A hell of a time
blog.nerdchic.net
blog.nerdchic.net
I'm certainly not saying that in this case, but this type of thing is completely your word versus theirs and an ounce of caution should be taken in the rush to judgement until all the facts come out.
Look, no one knows anything right now apart from what appears to be a credible accusation on a blog. People rightly want to believe that the truth is simple and want to see the accused held accountable; however, in cases like these one must take a measured approach to fully understand the situation.
It's easy to jump in with the lynch mob, but making an informed decision based on gathered data and collected facts is the right thing to do.
That doesn't mean it's ok to assume anyone accused of it is guilty.
I personally know girls who have been assaulted at parties, and girls who have grossly exaggerated or comletely made up accusations. No way of knowing which this is yet ... Sadly, both are more common than I would have expected a few years ago.
[Edit: actually, I think the correct term may be libel not slander]
But if the veracity of the accusation holds up, the perpetrator fully deserves what is coming to him.
"No" does not mean "yes, please continue".
Everyone has actual real friends who are women who've been victims of actual real sexual assault. Usually at least 10% of them. (That'll be 10% who've actually dared speak up about it, and another, probably larger percentage who don't, because they've seen what's happened to their friends who've spoken up. "What, no witnesses? How do we know you're telling the truth? Oh, you were drinking that night, were you? I guess you must have been leading him on...")
Let's get nerdy about this, shall we? It's classic outlier bias, like people who're afraid of the risks of flying, and prefer to drive everywhere.
In the time it takes you to read the article about the Duke lacrosse case, another woman will have been sexually assaulted. (One every two minutes in the USA. 1 in 6 women, 1 in 33 men.) But the Duke case is the one you'll remember, because it's far rarer than real sexual assault.
Maybe she's making it up, and the guy really is innocent. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
That being said (and take this with a grain of salt because I'm not stating it's a fact), in my experience I've seen more cases of male friends being set up. Not only with assault allegations, but pregnancy, rape, and other convoluted evil plans. I've even been accused of such things twice in my life, once when I was a virgin, and a second time when I had a stable long term relationship (my partner and my neighbor where with me at the time so I had both as alibi).
But... if I had to guess, I'd say there are probably a hundred times more sexual assaults that go unreported versus false reports.
Sexual assault is, unfortunately, very common. False reports of sexual assault are relatively quite rare. These two things do not have parity.
I otherwise had a great time there, but I didn't go back for 10 years. I had none of the same issues later, but I'm not sure if the crowd has changed or if they're just less interested in 27 year olds.
BlackHat (which runs contiguously to DefCon) is much more of a "professional" conference, while still being more "fun" than something like RSA, or the academic conferences from IACR.
(I really enjoyed DefCon, and have spoken a few times, but going without knowing what you're getting into would be a mistake)
I've never been to one of these conferences, but what's the deal here? Being a bit of a cynic in regards to the social skills of a lot of techies, I'm thinking that this is could be the result of alcohol + desperate and socially inept guys + a few women that don't have the critical mass to put up a proper pick-up shield. If this is really a normal phenomenon at tech conferences, I'm a bit shocked that no one have mentioned it before.
The incidents that have been mentioned sound more to me like completely clueless pick-up attempts than any genuine attempt at assault or rape, but the end result is pretty much the same.
It's uncomfortable to suggest but picking 10 of your close female friends and asking directly if they've been sexually assaulted at a party might be informative. I'll say that from my personal experience if you get fewer than 10 affirmatives I'll be fairly surprised.
That said, I've been to lots of other technical conferences without any issues. I'm not much of a party animal, but anything else I've encountered at bars or parties has been milder and less frequent than at DefCon, and has generally seemed more awkward and less predatory.
Also keep in mind, there's a big difference between this happening (no matter the frequency) and it being accepted. It sounded like she was able to enlist the help of several other people to break in and stop it. The fact that this shit didn't fly with what was likely a vast majority of the people there didn't prevent the assault from happening.
Seriously, what percentage of the people who attended do you think were actually aware of this happening at the time?
You misunderstood.
Her point was it wasn't her job to avoid being assaulted, it was the job of the males present not to be assaulting her.
As an example of this type of incident being mentioned before, while this list is not limited to incidents of physical sexual harassment it includes some:
I even had a closer to home to home experience with this in highschool, I was a girl's scape goat in a plot to make a boyfriend jealous while I was actually still a virgin. She told everyone that she had sex with me, when it wasn't true and it almost became a problem.
I'm not trying to say that this is the case here and that the author is lying though, but with lack of proof (and that certainly seems to be the case by reading the blog post) it is a very slippery slope to name the person on your blog. This could most probably ruin the guys life, the same way my friends life was on the verge of being ruined by someone with a bone to pick. Again, I'm not saying this is the case here, nor that I don't believe her, nor that I condone some men's behavior. As a matter of fact I'd rather side with the author on this one, but naming a person publicly like this, can easily destroy his and his family's life and future.
Let me get this clear: it's your opinion that unless somebody videotapes every moment of their life, that they should not publicly state negative things that happen to them?
edit: for the downvoters, which part of that question is inappropriate?
Anyways, I've made no such claims, but you have to admit that it is as easy for a woman to completely destroy a man's life with such allegations, the same way a man can destroy a woman's life by committing a sexual crime against her. For this reason it is a necessity to have actual proof, be it video, witnesses, and most importantly DNA.
To answer more clearly your question: Anyone has the right to state whatever negative things happen to them, but the moment you start pointing the finger (in this case the alleged sexual harasser) you better have proof not only because you might be potentially destroying the life's of many people in the process, but because you are also opening the door to a suit for defamation of character.
Think about it, if it so happens that it's not true, he might lose his job, the custody of his children, any future career in the field in which he has established himself, being labeled as a sex offender, etc. If you're going to completely turn someone's life upside down, you better have the proof to prove such allegations.
After one long day of partying, we were all just relaxing and drinking and watching some late night television. My friend is lead into the room by one of the girls and that's the last we see of him for the night. Now I can't say for sure what happened in that room, but all we know is that the next morning we find out this girl has a boyfriend, who now also knows of what had happened the previous night. Hours pass, doors are banging, my friend is now being threatened by the boyfriend. Then the police show up. The girl who had lead my friend into the room has gone to the police station and accused him of rape.
At this stage, that girl has left with her boyfriend, while the other girls still remain in the room next to us. We chat across the veranda and the other girls still seem normal and friendly (you wouldn't expect this from friends of a girl who had just accused one of the guys of rape). The issue of the pending allegation of rape arises and one of the girls notifies us that she believes our friend is telling the truth and will give a statement to say that the last thing she saw was her leading him into the room. And that after speaking to her in the morning she seemed normal and didn't confide in them about any problems that night.
That night ends and a new day begins, my friend is clearly shocked and frightened. His phone rings, it's an unknown number. He picks it up and the person on the other end introduces himself as the father of the girl. (One of the other girls had given his number to the father). The father goes on to say that this has happened before multiple times. This girl has falsely accused men of sexual assault multiple times (wtf?). He goes on to say that he believes his story and apologizes for what he has been going through. Charges were eventually dropped, other girls made similar statements, things were supposed to go back to normal. I noticed a bit of a change in my friend from this experience, he was not the same person he was before the accusation.
I'm not saying women are liars or anything close to that about this story. I certainly do not advocate the naming and shaming this blog post is doing, it is unprofessional and frankly, ridiculous. Women say men exert power over them, yet they forget just how easily they can destroy a mans life and career.
I have a right to tell the world you're a rapist, there's a freedom of speech inherent to being a US citizen which allows me to do this, but you have the right to seek damages for the troubles you're being put through.
Of course there have been cases where women falsely claim sexual assault, and it has severe negative effects on the accused. But does it follow that women in general (including Noirin Shirley) should not publicly name a man who assaulted them unless they have iron-clad physical proof, because of the risk that... they might be lying or delusional, unbeknownst to themselves?
Correct me if I'm misreading either post, but that seems like a strange logical leap. If Noiren were lying, she would know that. If she has no personal history of mental illness, alcoholic blackouts, etc. etc. and has a clear recollection of what seems to have been a pretty clear-cut interaction, she can also cross off delusion from the list.
Certainly, she should be (and, I'm fairly confident, is) aware of the repercussions of a post like this. But it's certainly not "ridiculous and unprofessional"; on the whole it seemed like a very measured response to an assault. Any legal repercussions will have to come from a court, of course, but naming him is perfectly valid, and must have helped to give her back some control over her situation.
What if he had pushed her down the back stairs instead of sexually assaulting her? Should she be photographing her bruises (hoping they're visible enough...) and asking the bar if they have a video camera out back before telling anyone what happened, just to be sure she hadn't imagined the whole thing?
There are absolutely negative consequences to being publicly named as Florian has been here (though he'll face far worse if the legal process finds him guilty). Yes, if Noiren were wrong/lying/deluded, she would be doing him a serious wrong. If she is telling the story accurately, though, who's actually to blame for those negative consequences? (And why is this so obvious with any other crime, but not with sexual assault?)
I'm not endorsing this sort of behavior obviously, but the public shaming element here seems fairly twisted. If a sexual assault occurred she should go to the police about it and press charges. Not start an internet witch hunt.
I guess for me the interesting part of this post is discussing what we can do about the tech community's culture / conference arrangements / whatever to make these incidents very uncommon for all genders, as opposed to how to handle this particular incident. I suppose that could've been done without naming the person, and the post would've still been interesting to me.
Or in that case would you actually admit it was assault and your guy friend had every right to feel intimidated?
Guys and girls are, in general, different. Guys' misunderstanding of this simple fact leads to events like the one described in the article.
And if the male blogger had then written a similar blog about being sexually assaulted at a party, naming the female who grabbed him?
This I would take just as seriously. Why should people that blog about their lives and their interactions with other people omit being pseudo-raped? Because it's a "wild accusation"? Well, fuck that.
Often when men think about this situation, they think of some non-repulsive (to them) woman who doesn't have any power over them grabbing their package. Often they conclude "Well that wasn't so bad. I generally want to have sex with females. A female just pawed my package. Cool, maybe she'll sleep with me."
Now let's assume that's a hypothetical guy's default reaction. What are some nuances that might change that reaction?
