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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

What is the alternative - accept that victims of sexual discrimination and harassment stay silent?

If they don't name names, nothing changes; if they do name names, they're accused of submitting someone to trial-by-Twitter. A catch 22 if I've ever seen one!

As to your "shit like this shouldn't be blogged about" comment, that seriously bothers me. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that victims of sexual discrimination stay silent? Jesus tap-dancing Christ, the Rapture came and somehow I got teleported to the 50s.

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You're presenting a false dichotomy between staying completely silent and putting something on the internet. A victim can limit him/herself to talking to the police, his/her community, HR, the principal, his/her friends, his/her acquaintances, etc. The victim can also blog about it once the accused party is found guilty. Until then, putting something like this in writing is considered "bad" (if it's false), broadly speaking, by society, which is the reason behind libel laws.

> As to your "shit like this shouldn't be blogged about" comment,

He didn't write what you quoted.

> Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that victims of sexual discrimination stay silent?

No, he's not.

> He didn't write what you quoted.

Yes, he did:

"Personally I think shit like this should not be blogged at all but whatever. I am not ready to fight this battle again."

It's in the first damn comment. Read it.

> No, he's not.

He's advocating that they not speak about their experiences in a public forum. That's a type of suggesting that they stay silent.

Even though the false dichotomy has been presented to you you are still sticking with it.

I am advocating that the soldier's story of a grave misstep by a person not be presented one-sided with no opportunity for recourse in a very public manner on a very high-traffic blog.

If the conference organizers issued a response, is there ANY doubt that it will make it to the front page of HN?

I agree that it would likely end up being an endless series of accusations and counter-accusations, but it is not as if an accusation is being made with no chance to respond.

Wrong: if they do name names nothing changes. And I am suggesting that your first thought after being the victim of any crime should not be to broadcast it publicly on your blog. Blogs change things for the worse in a lot of cases and this is one of them. How can you expect an impartial trial when the victim has already laid out the entire crime publicly? This is why some civilized countries have insane legal controls on broadcasting a trial in progress.

Seriously I am not going to fight this battle again only in the end to be accused of being a woman-hater.

> be accused of being a woman-hater

This only seems fair, as your opening salvo began with accusing anyone who disagrees with you a man-hater.

I seriously doubt that a blog post was the "first thought" in any of the many prominent incidents of this nature. It's a very serious, very personal topic, after all; and I've seen no evidence whatsoever that putting it up on the internet for all to see was a 'first thought'.

What you really mean in your suggestion is that these women should never make a blog post.

One compelling reason for publicity is that these problems go beyond individual occurrences and permeate the startup/IT culture. No number of quiet police reports or settled lawsuits will bring about changes to that culture, but a glaring spotlight may have an effect.

It doesn't seem fair. We are intelligent entities who can isolate the different points he makes and decide for ourselves whether they make sense or not.

these problems go beyond individual occurrences and permeate the startup/IT culture

Can you provide some dependable data to support this? My experience is that most IT people are terrified of being considered sexist and would go out of their way to be fair and just to women.

In fact, my experience is that women get much better treatment in IT than men any day. The few cases where this does not happen are exceptions, not the rule, and this shows the anti-male perspective of people like you, who carelessly accuse the entire IT culture of being sexist when the truth is that our culture couldn't be farther from that.

What I walk away from discussions like this with is:

Everybody in IT is like this so my behavior is justifiable.

That's the only explanation that makes sense for the sweeping generalizations of men in computing.

I did not accuse those who disagree with me of misandry. I said the misandry will drown out objective discussion of the topic.

You are kidding yourself if you think blog posts like this change things. As long as men have had penises things like this have happened. It will always happen. Ranting about it on a blog will do nothing except ostracize and jeopardize the life of the accused.

There is nothing special about IT when it comes to gender affairs except a bunch of people who think it is okay to publicly ruin lives and justify it under the guise of "defending a profession from sexual impropriety".

> You are kidding yourself if you think blog posts like this change things. As long as men have had penises things like this have happened. It will always happen.

A response, in several parts:

1) So men are mere unthinking animals, victim to their penis and incapable of higher reason, and thus innocent? Who's the misandrist here, again?

2) Perhaps you also believe that skin-color based slavery is also inevitable, natural and inescapable. After all, it's been happening for all of history!

