This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup | Hacker News Reader

This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup

ariannasimpson.com

165 pointsfrankdenbow286 comments

> In my mind, it’s a little preposterous that if I want to do so, however, I have to be ok with being felt up and indirectly insulted.

To the author: You're right, it's unacceptable but you know how to fix it? You say something at the point in which it occurs. Nip it in the bud. Running off to write yet another gender-division-in-the-tech-world blog which will be read, primarily, by the sort of folk who already agree with you isn't going to make nearly as much of a difference as taking care of issues promptly. After doing so, blog about what happened and the resulting reaction. That's the sort of story that'll spread like wildfire.

Someone with such a messed up perception of personal boundaries and acceptable behavior that they would FEEL UP SOMEONE IN PUBLIC is not necessarily going to stop just because you tell them. They might get more aggressive.

Perhaps this is where self-defense comes into play?

If your options are 1) say something and make the aggressor more aggressive, or 2) distance yourself and hope they don't press the situation further, at some point you should have a backup plan.

So, the woman is dumb for leaving the home without having a plan to deal with people who physically assualt her in a public space?

Is that what you're saying?

I don't think I actually said that, so I'm not sure where the hostility comes from, but... maybe?

Sure, she shouldn't have to be competent at self-defense just to leave the house and meet-up with some fellow Bitcoiners (or any other hobbyists), but I think that if you don't have some sort of backup plan, you're basically at the will of whatever you meet along the way.

It seems that you disagree. Care to talk about it (civilly)?

Other people came to a similar conusion to me. So, being charitable, your post wasn't as clear as it could be. That's me being civil. If you agree that I misread your post you can stop reading here because the rest of this post is less civil and not relevant.

On the other hand maybe you really do think that women should learn self defence or somesuch because they could be the victims of violent crime.

Except this wasn't some mugger trying to rob her. The appropriate response is not to say "that sucks, but it would have sucked less if you learnt self defence". The appropriate response is to say "that sucked, and it sucked that noone steps up to tell him he was wrong".

People blame the victims of crime all the time and it fucking sucks.

"Contributory Negligence" (Attila the Stockbroker) was written in 1985. It's baffling why people still think that when a woman is groped in public it's somehow up to her to have a backup plan, with everyone else there getting a pass to just ignore it.

The really fucking baffling thing is that these abhorant views ("she deserved it") aren't going away.

http://www.newstatesman.com/glosswitch/2013/09/there-no-grea...

Well, people love a good disagreement, don't they?

Do I think that people should learn self-defense because they could be victims of violent crime? That's one reason to do so, yes. As women tend to be a particularly vulnerable subset of "people", this applies to them in particular.

What does it matter if this scenario was not that of a particular type of violent crime? I don't see where you're going with the mugging comparison. Violent crime is violent crime.

That I didn't immediately chastise the aggressor doesn't mean that I don't blame the aggressor, but the fact is (and I've said this in another comment) if you cannot defend yourself, you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control. This is not a life philosophy or a political position, but a piece of advice based on fact of reality. Call it "victim blaming" if you want to (and I know that you do), I call it living in the real world.

If I'm caught in a mugging, it isn't necessarily my fault (even if I could have taken steps to prevent such a situation) and I probably didn't choose to get mugged, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have some sort of self-defense plan in-place to mitigate risk.

This isn't about right and wrong. This is about surviving in a world that many of us forget is still very often hostile to our existence.

Some people, and I'm obviously one of them, think that a flag is raised when someone mentions things like self defence or other victim behaviours before condemning the attacker.

Whether you like that or not you need to be aware of it because you will meet people who are very much less civil than I am if you discuss this.

You don't need to warn me that people can be unkind when they get riled up in argumentation. I'm well aware of that (and in fact you've already demonstrated it).

And frankly, I don't really care if you think there is something wrong with me because I've focused on precaution and mitigation strategies on the part of the victim. I see no purpose in condemnation here. I'd rather focus on giving advice to the (hopefully) more rational of the parties involved in the situation.

Why is that women have to prepare themselves to deal with aggressive behavior and/or pretend nothing happened and hope someone doesn't violate their personal space again? That squarely puts the blame on women for the harassing behavior of others and makes it their problem, when the reality is that the problem is with the harasser and people need to speak up.

You're reading too much into what I'm saying.

I didn't say that this is the woman's fault. I didn't say that the man is blameless. I said that if you cannot defend yourself, you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Period. This isn't a life philosophy or a political position, this is a fact of reality.

In an ideal world, she wouldn't have to worry about defending herself, but we aren't living in CandyLand. If you cannot rely on yourself, who can you rely on?

She shouldn't need self-defense.

I'm a male, pretty scrawny, middle aged. But if I'm in a group of men, and a female comes by, and one of the men is groping her, and she tells him to back off, and he won't, I'm going to get in his grill. (Think of it as self-policing for the male community.) I strongly suspect that I won't be alone, but if I am, I'll do it alone.

My mother got a master's degree in math in the 1950s. She had to put up with a professor telling her that women don't belong in math. No woman should have to put up with that crap in 2014.

>She shouldn't need self-defense

I agree that she shouldn't have to worry about this sort of situation, but that doesn't mean that she doesn't need to worry about it.

They 'might' do just about anything if you tell them to stop. (including stop)

The point is if you don't try, they have already shown what they plan to do. And in a group of people with two people you know some of the risk is mitigated.

Now I think she handled a bad situation quite politely, and she has no obligation to put effort into making that particular situation better.

However I believe that in making the blog post she is showing herself to be a person who both wants to and is brave enough to make the situation better. But as mentioned by the gp the people who read these types of blog posts are largely the type of people who believe we should treat everyone like a person. As such helping out further by informing the person or group of people of their unwelcome and in this case inappropriate behavior could further that goal of improving the situation for everyone.

Edit: I am a privileged white male who realizes I might have huge misconceptions about what it is exactly like to live as one who is treated with less privilege, so would welcome criticism of my view point. So if my above comment smacks of 'of course you think that you've never had to deal with....' I would like to know.

Unfortunately many women simply don't feel safe enough to fight back and instead will remove themselves from a situation like that. If the space itself feels unsafe (instead of it just being a 'bad person in a good place' situation), that's going to make it seem like a much better idea to leave.

After all, it's not as if these are unusual occurrences. They're all too common.

This whole HN thread has been a huge volley of victim blaming. It's quite disappointing but not at all surprising.

Last year, I was on a train back to visit my parents place—a little village in quiet commuter-land suburbia. It was late. I had drunk a small amount before getting on the train but wasn't drunk.

A tall drunk man started shouting at me about how he wanted me to suck his dick. I obviously didn't do a good enough impression of a disgusted homophobe by shouting "eww, no". He twigged that I was actually gay and started shouting abuse at me.

He was there with a friend who was leering and laughing along. There were no third parties in the nearby vicinity. So, what did I do? I let the abuse continue and didn't put up a fight. I was surprised this was happening - these were grown men, this was a train line going mostly out to quiet middle-class suburbia. There were two of them and one of me—they were bigger and stronger while I have the body of a lifelong sedentary computer programmer; if there were a physical altercation, I'd come out worse for it. I don't want to end up in the emergency room.

Should I have stood up to them and told them to stop? To give as good as I get? Yes. It might stop them next time. I certainly want to make the situation better. But in the moment when you are being picked on and attacked, the calculation you make isn't the same calculation you'd make after the event. The flipside is I have seen other examples of homophobic abuse of others and been ready and prepared to step in (hasn't been needed).

There's a sort of frozen moment of panic when you are abused. I've had friends who have had very bad sexist abuse who have said the same thing. I have one friend who is trans and a sexual abuse survivior who goes through far more abuse and manage to stand up to it and live their life. I have great admiration for them, but I don't think it is anyone's job to go around policing the reactions of victims when faced with discrimination and abuse.

Easier said than done. I've been "out" for years and despite being opinionated and a "proud" person, I still find it extremely hard to put my neck out there and call others out (and interesting, it's much easier for me to stand up for female friends than it is to stand up for myself or other LGBT-specifically related issues).

It's hard enough to do, at all, to confront someone. But it's another thing when you've just been thrown completely off-kilter by having a stranger inappropriately groping you in public (Plus, you think he's going to have a positive reaction to her chiding him? Somehow I doubt it.). I'll give her a pass on not reprimanding him. (Plus, your post has the distinct scent of victim blaming)

Of course the asshole wouldn't have a positive reaction. That's precisely the point: Make it known how inappropriate and unacceptable their actions were. Make them uncomfortable.

Victim blaming? Dare I even respond to that? That would imply I'm somehow suggesting the author was at fault or responsible for the action occurring, or that it was somehow acceptable because she didn't react then on the spot. Not in the slightest.

Sorry, but victim blaming is exactly how your original post came across. You might not have meant it that way, but that to me is how it read.

This is a great point, but it's hard to be confrontational in a place where you're already worried about your social standing. I agree that things would change faster if people were more confrontational but it's kind of a lot to ask. Posting a blog post about it (and one that's well-written, with good examples and explanation) is also a great step forward, and requires substantial courage on its own.

I'm really turned off by these posts, too. I roll my eyes and mutter "Christ, not another one". But I'm a male who doesn't have to worry about being groped and I keep my hands to myself.

But let me guess how the reality turns out for her:

- She says something about it.

- The guy who is misbehaving is probably physically bigger than her. She may feel fearful of speaking up.

- She speaks up and gets called a "prude" or, ironically, a "slut". Maybe they'll blame it on her sweater being a little too form-fitting, or a little too low-cut.

Then, she follows your advice and posts what happened and the resulting action which results in even more criticism, death and rape threats than the course she actually took here.

If you have a young daughter, these are the kinds of issues she'll have to deal with some day. Might as well think about this now.

disclaimer: I'm on her side.

I've never really understood the potential-physical-confrontation argument. It must be a very, very small minority of men who's first reaction to being embarrassed and shamed by a woman is to physically assault her in public?

I am not a woman. I am a large, muscular male who doesn't get bothered by anyone.

But it doesn't have to lead to actual physical assault to be uncomfortable or cause negative lasting effects in one's life. The intimidation, the mental abuse aspect of it is enough. If you've been mugged without being shot, it might make a little more sense to you.

And really, he put his hands on her inappropriately, so he's already committed physical assault -- not to get all bleeding-heart emo feminist or anything. But that just ain't right.

Funny how far removed real problems are from our society.

"The intimidation, the mental abuse aspect of it is enough."

versus

Collecting wood in a forest 40km away so you can stoke a fire and your family can eat.

Tell the guy to get his hands off you, grab a seat, introduce yourself. Everyone needs an emotional baby sitter and therapist nowadays.

As I'm reading, all I can think "Are you even remotely serious? We now can't have a discussion about gender without rfnslyr derailing the conversation, this time because he wants to harken back to early pioneer days?"

Your trollish derailment of gender threads on HN is rather telling. Or do you have any point related to how this woman was groped without her consent, repeatedly?

Yeah actually I do. I have a huge problem with it. I have a huge problem with: some douchebag acted less than human towards me -> this is how it is like to be a woman in the tech industry.

Next time somebody gives me an off handed remark about something, I'm going to generalize as well and cry wolf online.

It's blowing up a problem that isn't a problem at all, way out of proportion.

I get groped at bars all the time by women, I don't make a whiny blog post about it. Kind of funny she made the post and claimed to "have a thick skin".

She clearly suffered a fair amount of emotional trauma from this rather mild leg grabbing. Did she do something about it? Of course she didn't.

Women in the tech industry is the next phase of Shakespearean drama.

Every time some retarded bullshit gender article meanders across my front page on HN, I'll shit post it. Why? Because HN is not your personal feminist platform. Flood twitter with your personal garbage.