1) What if the woman is repulsive to the man? What if his friends will mock or shame him?
2) What if rather than pawing at his package, she tried to stick her finger in his ass? There's a psychological (and physical!) difference in vulnerability to having stuff put in you, rather than probing with your appendages.
3) What if the aggressor has power over the victim (I'm not saying that's the case in the article)? I.e. She can paw you, and you're going to always wonder whether your next review depends on your reaction.
Now, you may think I'm distorting the situation, but I'm just trying to illustrate that even for a guy who thinks his reaction would be "Cool, gropage.", the real situation may well just feel like an attack.
I.e. it's fun to theorize about men's reactions versus women's, but unless you're actually a man who has been the victim of unwanted attention, you're unlikely to really know how you'd feel about it.
My reaction on reading the article was "Holy shit, people actually do that?" I guess I live in a sheltered world, oh and I'm a large male.
4. The guy is gay and doesn't want to be inappropriately touched by a woman because he's attracted only to men.
I think that, in general, men getting sexually assaulted by women is something we take less seriously because, yes, as you say, men want sex, they aren't so bothered and because in general men have power (physical and otherwise) over women. But in most cases there are good reasons to challenge those assumptions, which we should do.
This is true, but ...
There's a real benefit to knowing that this kind of thing happens, and how often it happens.
As guys, we're just not exposed to this as often.
For example, my wife used to regularly get heckled in our old neighbourhood. It never happened when she was with me. She just mentioned it one day, and it blew my mind. I was like "heckled, wtf, people still do that?"
Another example: at one job in the 'burbs, it was about a 10 min walk to the coffee shop. I was walking about 20 m behind two women for about 5 min. One of them was very attractive. I admit that I discreetly checked her out and then let my eyes wander around the rest of the scene, so I wouldn't be a creep.
Here's the interesting part: every single guy in an oncoming car turned his head to look at her. They didn't heckle her, but the head-turn was extremely obvious.
So, I'm not saying that guys shouldn't look at women, but it offers an interesting change of perspective.
What does it feel like when every single guy you see turns his head to check you out? You might say "flattering", but now imagine the relentlessness of it. Mind-blowing.
Long story short, it was a twisted joke and I was NOT amused. I was 18 or so, and they were 20 or 21.
Hell, let's be honest: a non-trivial percentage of men would love if it a woman hit on them by sticking her hand in his pants. Not all of them, surely. I won't even say most. But plenty.
Actually, I'm pretty sure they do. Skepticism, questioning of their sexual preferences etc. People of all genders who report experiences of sexual assault can suffer for it.
I wasn't claiming that it happened anywhere near the extent that it does to women. I was questioning the previous commenter's claim that there was no history of men being assaulted by women and experiencing skepticism etc when they tell the community about it. Because sexual assault isn't about gender it's about power.
> But you're gesturing a dripping faucet while others are pointing at a gaping hole in the roof.
I was disputing the claim that the dripping faucet did not exist and stating that both dripping faucets and gaping holes in the roof are bad.
It wasn't my intention to minimize the issue of sexual assault by men against women--how would you suggest re-wording my response in future?
Why is that? Once again, various reasons, but always remember guys have a huge physical leg up. I dated an ex-cross country runner once, and while she'd never fess up to it, even though I was only 140lbs I could wrestle her to the ground. Why? I am 8" taller than her, with limbs to match. (She liked to wrestle. She never won.)
I was shocked, It felt repulsive (because a drunk woman 30 years older than you grabbing for your balls trying to stick her tongue into you mouth is hardly attractive). It didn't feel good, but I didn't feel "damaged" because of it either. I left the place and went home.
No blogging, no police, no drama. It's not like there was some sort of conspiracy to destroy my person. It was an unfortunate sexual misconduct that a person needs not to dwell upon.
There is a big difference between unwanted approaches, even being creepy - and actual rape or "sexual assault".
Riding the subway one day during rush hour I couldn't help but notice the guy next to me, a total stranger, was pressing hard against my privates with his hand through his own coat pocket. Thinking it might just be an accident and immersed in my reading I turned away 90 degrees. Sure enough five minutes later they guy had changed position was once again attempting to stroke me, quite hard. Mind officially blown, I moved to the other end of the car, mused on the creepiness of the situation, then promptly forgot about it.
Uncomfortable? Mildly disgusting? Yes. But not "sexual assault."
Your analogy is flawed. It ignores a fundamental biological difference twixt men and women; that in general, men are bigger and significantly stronger (I won't look up the exact numbers, but a much larger proportion of a man's body is muscle).
Here's a more accurate analogy that carries with it the psychological overtones your analogy missed.
Imagine you are a man, at some party, and some big guy approaches. He's way bigger than you, maybe as much as a foot taller, and he's clearly much stronger. Even if he's not sporting his muscles visibly, it's clear. He's bigger than you, stronger than you, and ultimately if he wanted to force you to do something, the advantage would definitely be with him. He looks an you in such a way that it's clear he wants to have sex with you, and then forces a kiss upon you, and then rams his hands into your underwear.
You can struggle, but he's bigger and stronger and really your only option is to push free and go somewhere with other people who will protect you if he tries it again.
You'll be thinking about this for days, wondering what would have happened if there was nobody there to protect you. You'll probably feel weak and vulnerable and violated. You'll think of this every time you go to a party for the next year. Every party you go to that you should be able to enjoy, you'll be thinking about this; afraid that someone bigger and stronger might decide to sexually assault you. It's a fucking horrible way to live.
Would that do it for you?
I disagree. I think she's chosen a pragmatic middle ground here. There's behaviour which everyone (I think) agrees is inappropriate. She says it's happened before, and she wants to stop it from occurring again. She comes up with a legal way to respond, and isn't required to press any charges.
It probably could be prosecuted as a crime, but she has judged (I'll trust correctly) that this does not merit legally wrecking his life and taking up months of her time as a witness. He was drunk and stupid, but she'll recover. She runs the risk of being socially shunned, but she's unlikely to have this happen to her again at a similar conference.
Yes, one could argue that this would have been as effective by leaving the perpetrator anonymous, and I'd agree. But like the choice of whether to prosecute, I've got to trust her with this decision. So long as her statements are true, she (in my opinion) has the right to use them however she chooses. It's certainly fair to ask her if anonymous might have been better, though.
For male versus female: no, this is still asymmetric, at least in modern American society. On the bright side, at least we've moved to having it be a matter of gender and role rather than solely sex. You might see such a blog post if the woman was in a position of power over the male: an employer, a law enforcer, a politician.
This happened at a private after-party in a private hotel room where a small crowd got all cozy with apparently too many drinks involved.
This did not happen at the conference.
The difference is important. Context is everything in these cases.
Regardless, I consider the after-conference 'events' often more substantial than some of the conference, it is my favorite part and I often learn more out of the (usually drunken) disucssions.
The thought of having the anxiety or fear like this ruin that for me is terrible.
In terms of excusing the man's behavior, it makes no fucking difference.
I don't think telling women "oh sure the conference is perfectly safe but watch yourself at the after-parties, geeks can get pretty handsy when they're drunk" is going to encourage more women to come to conferences.
(Sorry for the sour sarcasm, it's the only way I can handle such a uncomfortable subject)
Honestly the only thing that could possibly make any difference would be if the whole thing was fabricated. Which would be a huge difference.
I do agree that this is where most of the problems happen, though. I've only heard of something along these lines happening at one academic conference I've been to, and it was the most party-ish one, where the academic and non-academic/drinking parts were pretty loosely separated. The kind where 100 people get in a drab room on a university campus and listen to talks for 8 hours, then go sleep so they can get up again at 7am for the next morning's keynote, seems to result in no trouble of any kind (admittedly, there could be problems at those too and I'm just out of the loop).
Oddly, I've never heard of any problems at the most party-ish hacker event I've been to, SuperHappyDevHouse. I don't know if it's the culture, the frowning on drunkenness, the mixture of people it attracts, the physical layouts, or what.
We purposely encourage the culture at SuperHappyDevHouse that frowns on drunkenness.
Additionally, we have put a lot of effort into making SHDH an event that is welcoming to everyone, including women.
I try to greet everyone who comes to SHDH for two reasons: So that newcomers know they are welcome and so that everyone knows (at some level) that they will be held accountable for their behavior.
ETA: Or that she should have not put herself in the vicinity of drunken people.
I was in Atlanta.
I was at the original private party.
The party moved out to a nearbye bar.
The assault took place in a public bar. An expensive downtown Atlanta one.
Maybe 30+ people from the conference in the bar.
Regardless, it does not matter the physical location of the assault. It was wrong. It is unacceptable anywhere.
I know Noirin and I've helped with ApacheCon for years (first time in years I wasn't there).
Very often they end with a minor hero, like Bill in this case, acting as a chaperone for someone who should never need one at all.
It frustrates me greatly that despite the effort that many conferences do to make conference going more egalitarian, welcoming and safe for women some men are still as ignorant, offensive, and disgusting as to treat women this way.
Until there is corroborating evidence (witness, confession, etc) I see no reason to believe anything about events that took place. It seems incredibly dangerous and irresponsible to default to believing one person's (as of yet) unsubstantiated tale.
I can think of half a dozen scenarios in which the accused was innocent. Everything from mistaken identity (that has happened to me!), to drunken mis-remembering, to flat out lying is still on the table.
You will virtually never hear those words meant literally.
Most people in the world are good but unfortunately this kind of thing happens and when it does we have to show it will not be tolerated and will be properly dealt with.
we had a post about the whole "talking about all the bad stuff will discourage women in tech" bit a while back at geekfeminism: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/06/10/dont-mention-the-war/
Tech conferences already have a reputation for this kind of incident:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidentsJust as a woman needs to be vigilant of what is going around her, us men (or other women) need to be vigilant of threats to other women around them when in bars or conferences or wherever.
If this allegation is true, I hope that the perpetrator is charged and his life altered so he can't do something like this again or worse.
I can only hope she is beyond all doubt the situation as described could not have been perceived any differently, particularly after using language such as "told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear".
It's also sickening to see how many people have sided with the accuser in the weblog's comments and elsewhere (especially on Twitter), given nothing more than a name and an accusation.
