic interest (or vice versa), but you can have at least a decent guess whether someone will be interested in going on a date with you. In some contexts it doesn't hurt to ask when you're unsure, but at work it's better to err on the side of caution (doubly so if there's any power difference between your positions).

>there are other cues you can* pick up on

*Assuming that you are neurotypical

Disclaimer: not in any way attempting to diminish your experience. Only adding my own, to broaden the conversation.

It can be a similar experience for men (although it's definitely not something talked about). I've had a female coworker walk up behind me repeatedly and give me unsolicited back rubs and ask me if I wanted to go to an empty office. I've been flirted with and hit on repeatedly. I've had a group of women at work, some of whom were in positions of power, socially shun me because I wasn't romantically interested in one of their friends, another coworker.

Most of this happened when I was younger, and I probably would respond differently now that I have more experience (I just kept my mouth shut back then). But, I still can't help but feel that I wouldn't be taken as seriously by HR, because I'm a man.

I'd like to see us move past the current narrative of "Men do this to Women" and get to a place where we recognize that People shouldn't do this to other People.

Those experiences are awful. I do not dispute that there are male victims, including in the workplace. I absolutely agree that "People shouldn't do this to other People".

That said, women as a group are disproportionately on the receiving end of improper workplace behaviour overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.

And you can't address that dynamic without first acknowledging that it exists and putting words to it. And so, men as a group do this to women as a group and it has real-life ramifications for women. That doesn't mean we don't address what is happening to men. It's not a zero sum game. But it also means we can't ignore how gender is implicated in this discourse for women.

So the solution is what? To impose solutions on the individual who never would have done anything untoward anyway?

Creating an online space that empower women, like Leap, is one example of a solution.

Yeah I'm sure it won't lead to any false accusations or men being fired because of mob mentality. Also your point about women being asked on dates is laughable.

We've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

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

OK, now that I have you, what is the benefit of acknowledging that men as a group do something to hurt women? And if that's the case, what is it that women, as a group do to hurt men?

I believe the awareness of the #metoo movement is powerful, in that it allows me as a male, to say stuff like "that's not cool" when needed.

> That said, women as a group are disproportionately on the receiving end of improper workplace behaviour overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.

Yes, that is definitely the case in places where men outnumber women in positions of power, which is still most businesses. I can tell you, from first hand experience, that when that dynamic is flipped, men, perhaps equally as often, become the more objectified party.

IMO this is an issue of human nature and power dynamics, not the genetic proclivities of any one sex or gender identity. I know that my own experiences made me completely avoid mixing work and "attraction". I suspect that the higher percentage of women facing this abuse and coming to the same conclusion also drives the disparity.

But we don't have to single out men and give offending women a pass, even if it's supposed to be temporary, to solve the problem. "Nobody can do this to anyone and get away with it" also solves the problem without making the non-offending men feel unfairly singled out.

I can tell you, it's extremely frustrating to have people assume that I'm a potential offender, only because of my sex and gender identity when, in fact, I've repeatedly been the victim.

> IMO this is an issue of human nature and power dynamics, not the genetic proclivities of any one sex or gender identity.

I think that notion is irrelevant to the problem.

It's the nature of SSD to get corrupted. It's the nature of the internet to be unreliable. Yet many companies in Silicon Valley build robust and reliable services atop those fundamental starting points. "Oh, I'm using an SSD, guess my repo will just become corrupted," is not something you hear technologists utter.

However, it's apparently accepted as natural that employees of some Silicon Valley companies might say to themselves, "Oh, I just turned down that project manager's sexual advances, guess I can't work on that project in my future." That can only happen if the company has no interest in addressing those kinds of problems. I know that sounds flippant, but GNU/Linux was built largely upon the initial work of Linus and Richard-- two developers who apparently wanted and had zero social interaction with one another. So even from a narrow productivity standpoint, it's insane to ignore those problems and throw that value out the window.

What kind of threshold has to be crossed before we recognize women acting as a group?

General principles of human rights broadly forbid notions of collective guilt and collective punishment: one formulation is that everyone is entitled to be treated as an individual before the law. This doesn't mean one can't sue a company or nation; but men don't act as a group in the sense of having a steering committee with clearly articulated policies on gender politics.

It's not "broadening" the conversation. What you're doing is recentering the conversation as a "Men are victims of women too!"

As a rhetorical device, it's so common it has a name. It's called "derailing".