It's very amusing and ironic to me that you are completely projecting the air of "generalization". I didn't see the author anywhere saying "All bitcoin users are like this" and in fact, you'll find me chiding someone else, here, for saying that.

You just want to reduce this to something that you can dismiss and ignore, because it's complicated and you can't hold your own when it comes to the details. And, in this case, you're just putting words in the author's mouth in order to invent a way to demean and dismiss her. Classy.

>Did she do something about it? Of course she didn't.

I don't even know what "Of course" is supposed to mean there, but I'm pretty sure it says something not-so-great about your default position and open-mindedness on this issue.

edit: Can't keep up with your edits (it's okay, I do it too)

>Kind of funny she made the post and claimed to "have a thick skin".

And again, you'll note that this is very much a recount of what happened. In fact, she explicitly said she doesn't think she was violated (and I disagree with her, but that's her prerogative).

The fact that this article even exists means she didn't do anything about it. It's not a helpless matter at all, but she's acting as if this is such a big event it warranted a whole essay on the matter. Like she just couldn't WAIT to leave the male stronghold of this meetup to seek emotional counselling online.

I am very open minded to problems that matter. There is no problem here. She ran into a super duper asshole, didn't outline her boundaries immediately, and instead is further polluting the tech industry with this gender nonsense. Next time some random grabs me by the shoulder that I don't know, I'm going to write an essay on it as well.

Did she get fired from a company because the CEO hates women? No.

Did she get physically assaulted or raped because she's a woman? No.

Is her pay significantly lowered simply due to the fact that she is a woman? No.

Did any significant change occur in her life from this encounter with this ONE douchebag? No.

Those are real problems which beg real discussion. This is an emotionally unstable girl who feels the world revolves around her and her gender. I know the type.

So why do I care? Why is it only women who blog about this emotional hot air?

It creates a false view of the field for other women, and when they go into it after reading crap like this, they assume this is what it's like.

> She ran into a super duper asshole

Well not just that. If anyone at the meeting made it clear that the comments that were happening were not appropriate or welcome either I missed it in the article. It most people this creates the perception that it is acceptable behavior according to group standards. I would bet this perception of group standards is studied phenomena that is the default perception by the majority of people. So it seems reasonable that most people would get uncomfortable by the situation.

Right, this is like responding "first world problems" to anything and everything. Great, so basically anything except food and shelter is meaningless. What would you like to discuss now?

Not many people could cut it through pioneer life [1], either. So, I don't get your point at all.

1. Lived in the woods by myself for an extended period. Fun looking back on it now, but was not fun at the time.

This from the guy who lived in his mom's basement learning to code[1] and whose "goal in life" is to get rich in an acquihire[2]. I have some pretty legitimate doubts that you know the slightest thing about either primitive lifestyles and their hardships, or modern lifestyles and their hardships.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7112803 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7052008

At the risk of being down voted, I wish I could upvote the comment above more. :)

Yeah, but he was right about one bit: "Tell the guy to get his hands off you, grab a seat, introduce yourself."

Then again, what kind of person gropes a stranger, in public, in front of a bunch of people who are sure to see and know who you are?

You really can't put anything past someone who has absolutely no restraint or regard for people.

I would agree that the men who would hit a woman would almost exclusively fall in to the group who would grope them and say inappropriate things to them. However, I know way more otherwise well-socially-adjusted men who would make sexist comments but would never hit a woman.

Yeah, let's just get it over with and say he basically raped her. Let's increase the counter for "women get raped in public all the time" up by one. After all, even if he didn't rape her, the psychological damage was the same, so it counts. Also, let's put that guy in jail for rape.

No. Let's keep words meaning what they mean.

But we can say this guy violated her space and insulted her dignity and acted in a way that would make most people cringe if not shun the guy.

I wouldn't trust him after seeing him display that behavior. Would you?

"I wouldn't trust him after seeing him display that behavior. Would you?"

Of course I wouldn't. Neither would most people in the Bitcoin community. Nevertheless, now we have "this is how women are being treated at Bitcoin meetups".

Btw not only would I not trust him, I also wouldn't like him.

In that case, your comment is misplaced.

I don't think this guy represents any group of people either.

I was commenting on why the woman might be justified in worrying about a physical attack if she embarrassed the creep because he obviously doesn't have much in the way of boundaries.

Sorry, I probably really misread you. I also read the article again and personally I don't think the situation sounds that threatening - there were a whole bunch of people there, including a good male friend.

Nevertheless, "she could have said something" is of course not an excuse for rude behavior. I wouldn't want to excuse his behavior. As I said, if I knew him, I probably wouldn't like him much and certainly wouldn't encourage him to attend further meetups.

Ok. I am a big, intimidating looking guy (or so I've been told). Next time I see you, how about I just go ahead and put my hand on your waist, lead you to a chair, sit you down next to me than put my hand on your leg while saying shitty things about whatever group you might identify.

Then we'll see how you feel about the situation.

Could you even imagine such a thing?

I've seen a one guy sucker punch another over a woman, dropped him straight to the floor. All three were total strangers to each other, also everyone was probably drunk though. I agree that it is unlikely, but it isn't beyond the realm of possibility... also to assess the violence situation you have to factor in the crowd. If you're going to potentially start shit it matters if you happen to be surrounded by his friends.

Anyway, although I agree with treating unwanted advances with reciprocal escalating naked hostility, the meetup organizer is really the only one with the power/knowledge to enforce standards of behaviour.

And unfortunately, the organizer himself was completely retarded about the idea that a woman would be involved in Bitcoin.

Well, how about this analogy--you see a really beautiful girl and you try to hit on her. You're not afraid she'll throw her drink in your face, because most beautiful girls would never do such a thing, but wow, she's really drop-dead gorgeous and you don't know how to handle yourself and you find yourself getting really, really tongue-tied.

It's like that for women confronting large men, except without the happy butterflies in your stomach.

The difference is bautiful women crush me all the time, so there's strong precedence ;)

I think the problem with that analogy is the standard advice for men in that situation is to grow up and get over it.

Of course no analogy is perfect. The point of the analogy was to illustrate that even without someone actively trying to beat you up, acting normal can be difficult. That is the only aspect which I think those two situations share.

The actual threat is irrelevant. There is a physical power asymmetry, which can be intimidating.

Of course, by simple statistics, it is men that need to be afraid of being physically assaulted.

Well he damn near sexually assaulted her in public. Once he rested his hand on on her leg like she was his girlfriend, she had every right to be weary of this guy.

In a situation like that, we're not talking about cold, rational threat assessment. You're dealing with instinctive assessments of, as another commenter said, power balance, from a part of your brain that's a) very concerned with physical survival and also b) attuned to the support of other people around. And if the guy got away with putting his hand on her leg in public, so reasons the lower brain, who knows what else he can get away with?

Disclaimer: I'm a man so I've never dealt with that exact situation, but I've observed the above thought processes in awkward situations, and I would assume it's amplified in the described situation.

Spot on response. It's pretty absurd the number of people whose knee jerk reaction is some variant on "deal with it the way a man would". That line of thinking is so screwed up on so many levels to be absurd.

I have two daughters and I would tell them to say forcefully "Get your hand off my waist/leg" so everyone can hear it, and then physically remove his hand from her body. Then it's her option whether or not to make it a police matter or stay at the event and blow it off, depending on how she felt about it.

It's not just about having a young daughter. People need to teach their sons that they shouldn't be putting their hands on women's waists and legs. That is the other reason to write blog posts on this--to make men aware that they shouldn't be doing things like this.

I'm pretty sure everyone younger than 30 is well aware that such things aren't acceptable. In case you haven't noticed almost all cases are by people in their 50s or older who grew up in a different period and have different norms for social interaction.

At least that is certainly the case where I grew up. You keep your hands to yourself (and typically leave it to women to initiate things since doing otherwise will often result in issues).

> I'm pretty sure everyone younger than 30 is well aware that such things aren't acceptable

This is a severely optimistic take. There is a generational aspect but the main problem is lack of respect and empathy and those follow no generational boundary.

I would identify lack of respect and empathy as the primary source of the problem, rather than lack of education. The issue is less "some people under 30 do not know that treating others that way is not acceptable" and more "some people under 30 _do not care_ that treating others that way is not acceptable"

I mean, technically I suppose the empathy and respect may be something that you can teach, and if those are lacking then education aimed at raising empathy and respect needs improvement. However I think we are dealing with an issue that will be more difficult to resolve than just adding this material to high-school curriculum. Teaching empathy and respect is much trickier. (And with some people, it may be flat out biologically impossible (though google seems to be suggesting to me that researchers believe that psychopaths can choose whether or not they feel empathy, which is better than I suspected.))

I think we need cultural changes: teaching that is hard enough but almost impossible when some people provide an excuse shield anytime someone is called out on boorish behavior. This can't be an only in school kind of message - you have to see it actually practiced on a broad scale.

I really hope it is true that it's just a generational thing.

http://www.newstatesman.com/glosswitch/2013/09/there-no-grea...

This article says that research shows young people having weird attitudes about rape.

Maybe there are problems with the research; maybe the results would be very different if people were asked about the situation in the article.

But to just say "this is a problem with older people" feels sub-optimal.

From my observation, most parents teach their sons some euphemism-laden variation of the idea that they shouldn't make unwanted sexual advances—that they should be respectful to women, "treat a lady right" etc.

Even if they didn't it would be irrelevant: when it comes to sex, teenagers and young adults are much more influenced by their friends and by culture at large. A music video has much more influence than mom being bossy again.

Entirely speculating, but I think that's because a lot of parents avoid the Sex Talk until it's way too late. I think that if parents instill this kind of respect for consent at a much younger age, it will stick in the face of their children's peers' confused notions about what is and isn't okay.

But, again, I'm just speculating.

She speaks up and gets called a "prude"

I do wonder about this sometimes. Like, when have I ever cared what the guy who hit me with his car thinks of me? When have I ever cared what the guy who stole my MP3 player thought of me?

I know "stop caring" isn't useful advice, but I wonder sometimes why any woman would care what an assaulter has to say in the first place.

I think the concern is more with what people in the immediate area (who may not have particularly been paying much attention) think. There is also the concern of escalating the situation beyond your control (fear that they might react violently).

Maybe the analogous situation is if you got mildly rear-ended, damaged cars but no injuries. Do you loudly call out the other driver and accuse them of negligence/recklessness, or do you calmly exchange information, file a police report, then let the situation be addressed when you are back home?

It's not really a good comparison, but I think it at least makes a little sense that you wouldn't try to call out the other driver on the side of the road after the accident (at least not without police present).

She specifically mentioned looking at this as a professional opportunity: beyond the immediate concern of possible retaliation by the attacker there's the concern for what other people might think. His friends might defend him and uninvolved people would remember her for the incident rather than as a professional and potential business partner.

Note that all of the property crimes you mentioned are different in one key way: a large subset of society doesn't initially try to blame the victim when it happen. Nobody is racing to explain that your car was asking for it or that you must not have taken enough steps to make your MP3 player unappealing, all of which are depressingly routine for victims of sexual assault.

Here's an informative post from reddit which covers some of the issues of why women might not speak up and not resist crass advances: http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1u9994/startin...

Unusually the writer of that comment has received 12 separate gifts of reddit gold subscription (from 12 separate people) -- reddit's social tipping system (they're $4 or so each).

> The guy who is misbehaving is probably physically bigger than her. She may feel fearful of speaking up.

She was there with a friend, and two have an advantage over one in a physical confrontation.

I don't know. Doing that would probably, consciously or not, forever put the author down in the other attendees' "difficult to deal with; better to stay clear of in the future" list. On the other hand, chances are the social repercussions the groper will suffer for his actions will be minimal regardless of whether he is called out or not.