Not cool (either way).
After all, the name of the accused will be made public in any case if there is a trial.
Also, site seems to have been hit pretty hard, but google cache to the rescue http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
But naming a person before they are even a police suspect, that I do not agree with. Plus…as evidenced by myself…it may draw attention from the real problem at hand.
Edit: I disagree with naming names at this stage of events because it sets a precedent that will lead to irreparable damage at some point. Given the police has all the necessary details, the potential downsides of publicly naming a person outweigh the potential benefits. I will leave it at that.
Third parties may or may not believe or take action unless otherwise convinced. I would be highly suspicious of someone who has been credibly called out for something like this (and would probably not invite him to drink with me, especially if I were female), but would need more evidence before taking much more action.
Even in the UK, it's not slander or libel if it's true.
Somehow I doubt anyone would accuse me of starting a witch hunt, or tell me that I needed to take better precautions for my own safety, too.
This man (allegedly, to lawyer it up) sexually assaulted a woman. If that's not the problem at hand, what is?
Edit: The currently top-rated comments would likely be nonexistent or with very low scores if the alleged assailant had not been named.
Noirin obviously has some strong opinions regarding gender and technology and I pray that these haven't had any role in this matter.
Her Geek Feminism affiliations - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Heroes_Women_in_FOSS
Her involvement in the org.apache.women group - http://markmail.org/message/dwdadluiapbg5qrs
A blog entry about her divorce that pretty much blames it all on her husbands health. - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cm9PvCv...
> Her Geek Feminism affiliations - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Heroes_Women_in_FOSS
A web page created by Kirrily Robert (a.k.a skud) who was liveblogging a talk by Pia Waugh entitled "Heroes: Women in FOSS" at OSCON 2008. On that page in a list entitled "We gots hackers: a list of women" Noirin Plunkett's name appears along with ten other women.
> Her involvement in the org.apache.women group - http://markmail.org/message/dwdadluiapbg5qrs
In which, amongst other things she asks if the charter for the group "could replace every instance of 'women' with a word that includes both genders - 'people', 'newbies', 'interested proto-participants', anything that's not discriminatory." and concludes with:
"""
If we can make the ASF a more open, comfortable, easy-to-work-in environment, everyone wins. I understand that it's very easy for a group of women to focus on helping other women - it's easier to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are similar to us. And I'm certainly not saying we should insist on fixing everything at once. However, I do think we should start the way we mean to go on, and that, to me, requires a much more inclusive charter.
"""
> A blog entry about her divorce that pretty much blames it all on her husbands health. - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cm9PvCv...
And also links to a blog by her ex-husband wherein he says "How Noirin lasted so long, i’ll never understand. She’s amazing."
I don't want anybody in the tech community to die at the hand of character assassination, Florian, Noirin, you or me.
Absolutely right, that's why it is so important we have ALL that facts before arriving at a conclusion.
Occam's Razor, man! Use it! Why in the world would she blame this dude out of the blue? What does she possibly have to gain? Several commentators have mentioned the possibility of false allegations, along with anecdotes. But pay close attention to those incidents: in all of them, there was some prior relationship between the women making the false allegation and the guy. If this was the case here, there would be a dozen witnesses who could punch a hole in her claims. She has named names in her post; a person making such a false allegation would never do that, because then her story can be cross-checked.
But once again, I am shocked that you'd think that being a feminist or having strong opinions somehow makes her story less credible.
I am shocked that you would take such a forward stand on such a small amount of information from a single source. WE HAVEN'T EVEN GIVEN HIM A CHANCE TO RESPOND! Please, I beg you, wait for all information before jumping to a conclusion, that is all I ask.
There's no shame in asking other people for help when there's a situation to be dealt with, and I'd be surprised if a bunch of ApacheCon attendees were less than helpful in this regard, even in an after-several-beers state. Independently of whether someone barfed on you, stole your wallet, sexually assaulted you or wanted to start a boxing fight.
That turns out to be very hard to do. It's difficult to have the presence of mind. I've done it many times, but haven't always managed to react immediately, 100% of the time. I believe it takes practice. It's worth setting up a situation to role-play and actually say the words to call someone out and shut their bad behavior down, and how to support someone who's trying to do that.
The Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Project might be helpful: http://backupproject.org/faq.html
In a way that's what has happened with this blog post. And look at the response.
> There's no shame in asking other people for help
There is if someone calls you a liar or comments on your sexual behaviour as a result. It's reasons like this that people are reluctant to report incidents like this.
Also, since the developer is still representing your company at a conference. Accusing the developer of an assault is also a good way to tarnish the company's image.
In the United States of America anyone can sue anyone for anything. Once it gets to the court, everything is open to interpretation. Thats why most legal documents are written with vague language that leaves intent and outcome up to the interpretation of the court.
(Obviously this is not a whistle-blower case here, and I don't know if there would be any grounds on which to sue for wrongful termination; I'm not a California employment lawyer.)
Well, yeah. Stipulations include forcing someone to do anything illegal, firing someone because they're involved in union activity, or terminating someone based on discrimination. Please CITE a source or a case that concludes you can't fire someone for getting involved in the aforementioned mess in the link above whether he is guilty or not guilty. Thank you.
(Disclaimer: Again, not a lawyer — that's just my layman's understanding of what I've heard and you should probably not cite this comment in court.)
"If the accused is an employee at-will, his or her employer is free to terminate him or her for no reason or even a bad reason, so long as it is not a reason prohibited by law. Discharging an employee based on an accusation of sexual harassment is not unlawful, even if the accusation is not correct."
http://www.fklaborlaw.com/faqs/Sexual-harassment-accused-rig...
Assuming the twitter dev contests her version of events, I see no reason to believe either one over the other. It would be stupid, and frankly sexist, to default to believing either side.
I would show him the post and ask him to explain himself.
All we have here is an unsubstantiated allegation; it happens to be an allegation I personally believe, but it's still not reasonably enough to fire someone over. If he was my employee and responded "that's all lies and I wasn't even at the pub" I'd encourage him to sue for libel. If he said "oh shit... yeah, I screwed up", I'd reconsider any important responsibilities I had assigned him (since such behaviour is evidence of not being able to act responsibly) but continue to employ him as long as he could contribute in other ways. If he said "yeah, so what's the big deal?" I'd fire him on the spot and phone the complainant to encourage her to press charges.
But above all I'd wait to hear both sides of the story before passing any judgement.
On the other hand, I believe her. As far as I know she has no motive to falsely claim this against him. Also important, tens of thousands will read this story and most of them will believe her too. The company may face pressure for me to act. Do I throw my employee under the bus, on the basis of my judgment of her statement?
I still don't know the answer but I don't think it's clear cut either way.
At that point you'd have to make a judgement call. If someone is being publicly accused of a sexual assault which he denies too place but doesn't show any interest in launching a libel suit, that makes me rather suspicious. On the other hand, if he files a libel suit, or if criminal charges are filed against him, it seems reasonable to step back and let the courts decide what happened.
I'm not saying that I have a good answer for all possible situations, only that I know that I'd start by listening to both sides.
The company may face pressure for me to act. Do I throw my employee under the bus, on the basis of my judgment of her statement?
You're really asking two questions there. Is it reasonable to fire someone based on your judgement of what happened? Quite possibly. Is it reasonable to fire someone based on public pressure alone? I would say absolutely not -- but I come from an academic background, and I feel the greatest moments of academic history have been when universities have defended their faculty against public opinion. Most CEOs would probably throw an employee under a bus at the first hint of public pressure.
If I were the guy and not guilty, I wouldn't really be all too interested in pressing charges, mostly because I'm too lazy and I hate lawyers etc.
EDIT: Now that I think of it, actually I would probably end pressing charges, but my initial reaction would be that of "wtf, why do I have to summon lawyers because someone did something stupid", with emphasis on the wtf.
Somewhat, but the contexts are a bit different. Victims of sexual assault often decline to press charges because testifying about assaults can be traumatic (and even more so being cross-examined). Many simply want to hide and pretend that nothing ever happened.
In contrast, people who are wrongfully accused of crimes tend to shout their innocence from the rooftops.
Really? I think that doesn't cut it here. "yeah, I screwed up" is an appropriate response when you show up hungover for an important presentation,not when you try and force yourself on someone.
But I come from Canada -- a country which eschews the death penalty and even gives parole to multiple murderers on occasion. We're more forgiving than Americans.
Ideally the accused, if guilty, would man up, admit wrongdoing alcohol or no, apologize, and do whatever is in his power to right his wrong, make whole, undo the damage, seek counseling, stop drinking, donate a large sum to a women's shelter, speak out against sexual assault at tech conferences, that sort of thing.
Incredibly embarrassing for him yes, but the fact that she has only so far publicly shamed him and not actually pressed charges is more than charitable on her part.
She's left the door open for him to respond in kind and for this to be resolved between the two of them. But he has to realize the generosity she's displaying here, and reciprocate ten-fold.
To me that would be evidence that someone was not only shocked by their behavior, but sincere about being shocked, and willing to make it right. I'm not one to throw stones in such cases.
I think that she did it without really thinking it through because she is personally involved. People do not always make the best decisions under those circumstances, which is why we have the legal framework.
I must stress that I cannot really blame her, I do not know how I would have acted in similar circumstances. I just wish she had not done it because when naming names becomes precedent, something bad will happen to someone undeserving of it.
But you can't expect a woman to act charitably after being sexually assaulted. That she hasn't pressed charges is still above and beyond the call of duty on her part, and I do think the road to redemption for a guy in this situation is clear, though not easy.
PS - all this presumes guilt; consider it hypothetical.
> That she hasn't pressed charges is still above and beyond the call of duty on her part, […]
This I disagree with. A public outing can be just as, if not more damaging to the alleged assailant. It is possible that she also thought or thinks along your tracks, but I do not think it is factually true that this is somehow a "soft" option.
And no, definitely shouldn't presume anything in these cases, which is what I meant by that last line.
