Sexual assault, and why men don't get it

I'm sorry but this whole discussion has been beyond obnoxious as far as I'm concerned. It started with people taking one drunk jack ass and extrapolating that to slander the whole male tech community and now we have someone taking one insensitive comment and extrapolating it to slander all of HN (the other comment she quotes just pointed out it would have been a better idea to go to the police)

Does the author really believe anyone in their right mind would think it was ok for a man to stick his hand down a woman's pants uninvited?

There seems to be a bit of "talking past each other" going on here, because nobody is stopping to consider the real motivations involved. In particular, while I think lepid0ptera has defined her side of the discussion well, I think she may have completely misunderstood a strong motivator on the other.

Many responses on one side have been along the lines of "that kind of behavior is reprehensible, but we have no idea if it happened here without an impartial inquiry", perhaps going so far as to suggest that she was irresponsible to name him publicly.

Responses on the other end of the spectrum have echoed the idea they understand how horrible the experience was, because they've either experienced something like this themselves, or know someone personally who has; again, many going so far as to applaud her bravery in both coming forward and being willing to name her assailant.

Consider perspectives.

One side is terrified of the idea of an assault like this (either on themselves, or on a loved one), which informs their view of the situation. They put themselves in the shoes of a potential victim, they empathize, they appreciate the emotional and potentially physical harm that could occur. This gives their reaction to a post like the one made earlier essential context: they believe a woman was attacked, with no witnesses, leaving her in a uniquely helpless situation that she'll relive in her mind for the rest of her life, but at least she has the courage to name the man who did this to her.

The other side is terrified of the idea of being falsely accused (either themselves directly, or someone they care about). An accusation of sexual assault can end careers, take away essential freedoms, mark them for life in both a professional and personal context. They empathize with another possible victim here: someone falsely accused. This also gives their reaction essential context; they are watching someone's career and personal life dragged through the mud, accusations and discussion threads that will live online in perpetuity for future employers and lovers to see regardless of the outcome forcing them to relive this experience for the rest of their lives, without any kind of due process for the accused.

I think it would do everyone good to take a deep breath, try very hard to set aside their own prejudices, and understand why the other side is reacting the way they are. I'd like to think, especially here, that most participants are trying to act in good faith. Perhaps a little perspective would help.

I don't pretend to know what it's like to be a woman - nor really how situations like this are to be resolved positively for both parties.

However, one thing that strikes/confuses me is that while some women may wish to paint the current poor girl's reaction as some kind of universal truth - I've heard of zillions of yarns where it went exactly the other way... i.e. the guy and girl end up having a night of great sex because he was bold enough to go all in (pun a little bit intended).

This schism in results tells me that only one thing can be known for sure. If you're going to go stampeding for the crotch, make sure you've picked a girl that's up for it. Don't know how to pick such a lady? Don't know if you know how to pick such a lady?

Buy her flowers then... and we can all be spared these excruciating discussions on a place where we'd all feel much more comfortable chatting about code.

All good points. Men really don't get this issue from the female perspective.

But umm, showing up on a male dominated board, picking a few admittedly lame comments and then busting on the entire group for their cluelessness?

I also saw a great deal of support for Noirin, a great deal of concern for the state of the tech community and some really good discussion on how the problem might actually be fixed.

There exists an enormous asymmetry in power between men and women when it comes to sex, and so it generates equally large asymmetry in consequence when it comes to accusing men of misdeeds. This causes a great deal of fear and mistrust from both sides, which leads to huge differences in perspective. (Sorry to go Yoda there) To say this causes lively debate is somewhat of an understatement.

I think the talking past each other is largely because the argument was polarized before it begun:

Women - Think men don't understand the seriousness of sexual assault, know women who've been victims

Men - Think there are women who cry wolf on sexual assault, know men who've been victims of that

...and so we inevitably reach this cross-talk where men are saying "where's the proof?" or "innocent until proven guilty" (which is largely what I saw from HN), and women are responding with "why aren't you treating this seriously?"

Drunken louts are not just a feature of tech conferences, they're everywhere. It is only coincidental that the last time I told a guy to "shut the fuck up and leave. Now." was at an academic conference after he made some particularly offensive comments to a married woman. I think most men are aware of thing like this, and do what we can.

HN attracts a more thoughtful/passive/insensitive (depending on point of view) approach to most things, so the "innocent until proven guilty" line seemed to be the general vibe I got from the commentary. I think that's the most even-handed such an issue can get.

Does anyone have a cache of the article?

http://blog.nerdchic.net/archives/418/ is down, and I'd rather read whatever happened directly from one side than from a third party.

Edit: relevant part (they're at a pub):

"And then I went to the loo, and as I was about to go in, (name), 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."