There is a lot the unmentioned presumable majority of perfectly reasonable guys at that meeting could have done to make the few bad apples feel excluded and uncomfortable in a way which would far surpass any explicit callout by anyone in its effectivity, but unfortunately, in practice, most people are very reluctant to use social signalling in any rational or deliberate way.

I hope we're intelligent enough to differentiate between "unwelcome physical groping" and "overheard some guys make private a joke about 'dongles' and overreacted" but you do bring up a valid point certainly.

I guess I just get tired of people in general who complain about things and never take action to remedy it, then go back and garner support by preaching to the choir. I'm absolutely aghast that it happened to her but I just wish people would start being as vocal in person as they can be on their blogs.

Yes, the "dongles" story is not really comparable to this and I don't see any agenda I would consider desirable being served by conflating the two. While the old "would you find this okay if the genders were reversed" benchmark seems insufficient to me, a stronger version along the lines of "would you find this okay for every possible assignment of genders to the people involved" both clearly distinguishes the two and preempts the "I'm sure every man would be happy to be groped by random women!" defense one hears all too often in the case of situations such as this one.

I think you are not acknowledging the difficulty of calling someone out on the spot. It is awkward, and puts a complete stop to the actual, desired activity. It also puts the victim through two unwanted situations.

As others have also said, people in such situations are sometimes so surprised by the infraction that they are stunned, and at a loss for how to react. It may take them time after the event to process what happened and determine how they feel.

The reason that others in the thread have brought up blaming the victim is that you have not acknowledged these aspects of the situation.

What exactly do you want her to say? "Hi, stop being a dick, because this kind of behavior is a serious turn off to women who want to be involved in tech?" That's obviously not going to fly.

So what about, "Hi, could you not awkwardly hug me?" What people say in response to that is, "Why are you being mean to me? I was just trying to be friendly." It's extremely hard to say something in the moment without getting stereotyped as a frigid bitch.

Not a woman, but perhaps something like "This is much too forward of you", in a disapproving tone. Nothing makes me quickly reconsider my actions like this words, even if it turns out she was kidding.

It provides the suggestion that if he proceeded differently, there might be a chance, but if he continues this way there is not. That suggestion might be enough to restore at least a semblance of normal interaction?

At the hug, she says "Sorry, we've only just met." And removes herself from it if it lingers. If he makes a joke about getting to know her, she says "That's a bit creepy, aren't we here to talk Bitcoin?" And moves on.

At the hand on the thigh, remove it firmly, say with some volume "Please don't put your hand on my leg, it's inappropriate." Then stand up to move seats. If there are no seats, ask "Can someone spare some room down this (other) end of the table?"

As a woman, what I hate is when I'm trying to be nice and proper and educational about telling people to back off and they use that as a springboard to go all "who, me?" or maybe "oh, okay" and then assume I'm a frigid bitch anyway instead of recognizing that they're the ones making a big mistake.

So nowadays I am of the shove the offending body part off and "get your hands off me" mindset because it doesn't really matter. I don't need to be nice about someone invading my personal space especially if I'm going to be known as a frigid bitch anyway. It's also not my problem to educate that person on basic human interaction no matter who they are and no, I refuse to accept stereotypes as an excuse for what they did. (I would expect no less if I were doing the same to someone else - minus the frigid bitch part.)

Regardless, the other problem with confronting something as it happens - that a lot of people here right now don't seem to recognize - is that sometimes you don't even fully realize what's going on until after it's happened or started. Either you're in shock, or you're not noticing how fast something escalated. You also might have no idea what to do because you're worried about the consequences (which range from physical force to losing your job and death threats and "frigid bitch" namecalling). It's not easy. I only wish it were, and I speak from a rather privileged perspective where I work for myself, don't care about what people say about me most of the time, and have a big, tall, hairy fiancé and a big, tall, intimidating roommate to back me up.

I don't need to be nice about someone invading my personal space

Yes, I agree. But of course not every woman is willing to be outright confrontational and thus resort to "grin-and-bear-it", which is why I was thinking about other possible avenues based on my experiences receiving blowback.

I realize it's a different story actually there in the moment than it is for me, an armchair warrior, but the only ways I know of to get around that are 1) making choices to avoid the situation (which never go over well in discussion) and 2) behavioral changes. I avoid #1, and #2 is not an issue with anyone I have any influence over; everyone I know would immediately ostracize that person if word ever got out. So all I've got left to discuss is possible reactions. :/

> But of course not every woman is willing to be outright confrontational

True, but men are generally outright confrontational and when dealing with men, speaking their language is likely to lead to them understanding in the moment what just happened.

You are not wrong, but that is not a practical solution if a given women cannot bring herself to implement it.

Understandable, but meek people get walked on; that's simply how the world works. How it out to work really doesn't matter, practically speaking you must play the cards you're dealt. If a guy hits on a women and she doesn’t like it, she needs to end it somehow, either by leaving, or by confronting.

meek people get walked on; that's simply how the world works

I agree, and so my personal advice to individuals is to not be meek.

But one of the points of civilized society is to defend the meek.

So, the two messages (stop being meek for your own sake; we need to defend the meek) are not incompatible.

I don't think they're incompatible at all. Had I been there an seen it, I'd have defender her, but when there's no one there to do so, the meek must step up or get walked on. The world isn't as it out to be. There's always the leave option, or simply move away from that person.

I think the best way to do it is to ask organizers to set up codes of conduct for larger or regular events, and for smaller events to just outright be like "what do you think you're doing? that's not appropriate" if "fuck off" is too harsh. If a person is worried about how to confront someone at all, s/he could ask for help from others at any point (even the much-maligned Ada Initiative) and confront the person on terms s/he is comfortable with (like later in an email). I mean, even a little "excuse me" and taking their hands off you is something and hopefully everyone else understands what's going on and discourages any negative reactions to that. I'm just going all out because I used to grin and bear it when I was younger and now I know better, I'm tired of this bullshit, and I don't care about making someone a public example. And I speak as an introverted little aspie geek just like the stereotype. Fuck everyone that thinks that's a good excuse.

On a sidenote, I was much younger. I went to college and started to go to tech conferences and events at 15. You will not believe how many men, including married men and men old enough to be my father, would hit on me and worse. One of my pipe dreams is wishing I could tell them that they tried to grope a 15 year old. Alas it was almost a decade ago and I can't do anything about it now (except making sure that everyone has resources to discourage that behavior).

> So nowadays I am of the shove the offending body part off and "get your hands off me" mindset because it doesn't really matter.

Awesome, as a guy, that's what I think women should do.

Okay, so that's what women should do, then what should men do?

Obviously, not be total jerks like that guy and grope women you don't know. I'm not blaming her at all, don't mean to imply that. He was in the wrong.

Sure, I didn't think you were blaming her, but I do think the issues go deeper.

Think about it from the perspective of the groper. He perhaps doesn't understand why the action was uncalled for, in his mind he was just being 'friendly' or 'flirty', a little forward but nothing more. How is there this disconnect between these mostly harmless intentions and the inappropriate actions that followed? Certainly a level of ignorance and/or lack of emotional intelligence is at play. So as men, what can we do to help change this?

I'm privileged. I also have a black belt in taekwondo, studied other martial arts/self defense techniques, and I'm big and fat and subjectively beautiful with a couple thousand Twitter followers ;) I'm part of a bunch of women/diversity-focused communities I can turn to for help too. (Double Union, devchix, Tech LadyMafia, etc. if anyone was curious.)

There will be women that can't do what I'm willing to do for a lot of reasons. People, even. There are people still having problems with what they've done in the past to discourage bad behavior even though they were the victims. There will never be a shortage of that, ever.

So whatever you think someone else should do, don't forget you can help too. Discourage this behavior in everyone, support codes of conduct or implement them in your own groups, and follow said codes of conduct. The community will become a better place for it, not just for women but for everyone in general, and you can't go wrong with that.

Of course, had I seen such behavior I'd have told the jerk to back off myself and pointed out that she's clearly uncomfortable with your inappropriate behavior. It's a bitcoin meetup, not a singles bar.

assume I'm a frigid bitch anyway instead of recognizing that they're the ones making a big mistake

I know I already replied to you, but I had one more thought- your frustration is not with assholes & sexual assaulters, your frustration here is really with humans in general :) This is a classic, classic human trait that shows up in just about every type interaction.

I have the personal space problem no matter where I go and the "frigid bitch" thing for even the slightest offense is common, so yeah it is definitely a human problem. It just seems that in the tech community there are people more eager to jump to namecalling/victim blaming/harassment or defending what happened. (Scroll down for some great examples, if they haven't been deleted yet!)

There are good people for sure here, I'm getting married to one in two months. The rotten apples are just more vocal and this is a community I'm trying to care about improving.

the "frigid bitch" thing for even the slightest offense is common

You must meet a lot of real assholes :( Again, not a woman, but I've literally never heard a man speak those words, at least that I recall.

Edit: I may have heard it spoken before in the context of ex-wives

So I say "frigid bitch" but it's not always spoken or spoken in those exact words. Everything from just plain "bitch" to calling me a whore, a slut, a cunt, or insulting the way I look and my mother and my mother's mother. Sometimes it might be justified, more often it's not.

It was worst with dating and relationships, where on okcupid and fetlife and other such communities some guy would message me saying I'm hot etc. and sometimes go into some disgusting and inappropriate fantasy about sleeping with two women because I say I'm bisexual, and then call me a ugly whore because I rejected him with a "sorry we're not really a match" ...because it's true. This happened with surprising frequency. I eventually made my profile visible to other women only, and then I gave up altogether soon after that.

I would also try to go to events with friends because just that one act tends to make creeps think twice, often because they believe you're "just" a girlfriend/wife (another terrible stereotype). In addition, I had a couple fake wedding rings for going out at night in general. Now I have a real ring and it's funny how the new assumptions are now sticking around for good. And I still only go out to events with my fiancé or limit myself to events run by women-focused or women-only groups. Being in SF this is easy, not so much in LA where I used to live and elsewhere. Also, I make a point of not giving this advice out to anyone because it smells a lot like the "don't wear revealing clothes/don't walk alone at night or else you might be raped" victim blaming so take it with a grain of salt ;) But a lot of women do this in general. It's kind of sad but it's life. It's also one of many reasons why tech sucks balls for women to be in.

I'm pretty sure for every asshole of a guy I encountered there were others and especially other women in his life that would speak well of him. I'm convinced most people that cause problems just need a small reminder to not be creeps. Unfortunately the internet and pseudonymity makes that hard, and makes it easy for real, persistent assholes to perpetuate their bullshit.

This has happened to me. What I got back was a hurt look with, "I'm just trying to be friendly!" Honestly, what do you say to that? Some guys have a magic talent for turning it around and turning you into a villain for daring to assert your boundaries.

I'd think the appropriate response to being groped is to shove the guy out of your personal space and say get your hands off me jerk. His response is irrelevant, groping is not just being friendly.

However, admittedly, as a guy maybe I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

The problem is that she wants to be there, wants to meet all these people, wants to be accepted as a fellow bitcoin enthusiast, wants to make a good impression, wants to maybe make some friends, or maybe just some connections.

It's hard to do any of that when 5 minutes in, you're shoving somebody and chastising them publicly.

The groper is not going to react well to that. They're not going to think they did anything wrong (if they did, they wouldn't have done it in the first place). So they'll see her as the aggressor and complain loudly.

No one should care how the groper responds, after they hear "stop groping me jerk" he's going to be the one shunned, not her. Assholes never think they're wrong; you shouldn't care what they think. It's not at all hard to do any of that if it's clear to people around you who the asshole was.

I keep seeing people talk about how the groper is going to react... seriously, who gives a shit how the villain acts, he's the fucking villain in the situation. You may as well point out that a rapist isn't going to react well to being made to stop raping someone; I'm stunned you'd even think this a valid point to make.