Definitely. Actually, even the story we have already is open for multiple interpretations. If this became a case and I were his lawyer I would certainly point out that a) she admits to having been drinking and b) she states: I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear. If she doesn't know, how can a judge? To me, in the absence of other evidence, I do not see how he could lose a libel case, or how she could win a sexual harassment case. And yes, in general (and quite possibly in this case, too) it is unfortunate (I would use a stronger term, but cannot think of one that doesn't have four letters) that such cases often do not lead to an outcome that people would feel to be just. However, the only way to fix that I know involves Big Brother-like changes to society (e.g: require everybody to record their entire lives, let the government keep the tapes for a couple of years)
So forcing one's hand in to or near someones underwear is acceptable behavior? It's a crime. Whether under or above clothing, it is a crime.
I think about things like this, and compare it to say the US-Iraq situation, one in which no US leaders have been charged with any crime, and I'm just shocked really. It feels like living in some Orwellian mad house. Perspectives and priorities are so backward. Hand in/on/near/above another person's clothes/underwear --- CRIME! ALERT THE POLICE! JAIL TIME! Invade another country on the explicit premise and justification of threat of imminent use of WMD's by that country, causing thousands of US and Iraqi deaths, which turns out there were no WMD's and the US administration appears to have spun matters and manipulated the public and Congress into getting the mandate to it -- not a crime. Oops. No big deal. A simple mistake. Oh well. It's life. Let's move on. Back to prosecuting the hands-in-panties situations! :)
Perhaps you should realize the pain this "non-issue" causes people on a day to day basis. I hope your mom, sister or wife - perhaps your daughter or your best female friend - NEVER have to deal with such a situation - sadly this is not the case and at least one of those mentioned will experience it to some degree. Let's see how you feel about it then.
Anyhow that is all I have to say about this - I won't feed the troll anymore.
And you shouldn't imply I'm a troll, that's pretty rude.
As others have stated, employment in California really is at-will. For example, I know someone who has been fired for getting too drunk at a company party!
So yeah, companies in California can fire you for any reason, or no reason at all. In this case I see the negative effects of keeping the person employed (such as the loss of potential employees and damage to the company reputation) outweighing their value as an employee.
Apache KeepAlive: it kills more blogs than cancer.
For learning about this general subject, I recommend the YSlow presentations.
I'm the administrator of the box running the blog. I'm also colm@apache.org, one of the authors of Apache httpd. KeepAlive's are enabled on the host, but with a deliberate timeout of 1 second. The listen backlog is 25, which can contribute to a backlog looking like the above but it isn't.
The hosted ended up getting wedged due to poor MySQL contention, there is a limit of just 80 server processes (and hence connections - we're running pre-fork on this host), and they were each getting blocked on MySQL reads.
That's been sorted now, and some better caching, compression and more put in place. It's a 1Ghz, 1GB RAM box is a colo that got slammed by HN, Reddit and Techcrunch in one go - to an uncached wordpress instance. I'm surprised it did as well as it did ;-)
Again, we're not talking necessarily about rape (in the old fashioned sense of the word) but about "sexual assault" which is a more recent and genericized and watered down term used in the law enforcement system, designed intentionally to include a much wider variety of acts beyond the traditional rape act.
That is so not true. Don't extrapolate your own pitiful lack of morality onto others. If you have to explicitly remind yourself not to rape people, it doesn't mean everyone else does too.
That is so not true. Don't extrapolate your own pitiful lack of morality onto others. If you have to explicitly remind yourself not to sexually assault people, it doesn't mean everyone else does too.
Is that better?
Rape is a subset of sexual assault.
By the common legal definition of sexual assault it includes acts like a pat on the ass or on the clothing outside the breast area. Hardly rape.
What one person would call sexual assault another may call just being aggressive and forward with their sexuality. In that scenario, it is not a pitiful lack of morality. Just sexuality. Sexuality itself is not, or is not necessarily, immoral. It's a natural biological process and urge. We're not talking about murder here, or theft, or bombing, or starting a war. We're talking about an unwanted kiss or touch. If the very same act was wanted and explicitly consented to by the receiving party it would not be a crime. That's how subtle and delicate of an issue this is, and so controversial.
But that doesn't make criminal acts any more acceptable. If you do illegal things when you drink, don't drink.
What I'm saying is, there are limits to "losing control".
Telling Florian this stuff ahead of time, or sending him to a groper's equivalent of defensive driving classes, isn't going to help.
This guy probably wishes he kept his hands to himself.
Are you reading the same site? What I see is lots of perfectly reasonable people saying "it's really horrible that this sort of thing happens, and we've got the pitchforks and torches ready, but we're not going to put a noose around this guy's neck based on a blog post alone".
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875900
This right here is called denial. In short "I have a friend, who is like this guy, who was accused of the same thing and he got off." Which in my opinion is denying that the female involved is telling the truth and that this person is completely innocent.
Additionally, this is the second highest post as I type. I don't think I even have to respond. At this time, the comment that makes the same point as me is downvoted to the negative:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875948
At this point I don't want to continue further defending my point. Downvote me if you like. I find the responses here about 50% disturbing and 50% uplifting. That is no reflection on HN, but on the tech community. Before today I would have gladly recommended to my daughters to follow a tech path. But after tonight I've lost my innocence on that. I've never really thought about these issues from a woman's perspective before tonight. And I've never really been involved in a situation like this. So my responses might be a bit different than the typical younger 20's male responses. And I'm fine with that. Maybe I've just lost my innocence.
This type of thing is, unfortunately, by no means exclusive to or even at all more common in tech than anywhere else. By all means try to prepare your daughters for the world, but I think evaluating tech as any different in this respect would be a disservice to them.
I've talked to many father-friends who have sons and daughters who go to various high schools and colleges. I've heard stories of sexual assaults and very unfortunate situations. But I could always justify them to myself as inferior disciplines and sad situations.
It's not like I thought this never happened in tech. Just the combination of highly skilled, top company, person in tech and the response of a general community that I highly respect give me pause.
In general, I think I am older than the HN crowd, so I am fine with thinking a bit different.
The "anyone involved in feminism and getting women involved in open source is a man-hating liar and is probably lying about sexual assault" tone is too misogynistic for words, cloaked in a thin veneer of "let's not rush to judgement" for plausible deniability.
And I can guarantee that for every father who worries about how his daughter might one day be groped by a man, that there's at least one daughter who hopes or fantasizes about being groped by a man someday too. (Of course, probably by a man she is attracted to or perceives of him as an Alpha, etc.) Sex. It's messy stuff.
I like to fantasize about all kinds of disgusting things.
However, if a stranger came up to me in a bar, and simply presumed that I would like to have one of these disgusting things done to me, I'd be quite offended.
Fantasy is one thing, reality is another.
The tweet quotes the line: "It is not my job to avoid getting assaulted. It is everyone else's job to avoid assaulting me."
I think that statement is wrongheaded. Not the second part - it is indeed everyone else's job to avoid assaulting people. The responsibility for the crime lies entirely with the perpetrator.
Unfortunately, because of this, making any statement as to the victim's behavior is always seen as "blaming the victim".
The problem is, in this world, we only reliably control the actions of one person: ourselves. We can take principled stands that "it's everyone else's job to not assault me", and that's so true, but in the end, being right isn't a suitable stand-in for being safe.
That is why I don't like the statement, "It is not my job to avoid getting assaulted". Because regardless of where the responsibility should lie, in reality, we are ALWAYS the stewards of our own personal safety. We have to be, because we're the only person in the world who will treat the job with the gravity it deserves.
If I walk down a bad alley, it is not my fault if I get shot. The person pulling the trigger is 100% at fault. But, I was not being a good steward of my own safety.
Towards the end of the post, she says, "I’m tired of people who think I should avoid having a beer in case my vigilance lapses for a moment." You have a right to be tired. I've lived in a couple of unsafe places where I grew tired of the fact that I had to be vigilant just to go about my daily life. It is draining and it is frustrating to have to alter your behavior because of the threat posed by others. But we only have one life, and safety must take priority over principle.
It is right to say that the perpetrator is the one at fault. It is right to call them out and make them account for their actions. Innocent people shouldn't have to alter their behavior to avoid danger. But the reality is that they have to anyway.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify a couple of points. Some people are taking me as saying, "you have to do everything possible to protect yourself, and if something happens, then you didn't protect yourself enough."
This is false. Sometimes, stuff happens even if you do everything right. The point was simply that you have a responsibility to your own personal well-being to do everything right, even though you can't guarantee 100% safety.
Also, I have avoided applying my comments to her specific sequence of events. Some people have taken me as lecturing her in failing. Folks, she was largely successful in doing what I'm saying. Her attacker was clearly intending to do more and was foiled. This may not have been the case if, say, she had been too drunk, or in a place where she was not able to make the escape she did, etc.
What her attacker did was the sexual assault equivalent of a sucker punch. He found the ever-so-slightest opening and exploited it. She successfully shook off the initial attack and defended herself from any further assault. We're talking about a situation that could have ended much worse, and didn't because she was able to take ownership of her safety. And she had to do so because there was no one else to do the job.
Which is why I found the comments in her blog/tweet that I replied to a little puzzling, and made this post to address them.
I'm pretty sure most women wouldn't want to live in that world either.
I didn't want to get into the much more fuzzy and subjective discussion of to what degree her actual actions did or didn't follow what I laid out.
Look, I appreciate the fact you're trying to make a reasoned, pragmatic argument on an emotional issue. But the fact of the matter is this is a situation that we can change and do something about. Anyone should feel comfortable participating in our community without fearing for their personal safety; we have the ability to support victims and make clear to those who would commit these crimes that it's not something they can get away with, which is not the current status quo.
I made comments towards the general attitude she espoused at the end of the post. I quoted exactly what I was responding to. Anything else is stuff that I wasn't responding to.
>> Anyone should feel comfortable participating in our community without fearing for their personal safety; we have the ability to support victims and make clear to those who would commit these crimes that it's not something they can get away with, which is not the current status quo.
I agree with all of this. Everyone should be able to participate without feeling unsafe, victims deserve support, perpetrators deserve to be called out, would-be perpetrators should be put on notice. All of that is very much consistent with what I said.
In all seriousness, thanks for your articulate and reasoned comment.
What can we do something about? Aren't loud, drunken, dark, crowded venues the kind of places that sexual assault happens? Is the hypothesis that if we shame people more that we can eliminate sexual assault?