OK I'm going to agree with the author here (assuming this is true). If you're escalating without complaint, there's nothing wrong with putting your hands down a woman's pants. If she's indicated she's not interested though, it's being an asshole.

Lepid0ptera ---

A think you may be concentrating on a different subset of the commentary than I am. I see a lot of different viewpoints:

1) Wondering if we should trust only one side's account without knowing all the details.

2) Wondering if she's being irresponsible by _not_ escalating it to a police matter.

3) And yes, wondering if she's making too much of a deal about nothing.

I'm most interested in the second. I feel like she's getting push back from people who feel that by trying to handle the matter herself, she's not properly adopting the socially acceptable role as a passive victim. I think you might miscounting some of these responses as being in the dismissive category when they are actually something else.

Or maybe I'm miscounting the 3's as 2's. Or maybe I'm misconstruing her response as being extra-legal --- for all I know, she's decided to file charges AND name names. In any case, I find the HN discussion more useful than silence, and better than most of the internet discussions I see elsewhere. Certainly a greater variety of viewpoints would be help this process. You're bold and write well --- if you're not already here, come and join us rather than pointing out the lack of diversity from afar.

> It hurts and is potentially embarrassing and SCARY, because it is a prelude to rape,

Agreed. It is also highly unprofessional.

> which in turn is a prelude to death and/or babies

I think this is a little bit over the top, there are short-term birth control pills and most rapist do not kill their victim, and this is no longer the case:

> Fathers have killed daughters for getting raped, husbands have killed or abandoned their wives for getting raped.

Accusing someone with rape has been used as a weapon for a long time now, I don't think it's that surprising, that a lot of people are skeptic.

First point: the entire post rests on invoking a double standard. Imagine how it would feel if it was your daughter... in some parts of the world a raped woman's life is ruined.... Um, bad intro, really bad intro. Sure, the idea that any kind of sexual experience devalues a woman shapes a woman's experience of sexual assault. However, asking men to get in touch with their patriarchal, proprietary attitudes toward women's sexuality is not a good way to further a discussion about sexual assault. Leading into my second point....

Second point: the male response to a story of rape is really their response to an imagined scenario in which they're falsely accused of rape. This says a lot about men's difficulty identifying with women. They find it easier to identify with the man in the story, even though he's the villain and acted in a way they never would. Since they're unable to identify with the woman, they identify themselves with the man, and since they themselves are not sexual predators, they imagine a scenario in which they have been accused of rape because of an innocent mistake.

Naturally they recognize this is different from the original story, but they are so unable to empathize with the female protagonist that the alternative story they conjured, in which the man is a victim, is much more compelling to them. They know it's a different story, but it's so scary and real to them that they simply must discuss it. The original story of rape is so unreal to them that they simply push it aside.

This lack of empathy for victims of rape is what needs to be overcome so that men can have a more evenhanded response to stories like this. Instead of asking men to imagine themselves as a patriarch whose honor and property have been marred, ask them to imagine themselves as a woman. Ask them to put themselves in the place of a woman and imagine the experience of a man shoving his hand into their pants and groping them.

Empathizing with women does not come naturally for men, so men need to practice and take a self-conscious, self-critical approach (as anyone would when attempting to empathize with someone different from themselves.) They need to be careful to balance their perception of the story. They should not automatically replace the man in the story with themselves and let that perspective define their response. If they easily imagine the man's point of view and feel the intense emotions they would feel in his place, they should work until they can imagine the woman's point of view and feel her emotions just as vividly. Women can assist by describing a woman's experience. Actually, I would say that guidance is essential, and men should pay close attention. There's no lack of material available; we must simply avail ourselves of it.

Again, it's the woman's experience that we should focus on. It's a bad idea to invoke the brother's or father's response. Sure, every guy can imagine the sense of shame, violation, and powerlessness they would feel about their sister or daughter being raped -- feelings that may be analogous to the shame, violation, and powerlessness felt by a rape victim -- but the fear in the heart of every loving high school boyfriend approaching the door of his girfriend's house betrays the assumption that his girlfriend's brother or father would be similarly outraged by the idea of her having consensual sex. The brother's or father's outrage does not depend on empathy and may be in contradiction to the woman's own feelings. In this day and age, their reaction seems pathetic and ridiculous, an atavistic twitch.

So the empathy must be with the woman herself. To have a balanced response to the story, a man must identify with the woman as easily as with the man, and should not simply project himself on the man but instead realize that the man might have behaved in a way that they themselves would not. Until that is achieved, men will respond to a very different story than the one told.

    I am 25 years old, and I have had sex with 50 people.

Dunno, why, but I find that really, really amusing. Because, you know, men are filthy animals, right?

I kind of stopped reading at the 50 dudes in 5 years part. She pretty much lost all credibility at that sentence.

This is bad :(