Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

Legislation happened in the '70s, but I would characterize those earlier movements as countercultural.

MeToo, as far as I'm aware, is the first time where allegations against sexual harassment are with the prevailing winds of modern American culture, and when people other than politicians have suffered actual blowback and consequences from such behavior.

View on HN

That’s more perception than reality. Many powerful men and some women have been removed from upper management in industry or government due to sexual harassment. Add to that many very large monetary payouts resulting in policies and training for decades, the difference is before social media these things have been mostly kept quite.

Hollywood has also been something of a holdout as people hold power without being someone’s supervisor.

The removal of CEOs and boards is a relatively new development; it would be hard, particularly for public companies, to hide such drastic actions, and for it to happen over sexual harassment and similar policies was certainly not very common over the years. Government is a bit of a different case, particularly in the case of elected officials where a lot of times it's more viewed in terms of what it means about the official's morality, and less about what the actual victim's allegations were.

A non-exhaustive list of changes in CEOs and boards and upper management in recent times: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635067

If you compare ‘Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson’ to these cases the trend is much less extreme situations having significant repercussions. Which eventually hits more CEO’s becase their simplicity are fewer CEO’s of major organizations and thus fewer CEO’s committing extreme over the top acts. Aka more cases of comments than inappropriate touching, more touching than grouping, and more grouping than rape.

However the impact of CEO’s vs the 1000’s of lower level managers is less in that they directly impact fewer people even if they have oversight over large organizations.

As to removal over time that’s extremely sensitive when dealing with CEO’s so the bar has been rather high. Still you can find cases 10+ years ago.

It is far from the first time men have suffered consequences for sexual misconduct at work. MeToo is really just Hollywood and the media being held to the same standard that most of corporate America has had since the late 70s or early 80s.

Christ, you'd think they invented it, even though the vast majority of people have lived under these rules for over two decades.

CEOs and important upper management being pushed out and boards resigning over sexual harassment and fraternization is a relatively new development. And it's more than just media companies.

Barnes and Noble: https://www.retaildive.com/news/barnes-noble-axes-ceo-over-m...

Humane Society: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/us/humane-society-ceo-sex...

Social Finance: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/technology/sofi-cagney-sc...

Black Parent Initiative: http://www.wweek.com/news/2018/02/20/entire-black-parent-ini...

Urban League: https://kdvr.com/2018/03/01/urban-league-president-ceo-resig...

Wynn Resorts: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/steve-wynn-casin...

Fidelity Investments: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/11...

WPP: https://www.adweek.com/agencies/wpp-parts-with-former-jwt-ce...

Silicon Valley Community Foundation: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/26/silicon-valley-commun...

Intel: http://fortune.com/2018/06/22/intel-ceo-brian-krzanich-sexua...

Tronc: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-ferro-retires-...

Yes, I'll admit that the consequences are occurring further up the ladder in some cases. Still, the point stands that the vast majority of people have had to live under these rules for two or three decades. It's nothing new, except that a tiny number of powerful people who were previously exempt from the rules now aren't. For the rest of us, it's business as usual.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com