I am not sure that insufficient shame is the problem. I doubt the males that do this think it is a fine thing to do when sober.
Our society thinks frat parties, dance clubs, and drunken after parties are a swell way to have fun and a huge percentage of our women are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. These two facts are related. It's dumb to think we can pack people together and dull their inhibitions with alcohol and nothing bad will happen. It's not harmless fun.
Maybe the Mormons have the right idea about alcoholic partying. We're playing with fire and we're lying to ourselves if we think we'll ever make it safe.
I'm sure people spend a lot of time doing things like commuting to work or sleeping at night, but it's highly unlikely that they will commit sexual assaults during those times. People are just more likely to be drinking at times when they are looking for sex (e.g. at a party, at a bar, etc).
You should probably be following something like the following line of reasoning:
1. How many sexual assaults happen on dates?
2. How prevalent is drinking while on a date? (Maybe you'll have to divide the data up regionally or something for it to make sense)
3. How many sexual assaults happen when there was drinking on a date?
Then you can start to look at how likely it is that alcohol is really the cause of sexual assault (at least for the dataset that you're looking at).
The underreporting is not uniform, though. I wouldn't be surprised if intoxicated victims are less likely to report than sober victims; and the sobriety of victims and assailants is highly correlated.
> I doubt the males that do this think it is a fine thing to do when sober.
That part of your post is almost as bad as the film, 'Reefer Madness.'
> Our society thinks frat parties, dance clubs, and drunken after parties are a swell
> way to have fun and a huge percentage of our women are sexually assaulted at
> some point in their lives. These two facts are related.
He called her over to ask her a question, kissed her, she protested, and so he groped her. What the fuck should she have done differently?
Where you're making a mistake is taking my comments and applying them to her specific sequence of events. If you read what I wrote, you'll note that I was not doing this. I was responding to the comment towards the end of her blog post, which she recycled into her tweet.
EDIT: if you disagree, please comment instead of downvoting. (If you think my comment harms the discussion, you can downvote of course.)
So, yay for HN, and yay for not being reddit.
And, also, I agree with it.
Her post said, "It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference."
Clearly, for women, tech conferences are far too closely resembling the dark alleys that I'm being metaphorically shot in, and that deserves some serious attention by those putting on the conferences.
If the conferences are that bad where this is becoming a pattern, then it is also important that participants pay sufficient care to their personal safety, while also doing everything possible to bring the issue to light. And bringing the issue to light is something she is doing with this blog post, for certain.
It's not just up to those putting on the conference. It's up to all of us.
And it's not just about about incidents as "blatant" (although not to everyone, apparently) as this but also other cases:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
If people don't make a stand, things don't change.
Or maybe it's the job of the city in which you live to provide sufficient lighting and security for its citizens.
In this metaphor you, I and the tech community are the city.
She didn't do anything extraordinary, though. A crowded bar is hardly an "unsafe place," for crying out loud. And I would ask you what you, specifically, think she should have done differently, but who are any of us to judge in the first place? Going to a bar with some friends for some beers is eminently normal.
I am not accusing you, personally, of justifying sexual assault. But people can and do presume that a woman who is assaulted was in some way foolish or asking for it. And they make legal decisions on this basis.
As I said, I get that you're making a narrower point that speaks to reality over principle. But it is spectacularly unhelpful and in extremely poor taste to counsel a victim of sexual assault that she is responsible for her own safety and, by implication, she needs to be or should have been more careful. Why do people feel like it's OK to lecture women in this way?
Finally, I must point out that your experience of living in unsafe places is a very, very small subset of a woman's experience living in places that might otherwise appear "safe." For all practical purposes, men don't have to worry about being sexually assaulted. This is a case in point: she was at a bar, among numerous fellow professionals, many of whom she considered trustworthy.
That is exactly what I was taking great care not to have my comments construed as. I don't think I could have any more emphatically stated that the fault lies entirely with the assaulter.
I was hoping that it was possible to separate the issue of the assailant's responsibility from taking care of one's own personal safety. It seems to me that these discussions are never able to do that.
I don't see any logical reason why talking about taking care of your own safety should be considered in any way logically equivalent to taking the blame off the assailant and putting it on the victim. The two concepts should be wholly separate. It is my opinion that it is emotion instead of logic that tends to make the two become confused in these discussions.
As for your comment about it being in poor taste to counsel someone who has just been a victim of assault, that is why the post in question is a comment on the HackerNews post (which was NOT posted by her) and not a response to her tweet, or comment on her blog, or a private email, etc.
This distinction may exist in theory, but in practice, it requires some ability to judge the victims actions in retrospect. Aside from being practically impossible, it's presumptuous to think that you or someone else would have exercised better judgement. Actually, it's patronizing. Everyone's a little bit (racist|sexist), so for my part I would not call this some deep character flaw on your part. But it's an antipattern that men fall into pretty easily and women are quite sensitive to.
"As for your comment about it being in poor taste to counsel someone who has just been a victim of assault, that is why the post in question is a comment on the HackerNews post (which was NOT posted by her) and not a response to her tweet, or comment on her blog, or a private email, etc."
I get that, but you--- as a man, I presume--- help set the tone of any discussion about this. Other men will read what you write. Some of them are smart, and they'll get you. A lot of other people won't.
I don't know HN's audience, but I presume there are women here that read what you wrote. What you say colors and informs their perception, too.
Think for a moment about how what you write affects the discussion. You have the power to influence it as much as everyone else. I wouldn't presume to advise you not to write your thoughts or anything like that. Rather, this is one of those "with great [freedom] comes great responsibility" areas. What feeling would you expect a victim of sexual assault to come away with after reading that? What would you want them to think, both about you and about men's attitude towards assault in general?
It's not about singling out or patronizing women.
I've put a lot of thought into my own personal safety in sketchy situations, and seeing someone say something along the lines of "protecting myself isn't my job" just rubs me the wrong way. It really has absolutely nothing to do with women and sexual assault in specific.
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/faq-what%...
I don't think that flies, because the point of her post was to identify a sexual assailant. She said she was the victim of an assault by another person, an issue of injustice which is a social and cultural question, and you said "Yes, but everyone is responsible for their own personal safety." This isn't about personal safety, it's about social justice, and yes, those are two very different things. So why are you trying to change the subject? The reasonable conclusion is that you're trying to weaken her claim to justice, which implies that you think we focus too much on justice, using social resources to protect women and they need to look out for themselves more.
It is not a question of identifying a sexual assailant (it is clearly the guy), or in trying to assign blame to the woman (this is out of her control.) If you read what he wrote, he was not denying any of these points. He was not talking about social justice. He was nitpicking one of the things she said which was not about social justice.
He also did not deny that she was not looking out for her personal safety. He simply said that it was incorrect not to take responsiblity for this -- she did appear to take responsibility but in her message says that it's "not her job". He is just being pragmatic. Predatory people exist; often we have to protect ourselves from them.
It's essentially a clever twist on the old argument: "She showed some skin so she had it coming"
Seriously: shame on you.
In an ideal world, votes down mean "this comment contributes negatively to the conversation, and on an ideal HN I wouldn't have seen it". Actually, I can't find any specific HN guideline on how to vote, so YMMV, but I think that's the enlightened 2010 rule. So people who downvote you don't necessarily disagree.
No one thinks its okay to demand of other people "hey, if you can't articulate why you agree with einarvollset, don't upvote him". Why would you have this asymmetry of expectations?
With that in mind, the parent of my comment is clearly a bad comment, it explicitly violates the HN guidelines, which say "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading" and also which specifically proscribe calling names. This complaining-about-downvotes comment is a poor one, and ought to be downvoted.
Its parent, that seems more subjective. My take on the matter follows. Your comment appears to _me_ to be reactionary in the most trivial way. It's full of ad hominem, and besides that it's clearly wrong. Legion goes to great lengths to observe that the BLAME lies with the perpetrator, and that his/her problem is with an unrelated claim, namely a claim that people are ought not be responsible for their own safety. You appear to be arguing against a straw man (making your comment less valuable), using rude language (making your comment less valuable), later in the day than other commenters who made more-articulate variations on your comment (making your comment less valuable). In short, it appears to me that your comment detracts from the conversation, and has no redeeming value, and as such should be lovingly downvoted. YMMV, that's why they're votes.
As a community, if we are aware of a danger to a member of our community then we have an obligation to work to remove that danger.
If that requires putting up a light in that dark alley, standing up for people at conferences or whatever then we have a responsibility to do so.
This whole conversation will have been for little if the next time you or I observe unacceptable behaviour we do nothing about it. It says something for the Apache community that the author felt that their were people she was able to make contact with about it. But we all need to move from the place where we are the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
ORIGINAL - probably misunderstood by the downvoters: But I surely hope he did grope her and he was indeed as abusive as she described him to be. Because if he didn't all this content we are creating will just serve to leave a very bad looking legacy of doubt around his character. I will therefore leave the thread hoping for him that he responds soon on http://flori.posterous.com/
Not that I feel the victim is to blame in this case, but it is foolish to decide the victim must ALWAYS be utterly blameless. Japan was the victim of the detonation of the first atomic bomb. Were they utterly and completely blameless?
It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not
the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference. But it is the first time
I’ve spoken out about it in this way,
I’m tired of the sense that some idiot can ruin my day and never have to answer
for it. I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired of people who think I should wear
something different. I’m tired of people who think I should avoid having a beer
in case my vigilance lapses for a moment. I’m tired of people who say that guys
can’t read me right and I have to read them, and avoid giving the wrong
impression.
Nonetheless from what I see there's nothing she could have done to have prevented it, besides being absent from the after party.
I'm going to phrase this in neutral terms, because I believe you thought you were making a useful point, and are genuinely confused at the reaction. Has anyone suggested you might have Asperger's?
Here's the thing: people will judge you based on what you appear to be thinking about.
Let's say your next-door neighbor is black, and then you hear he suffered a beating from some white supremacist skinheads. So you write a post on a forum saying "You know, some black people are so caught up in their own identity of victimhood, they invite others to take advantage of them."