3) IT (and more so, startups) are significantly and noticeably more sexist than many other professions. Also, it's my profession, and I'd like it to be one I can be proud of.

4) Really? "Jeopardise the life of the accused"? The only death threats I recall from recent situations were made against the woman (accuser).

5) Things have changed. For one, others who have experienced similar harassment have another data point to know that they're not alone. For another, those of us who aren't as tolerant of jackassery as you are have been reminded of how far we have to go.

You're so full of yourself it's amazing.

1) I did not fucking waive blame. I acknowledged that it happens.

2) Sure. Dilute my argument by bringing in slavery. Good call. I am totally on your side now.

3) If you want to believe that. I have not come across a profession yet where this stuff does not happen in spades.

4) By life I meant work opportunities and reputation.

5) Things have not changed. At all.

> You're so full of yourself it's amazing.

Glad to see that you're easily impressed!

WRT, 1 and 2), your statement was that assault and harassment are inevitable and unavoidable aspects of human nature. Funny enough that is the exact same argument, word for word, that was used by those in favour of segregation (and before that, slavery). How am I diluting anything by pointing out the parallels?

Secondly, do you really think I want you on my side? My goal is to communicate exactly how strongly I disagree with you, not for you to be my pal.

Finally: If you truly believe nothing will change, then why are you putting in so much effort to defend the status quo?

Inevitable and unavoidable has nothing to do with innocence. Which again I did not assert for those that do this.

Parking your car in the ghetto with the windows down will inevitably lead to your stereo or car getting stolen. That absolutely does not imply that theft is OK. You want me to be saying that so it is easier to deflect my argument.

As for the slavery you are intentionally bringing in a more hot-button issue to divert attention from the topic at hand. It's called a red herring.

jsprinkles, you are such a despicable human being that I can genuinely say my life was a happier life before I found out that you existed. Good grief you disgust me.

I know this comment is not contributing in any way, and will invariably get downvoted into oblivion given the general misogyny rampant among many of the HN regulars, but I just could not let that go unsaid. THAT’S how much your behavior in this thread has bothered me.

(btw, I'm a white male)

Update (as I cannot reply a level deeper than jsprinkles reply to this, it seems): the “amount” by which my life is a less happy place is about the amount of sound the world’s tiniest violin produces. But the knowledge is there now, and cannot be forgotten.

I'm sorry but I cannot help but be amused that some anonymous opinion on a forum somewhere has made your life a less happy place. My tiniest violin is mourning your loss. I do not mean to be disrespectful but I fail to see how my words can so deeply impact your life.

I beg you to unplug and go find some peace if this discussion has gotten that far under your skin.

What behavior specifically disgusted you? That I preach moderation in times like these instead of rushing to publicly out someone? That I disagree that IT is a completely women-hating industry? That I acknowledge the inevitability of a gender programmed to reproduce to eventually make unwelcome advances on a woman without forgiving it or removing blame?

> You're so full of yourself it's amazing.

The only people who say that are people truly full of themselves. People who aren’t full of themselves would be too disgusted by such a comment to ever make it.

So what's your suggestion, besides suggesting that people simply shut up about it?

I think there's an appreciation to the dangers of a very public airing of dirty laundry - but the alternative (shaming victims into silence) seems far, far worse.

Shaming victims into silence

You really need to calm down and think things through. Just because jsprinkles said that blogging about this accomplishes nothing (and he's absolutely right btw), doesn't mean he's saying that she should stay silent. Since when is blogging/tweeting about this the first line of action?

Go to the police. Period.

P.S. Try not to throw the word 'victim' around. All we have is her word. If the allegations are proven, then yes, she's a victim. Till then, she's a blogger.

IMO, she's a victim if the events happened. It matters little whether they are proven.

And how do you know the events happened? Besides her blog post I mean.

Please keep clear in your mind the context of the discussion.

The question in this particular thread of comments was, what should someone who experiences these events do? There is no particular person whose words can be proven or disproven, just a hypothetical person who ("by construction") is a victim.

You should take your own advice and pay attention.

We're not talking about some hypothetical person. We're talking about this specific person. It's ok for Tammy to refer to herself as a 'victim' since in her mind, it may very well be true. But we can't call her a 'victim' since, in this specific case, we don't know what happened.