When people act inappropriately, it's doesn't matter what they think or how they react; they're in the wrong, their feeling are irrelevant. Concern yourself with how the victim feels and stop sympathizing with the groper.

I am explaining how the victim feels. The issue is not the groper, the issue is everyone else, who may or may not react the way you think they should.

Look back at the story of the woman who stood up for her feelings at the tech conference by calling out behavior she thought was inappropriate. Some people agreed with her, but others derided and attacked her.

Whether one side or the other was more morally correct in your eyes is not the point. The point is that it sucks to be the object of social tension.

And it's not really fair for you to define how tolerant other people should be of that pressure.

OK, that's much clearer, I wasn't getting your point before. Noted.

The best response is to say something that makes him feel embarassed. Like "wow. This must be a big day for you. You don't get to touch a woman very often, do you?". Loud enough, of course.

I know that, without reservation, my fiance would respond to such a situation with a "dude, what the fuck?! Get off me!" rather than demurely accepting the situation and biting her tongue until she could get home and blog about it.

Don't characterize my statement to be blaming the person who was "victim" here. I'm just reiterating that the original poster is not being unreasonable to suggest such a response might have been appropriate and even expected. Given the circumstances, I'm actually somewhat baffled as to why it did not happen. The person was at local meeting with other people and her male friend. She wasn't some lone girl on a subway train packed to the gills where some vile beast was surreptitiously pawing at her.

She certainly isn't obligated to say or do anything, but suggesting she or questioning why she didn't is an entirely rational way to follow up to hearing a story like this.

It's not on the author to say something. There were a handful of other people there who could have spoken up.

Please, everyone, if you witness this type of rude behavior, speak up. We are all, male, female, undecided, both etc. responsible for improving treatment of non-males in tech. Take an active role.

I doubt the others noticed the groping but you're absolutely right. People need to stop inappropriate behavior when and where it occurs.

It's not always easy to know what kind of relationship people are in. That's probably a reason why people tend to wait until it escalates beyond a certain point.

If people would interfere too soon, feminists wouldn't be happy either. Because that kind of behavior would imply that women are weak and unable to take care of themselves.

The average man is five to six inches taller and forty or more pounds heavier than the average woman. Men are also physically stronger pound for pound.

I'd rather take a tongue lashing for being an interfering white knight wannabe than not say something and find out that the woman was too uncomfortable, for all the reasons being discussed in this thread, to extricate herself from the person bothering her.

Exactly right. I may have a T-shirt made for the next technical meet up I attend:

"I have daughters. I lift weights. I'm watching how you treat women."

Okay, so it could use some wordsmithing, but if a few of us were to make it clear that this is an issue and we are willing to do something about it, the gropers might think twice.

How would they see it under your armor?

There were a handful of other people there who could have spoken up.

If you don't know who any of these people are, or how they know each other, it's hard to tell what's going on. Having said that, I'm all for banning gropers from meetups.

This one raises a good point, especially if the girl is halfheartedly trying not to make a big deal of it, as this one described. It might be tough to spot for a crowd of people practically defined by their inability to detect nonverbal social cues.

> If you don't know who any of these people are, or how they know each other, it's hard to tell what's going on.

By default, a meetup group of strangers is an environment that should be free of harassment, it is better to speak up and be told that contact is OK than to say nothing and let someone fend for themselves.

So you're going to go butt in on every couple there?

I'm confused too! Are they suggesting that if a husband/wife couple come together and the dude hugs her I should run up, push them apart, and then threaten him for being gropey?

Do people on here even leave the house? They've really out of touch with reality.

No, you will ask politely. It's 100% socially acceptable to ask about how people are connected or know each other.

If people get weird about it, apologize. "Sorry, I was just worried for a second that you were, like, groping her!" Laugh it off. Women are likely to respect you for the fact that you're even aware that this is a problem.

I get where you're coming from, but it's been my experience that unless the behavior crosses a significant line, it's best not to intervene without more information.

Spoken up, or, much more easily and effectively, given the perpetrator nasty looks, not have invited him around the next time, gossipped about him behind his back or whatever else is part of the usual creep treatment. For all the reluctance tech people might have to consciously engage in this sort of herd animal behaviour, it's a component of social interaction that isn't going anywhere anytime soon; if they refuse to deliberately use it in situations to an end they can agree to be good, it will just wind up being used to random ends in ways the people doing it are not even aware of. In addition, this way, the pressure of having to "start a fuss" by lifting something unspoken into the realm of explicit discourse if they don't want a situation that is unpleasant to themselves to continue will be on the people who were at fault to begin with.

I'm not saying the author had a responsibility to fight back, but I'm having a hard time justifying her "right" to not say anything. If she doesn't say that she doesn't like it, the guy has no reason to back off, at all. Not justifying what he did at first, but it would justify everything he did after that.

> Please, everyone, if you witness this type of rude behavior, speak up. We are all, male, female, undecided, both etc. responsible for improving treatment of non-males in tech. Take an active role.

How are we meant to know this is "rude behaviour?" unless we are privy to allot of information about their personal lives they could have a previous relationship, could be married, or be hooking up.

If I see a guy put his hand around a women I am not going to try to intervene because I don't know the background there. It is just unrealistic to suggest people should do otherwise.

Now if she had previously mentioned this behaviour or the individual in a negative way I might say something, but based on the situation (and most situations) that wasn't the case.

How about you ask? Start by being polite.

"Oh, I haven't been introduced. So how are you two connected?"

You'll to have to step out of your comfort zone for this even if it is immediately obvious. And if it's normal, you've lost nothing.

Yeah, I do not feel comfortable doing anything even approaching policing other people's relationships. The most I would feel okay with doing is asking "Is everything okay here?", but even that is quite an ask and I would not consider it unless I noticed that one of the people was visibly upset.

Yeah, before you say it, "me feeling uncomfortable" is a pretty selfish excuse for not helping somebody that is feeling a hell of a lot more uncomfortable than I. I'm not going to make excuses for that. I'm just not going to start interrogating people in public about the nature of their relationships.

If you care: Sometimes, just looking may help. Just don't turn a blind eye to it, which is what most men do in such situations.

If the woman feels she has a sympathetic supporter, it is easier to defend herself and if the jerk thinks there is an eyewitness to his assholish behavior, he may tone it down without you needing to say something. I think saying something may be counterproductive (because when accused people are quick to justify, and that makes them LESS likely to back off, not more) but just being aware can sometimes help.

Sure, that's fine.

If I see something that seems off, I might try to enter the conversation. If I see something that really seems off, I might ask if both of them are okay. If it is more extreme than that, I am open to taking more extreme action.

What I'm not going to do is orbit the room interrogating people about their relationships without seeing any warning signals.

Nobody ought to ask you to do something you're uncomfortable with, and nobody ought to expect you to be the social enforcer or whatever. I empathize 100%.

But if a woman's body language seems particularly bad, or you know your friend/acquaintance only just met this person? That seems like a good opportunity to speak up without "interrogating" people, as you put it.

Truth be told, it's more about friends who enable their friends' asshole behavior by looking the other way. Assholes cannot be 100% friendless, nor only friends with other assholes.

> But if a woman's body language seems particularly bad, or you know your friend/acquaintance only just met this person? That seems like a good opportunity to speak up without "interrogating" people, as you put it.

That seems reasonable to me. You make a good point about friends enabling assholes too.

But people can (and many do) engage in socially unacceptable behavior more, or exclusively, in contexts in which their friends (or people that know them more generally) aren't around to recognize them and observe it.

Who's suggesting you need to police everybody? Think of it like being an ally or a spotter, not an enforcer or inquisitor.

Good comment! I am working on organizing a meetup of my own to counter.

I think that the point is less to change it than to report on the fact that it's (still) happening.

If she just told him off and he avoided her for the rest of the night, but otherwise she still felt as isolated and ogled, how would that change things? If she picked up a megaphone and shouted about how she needed to be treated with more respect, would she be? Or would everyone just think she was looking for attention.

The way she conducted herself makes sense to me, and while she was put off by the situation, she still got most of what she wanted to out of it. She didn't go to the bitcoin meetup to make a stand on her rights, she did it to talk about bitcoins. While there, she was put off by the way she was treated. Had she just made a scene about the way she was treated, maybe she wouldn't get to talk about bitcoins, maybe the people there would think "Oh, ok, this makes sense. Women don't really talk about bitcoins, she's not here because she is interested in bitcoins, she's one of those feminists. I get it now."

Her blog post is just a way of expressing "Hey, I experienced some uncomfortable situations at a bitcoin meetup because I was one of two women in a sea of men who didn't take me seriously."

The thing is, it's not her responsibility to fix it. Sure, there's things that she can do, but when men go to a bitcoin meetup, they don't go there to argue for men's rights, they go to talk about bitcoins. She can't reasonably do both, and the only way women can get into bitcoins is if they talk about bitcoins. If they have to defend their gender position instead, they don't have much opportunity to do that.

The way to fix it is to support your female friends who are interested in these things to continue to be interested in them. To go with them, whether you're a guy or a girl yourself, to give them support when they are learning about them. To not make a big deal about the fact that they're a woman and you like these things. Instead spend your time just collaborating on those things that they're interested in.

The only real way it will change is when people start to see it as not unusual. The only way for it to become not unusual is for more women in general to get interested. If women are getting turned off these things by weird guys and sexist comments (which come about because culturally not many women participate in these topics), then you can either try and stop every immature guy from saying something sexist about a women who does things that no other women do, or you can support more women when they want to do those things so that can get something out of it even when the weird guys bug them. Maybe with enough women interested it will no longer be something that seems surprising.

> The thing is, it's not her responsibility to fix it.

It is her responsibility to fix the things which immediately concern her. This guy's a creep; he was in her vicinity; it was her responsibility to fix the problem he presented.

Do you at least agree that he was in the vacinity of other people and they also had a responsibility to fix the problem?

Honestly? It's unclear. The rules here are soooo murky, and so very dependent on so many things that there's really no telling. Some girls are simply okay with it -- hell, they even like it when some guys do this. Note, that's some girls. It all depends on things like context, culture (of the place, company, country, etc.), situation, history, the persons involved, the social standing of the persons involved, the physical appearances of the person involved, etc. etc.

In this specific instance (a meetup event, about a tech-related subject) one would certainly think that the guy was in the wrong. But yet I've been to enough business parties that would even put this to question -- I've seen girls react positively to behavior I would describe as groping like "that guy should be arrested" groping (I've inquired girls who were recipients of this treatment, they seemed genuinely fine with it -- that it was just "playful fun", and "not a big deal"). So, I really think that grand-parent post has the best answer: if you feel you're not being treated right, just say it then and there, tell them "hey, you're not being cool right now", "hey, you're making me feel uncomfortable, please stop with this, and don't do it again", whatever, just say it. That's the only surefire way to put a stop to getting harassed.

Wow, no, 1000 times no. You are officially part of the problem.

Saying this is a murky situation, saying some girls like it (I don't care if you qualified it as "some" girls)... not ok. The only time it's ok is if you know the woman and know she's ok with it. It's NEVER ok when it's a stranger.

Yes, someone else should have spoken up about it and said "Hey, dude, WTF are you doing? Leave her alone." The fact that no one did, when it was probably pretty obvious she didn't know the guy, is part of the problem.

Yes, she should try to make it clear she's not interested, but it also shouldn't be her responsibility to make sure she's not sexually harassed. Just like it's not my responsibility to make sure I'm not mugged. A tech meetup is not a place where you should have to worry about that sort of thing.

Yes, thank you for that comment. It's been a discussion for so many years, there are always the same arguments used by the same sort of not nice people who never seem to understand that women are not responsible for what is being done to them by creeps, rapists, assaulters and other bad, bad folk.

> You are officially part of the problem.

Exactly. As is the tone of some other HN responses herein. Little outrage at the men's behavior and much criticism of or advice for Simpson. Not much better than men who blame the victim for being raped.