That might be a valid point, and maybe you aren't even intending to make the connection between what you said and what just happened. But by the standard principle of conversational relevance, people will assume that's what you meant. And the people around you are going to be outraged, because if you were able to react like that, it indicates, at best, that you had no emotional reaction to your neighbor being beaten. People who aren't aroused to defend victims are considered creepy and untrustworthy. It suggests you are indifferent to the attackers, or that you even identify with them.
So, just as you tried to offer neutral advice on staying safe in a dangerous world, let me offer you neutral advice on not sounding like a horse's ass. When someone in your community is victimized, their emotional state, as well as the safety of others in their situation, is supposed to be uppermost in your mind. Statements that show otherwise are interpreted as supporting the attackers, or perhaps suggest that you think the victim wasn't really part of your community or worthy of defending. So, if you want to make tangential comments, at least acknowledge the situation first.
Maybe people who are innocently commenting on whatever popped into their head shouldn't have to make such gestures to solidarity, but the reality is that they have to anyway.
Legion's post reads as very self-aware to me, and I think he (she?) sounds fairly aware of how society tends to react. His whole post is a response to this reaction. To me, he sounds to be looking for an audience that can rise above this. Thus you might be teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. Which might actually be a 'neutral term', since I've never understood it's origin. :)
If you must know, yes, I feel contempt for someone who acts like this, and I was unsuccessful in hiding that. I think the collective response of males and/or geeks to this story is pretty revolting. Over on Reddit, the crudest and most hostile comments are being upvoted. On HN, we avoid crudeness, but neither can we escape from the black hole of geek discussions, libertarianism and related fantasies of complete self-reliance. Way to go, internet.
I also understand that sometimes people who aren't neurotypical really do need things explained to them in extremely literal terms. In the past, I might have been as clueless, probably more clueless. So I tried to focus on being constructive, although I did fail.
My comment was intended as constructive as well: from afar, I can't tell if you are a step ahead of Legion or if he is a step ahead of you. And I won't even hazard a guess as to which step I'm at. I was aiming for feedback that you would find useful, either by confirming your diagnosis or helping to refute it. I feel no contempt toward either one of you.
I think the odd thing in this case is that the 'victim' is not properly playing her role. Rather than being damaged for life and seeking the help of the 'authorities', she seems to have assumed control of the situation herself. For me, this makes a response like Legion's socially acceptable, even if misguided. Cheers!
You use a word that I find very interesting: "outrage". I find it interesting that you don't seem to conceive of a middle ground between "clinical lack of emotion/empathy" and "emotion completely overwhelming everything else".
You're right that my emotional response (yes, there is one) is tempered by the relative social distance between me and the victim. This is, of course, normal - otherwise, we wouldn't even blink over a somewhat-thwarted sexual assault attempt, as we would be far too focused on the daily atrocities of the world that routinely dwarf it in magnitude.
Your phrasing was that, "perhaps... you think the victim wasn't really part of your community or worthy of defending". This is, indeed, a person I have barely heard of before now. She is a good bit further removed from my social circle than the metaphorical next-door neighbor you sprinkled throughout your comment.
My strong emotional reactions are the property of the more inner concentric circles of my social graph. Perhaps yours reach more outwardly in the graph, and that's fine. I would caution you, however, about doling out psychological diagnoses simply on the grounds that one's emotional reactions do not strictly coincide with The Neilk Standard.
At this risk of everyone taking this the wrong way....
(1) If it's not the first time this has happened, it might be time to re-evaluate the pattern of behavior that led up to the unfortunate event.
(2) Never have to answer for it?!!? Um if you're sexually assaulted (multiple times?!?!) you should definitely be reporting that to the POLICE where the offender will, I'm pretty sure, have to answer for it. Right?
I totally understand that blogging about this must have been incredibly difficult for this person, and perhaps naming the accused in the post lightens the burden on her a bit... but this should definitely be a police issue, not a blog issue!
Responses like this are exactly why women don't speak up when these things happen.
It seems logical to me... but I guess in being logical I'm somehow being sexist or something (which is why my original comment is getting downvoted?)?
It's just that overwhelmingly, when harassment occurs to women, the conversation turns to 'What could she have done differently to make it not happen to her?' and NOT 'What can we do to make it so men don't harass?'
If it didn't happen to so many women, so often, then maybe the conversation could go that way.
But as you say, let's analyze the pattern. What if the pattern is "Go to tech conferences and socialize in a normal and acceptable manner with other people who share my interests"?
What are you going to tell her? Don't go to tech conferences? Don't network with other people in your industry at a bar? Don't talk to a man while drunk? While sober but he is drunk? Don't talk to a man at all? Don't walk down the street at night in a skirt. Don't walk down the street at night at all. Don't leave your house.
Going to extremes (don't leave the house) is obviously not a realistic or constructive option.
Its not the behavior of the women that is at fault, it is the man's.
I'm not saying that her behavior is at fault (100% the man's fault), but I'm suggesting that PERHAPS there is something she could have done differently to avoid what happened, and if so, it would be worthwhile to determine what that possible thing is.
The only way to avoid it is tell a woman to never be attractive. Never be friendly to men. Don't ever smile at them. And god forbid, don't flirt with them.
Don't get drunk and try to have fun. When us guys get wasted, the worst thing we have to worry about is one of our friends shaving our eyebrows, not some strange dude trying to fuck us.
Another more logical way to read what you're saying is that she should think to see if she's doing anything wrong when she's telling these guys to go away or stop, like conflicting body language.
My only problem with that argument is that very few people purposefully do anything to get that kind of behavior out of someone else that they don't want it from. It's like ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the behavior of the person doing the assaulting.
I've never been sexually assaulted by anyone at any event (and I am female), but I've had plenty of guys hit on me and feel me up and such. If I don't know you as a close friend, "stop" means stop. Doesn't matter how naked or dressed or drunk or sober or sleepy I might be. It is NEVER my fault for being who I am and telling people to stop at the same time. People that can't understand anything like that need to reconsider what they're doing, because they're about to cross a very, very uncomfortable line. And thankfully, every person that has ever tried to do such a thing has stopped. Good thing, cause I'm the type that will eventually break fingers and call the cops no matter how drunk I am over something like that. That is never acceptable behavior. I don't do that to any person, ever. Nobody should ever be doing that to anyone else.
Lastly, please don't read this as any sort of commentary on the actual story in question. I was shocked to read the post originally, but I'm not passing judgment on anyone. Just a general statement.
What would you tell a man who walks home at night alone through a shady neighbourhood and got mugged with any frequency (to the point he expects he will be mugged again walking home through the same neighbourhood)?
Of course the muggers are 100% responsible for their actions. The man wasn't 'asking to get mugged', and has the right to walk down through that neighbourhood and expect a level of safety. But still, the appropriate suggestion is to recommend a safer behaviour.
Applying the analogy to a woman's sexual assault scenario, you would have to look at the various pieces, and how they translate to our model. Was she dressing or behaving promiscuously? Is she going out and partying late at night? Yes, it is her right to dress and behave how she likes, and she should be able to do so safely, but this isn't the world we live in. These actions are the equivalent of walking through the unsafe neighbourhood alone at night in our above model.
The goal for society shouldn't be to regulate the woman's behaviour until she avoids all potential dangers. No, it should be to regulate the behaviour of the assaulter - by holding him accountable, and punishing him as necessary. Still, until society changes, it would be prudent for the women to make safer decisions.
This is no way is meant to apply directly to the OP's situation. The man made a move - aggressively - she refused, and he assaulted her. I don't know how her behaviour could have changed this. (Allegedly. No need for any Internet justice here.)This is just meant to portray a counter-example. Responses like 'she was asking to be raped/assaulted' are unacceptable IMH. A woman could be walking down the street naked, and if she were raped it would be 100% the rapists fault. Sure it might not be wise for the woman, but the rapist must be held accountable.
It's just that every time a women is assaulted and the first response out of most of the people she tells (including the police! and others who are supposed to be there for her safety!) is "Well what did you do wrong?" it makes women want to not speak up at all.
I am getting sick and tired of "it must be her fault".
Standard cost-benefit analysis: how does the number/severity of ruined days compare to the number/awesomeness of fun days (presuming that without that "pattern of behavior" all days would be "meh")? Maybe the rational choice really is to try to change the world...
You're definitely right about trying to change the world.
Without witnesses, it would be hard to prove that such an event did or did not happen. (Not saying I agree or disagree with her blogging it, but I can sympathize with her doing so in an otherwise powerless situation.)
That is all.
Er seems like the only pattern of behavior (that she's described at least) is that she goes to tech conferences and she fully participates in the happenings there. Are you suggesting she stop?
Prodding question, but honestly, we're trying to get more women involved, right? Telling them (basically if not a bit hyperbolically) to quit-being-such-sluts-and-they-won't-get-raped is a bit counter-productive. A woman should be able to participate at tech events in the conference and the after-party just like a man without the fear she'll be groped by the attendees.
If she isn't going to do that, then a guy gets accused of this without any opportunity to defend himself (regardless of whether or not she's telling the truth, if accused of something he should be called to account and should be able to defend himself). Instead anyone googling for his name is going to hit a ton of blogs accusing him of being the kind of guy that would commit sexual assault.
I sincerely hope that the girl in question gets all the support and help she needs, but if she believes that his activities constituted sexual assault she should call the cops, not just accuse someone of things on the Internet.
wtf?
I find it very hard to believe it is common for women to get sexually assaulted at a tech conferences full of intelligent, upper class , and generally meek around women guys. I'm sure it unfortunately does happen, but I doubt it is something occurring every other conference.
And that's the crazy part. It doesn't make sense. You've got intelligent folks, not the dregs of society or anything, and yet, it is common. I attended a tech conference earlier this year in which one of the attendees set up an open space to discuss "invisible diversity" (transgender / genderqueer, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, etc.).
1/10th of the conference's attendees presented as non-male, while 1/2 of this particular open space presented as non-male, which seems to indicate that it touched on a subject of particular interest to folks that didn't fit into the white, cisgendered, male majority.
More interestingly, most of the non-male individuals in attendance explicitly stated that they felt sexually threatened at most conferences.
Crazy, right?
But when someone makes that claim, and sufficiently many others offer their assent and echo the claims, then I'm left having to believe that, yes, those things do happen, and at a far greater rate than is directly visible to you or I.