Nah, you for some reason thought the other poster was talking specifically about Tammy, but you were mistaken. Look again at how they used the word:

I think there's an appreciation to the dangers of a very public airing of dirty laundry - but the alternative (shaming victims into silence) seems far, far worse.

Do you have a reading disability of some sort? That comment was...you know what, you clearly lack the rudimentary reading comprehension skills required to grasp what's going on here. And my time is far too valuable to waste in giving you a lesson.

So if it helps you sleep better, go right ahead thinking that. I am done with this nonsense :)

There is nothing illegal that's been done (if the blog post is honestly reported). This is a social problem.

How about reporting crimes to the police?

While I agree that "trial by Twitter" (or "trial by blog-wars") is probably one of the worst ways of dealing with sexual assault, there's an awful lot of anecdotal/hearsay "evidence" that reporting it to police is likely to be even less effective and probably more personally invasive.

Seriously. Google some stats about sexual assault case's successfully prosecuted. Read up on research about how few rapes are reported, and notice how often victims suggest the big reasn they don't report rapes is because of the way they expect (rightly or wrongly) to be treated by police and courts.

I can fully understand why women who've been raped refuse to want to go through the standard process of reporting and prosecuting that crime.

I can fully understand why anyone who suffers something short of rape would think it's not worth bothering trying to get the police to do anything about it. Seriously - what sort of reaction do you thing she would have got fronting up to a police station and saying "This guy banned me from a conference because I refused to have sex with him. Please have him charged."

In an ideal world? Yeah, the "police" would fix this. In the real world, not s much...

I've also had to take a friend to the hospital after a rape. I had to listen to her complaints about the invasiveness of the rape kit, and I also had to deal with the subsequent futility of it all.

The way I have decided to deal with this is to choose my friends and associates carefully, based on their code of ethics as determined by their actions over a long period of time.

How about a private service combined with a device to record, encrypt, and upload a "lifestream" style recording? There would be two encryption keys involved, one in possession of the customer and the other in possession of the service provider, who would be under contract to perform their side of the decryption only in certain conditions. This would have saved my friend from rape and also saved me much stress in a situation where I was physically threatened and also in an unpleasant fender bender where the other party lied their ass off.

I think this would be a better deterrent to many crimes than widespread gun carry laws. (Epidemiological studies of gun ownership find it's a net loss due to the higher incidence of deadly violence.)

This, minus escrow requirements, is David Brin's "the watchers" or "transparent society". I'd be really afraid of how the escrow happened, but if I could keep control of recordings, I'd support it.

Of course, one of the main reasons I'd want recordings is so that if I shot someone in self defense, I'd have video supporting that to show to the DA or jury.

The UK has shown that video isn't that great a deterrent of criminal activity. It does make people feel safer, but doesn't actually reduce crime. It is sometimes helpful in prosecutions, but even that isn't a major factor in street environments (in a bank, it's better).

I'm a safe and responsible firearms owner. I'm pretty confident that my firearms ownership, training, and use contributes to my personal safety. I think my safe driving and carrying a cellphone, first aid kit, flashlight, etc. and keeping cases of water and some canned good at home is more of a net win, though.

AFAIK, those cameras are placed in locations, and the street crime just moves elsewhere, while the bank robbery stays at the bank. I'm proposing to place cameras on people. I bet the crime in specific street locations did decrease.

The reason I propose the (private) escrow, is so there could also be an audio recording. (Not compatible with current laws, though.) An audio recording would've been useful in the posted scenario.

To quote eropple elsewhere in this thread:

  There is nothing illegal that's been done (if the blog
  post is honestly reported). This is a social problem.

Now I'm not entirely sure that's true (assuming there were only words involved), but it's definitely murky territory. I can legally tell someone they can only enter my house if they'll sleep with me, but I cannot legally tell someone I will only hire them if they'll sleep with me. Where on the spectrum is gaining entrance to an event organised by a private society?

I think it's more effective to direct efforts towards solving the social problem.

"Seriously I am not going to fight this battle again only in the end to be accused of being a woman-hater."

If you don't want to participate in the discussion, fine. But please don't try to encourage others to do that.

Huh? I am not sure you know how the legal system works but accusations are supposed to be public. Criminal trials in the US and pretty much every free country start with an indictment which is the accusation of the crime the defendant supposedly committed and that is always public.

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