EDIT: I just read more comments. So sad. Just a tamer version of the same ignorance and male chauvinism that blames women for being raped, or stigmatizes them for coming forward.

Uh, no; it's his responsibility not to be a creep.

What? This is horrible advice - exactly the opposite of what we should be encouraging. This is like saying women shouldn't resist if their boss sexually harasses them, because it might damage their careers.

I seriously hope nobody here will sacrifice their own basic rights because they are afraid of what others might think if they defend themselves.

If she is being harassed - this needs to stop right there. What other people might think is irrelevant. Those idiots at those meetups need to be aware of how disgusting their behavior is. You do this by telling it to them, directly. Not by bringing hordes of women that are somehow expected to suffer through the same crap until it magically gets better 5 years from now.

This guy will continue groping women at the next meetup as well, I'm sure of it. He will continue doing it until it is made clear to him that he is a creep.

Telling a stranger not to grope you is what expected of you, and not being afraid to do so is what we should be encouraging. It certainly has nothing to do with not being able to talk about bitcoins.

I think it's absolutely disgusting that you criticize the victim for documenting what happened to her.

It's despicable and downright fucking evil that you basically accuse her of sharing her story solely because she wants attention.

The worst part of your god-awful post is that it's currently pinned to the top of this board.

The fact that your disgusting, insensitive post is at the top is why women don't work in tech. They don't want to have to deal with assholes like you who have nothing better to do than say "she should do X instead of sharing her story", or whatever else you want to do to silence her, and shame her for sharing her story.

She is brave for doing anything, because she knew the world is full of assholes like you: cowardly bigots who will criticize ANY action she takes.

I'm sorry she had a problem. And I'm more sorry that HN has degraded to the point where a cowardly attack from a piece of shit like you is pinned to the top.

All I can think of in response to this diatribe is a line from The Big Lebowski:

"You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."

Seriously, dude; chill. You can communicate your (not incorrect) point so very much more effectively without ragefacing all over the person you're replying to. It gets in the way of successful communication, and probably does horrible things for your blood pressure to boot.

I disagree. Of the comments I've read here so far, I agreed with hbags the most. There are plenty of more measured responses to be found here, but none that captured how I felt as well as hbags. I'm not someone who holds grudges, and I accept we all sometimes say things without understanding what we imply, but in the moment I was glad someone could give voice to how I felt.

I'm not dumb enough to try to change the stripes on a proudly bigoted jerk like Meritt.

I just want anybody who sees his spew to know that his opinion is not the only one. I want any human who is harassed to know that if they share their story after the fact, that's good.

And they shouldn't worry about the fact that some utterly worthless assholes like Meritt will try to shame them for speaking out. They shouldn't be ashamed if they were too afraid, too shy, or too confused to respond in the moment.

It is GOOD that we share these stories. It is GOOD that we move towards a world where these things happen less often.

And the utterly worthless assholes like Meritt who want to shame people for sharing their stories... they might be well represented in HN, but they're a minority of normal humans.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

I'm fine with a bit of profanity and would like to see more, personally. But when your comment is basically nothing but invective, you don't really have a leg to stand on when you're calling someone else worthless.

And I'd like other potential Meritt's to realize how utterly disgusting it is that he tried to shame the victim into silence.

Meritt said 'say something right then and there, it's more effective. Then write a blog post about that instead'. Whether that's true or not could be up for debate (likewise the victim's responsibility to do something), but you have to be pretty one-eyed to read that as shaming the victim into silence rather than encouraging the victim into action.

No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you should never be allowed to say anything.

He's an asshole and a bully. If a victim doesn't protest withim his designated free-speech zone he doesn't want them to protest at all.

Hbags, you are full of shit.

Merritt said the behavior was unacceptable and the way to fix it is to address it when it occurs. Followed by the comment:

--- "Running off to write yet another gender-division-in-the-tech-world blog which will be read, primarily, by the sort of folk who already agree with you isn't going to make nearly as much of a difference as taking care of issues promptly". ---

Then said that a story about a bad situation where the person spoke up about it would be a great story that would spread "like wildfire".

At absolutely NO point in Merritt's short post was it said that if you don't speak up when you are uncomfortable or accosted, you should never be allowed to say anything about it.

You owe Merritt an apology for straight out lying about the content and intent of their comment and repeatedly attacking their character based solely on the things you invented (then repeated) in this thread.

You owe Merritt an apology

No way. Meritt clearly attempted to shame her for writing about something that, for whatever reason, she didn't confront immediately.

He's a censor. He's shaming her for protesting outside his designated free-speech zone. Fuck him.

Repeating your accusations doesn't make them true.

Knock your vile rhetoric and bullying off for five seconds and quote, for all of us, the specific sentence or more from Merritt's comment where he shamed the author, implied or supported censoring her, or said that she should not be able to post about her experience.

It is a simple request. I'm not asking you to irrefutably prove your ability to bend spoons with your mind. Merritt's comment was quite short. Just copy and paste the precise part of his or her message where what you keep attacking them for is actually stated or even implied.

Don't worry, we'll all wait. Go ahead.

So. Nothing. Exactly as I thought.

[OT]

> about: hell-banned by bigoted assholes

I don't see any evidence of you being hellbanned^. Furthermore, hellbanning is (typically, at least) an automated process. It is done by an algorithm that evaluates the quality of your posts using their score as the metric of quality. At the time that I am writing this, this seems to be your only post in this thread that has been voted into the negatives.

^ I have showdead turned on, so unless you deleted the comments that you have made since being hellbanned, I would see them in your comment history.

No, he never said or even intimated "don't write about it". He said that writing this article this way would only be read by people who already agree. He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire, but there is nothing in what he said that meant "don't write at all". That's your projection. He said "if you do A, it won't be as effective as B".

The person who is being an arsehole and a bully is you, naming, shaming, strawmanning, abusing, and being generally vituperative.

> He said it would be more effective to be proactive at the time. I disagree with him about such a thing spreading like wildfire

He didn't say that being proactive at the time would spread like wildfire, he said that being proactive at the time and writing about that experience afterward would.

Would it? I personally doubt that. Do you have an example of something like that working? Or is that just speculation?

> Would it?

I think it would draw more attention and useful discussion from people interested in doing more than emoting sympathy, complaining about discussions of women's negative experiences, or discussing abstractly whether addressing the situation in the moment would be more productive.

Whether it would actually spread any more is another question, and one on which I don't have a strong feeling about.

In other words: It is just speculation. You (apparently) do not have a real world example to cite.

I am female. I have blogged before about some of my struggles with the glass ceiling, etc. It got no attention. Perhaps I was doing something wrong. But, as someone who has firsthand experience which contradicts your suggestion, I would be genuinely interested in seeing actual evidence. If I can find an example that works, I would love to follow that. I can't find it.

Thanks.

I don't think 'dragonwriter is suggesting what you think he is suggesting.

> In other words: It is just speculation.

No, in other words, I'm not the person that made the "wildfire" claim, just someone who clarified someone else's presentation of it, and I'm not even trying to support it, though I do think the recommendation made in the post in which it is presented is good for other reasons besides how the recommended action would (or would not) accelerate the spread of the story.

Yep, that's what I meant. And to be specific, I don't think if the article was "I asserted myself with the groper and he withdrew" would spread like wildfire. It wouldn't reach a particularly different audience to this one, methinks.

Well, I'd say the group interested in and reposting/linking a story of "Addressing the problem directly works" would be very different in composition to the group that tends to repost/link a story of "Bad things happen" alone.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the size/scope/impact of the two groups was about the same.

> No. what Merritt said that if you don't say something right there and then you should never be allowed to say anything.

No, he says, explicitly, that not saying anything there and then but blogging about it later won't be as effective in producing the desired change.

He does not say that people shouldn't be allowed to talk about it after the fact without addressing it immediately, he says that doing so is not the ideal choice if the goal is to actually deal with the problem.

There's a universe of difference between what he said and your characterization.

Sorry, but this is part of a pattern. You may feel OK with treating this as an isolated incident, but it's not. It deserves to be lumped into a category of common responses to stuff like this: victim blaming and derailing.

It does approximately nothing to prevent a situation like this from happening. It puts the onus on a woman to deal with other people's utterly unacceptable behavior. It erases the responsibility not just of the aggressor, but everyone else in the room with her who did nothing.

I'm sure it's pure coincidence this also divests the commenter from any obligation to talk seriously about these issues.

How many more caveats do I need? I even specified that the concept was up for debate and that it wasn't the victim's responsibility to do anything.

everyone else in the room with her Unless everyone else in the room was attending to the interaction of her and that one guy, this is hyperbole and doesn't help. If I'm in a conversation on one side of the room, do you really expect me to run over and forbid someone putting their hand on someone else's leg, despite not being aware of their previous conversation?

Anyway, if you want to talk about derailing, how about we talk about how this stupid large thread is focusing almost entirely on the preamble of the essay, and not the core theme that women aren't treated as being intellectually capable by the group? A large thread that is inflamed by throwing abuse around? How does this help the author resolve her article's thematic problem, being that her mind isn't respected?

Hey, I'm with you on the last part.

I'm addressing the fact that merrit's comment has no merit, and it's safe to pigeonhole it as worthless. The debate in this thread is whether or not it's helpful, and I weighed in, trying to talk about it at a somewhat higher level.

As far as "everyone else in the room" is concerned, that's absurd— it's a false dichotomy, excluded middle, etc. Rather than just write it off, think about it in good faith for like five minutes. How you would approach an ambiguous situation like this?

How about you ask? Apologize if you've intruded? You can all laugh it off — "ha, sorry, I thought you might be one of those guys" — and now you've broken the ice.

Nobody's asking you to be Superman zipping around the room, let alone the entire world. But there's a world of difference between that and just keeping an eye out once in a while.

Incidentally, in my mind, this counts as a productive conversation and not derailment— if more dudes showed less tolerance for this kind of bullshit, the world would be a better place.

On the 'everyone else in the room', you're effectively blaming some people for not responding to something they were unaware of, is my point.

In any case, look at what happened. There was the initial hug, and a subtle signal 'no' was sent'. There was the hand on the leg and a clearer 'no' was sent, at which point it stopped. What is there to intrude upon? As an observer, at want point do you launch into the defense? Stop your conversation because two people over there have initiated flirting, and you have no idea one way or the other that one of them isn't into it?

Breaking into the start of other people's nascent flirting makes you an arsehole. And "I thought you were one of those guys" isn't going to help the mood - it's basically saying to the other party "hey, I thought this guy was a creep". Wait until you have more information that one party isn't interested.

Similarly, with the encounter in the article, jumping in at a point before she was able to resolve it in the article is also robbing her of her own power. She resolved it pretty quickly and moved on to other things. Stepping in with an "is this guy bothering you" before she's even had time to send a clearer nonverbal 'no'? Someone has to be pretty helpless before you jump the gun that quickly.

Yeah, I have to agree. I've burned a dozen bridges and poisoned quite a few wells before I learned that a message like that can actually be much stronger if you step down the rhetoric just a notch.

Easier said than done.

I usually stay away from making blaming statements, but you're an asshat.

Merritt didn't criticize anyone - instead they (she?) offered suggestions for a path to conflict resolution. You, on the other hand, are making a slew of blaming statements that are made up bullshit. What you are angry about, I'm unsure. I'll hazard you don't know either.

Cognitive dissonance at its finest, folks.

Meritt absolutely made blaming statements. Even the most charitable reading of his post is him complaining that she decided to make clickbait.

He tried to shame her and degrade her for having shared her story instead of doing something else.

He's an asshole. Fuck him.

I may be misreading meritt's comment, but it seems to me that meritt is criticizing the author of the article for not addressing the situation when it happened; not criticizing the author for blogging about it. In fact, meritt seems to be suggesting that the author should blog about the incident, though meritt thinks that a blog about the author resolving the situation by confronting it directly would be more effective in promoting productive discussion.