Is this seriously what typically goes on at drinking parties?
(There are also people who are totally out of line while sober, but I think it's a minority of the serious incidents at conferences.)
I had a hell of a time last night – in good and bad ways.
The good came first. The ApacheCon lightning talks were, as usual, hilarious. The talented Paul Fremantle brought out his tinwhistle and I danced an only-slightly off-time hornpipe. Bertrand revealed the secrets of the members@ mailing list with a speaking chorus. A crazy person with a graphing calculator and a psychedelic three-ring binder gatecrashed and spoke about no-one’s sure what. Ross, Paul and I did an “Ask Me!” talk. Leo, Rich, Shane filled their five minutes in traditional and hilarious and moving fashions. Jean-Frederic had us saying Hello World in more languages than I could count. We laughed as we counted hesitations, repetitions and deviations. It was great.
The party moved up to my room. We had beer, and beer pong, and altogether too many people crammed in. It was more egalitarian than I remember last year’s being – lots of new people, lots of people who weren’t part of the old Apache guard. A charming Southern gentleman with the most awesome belt I’ve ever seen (Carl, where did you get that!?), an excited Berliner who picked me up and whirled me around and somehow managed to avoid having me kick anyone in the head. I lay across the bed, sat on laps, generally tried to squish in to any available space and get time to talk to all the fabulous people thronging the place.
At some point, it was too late and too loud to reasonably continue. Everyone cleared out (Nick, you are a god, for spending the extra five minutes to clear the carnage, so that I could wake up in a room that showed no signs of what had happened the night before!), and we headed to the Irish pub next door that has become our local.
Some food, a few more beers. Squeezing everyone up so I could sit next to someone I wanted to talk to. Laughing at the events of the week, and the night.
And then I went to the loo, and as I was about to go in, Florian Leibert, who had been speaking in the Hadoop track, called me over, and asked if he could talk to me.
I’m on the board of Apache. I’m responsible for our conferences. I work on community development and mentoring. If you’re at an Apache event and you want help, information, encouragement, answers, I will always do my best to provide. So this wasn’t an unusual request, and it wasn’t one I expected to end the way it did.
He brought me in to the snug, and sat up on a stool. He grabbed me, pulled me in to him, and kissed me. I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear). He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling.
I broke away, headed back to the group, and hid behind some of the bigger, burlier infra guys, while Bill sorted out all the people who’d left stuff in my room, so that I could reasonably escape. We headed back, people got their stuff, Bill stayed around, and I slept.
When Bill woke up, I pretended to still be asleep, because I couldn’t deal with speaking to anyone. I sent a mail to our planning committee to say that I’d been assaulted. Charel came to talk to me, and then I e-mailed Nick, who came up and helped me sort things out so I could get to the keynote and feel safe. Florian didn’t turn up today, and it’s probably for the best.
I had a few drinks. I was wearing a skirt of such a length that I had cycling shorts on under it to make me feel more comfortable getting up on stage and dancing. I had been flirting with a couple of other boys at the party.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me, at all. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me at a tech conference. But it is the first time I’ve spoken out about it in this way, because I’m tired of the sense that some idiot can ruin my day and never have to answer for it. I’m tired of the fear. I’m tired of people who think I should wear something different. I’m tired of people who think I should avoid having a beer in case my vigilance lapses for a moment. I’m tired of people who say that guys can’t read me right and I have to read them, and avoid giving the wrong impression.
But I don’t give the wrong impression, and it’s simply not true that guys can’t read me right. I don’t want to be assaulted, and the vast majority of guys read that just fine. It is not my job to avoid getting assaulted. It is everyone else’s job to avoid assaulting me. Dozens of guys succeeded at that job, across the week. In the pub, in the stairwell, on the MARTA, in my bedroom.
One guy failed, and it’s his fault.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DUxu_L4...
It may not seem that way but I feel confident in saying that it is.
Hell, even my "emotional" post is not. Perception is a funny thing.
(At the time of the incident, he worked for Twitter. Wonder if he still does?)
Edit: Ignore this - seems to have switched to https://twitter.com/flo at some point.
I'd like them to concentrate on tech stuff more and this stuff less.
I would suspect Noirin feels the same way.
The girl goes home shocked and crying and tells her Daddy who rouses up an angry mob to march down to the mans house, pull him from his home and lynch him in front of his family.
Two wrongs, one tragedy.
One one side, there is the possibility that he came to her out of the blue, tried to kiss her, and put his hands in her pants. One the other side, there is the possibility that she is consciously lying about all this (the people arguing that this is a possibility mention previous cases of false accusations).
Now, there are three very important things to consider: alcohol, communication and memory.
About memory: Memory is not as robust as people think it is, I learned this many years ago. When I was a small kid my dad accused me of destroying some plants he was growing indoors. At first I said "no I didn't do it", but then he explained that that could not be the case because I was the only one who likes to pick leaves off plants (which was true). I still persisted that I didn't do it.
The next day however, I remembered quite clearly that I was picking the leaves off his plants. So I apologized. And he planted new plants. These new plants got destroyed too, and we discovered that it was the work of mice. Telling the difference between a real memory and a memory of a dream is very hard.
So what happened to me was that I remembered something that (1) was completely the opposite of what actually happened (2) it was a memory that portrayed myself in a negative light, and the mind usually tries to remember things so that they show yourself in a positive light. So it seems very unlikely to me that such a completely fake memory could enter my mind. Yet it did.
I can definitely imagine that a memory was altered from "he touched me on my clothes" to "he tried to put his hand in my pants". Especially if you're upset about what happened, and then dream about it. Or perhaps she wasn't as clear about telling him to go away as she remembers. Note that I'm not saying that I believe that this is what happened. I am merely saying that it is a possibility that memory wasn't 100% accurate.
About communication: It is possible that she flirted with him (she even mentions that she flirted with guys in the post), and he thought that she was attracted to him.
Alcohol: obviously some things happen when people are drunk that wouldn't have happened when they're not. And it doesn't improve memory either.
So in addition to the stories:
(1) He came to her out of the blue, tried to kiss her, and put his hands in her pants.
And:
(2) She is consciously lying about all this.
This is also a possibility: A girl flirted with a guy. Later that evening, after a few too many beers, the guy went to the girl and tried to kiss her. She pushed him away, but then he put his hands on her hips at the edge of her pants.
For that matter, everything between (1) and (2) is possible. So please do not just consider "Guilty" vs "Consciously lying" as the only possibilities.
This sex offender thing results in curious effects in American society that I have not seen anywhere else. For example, in a typical American bar/night-club, the women would typically be the active part in initiating conversations and even talk directly about sex/one-night stands. This has happened to me multiple times. Men are very cautious to even initiate a conversation, let alone suggest something more, because it is very easy to label this sex offense. This is at least my observation with my American friends (Silicon Valley, educated, geek) - this may be different somewhere else.
Just my $0.02. I do not defend the guy, it is just so easy to drop names in blog posts lie that, but you have to be careful when you do that. Also read the comments on her blog. Some of the comments say that this is not the first time she has written blog posts about her being sexually offended (contrary to what she says it's the first time she talks about that). Do not kill the guy based on that. Even if he did what she claims, there are still 1,000 crimes that are much worse than that and we do not even discuss them so much here.
This is a comment from her blog post. This greatly differs from her original point that she has never talked about this before, let alone name anyone.
<quote> Please don’t think i’m accusing you of fabricating this story but it concerns me greatly that this isn’t the first time you have blogged about being sexual assaulted and named the men involved. Why do you think it is ok for you to do this?
I don’t know who Florian Leibert is but without any proof of what happened you have essentially libeled him by making a (technically) baseless allegation of sexual assault.
We are getting a pattern of events that emerges we need to analyze that. Public history of multiple sexual harassment claims in blog posts, "flirting with a couple of guys", "having several drinks", "private party in my room". Try to be fair here - we need to hear the other side of the story here for sure.
uh....not sure i can say much more without the PC crowd hammering me to death. While none of us were there -- which is a big caveat -- from the description I read I'd hesitate to call what happened "assault". I'm picturing the assault on the Normandy defenses in 1944, in it's best usage. Or someone walking up to you and slamming a baseball bat into your face. Ouch. That's assault. But being kissed or having someone come on to you in a sexual/romantic manner -- even if you did not want it or reciprocate -- I think really stretches and abuses the language.
Here's one mental tool to help tease out the important distinction involved. Let's say the exact same thing happened as described in the story, except that the woman was sexually attracted to the man in question -- it would not be described as assault, just a man being aggressive and the woman liking it and being glad he did. It's pretty well known that a lot of woman like men to come on strong to them and be dominant -- of course the catch is they like this if they were attracted to them in the first place, but if they weren't, then it can have the opposite effect. Well, even if there were German soldiers stationed along the beaches of Normandy in 1944 who "kinda wanted" for the Allies to invade, it would regardless still be a military assault when they did.
Now add alcohol drinking, a bar, late night, partying, lots of rowdy behavior, touching, intentional flirting, geeks with poor social skills and body language cue reading, etc. and things become even more, shall we say, less clear cut.
Shoving your hand INSIDE another person's (of any gender) underpants after being expressly told that said person was not interested in you sexually is absolutely sexual assault.
And again: what about the concept of no harm, no foul. It's life. Move on.
The same policy defines sexual contact as including but not being limited to: "sexual intercourse, penetration of an orifice (anal, oral or vaginal) with the penis, finger, or other object in a sexual manner, intentional touching of the genitals, buttocks, or breasts, or coercion to force someone else to touch one’s genitals, buttocks, or breasts. Sexual contact can occur over clothing."
Most people in this thread will be viewing the term similarly to the definition above.
That said, I'll let other folks deal with the rest of your post; I won't be able to do so dispassionately.
"Violence is...compelling action against one's will on pain of being hurt." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence)
"I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested ... He responded by jamming his hand into my underwear and fumbling." (from the article)
To me that sounds like "against one's will" and ergo an act of violence.
When I was a kid and first learning words like that, "violence" meant physical harm and attack. A punch. A gunshot. A bomb explosion. That was violence. I think this other definition you cited is a rather newer and more "lawyer-y" definition.
That said.
