Comment by sinak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sinak | Hacker News Reader

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The article doesn't claim that the harm to women was just from lack of mentorship. It states that Asimov's (repulsive) behavior made the sci-fi community inhospitable for women, particularly given his unique position as an incredibly popular author.

From the article:

> From an early age, Asimov was drawn to the communal aspects of fan culture, but he made it more difficult for women to experience that sense of community. Women have long occupied an ambiguous place in science fiction, where they have been alternately welcomed, dismissed, and harassed. Asimov took advantage of what he called the rising percentage of “shrill young girls” at conventions in the 1960s, and his unique position at such events—he was invariably the center of attention—made his example especially insidious. His admirers looked to him as a model of how to behave, and fandom was complicit for years in his serial misconduct in ways that have never been fully acknowledged.

> Asimov has always meant a lot to me, and the best qualities of his work—his rationality, curiosity, and imagination—changed thousands of lives for the better. Yet the visible edifice of his hundreds of books needs to be balanced against the unseen wall that he built around the heart of science fiction. His actions had a negative impact on an untold number of women [...]

> From an early age, Asimov was drawn to the communal aspects of fan culture, but he made it more difficult for women to experience that sense of community. Women have long occupied an ambiguous place in science fiction, where they have been alternately welcomed, dismissed, and harassed...

There's a common refrain heard recently regarding basically any historically male dominated domain, that women are not welcomed or encouraged. This is unfortunately all-too-common in software engineering. As a male software engineer, I feel as though no-one is welcomed or encouraged. I feel as though women are reacting to industries that have always been harsh and unwelcoming and feeling uniquely victimised.

Even if that were true, crab-in-a-bucket mentality doesn't do anything good.

Don't imply that I have a crab-in-a-bucket mentality. I don't want my industry to be unfriendly and unwelcoming. I didn't tell you how it has affected me personally either.

The main claim in article is the huge amount of women groped including odd example of shaking left breast instead of hand. Which leads to women finding excuses to not be in building when Asimov comes around.

This sort of behavior makes community aspect of it all much different for both genders.

> As a male software engineer, I feel as though no-one is welcomed or encouraged. I feel as though women are reacting to industries that have always been harsh and unwelcoming and feeling uniquely victimised.

Have you ever had someone grab your ass or try to kiss you without consent in a professional context? Ever had a corporate officer seem interested in hiring you, call you in for an interview, ask you on a date, and then decide not to hire you when you rejected them? Ever been told on the first day by a new boss about their open relationship with their spouse, and their search for new sexual partners? Ever had a coworker make an overtly sexist joke about your gender to your face? Ever been propositioned for sex by a stranger at a conference? Ever heard a friend explain that “I would never work for a woman boss. No offense, you’re not like most women.” Ever been denied a new job or a promotion because the decision-maker thought you might have a child within the next few years? Ever been the clear expert or authority in a meeting with multiple people and been repeatedly interrupted by someone asking the clueless novice next to you to explain what you were just trying to say? Ever had a novice badly try to explain the content of your own book to you, even after you mentioned you were the author? Ever gone to speak at an event and had someone ask you which speaker was your spouse? Etc. etc. ad nauseam.

If none of the above, then you probably are misunderstanding what people say when they claim to feel frequently unwelcome.

> Have you ever had someone grab your ass or try to kiss you without consent?

Yes

Someone has grabbed my cock without my consent as well.

> Ever been denied a new job or a promotion because the decision-maker thought you might have a child within the next few years?

Yes

Yes, men are also the victims of sexual harassment, assault and rape. It's surprising that acknowledging this is frequently presented as evidence that women don't have it that bad in this respect.

Imagine how awful that felt and how shitty it was. If it wasn't that bad, imagine having to deal with it frequently.

> Someone has grabbed my cock without my consent as well.

In a professional context? Yeesh. Sorry to hear that (whatever the context). Sexual harassment/assault of anyone anywhere should be unacceptable.