(To be absolutely clear, I am not a fan of criticizing the author for handling or not handling the situation in any particular way.)

I might be reading that all wrong; certainly I am being charitable to meritt and giving him/her the benefit of the doubt. There is a decent chance that I've gone to far, and that you are entirely correct. However your "charitable" reading of his/her post is certainly not the "most charitable".

Sometimes you're wrong. You're wrong now.

There are ZERO emotions in Merrit's comment. I understand you are upset about this, but really Merrit isn't the bad guy. You should think about why and try to not blame others for how you feel about it. This type of behavior isn't healthy for any of us.

Sorry I called you an asshat. I hope you figure it out.

Everyone needs to feel like they belong somewhere. They need a cause.

Your cause is hatred of white men and you find solace with others of the same persuasion.

But you're still wrong, and the angry ranting is just ignored by people, even if they agree with some of your points.

FYI.

> Your cause is hatred of white men and you find solace with others of the same persuasion.

You're seeing a problem and making it worse. Please stop.

100% agree.

I shouldn't even bother commenting here and this won't be the first time I'm giving up on HN, but seeing the replies you're getting I couldn't leave without at least offering you my support and letting the community know what a sick and twisted bunch of people tech, HN, pg, reddit and the rest of you are. Absolutely disgusting bunch of people. And that's coming from a privileged white male.

The replies that comment is getting are basically "don't be so vitriolic, calm down and you'll get your message across better", and you classify this as 'absolutely disgusting' and 'twisted'?

> this won't be the first time I'm giving up on HN,

Giving up...you're doing it wrong.

As far as I can tell, pg is not involved with this discussion at all. Was there an earlier discussion about this incident that I am missing?

That comment is 'despicable and downright fucking evil'? Why does everything have to be done at maximum emotional output these days? What about 'Hey, this isn't on, please don't do that'?

As soon as you start insulting someone, they will not internalise any lesson you're trying to make. They may moderate their behaviour out of fear of backlash, but they will shutdown any attempt to listen to the root cause of your problem.

Jesus christ you must have SERIOUS emotional issues.

You know how this situation should have been actually handled?

"Hey [groper], get your hands off me, I don't appreciate being touched by someone I don't know and I don't appreciate your remarks either."

10 seconds, situation over. But instead, OP decided to write a novel on this "experience", and generalized to: meetups, women, and tech. Now if other women read this, they will have fear and hostility instilled in them because scumbags like OP don't know how to deal with real life and just want e-attention.

What makes you think that "get your hands off me" would be enough for a statistically significant subset of people who are convinced that this isn't a problem, let alone their problem? On what planet do you live where people won't find yet another way to 20/20 hindsight somebody's past actions?

You and everyone else who reflexively criticizes someone who dares complain about how they're treated? It's social DoS. A single person can't possibly meet the arbitrary demands of a hostile reader. Folks — mostly men — pile on enough reasons why she's Doing It Wrong, and safely write it off.

And the part where it's her fault for instilling "fear and hostility" because a man groped her and she talked about it is a breathtaking feat of inverted logic.

You know how this situation should have been actually handled?

Men shouldn't grope women they don't know. (yes, okay, people in general shouldn't grope strangers, not all men, not all women, okay, thanks.)

0 seconds; situation never happened, and you never added to the misogyny on HN.

"After doing so, blog about what happened...."

"I think it's absolutely disgusting that you criticize the victim for documenting what happened to her."

Posted in reply to the wrong comment, maybe?

I think you are wildly misinterpreting merrit.

The point is not that blogging about it is bad, but that calling people out on the spot is even better, and people should do it more. Of course it's frightening, and of course it's harder - I'm not sure I would've done it in a similar situation if I were a female, and that's exactly why outside encouragement is important.

I personally would like it very much if people - both male and female - would react more by calling out unwanted behavior right on the spot, and I hope OP will feel encouraged to do so if something like this happens again in the future, knowing at least that she has the support of some people on HN.

> I personally would like it very much if people - both male and female - would react more by calling out unwanted behavior right on the spot

Perhaps somewhat ironically, this is what 'hbags is doing here.

I prefer using speech to communicate, dialog, argue, persuade.

I dislike using speech to bully, name call, police.

What the heck did I just read? Look you obviously have the best intentions and you seem to be very emotionally invested in this topic and that's honestly great, really it is. While sometimes it can be impersonal and a tad cold, it seems our community tries to leave ego at the door (sometimes) and make level headed analysis in order to seek greater understanding or offer advice. Meritt's statement had merit and if you hadn't based your whole argument on the feelings it immediately stirred in you, you might have seen the truth in what he said.

Discrimination and harassment like what happened to the blogger truly is a horrendous glitch in humanity that needs to be addressed. We've been addressing it for the last few decades and have made great strides but the problem persists. Everyone should absolutely be letting their story be heard but we need to start nipping this in the bud.

I don't think anyone here actually blames Arianna for not saying anything at the time. It's very intimidating to stand up against your assailant. But maybe if we just talked about confronting these types of people we would all have more mental preparation and courage to stick up for ourselves in the moment. Most parts of the western world are civilized enough that a simple stern "Stop touching me" is enough to end it. Be brave and stand for what you believe in! You have nothing to fear but allowing these public interactions and maintaining status quo.

That's the sort of story that'll spread like wildfire.

You must be using a different Internet from me. On my Internet, it looks something like this:

"Oh, you did speak up? You should have spoken up louder. You (should|should not) have cursed at him. You (should|should not) have been more polite. You (should|should not) have left. You (should|should not) have called the cops."

You can nitpick someone's past circumstances ad infinitum, as being too much of this or too little of that because there will never be a perfect, falsifiable individual test case— someone will find a reason why it's invalid. And after the fact, an individual can't go back and revise what they did, so all folks like you have to do is pick a reason why they did it wrong, and you can safely write it off.

In actuality, post isn't meant to be a conclusive proof or some damning, final conclusion. It's a data point, one among many as women get up the courage to talk about this shit. We need data points because there is actually a large subset of people who simply don't believe this is even a problem, let alone something they ought to think about.

If we actually want to "nip it in the bud," shouldn't we be talking at/about/towards the men who groped and insulted her ? That's the actual bud here, right? Why are we all trying to police her behavior instead of the men who attacked her?

Not everyone is able to "nip it in the bud" as easily as you may be. I'm not saying you're wrong, just pointing out that the solution you cite is not always easy.

>Was either of us mistreated? Technically, no.

This doesn't really line up with the entire second paragraph, in which she was basically groped. Groped. And then treated like a piece of meat instead of as a human being.

If that's not mistreatment, I really don't know what would be.

I think it's actually disturbingly telling that women's (or at least this particular woman's) expectations for how they'll be treated at tech meetups are so low that the described behavior isn't considered mistreatment.

To the younger folks out there: if you see something like this occur as a third party (you're neither the groper nor the gropee, neither the misogynist nor the victim), you need to not politely ignore it but to step in and correct the asshole, as firmly as necessary.

Whether it's groping or just verbal putdowns of some sort, you should step forward and add yourself to the situation, making it clear that the behavior you witnessed is not acceptable to you.

Otherwise, you're part of the problem too.

Especially if she makes it clear that it's making her uncomfortable.

Are you suggesting that "younger folks" just start trying to intervene in every public display of affection they see at a meetup?

If I hug my wife the last thing I need is some white knight running up and calling me names because they have some imagining of what is going on.

Honestly that advice on the face of it is terrible. We should discourage this behaviour but it should be through having rules for meetups, a complaints/reporting facility, and banning the offenders (or giving them warnings in less egregious examples).

Recommending people get into a confrontation if they get a bad vibe is just bad advice that will result in bad situations (see dongle-gate, et al).

Umm... no.

Well, the author was apparently there with her when this occurred. Doesn't sound like he spoke up about it. Frankly, that seems weird to me. If this happened to a friend I was out with, I would be expected to say something. Unless he was oblivious to this occurring, I don't understand how someone would just let a stranger grab their friend without stepping in.

As to stepping in and "adding yourself to the situation" with a stranger? I don't know about that, so much. I've had my fair share of trying to be the considerate stranger stepping in to help out, only to be screeched at by the person I was speaking up for. It often doesn't pay to try and help people out. (Not saying you shouldn't do it, anyway, just on principle).

I agree wholeheartedly with this article, however I don't think it's fair to use such a wide brush. "This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at _This_ Bitcoin Meetup" would have been more appropriate. There are bad apples in every community, and it certainly sounds like the author met some, but it's important to realize that a few bad apples don't ruin the whole bushel.

How many more posts like this are needed to convince you that the whole community of tech meetups is hostile towards women?

Of course that individual deserves the lion's share of the blame, but writing this off as an isolated individual acting inappropriately misses the forest for the trees (i.e. misses the root cause [culture] for the proximate cause [assholes]).

To further analogize, perhaps the bad apple was there because the bushel was poisoned?

> How many more posts like this are needed to convince you that the whole community of tech meetups is hostile towards women?

A whole lot more, because I don't see this shit at the tech meetups I go to.

Looks like you have some reading to do. Here's a good place to start: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

Hahahahaha! Really?

>Slashdot "OMG Ponies" April Fool's Day joke

REALLY?!

One of them was by a registered offender who they shouldn't have hired, another was PG admitting he didn't know young women all that well, so it doesn't support what you seem to be implying all that well, unless the month I looked at isn't representative. And also there's the fact that the list doesn't report the number of meetups/cons where no incidents are reported. But as I said before, I'd certainly need to see it happen at the events I attend before I believe it happens at all events or that the entire community is hostile towards women. You might as well list all such crimes reported in the US and use that as evidence that everyone living in the US is a misogynist.

I think that says more about the Bitcoin community than it does anything about the tech community, though. I imagine the average Bitcoin user as more a fedora-toting internet troll than a crypto-enthusiast. If you look at various cryptocurrency forums, the average user barely knows anything about computers, has little interest in learning more, and just wants someone to hold their hand through the process of getting loads of money off their parent's/school's/employer's electricity. It's totally unsurprising to me that the kind of person this attracts would start imagining themself as some kind of sleezeball investor on top of the world ("can I buy your affection, milady?") just because they're speculating on a couple hundred dollars of cryptocurrency.

>I imagine the average Bitcoin user as more a fedora-toting internet troll than a crypto-enthusiast.

Well, at least you disclosed that you're just projecting that image onto strangers you don't know.

I can make up reasonable sounding things too! Bitcoin supporters are more likely to be libertarians and thus are more likely to respect individuality, boundaries and privacy. Thus, I'm shocked to hear of a bitcoin supporter creeping on a female. (Of course, I'm not, but it has nothing to do with Bitcoin itself)

What does encryption, proof of work algorithms or anything else have to do with one's likelihood of being gross towards women? It's such a weird thing to even allege. Seems like another cheap "lol bitcoin fans are dumb neckbeards" remark to me.

Ok. Wait now. You both are generalizing regarding Bitcoin supporters.

Yes, libertarians are likely to endorse Bitcoin, but at this point I'm pretty sure that libertarians are a minority in the Bitcoin world, because the Bitcoin world now had its eternal september.

(I was intentionally generalizing to make a point, nothing more, I don't want to speak for any groups of people in general!)

edit: To those that apparently don't grok, I explicitly wrote "Of course not" in the post, pointing out that I wasn't actually asserting a hard connection between bitcoin and libertarianism.

Fair enough.

>What does encryption, proof of work algorithms or anything else have to do with one's likelihood of being gross towards women?