Even if that's the definition we're going to use, then, by that definition, this case still did not involve violence. The alleged evildoer in this case did not do anything against another's will "on pain of being hurt." Sounded like he was waaaaaaay too forward, I'd agree. :) But by her admission there was no threat, no pain and no use of "old-fashioned" violence (no attack or physical harm).
I'm going to go read up on the latest arbitrary definition du jour of "rape" and "sexual assault" tonight. What I expect to see is that especially the latter will be defined so loosely that if a guy merely touches a women's arm after she has drunk a glass of alcohol, then he could possibly be charged with the crime of sexual assault. That's how ridiculously overreaching this area of our laws seem to be.
I do realize that the position I'm arguing from risks being un-PC, especially with certain HN demographics, and if it's reacted to in a way that doesn't account for the subtle specifics of what I'm saying. But sometimes it's important to stick up for what you believe in, and say what you think is true and right, even if it's not popular with everyone. On the whole, it seems that what I'm saying is resonating with some of the readers here, which is good. I'd hate to live in a society where much or even all of sexuality becomes considered evil or a crime, and in a society where we're unable to make subtle distinctions, and we go after non-violent "crimes" more than massively violent non-crimes (war, invasions, government-ordered bombing or missile strikes, etc., for example).
If someone forces their hands into your underwear, it is disgusting. Who knows where that hand has been, and now it's in your private area? This is not about touching an arm. I'll agree with the other commenter that much of your posts does seem troll-like, especially when trying to say that shoving your hand into someone's underwear is no worse than touching someone's arm.
FWIW, however, I'm not sure that this necessarily needs to be a "throw in jail" kind of crime. Public humiliation on the Internet, however, seems like the best way to handle a crime of this nature.
Some men simply do not understand that it is not acceptable to put their hands in strange ladies' underwear. This is not a phenomenon that is limited to tech conferences. http://www.frumforum.com/the-prowl-getting-groped-in-the-dis...
Public awareness of this problem is a far better solution than sweeping it under the rug.
Most men don't do this. It'd be nice if in addition to being the great human beings that they are, if they'd step in when they see a woman being accosted in this way.
It'd be nice if in addition to being the great human beings they are if they wouldn't try to excuse piss poor behavior on other men's parts.
Yeah, but the damage is long done. These definitions are already codified into law.
The rest of your argument seems to boil down to the same behavior would have been fine if it were consensual, and that kind of situation makes it easy for the guy to misinterpret consent. This reasoning is absolutely ludicrous. First, he kissed her, then "I tried to push him off, and told him I wasn’t interested (I may have been less eloquent, but I don’t think I was less clear)", then he jammed his hand down her underwear. How would that be misread?
I can't believe this comment is getting upvoted - by this logic, a random guy who comes up and punches me in the fact shouldn't be convicted of a crime because I let random guys in our dojo try to punch me during Aikido class(and some of them succeed when I screw up my blocking/avoidance technique).
BTW, the legal definition of assault doesn't require direct violence, merely the threat of violence: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/assault
This is textbook assault, though.
Edit: incorrect statistic.
Now, in this thought experiment, let's start narrowing the requisite conditions. Say, that the area touched has to be near genitals or buttocks or breasts. Bet the percentage drops some, but still high. Let's say we widen it so it can be outside of clothing -- not necessarily on bare skin. Guess what, the percentage goes back up. Now let's specify that the touchee is not sexually attracted to the toucher. Percentage drops. Now we could narrow it further, or widen it, whatever, and we're going to end up with whatever percentage we want -- even one we want to call "high" or "prevalent" or an "epidemic", if we wanted. Let's add in some error margins and uncertainty because (1) people don't always tell the truth, and (2) people don't always remember things perfectly. Now the importance and validity of your percentage becomes, well, let's say arguable and ambiguous, at best.
Have some women been "raped" (in the clearest, most old fashioned sense of the word) -- hell yes. And that's horrible. And should not happen. But to say that a third of all women are "sexually assaulted" in their lifetimes and/or to say that that is (always and necessarily) an evil thing -- that part I'm not so sure of.
Rape? Bad.
Sexual assault? Depends on particulars of the specific case -- not what words/laws say.
You are claiming that some (likely significant) portion of these claims do not meet your definition of harm or violence. I'm not looking to get into a pedantic argument here about what kind of touching counts as sexual assault, or how far an assailant needs to go before the victim is "really" hurt. All I'm suggesting you do is talk to someone you know who considers themselves a victim and try to understand why they do; I really think you might learn something new. All you've said so far is that sexual assault isn't really a big deal because you don't think it's a big deal -- something of a circular argument.
If things truly happened as she stated in her account, he didn't touch her boob. He didn't casually touch her in a way anyone could have accidentally done in a crowded bar.
She said she was wearing a skirt and bike shorts (and presumably panties) underneath the skirt. To do what he allegedly did, he had to reach under her skirt (already not a socially acceptable action) and get past two layers of fabric and elastic (and bike shorts fit pretty tight). He didn't touch her through her clothing, or touch some 'taboo' area revealed via skimpy clothing. He would have had to physically move her clothing out of the way in order to touch her genitals after being explicitly told that she did not want to be touched by him.
I don't see why you are so up for debating the semantics of the phrase 'sexual assault'.
Here's a thought experiment. You (I am assuming you are a heterosexual man, maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but I'm betting I'm right) go to a tech conference. You go to an after-party, have a few beers, have fun, chat with your peers. Another guy comes up to you and asks if you want to talk. You say sure. Suddenly grabs you and kisses you. You shove him away and say, "Whoa man, sorry, I don't go that way." He then grabs your belt buckle with one hand and shoves the other down the front of your pants and squeezes your cock.
Do you feel violated? Have you been assaulted? Hell yes, you were just sexually assaulted, 'in the particulars of your specific case'. And it's horrible. And it should not happen.
Edited to Note:
I only chose the homosexual example to highlight the fact that the physical contact was undesired. My point stands equally even if it were the hottest woman in the world and after the kiss you said, 'No sorry, I'm married.' or any other type of no including just straight up 'No'. If after the no, she still reached down your pants and grabbed your genitals it would still be sexual assault.
And while after reading some of your other posts I gather you feel our current sexual assault laws are too broad, and I support your right to have that opinion, and indeed even open a dialogue about it or campaign to have the law changed in your jurisdiction, I find it in extremely poor taste to have said dialogue in the commentary of such a clear example of sexual assault.
Official Code of Georgia, Title 16:
16-6-22.1. Sexual battery.
(a) For the purposes of this Code section, the term "intimate parts" means the primary genital area, anus, groin, inner thighs, or buttocks of a male or female and the breasts of a female.
(b) A person commits the offense of sexual battery when he intentionally makes physical contact with the intimate parts of the body of another person without the consent of that person.
(c) A person convicted of the offense of sexual battery shall be punished as for a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.
He's lucky he "fumbled". It otherwise would have been aggravated sexual battery; a felony, in Georgia.
Hope that helps.
But seriously: it's arbitrary words on paper. And just one possible jurisdiction. I guess my take is that every legal jurisdiction can have a different definition. And even assuming that jurisdiction is the pertinent one from purely a legal standpoint, it is tangential to whether, in a more substantive sense whether an "assault" occurred, or rape, or whether violence occurred, or whether anyone was actually harmed in RL -- not in theory, not in some textbook.
All I've personally heard for sure, in this case, is that one guy made some moves in a bar which were waaay too forward relative to what the woman liked. Because she did not like it, she publicly names him and accuses him of "assault". I would bet you money that if she liked what he did then she would not have did that and nobody here would be talking about it. I think this element of it is what makes it so tricky, and so controversial for some folks.
(It's "criminal sexual abuse" in my jurisdiction, and in the circumstances described it's already a class 4 felony. That makes me happy.)
How I'm approaching it -- and this is really really important in order to understand why I'm saying what i'm saying so I'm going to draw it out a bit to emphasize it further -- is that we should listen to this story, and consider the details of this incident in terms of the physical activities that occurred, and the context in which it occurred, and come to our own independent judgement as to whether what happened was (1) evil, and (2) what was the magnitude of it (if it was), and (3) was their actual harm done (not imagined harm, not theorized harm, not genericized extrapolated harm, etc.) but real harm, and (4) if whether the very same incident were to occur except that the woman liked it, would we still consider it to be a big deal, and would we still consider it a crime or think it should be a crime.
I clearly am coming down on the side that says that what happened should not have happened, but, oh darn, it's really not that big of a deal and she'll be fine. The guy misread how forward he could be, and/or was drunk and/or she was also drunk, and/or one or both were flirtatious and things went too far. It can happen. It's going to happen. It will keep happening just as long as humans are sexual and have to play the mating dance with incomplete and imperfect knowledge of the other's intentions and desires, and heck, even of their own.
And look, by her own admission, it's not like a case where he dragged her into an alley at knifepoint and violently raped her, leaving her bruised, bleeding, in pain, etc. That is stereotypical rape, and is evil, and I think there's a very large social consensus that that is bad and should be a crime and be punished. We are not talking about that kind of event in this particular case. But some people seem to have the same emotional baggage in mind when they evaluate it. And I think that's a misleading and weak position to be arguing from.
I think I would care much less about this particular case if (1) the guy was not named, and (2) it was not blogged about publicly, and (3) here on HN. I mean at most, this is a situation for her, that other guy, and the legal system (and that, arguably) to deal with. The fact that it's been laundered here makes me want to play Devil's Advocate with the hopes of illustrating what I think are extremely important distinctions that should be considered, but often are not.
I don't want to live in a society where we care more about whether something is literally legal or illegal, and not more about whether something is right or wrong, and in making subtle judgements and comparisons about how right or how wrong something is, in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, it should not matter whether something is technically legal or illegal because we can change the laws, and, laws are being changed all the time, and laws are getting bought by special interests all the time. They are literally just words on paper. What should matter is the purpose and intent of laws -- why do we have them? Why should we have them? When do they work well and when are they broken or could use improvement. I think all of these issues are at play in this particular case. And this is way more interesting to me, both as a geek and as a citizen, than whether what happened is literally a crime or not. That's for cops and DA's and judges to decide. But we can, in theory, ultimately decide what those laws should be.
thanks for sparring with me on this!
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