It’s fascinating and telling that this comment was heavily downvoted, but not surprising. What’s a bit sad is that in that flurry of attempts to disappear your comment, no one had a reply.

This seems to be a pattern on HN.

Edit @ Brucephillips:

What beat is effectively saying is "Keep your mouth shut about your victimization. We're talking about ours right now." Is it surprising that that sort of callousness would be downvoted?

By the kind of people who would yell at an anorexic support group for saying that their attempts to derail said meeting with their traumatic history of obesity, was inappropriate? No. You’re a smart bunch, but I’ve figured out the reason that you all talk about “soft skills” like some kind of distant light you could never hope to approach.

Is it ironic that a discussion of women trying to establish a site for their own use leads to a subset of this site reacting badly? No.

Am I surprised that any time a group tries to address issues which disproportionately harm them, they get the “all lives matter!” attack? Also no.

I’m no longer surprised when people act like children because they don’t understand how to relate to others, or feel an overweening need to make any conversation about them.

Thanks for asking.

Edit 2: Rate limited.

What beat is effectively saying is "Keep your mouth shut about your victimization. We're talking about ours right now."

Is it surprising that that sort of callousness would be downvoted?

Why not just reply to me instead of editing your post?

In the hope you wouldn't reply, perhaps?

Have an upvote. I agree. While men no doubt are victims as well, does there always have to be that comment? I mean the thread is about a community for women....

I didn't read it as an attempt to derail or recenter anything, just as another data point. But i also don't agree that we are in a position to just refer to harassment as 'people treating each other badly' or whatever, given that in a situation where a person is being sexually harassed, the harasser is overwhelmingly likely to be male.

> A colleague was groped. She didn't report it.

What do you think should happen to people who grope other people?

> A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers.

What's the alternative? How in your world are people supposed to date?

> In all cases, what can you do to challenge these things without being seen as "the crazy one", "too sensitive", "party pooper", or whatever?

I'm not implying that you are any of those things. Did you ever consider the possibility that maybe you are too sensitive?

If you interact with a diverse group of people, they will do and say things that will offend you, such is life, the only way to avoid it is to ensure that you only interact with likeminded people. Expecting everyone to adhere to your values is tyranny.

Lets say that you'd like to leave tech. Which industry would you go that is better to women than tech? If there are no alternatives, then what incentives do tech companies have to create an even more acceptable space? At whose expense?

I work in a company with more than 50% women. Many of them worked in teams and companies where it was more than 80% women. They hated it. "Constant politics, catty behavior and backstabbing" is how they describe it.

Please correct me if this is off-base, but...

What you're describing has always seemed to me as an excellent example why women-only spaces are not necessarily about people-who-identify-as-women, but about people-who-others-identify-as-women. Other people treat you a certain way because of how they perceive you, and you want to have a place to talk about that with other people treated the same way. Does that sound at all correct?

I'm not sure how this comment will go down (hence throwaway). But as a man I'm now a little envious of Leap. I've never suffered the sexual harassment or gender based discrimination but I have suffered the bullying, and witnessed it against others, and I've been punished and had my reputation/career badly damaged by those I tried to stand up to. I would love a positive place where people can be open about what they're experiencing like this without fear of retaliation.

Do you work for them? There are many women-only forums and groups, including groups specifically for women in tech, on Facebook, Meetup, etc. By all means, create as many as you'd like, but this post of yours reads like an ad.

Edit: Sorry, didn't mean this as an accusation of shilling. I was just somewhat taken aback by the idea that there aren't any other safe spaces on the internet.

It doesn't read like an ad.

It reads like the often repeated (and ignored) experience of women in tech.

"There hasn't really been an online forum where I felt safe to have these conversations until now. Now that Leap is here I have other people who get me who I can talk to about the stuff that is bugging me."

If this wasn't written by a copywriter I'll eat my hat.

Would you please stop? She already said she didn't work for them.

Your question was a borderline personal attack in the first place, but I didn't chide you for it, even though this topic makes the downside of such an attack much worse than in a typical thread. Actually I did chide you for it, but then deleted the post because I remembered how sensitive HN users often are to booster comments posted by new accounts. I'm sure you're posting in good faith but this is a particularly poor situation in which to aggressively challenge a new user.

I don't work for them, I've been a member for many months now and I'm in lots of other women only communities I would speak highly of, too.