I think it's safe to say that the average Bitcoin user, today in this year 2014, only cares about getting rich quick by speculating on it and other cryptocurrencies and doesn't give a rat's ass about how the technology is implemented or what impact it might have on our future. Those are the people I'm stereotyping, not people (presumably) like our fellow Hacker News readers who see it for the fascinating and potentially century-defining idea it is.

Yes, based on experience on cryptocurrency forums and similar things, I have a negative stereotype ingrained in me of the kinds of people who are interested in get-rich-quick schemes and speculating on bubbles. Which is all Bitcoin is to most of its users: a get-rich-quick scheme.

I find basically none of your assumptions to be accurate, or more importantly, I don't understand how it is useful to assert as a broad generalization. Certainly here in this thread.

It's just frustrating, I'm clearly outspoken against groping and misogyny, but then I get lazily lumped in with them because I also am a fledgling bitcoin fan? Stereotypes are just a good way to reduce a conversation to a nearly useless set of tropes and blur away the details of reality.

In this case, it's a distraction. The problem is the groping and the mentality that led to that guy touching her without her consent. Unless the crypto communities are fostering that, or something about the tech makes that prevalent, it just seems like a distraction. Right? Instead, now we're talking about Bitcoin... instead of a problem that spans ALL of tech, not just Bitcoin.

Why on earth are you taking this personally? All I'm saying is that I hold the community of tech professionals to a different standard than I do every random person running cgminer, and that "tech" shouldn't be judged by the actions of those people, which makes about as much sense as judging the community of professional artists by the actions of random anime fans.

>In this case, it's a distraction. The problem is the groping and the mentality that led to that guy touching her without her consent. Unless the crypto communities are fostering that, or something about the tech makes that prevalent, it just seems like a distraction. Right? Instead, now we're talking about Bitcoin... instead of a problem that spans ALL of tech, not just Bitcoin.

I think you're more interested in imagining my post as an attack on your identity, because you somehow missed that making the discussion about Bitcoin was the entire point: My parent comment asserted that this was an example of bad behavior in the general tech community, and I claimed that this is far worse than normal behavior that is probably isolated to the "community" of cryptocurrency speculators. You can disagree if you'd like, but I'm not "distracting" or "derailing" the conversation, I'm just... having a conversation?

Sorry, I wasn't taking it personally. I was having a meta discussion about how we were talking about it more than anything. I don't think we have a problem with each other. :)

>I claimed that this is far worse than normal behavior that is probably isolated to the "community" of cryptocurrency speculators. [...] You can disagree if you'd like, but I'm not "distracting" or "derailing" the conversation, I'm just... having a conversation?

Fair enough, I think you're right and that we simply disagree on that fundamental pivot point.

Still though, what is the point of making this distinction? Like, I don't think anyone ever /was/ asserting that running cgminer or holding some doges makes you "as legit" or "in the same vein as" someone who works in SV or works for Microsoft or something.

I guess if you think it's specific to cryptocommunities then you would advocate for crypto-currency-specific gender training/education materials maybe?

>Still though, what is the point of making this distinction? Like, I don't think anyone ever /was/ asserting that running cgminer or holding some doges makes you "as legit" or "in the same vein as" someone who works in SV or works for Microsoft or something.

See the parent comment:

>How many more posts like this are needed to convince you that the whole community of tech meetups is hostile towards women?

Which implies that a Bitcoin meetup is a tech community meetup in the same vein as a Python meetup, and that their behavior reflects negatively on tech professionals.

When did we all start agreeing that some amorphous force called 'culture' is out there compelling individuals to act badly?

It seems like an extremely convenient gremlin. It can mean almost anything in any context and can act as both a sink and a fountain for blame.

Most people are mostly products of their culture. It's very possible to rise above it, but it takes work, and you first have to figure out which of the values and attitudes you've already absorbed, from culture and other sources, need to be changed.

This doesn't compel anyone to do anything, but if culture makes a certain behavior the low-energy path, that's worth some blame. Individual responsibility to get out of the low-energy path is a separate concern.

I don't buy it.

I think 'culture' was, at one point, a convenient label, a shorthand, for very complex phenomena. A label that only had significant meaning at a macro level where individual variables are smoothed out and even then should be suspect as a concept sturdy enough to build other ideas.

It is as if we conveniently labelled something 'x' and then ended up talking about how the angle of the two lines crossing affected the underlying idea we're actually referring to.

A word that can mean anything has no meaning.

I kinda hate to trot out this cliche, but the plural of anecdote is not data. No number of posts should convince anyone without additional evidence that they represent a large fraction of women's experiences.

I wonder what sort of proof you are looking for. I too would love to see some studies on this. Is there a percentage at which you would care? In the mean time, I'll send you this link as well -- http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents -- to at least show that this exact type of incident happens all the time.

I care now. Bringing up the hypothesis that "the entire community of tech meetups is hostile to women" is a red herring. Whether it's true or not, the response is the same: call out the bad behavior when it happens. The only interesting question to me is the tactical one of how to do it in a way that only embarasses the guilty party, instead of making an awkward situation worse.

Actually, the saying is that a few bad apples spoils the bunch, which refers to the tendency of decay or infestation to quickly spread throughout the bushel: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/09/136017612/bad-apple-proverbs-t... ("But as the memory of rotting apples fades, the meaning of the 'bad apple' proverb has changed. In 19th century America, it was a staple of Sunday morning sermons: 'As one bad apple spoils the others, so you must show no quarter to sin or sinners.' Or it could suggest that finding one malefactor in a group should make you suspicious of everybody else. 'A bad apple spoils the bin,' one journalist wrote in 1898 of the Dreyfus Affair; if one officer is capable of forgery then why wouldn't others be as well? Back then, nobody ever talked about 'just a few bad apples' or 'only a few rotten apples' — the whole point was that even one was enough to taint the group.").

In this case, the saying, the real one, is apropos. It might just be a few bad apples, but they taint the whole culture.

{I actually used this phrase a couple of days ago, at which point my wife hit my with some FFA knowledge.}

I guess I'm sorry (sarcastic). Thanks for the knowledge, though. That's helpful (not sarcastic).

Sounds like "no true Scotsman", to me.

Women have faced, and continue to face, challenges in tech circles. It's hard to make progress because the first step is admitting you have a problem, and it's easy for the tech community to think it's someone else's problem. Keep an eye on your own thoughts and challenge assumptions (yours and others) that marginalize gender issues.

The article seems to imply that this behavior isn't limited to just this particular meet-up, but is characteristic of her experiences in bitcoin/tech/etc.

> “Wow. Women don’t usually say that type of things”.

To be perfectly honest, this is something I might have thought (but even then had the sense not to say) when I was working as an engineer. The mere lack of women in tech leads to perceptions that make it unpleasant for women to enter the field. Most people interact with just a few spheres: people they work with, people they meet on the street, and their friends, which are often drawn from people they work with or people they went to school with. When you go to school with very few women, and work with very few women, as engineers usually do, your perception of the whole gender is disproportionately shaped by those women you meet on the street, in the course of day to day activities. For people who work in intellectually demanding fields, the people you meet on the street are quite likely to not be as smart as the people you work with or the people you went to school with. And that as a real impact.

Really? I've been a geek since, well, always, have a CS degree and have been working as a sysadmin and programmer since 1996. There have been women along the way, in my CS program, as coworkers, at the various startups I've worked at. Some of them have been a whole lot brighter than me. And in all that time, I've never thought "oh wow, how unusual." I just don't get it.

Nobody deserves to be physically or verbally assaulted like that, and it's up to the rest of the community (at everything: hackathons, meetups, open hours, etc.) to deal with toxic people.

People in situations like this: please if somebody is making you uncomfortable, speak up. Maybe the guy putting his hand on your leg is your boyfriend? The "good people" in the room want to make you feel comfortable, but sometimes its hard to determine if somebody is a friend or not.

This sounds absolutely horrible, but it raises a questions.

I'm a guy, and I tend to be quite aware of things happening around me. If I were to notice things unfold as described in this post... Assuming I'm not in charge: is it preferable that I somehow try to play a role in this, or would this only make everything more complicated/awkward. Should I stay back and just be pissed off?

What would be the best way to approach this situation?

If someone is physically assaulting someone you should probably try to do something to stop the assault? Kind of obvious

Notice unease. "Hey (groper), haven't you only just met (gropee)? Bit inappropriate to have your hand on her leg like that?"

Risk is that she may avoid confrontation by saying something to defuse the situation and the groper then misses the point and just takes you as an obstacle, thinking or later saying "It's hard enough to meet women without you blocking me, man!" Response to that is easy, of course.

The way that values basic human decency and empathy the most would be to notify the organizers and ensure that they don't just ignore your complaint, and to talk to the person who was assaulting the other person.

Unfortunately, I'm jaded enough to believe that no good deed goes unpunished, so in the same situation I'd just notify the organizers.

If you are worried about causing a scene, butt in about something else.

Hey <NAME>, I heard somebody say you like <TECHNOLOGY>! I'm a huge fan too!

If he's resistant to your interruption, be more forceful in trying to engage him. Maybe sit down next to him. Worst-case he becomes aggressive towards you, but so long as you stay bright & friendly, everyone else will see him picking the fight. That way you can try to defuse the situation indirectly. Maybe you get him engaged in conversation, or maybe the girl seizes the moment to excuse herself. Maybe you offer to the girl, Some other girls were looking for their friend, they said she had a blue shirt, was that you?

If he seems reasonable yet misguided (rather than a total asshole who knows the girl wants nothing to do with him), you can optionally try leading him away and quietly saying something like, I noticed that girl was starting to feel uncomfortable, tone it down/back off/try a different tactic.

Anyway, that's what I'd do if I was trying to avoid making a scene.

Excellent advice. Thanks.

Start off with polite inquiry. If it's a false positive, apologize truthfully!

If it's a true positive, you can still rebuke the aggressor politely. "Wow, that's really not cool, man. Don't you owe her an apology? What if somebody did that to your sister or mother?" You don't need to demolish the person because maybe they're not a lost cause and they can learn.

Congratulations, you have successfully determined that scumbags are everywhere.

The behavior of these people should not be directly correlated with bitcoin/tech/startups/whateveryouwanttocallit.

Good thing that, unlike meetups, the bitcoin protocol doesn't care if a bitcoin address is controlled by a man or a woman.

I mean, that's the whole point of having a collective ledger where every agent is untrusted. There is no one saying, "Your money is no good here," based on your gender, race, creed, or political leanings.

This is sort of what I was thinking. Bitcoin's involvement here seems merely incidental.

This story made me realize that eventually we will get some sort of "FemCoin", though. Anybody who continues to use Bitcoin will be labeled a sexist and be made a social pariah.

The reason is that women didn't have a fair chance to get into Bitcoin in time because the community was so hostile. Therefore all the Bitcoin wealth is unfairly shifted to white men.

Edit: turns out Femcoin already exists https://bitbucket.org/valerieaurora/femcoin

That's interesting. What you are suggesting is that, with lower barriers of entry to create new currencies, we will see a rise in forking economies just as open source and distributed source control allowed open source communities to maintain forks.

Leaving aside that, however, notions of "fairness" is flawed. Fairness for me means that a hostile community self-destructs under its own weight of hostility, not that "Bitcoin wealth is unfairly shifted to white men."

An unfair economy that discriminates against a class of people will see people leaving. I am not sure if it will happen like that, but that's an interesting thought.

There are already a lot of forks of Bitcoin, some even moderately successful.

Actually independent of feminism I have long wondered if other cryptocoins might supersede Bitcoin exactly for the reason of fairness. Assume the world wakes up to Bitcoin in a couple of years. Then the BTC wealth will be very unequally distributed. Why should people start using BTC if they are poor in it? They could as well say "hey, cryptocurrencies are swell, but let's use another one were nobody had a headstart".

I guess part of dogecoins success story is that everybody got rich in dogecoin quickly (1 Million doges per minute). A lot of people who didn't like Bitcoin like dogecoin.