I’m not asking whether this has ever happened to any man ever though. I’m asking if the specific guy claiming that nobody of any description feels welcome in the tech industry (and that women who claim that there is specific gender discrimination are just imagining things) has had any of those kinds of experiences.

As a man, I have had conversations about this topic with various male and female friends in the tech industry over the years, and anecdotally few if any of the men ever experience gender discrimination or sexual harassment in professional contexts while essentially all of the women do at least occasionally (some regularly).

I guess we should not even talk of the ruthless female on female psychological (and even physical!) harassment and violence that happens every day at many working environments.

Nah, let us focus on a caricature of the dominant evil male and let us live in a world of perpetual victimization while spewing lots of ideological Indoctrination.

Let’s be clear:

(1) My impression (as a man myself) is that the vast majority of men in the tech industry are well meaning and respectful. It only takes a few – especially a few in positions of power – to make the whole culture feel unwelcoming.

(2) I have not called anyone “evil” here. Something can be inconsiderate, unprofessional, make someone feel unwelcome, be directly harmful, or have pernicious systemic effects when perpetuated at scale, while still not being profoundly depraved or irredeemably malevolent.

(3) Nobody is defending “ruthless female on female psychological (and even physical!) harassment and violence”.

(4) The problem isn't all men. It's all women have to deal with this shit.

This comment shouldn't be downvoted: It gets at a low level asymetry in the problem. Only some men are actively problematic, but the combination of some problematic men and most non-problematic men tolerating or excusing their behaviour, puts all the women in the group in a position of dealing with the bad behaviour of "the problematic some".

In the past, this meant what's identified in the article: they would avoid the harasser when possible, and the presence of harrassers like Asimov was a deterrent to participation. Also, as with Harvey Weinstein, Jian Ghomeshi and others, there was a whisper network around him to ensure that women were warned of his behaviour. Male scifi writers would happily spend an evening drinking with him at a convention, unaware of any risk; females kept their distance as much as professionally possible.

Asimov knew, and was proud of, his status as "lech" (his word); I wonder if he was aware of the extent to which women tried to keep their distance from him.

This is a common theme that recurs amongst various forms of oppression: the oppressor's group doesn't have to think about the problem (this is a big part of privilege, btw), while the oppressed are forced to be aware of it and at least prepared to deal with it constantly.

Why would you not talk about that? Do you think one form of harassment somehow cancels out another form of harassment?

This is perhaps a good read to understand why your claim 100% not the case: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...

Ten years ago, previous place of employment, we had a guy leave the team. The idea was to replace and recruit internally. There was this young woman, junior consultant in a different team, early 20s, that had caught my attention due to her drive and general fearlessness.

Upon strongly suggesting hiring her my then manager replied: “but she’s a girl!”.

Granted, he was almost 60 at the time (different generation and times) but my jaw dropped... This guy who I really appreciated as a manager could have such views? I had no idea up to that point.

I’ve never personally known this happen to a “boy” in our industry.

Yea, it's always someone else's fault.

Too bad they couldn't cruise through life with the social status of science fiction/fantasy nerd. Doors threw themselves open.

We need some real social scientists to step in and quantify exactly how wronged everyone has been. Then we can sort ourselves out and defer to those who have scored more offense points than ourselves.

Or we could stop prosecuting 40+ year old rage on behalf of other people.

And assaulting women at conventions is cool and normal because it’s what Asimov did, right?

Yes.

Young men emulate high status older men, that is what I have seen.

Or we could learn from the past, like human beings have before. By acknowledging past mistakes and reassessing behaviours so we don’t repeat them. It’s called progress not rage. If anything, the tone I got from the author (and which I get reading it, as a fan who didn’t know this about Asimov), was one of profound sadness.

One of the reasons for calling out Asimov like this is to establish that the norms that allowed him to get away with his behaviour are no longer acceptable, and to prevent this generation from pointing to them as models or excuses. There's a thoroughly practical reason for disinterring the greats like this.

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