Sure, I know there are lots of forks of Bitcoin. I'm talking about forking the whole economy though, which requires being able to at least trade for basic survival needs.

From an existential point of view, there is no such thing as fairness and yet, people still create whatever notions of fairness. Fairness tends to be deeply rooted into emotional makeup of a person. Many conflicts come about because the parties involved have different, deeply rooted sense of fairness.

Forking in open-source software allowed it to more or less outcompete commercial software in many (though not all) areas, and what finally made it work was a relatively cheap way for forked projects to be merged back together again. In other words, if we are forking along the lines of fairness (and come to think of it, notions of fairness are the psychological factor from which economies arise from), then eventually, for things to work out means being able to merge economies back together again.

@throwawaycoder I see. You're underlying assumption is that there will ever be only one single "economy" of which there are multiple markets. I'm not sure that is wrong either (though I am not sure that is right). Thanks for bringing that up.

@throwawaycoder huh, not sure why your comments get downvoted.

The forking I mean is not necessarily the technical part of it, but rather the interactions of people. On the other hand, I also just talked with someone I know who has been in the payment space for a long time -- he says he prefers to keep things simple, so not necessarily a "forking" that happens.

Eh well, something to think about for me. I think the "forking" concept is useful for me when we start talking about markets for which there is oppression. I'm not particularly interested in things like drug or gun trade. I'm much more interested in things like, being able to 3D print a tractor so people can farm land and grow food even if vested interests try to suppress that tractor.

Great examples of what not to do. I would guess that many of these are fairly easy mistakes to make if you haven't been inoculated.

For most people, I think a single article like this is enough to "inoculate" -- to make the reader substantially more aware of potential mistakes / hidden assumptions in their social interactions, and likely change their behavior. Yet we still read lots of stories like these. I guess distributing these stories widely should help the situation.

Yep, that was my objective. I hope it helps someone, at some point. Goal was not to bitch aimlessly.

The story is pretty sad and not reflective of the tech community in my opinion. It sounds like a group of either a) nerdy guys with severely lacking social skills or b) just garden-variety douchebags.

Maybe it isn't related to Bitcoin and Tech so much as it is related to, say, USA and SF?

Because I can't imagine such stories materialize in other places (of developed word and large parts of developing world either).

You just seem to have enough peculiar traits from both gender sides for a perfect storm.

The event was in NYC not SF. SF / SV has its own share of problems but the one being discussed here isn't unique to SF or the U.S. Though I do wonder how the U.S. rank in terms of % of women in STEM majors or STEM careers.

Also the issue here has something to do with bitcoin attracting early adopters and groups with certain political preferences. I certainly wouldn't call the bitcoin subculture mainstream yet.

Okay, I have to admit I picked SF from comments.

I think this issue doesn't have to be correlated to "% of women in STEM majors". I think that by tackling this as simple the numbers problem you're only making it worse.

Maybe it's not so much Bitcoin attracting certain early adopters, rather USA having a peculiar supply of early adopters (for many things) that also happen to clash with USA's supply of women? This way you can't win, Bitcoin or no Bitcoin.

Thanks. FWIW, I haven't seen or heard about anything like this happening at the SF Bitcoin Meetup. If I did, it wouldn't be tolerated. In fact, there's been a woman running the show more often than not, and now one of the main co-organizer is a woman.

I've had some experience with managing tech meetups, and the inevitable occurrence of creepers making the attending women uncomfortable. The correct solution is for the people running the event to be paying attention to the behavior of the attendees and kick people out who are being disrespectful. And to do it noisily. It needs to be made an example of.

Unfortunately, these guys creep out other guys, too, so it's often the case that you see nothing happen because nobody wants to deal with the 'tard.

But it's no excuse. Pull up your big boy pants and give the asshole the boot.

Amazing to see this story so swiftly knocked from the front page. Sad reflection on our industry.

If nobody bothers to challenge or set boundaries with cretins like this, how will the situation ever change? I don't think this is a situation where you'd have to fear for your safety for showing a little bit of a spine. It's not as if people who are socially retarded enough to think that behavior is okay will change without negative repercussions for their actions.

I am really sorry about your experience.

Last year my girlfriend wanted to go to a Bitcoin Meetup in Buenos Aires. Nothing like that happened in that occasion, but it was really boring imo... though it was interesting to see how many "bitcoiners" are mostly clueless about how Bitcoin actually works

btw I would change the title to "This is What it’s Like to Be a Woman."

I can never tell how to interpret stories like this.

They met assholes. Assholes are everywhere. They're guaranteed continue to be assholes until their targets stop them / make others aware that they are assholes.

Slap them (it's loud, shocking, and non-damaging). Make a scene. It's not acceptable behavior, regardless of gender or location.

You can't just go around slapping people.

completely agree. slapping someone is an invitation to get punched in the face and/or shoved down (both of which carry a serious risk of death or coma due to head trauma), regardless of if you're a woman or not.

this is the real world, not movies. many people (especially men) and animals retaliate automatically when attacked physically. it doesn't matter what gender the attacker is, there's a high chance you will get your ass beat if you assault a man, regardless of the context.

She can go around slapping people who are groping her. Absolutely she can.

What, you're worried about him escalating from there? In a roomful of almost entirely guys? He won't make it very far with that...

The bulk of the article was about not being treated as an intellectual equal by the group, not the physical contact of one person.

Not to defend the men in this story but I imagine they are like many guys in tech-single and lonely, and see these sorts of meet-ups as an opportunity to meet women with similar interests. Specifically the line "Oh ok cool, so if we start dating I can use the app with you!" seems to suggest this objective.

I think a lot of their statements are said to provoke a reaction from women in a "flirty" manner, not because these men are actually misogynistic. Their well-intentioned flirtatious remarks are being interpreted as sexist by women attending these events, likely because these men are inexperienced with women and unsure how to relate to them.

Semi-related question about the comments on "how women think" and "what women care about". I am occasionally faced with a discussion, naturally with a woman, about something that has an empirical gender bias. I'm curious what other people think. A recent conversation along these lines:

Them: Smiling, Why are you looking at me like that?

Me: Well, I see that you like X. Most women I meet don't really like X, it's nice that you do.

Is that a reasonable framing?

My concern with posts like this is that a) men currently hold most of the power b) attacking their behavior in a confrontational manner tends to close doors, not open them and c) I do not see it offering a real solution.

I am female. I think about such things a lot and have, in the past, written about my own negative experiences. But my concern is that this does not give us a path forward.

Not that I have a problem with your premise, I'm just curious what criteria you used to determine a)?

Men currently hold most of the "worldly" power -- political offices, CEO positions, etc -- and, on average, make about 150% of the money women make in the U.S.*

* (These stats may be a bit out of date but I have no reason to believe that they have changed substantially. HN itself is a very male dominated forum and it is a place to meet and greet power brokers and god help you if you are a woman. It is not a very friendly place for a woman trying to make professional contacts, etc.)

It's interesting that so much of the commentary is focused on the actions of one man described in only the first two paragraphs, when the article is really talking, at length, about women not being treated as intellectual equals by the group.

There is an irony here in that the discussion is less about what she's saying and more about how her body should be treated.

All she had to do is say aloud that she was unconfortable and why did he had his hand there... Surprisingly most american girls just don't know how to interact with that kind of people, seems to me for the ammount of similar posts out there, I know some girls that would have just make the guy blush and just have a nice time there.

not sure what connection to Bitcoin here. The guy behaved like, for example, the mayor of San Diego (that mayor). Different age, different business ... Would it warrant "This is What it's Like to Be a Woman in a city administration"?

I do not get it, didnt anyone have at least a few female classmates from their uni time?. Even at work, in France, we have some bright female engineers leading guys on code reviews. It should not be surprising to see female bitcoin crypto fans.

There is an idea of feminist perspectives helping find a way past the current zero sum dog eat dog approach of society. Aping a bunch of dysfunctional men in their self-serving comprehension of governments and money systems is not it.

Super yuck.

I wonder what percentage of men act like that? Is there anyway to make an educated guess?

Jesus Christ.

Is it only Texans and the South that know how to raise a gentleman these days?

How about we just meet somewhere in the middle of "rushing to open the car door for her" and sexual groping?

Yep.

might be a west coast thing.

http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/bitcoin-doesnt-need-women/

This apparently happened in NYC.

I've lived on both coasts, and one thing that I have noticed is that people on the east coast refer to people on the west coast as being either not sufficiently progressive, or progressive in the wrong ways. People on the west coast refer to people on the east coast as being either sufficiently progressive, or progressive in the wrong ways.

Other than that, they both seem fairly identical to me...

Where do people get off thinking they have the right to touch others, especially repeatedly, unreciprocated? So many of these tech, gender, sex issues would be pre-empted so many times if people simply respected some basic boundaries, were less presumptive and thought about their actions.

I'd love to know what that groper would've done if I'd walked in, as a guy, and immediately started hitting on him and touching him. Even more bonus points if he knew I was gay when I walked in. Except that I'm disgusted with myself even imagining doing that to make a point. Just think people. Have a tiny ounce of empathy.

I think it's pretty simple; human courting is chock full of nonverbals and hints and read-between-the-lines. You take a guy who understands he's supposed to pick up on these things and be bold, but is quite bad at detecting whether interest is reciprocated, and tadah- you have this blog post.

Supporting evidence that I felt greatly bolstered my theory- Not long ago I went for a kiss with a girl I barely knew. I knew from body language alone she wanted that, and I was right. She later explicitly told me how happy she was that I had been bold, taken control, and made the leap totally out of the blue.

So at least to my figuring, it isn't like these people are fundamentally misguided. It isn't like courtship is supposed to be started with "May I stroke your hair? Ok, now I'm going to kiss you, is that Ok?". They are probably just really bad at navigating these waters.

I uh, I do understand what you're saying. My empathy is overflowing, and I've seen friends that have gone from timid to "over confident" in order to find more success in dating... so I can understand that a million thoughts were flying through his head when he decided to go for it.

BUT, the two were strangers, in a topic-oriented setting, and she rebuffed his first attempt. That could have, and should have been the end of the story...

Put another way: if he had hugged her, she said "We just met..." and that was the end of it, we wouldn't be having the conversation at all.

Unfortunately, as you allude, there's not really a definitive way of solving this problem unless we build a way of giving passive signals constantly. Some sort of an indicator or smart phone app "Yes, I am willing to be hit on by you and you, but not you and you". There's a weird idea...

You're right, it could have/should have stopped at the first rebuff. But it does make quite a lot of sense that someone who we are already assuming is very bad at reading attraction and social clues might miss or chose to ignore the first rebuff, especially when it is an indirect rebuff like the one in this story.

Here's how she responded to that,

"I try giving him the benefit of the doubt and make some quip about his being a friendly sort"

To be fair, we don't know exactly what she said, but I can imagine a few ways that she could have said this that would have come across as playful, not corrective. I'm not accusing her of anything of course, but combined with the fact that you pointed out that this guy might not have the social intelligence to pick up on the hints, anything that could be construed as playful would have been.

It's still his fault for missing the hints, but it definitely turns him into socially inept, not sexually assaulting.

Bingo, bingo, bingo.

So you didn't immediately tell him to stop and continue on with your life and fled to the internet just so you can get HN karma? Yeah I stopped reading right there. This is why "women in tech" are a problem, because they constantly put themselves on a pedestal.

You disapproved of someone's response to a situation you have never yourself experienced and stopped reading but you had to come here and post an insulting comment?

Are you OK?

Yeah I'm doing OK, are you?

I'm fine.

I'm just concerned that someone in this community (you) could be so upset about this story that you're posting things that I can only interpret as deliberately inflammatory and hostile. Instead of just assuming that you're a bad person trying to stir up trouble, I was wondering if something else was bothering you.

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