It's Different for Girls
heidiroizen.tumblr.com
heidiroizen.tumblr.com
The really sad thing about is that the vast majority of guys I talk to about this topic are simply not aware that women, especially attractive women, go through stuff like this all the time. So when they hear women complaining about discrimination, harassment, glass ceilings, and so on, they think those women are simply "being bitchy." Which simply perpetuates and intensifies the status quo.
I'm really curious about the numbers here - what percent of women have ever agreed to such offers for the purpose of getting ahead (at any point in their lifetime).
I'm hoping the number is in the single digits, because if it's higher this type of harassment will never stop.
Oh yeah, that's another thing that happens: when a good-looking woman is successful, others (men and not-so-good-looking women) will assume she must have done sexual favors for someone in power - as opposed to because she's smart and capable.
(You may have asked the question innocently, but... there be dragons.)
1. She gets a promotion she doesn't totally doesn't deserve because she submitted to sexual harassment by her her boss at work. She's happy about this.
2. She submits to sexual harassment because she is afraid she'll lose her job if she doesn't. She feels dirty and exploited.
And this is unfair to men how? Because they don't have to put up with sexual harassment at work as much?
I don't know. That's why I asked. Do you know?
And there is a 3rd option where she refuses.
Jokes/books/movies makes it seems like it happens all the time, but I don't know if it really does.
I can't take claims of the above seriously in the US, because women are 100% legally protected from professional retribution when declining said "deals". I can't speak to outside the US, but here, the protections are vast and absolute.
It's not 1913 anymore, any anybody who claims otherwise needs to wake up to the current legal reality.
But I have no idea if this actually happens as often as jokes and books/movies claim it does.
Which doesn't justify when a woman gets a job by blowing someone, but as a man i'm not exactly concerned about the relative amounts of privilege I receive relative to the blowjob "opportunities"/discrimination women do...
I am of course doing my small part to fix this by offering to blow every Manager i meet if they'll promote me :( You gotta do what you gotta do for equality...
Assuming not all (attractive) women will publicly or privately complain about such behaviors by men, will the others submit to such behaviors by the men in those positions? Will some women complain (public/privately) and still submit to such behaviors, and what circumstances is that more likely to happen? And is that act submission more socially accepted than say, if the sexes were reversed?
Tangent: I wonder if such things could be analytically studied? Some one could mine sites like HN, twitter, etc for a signal. Check the various states of the author of such. But then it would be hard to match that with the outcomes of submitting to such behavior or not without some kind of surveillance.
Meta: My tangent makes me really wonder what the world could be like where the current information asymmetry when it comes to present and technically possible surveillance systems, did not exist, where nearly everyone could leverage such scale of information in the same way that nearly everyone can leverage the atmosphere to breathe…
Edit: So I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted since I'm not trying to lead any bias towards any group that could be placed on either side of the interactions, It could be Martian's propositioning some being from Alpha Centauri system. Is pondering a way to study such things (and how one could even approach to) so controversial such that no one will respond yet shame at the same time? It's like we're not even allowed to try to explore what is going on. We all must trout out more anecdota, spout out more faux outrage about what has been going on (we're all apart of the status quo, and even with the internet outrage we haven't progressed very far in understanding it seems, who could have guessed…), and damn everything else. Anyone going to propose another reason to refute that's not what's going on here? Maybe someone can point me to a place where I could attempt to frame such ideas/questions/ways to approach studying such things and doesn't cost $xx,000 per year, since apparently, HN isn't for such. Amusing HN…
I didn't downvote you, though I was tempted.
I think what's happening people are taking offense at exactly your detached tone, where what they're looking for is a human response.
Involved Person: Oh my god, did you see that guy who was just shot.
Disengaged person: Yeah, the way the blood spurted out of his head was fascinating, I've cut up with an equation for the arc it took.
You see how an involved person can take offense at someone's disengagement?
Probably great advice for the meatspace, but I question if such needs to be the lowest common denominator for online interactions. But I guess some people must be thinking: "How could this person not derive any pleasure/fun from deriding another human being (or in this case, anonymous men who abuse their position in power or in society for a variety of reasons not made apparent but must be inferred by the audience, but human being nonetheless), especially when its socially accepted to do so?!?! How dare he (go figure, but he's admitted to being black [gasp!] so now I'm confused!?!?!) not partake in a sadomasochistic expression of the human condition!?!?!"
I don't really think it's a thought of "why don't you take pleasure joining in", but a very base judgment of whether someone is with-us or against-us. Since you're not outraged at this very important subject, you must not share my values. And since you have different values, you must be a contributor to the problem.
Agreed. I figured maybe if I could try to frame the issue in a technical means that might interest people of this community in the context of controversial present uses of technology (trying to expand beyond the mob behaviors in the community towards present asymmetric usage of such) that could benefit us in many spheres if used to study our behaviors if the means were more available/accessible to all.
It's just funny because now people in my position have been pushed towards pursing startups in order to try to address social behaviors using technology because no such freedoms are granted in academia until one is grey haired, and even then you must pander the present status quo in academia which I have friends whine to me about all the time.
At least on HN, I can have a way to even find people trying to do similar things, and I wouldn't know if I didn't state what I was thinking which I think outweighs the fear of being grey out (it still is pretty unpleasant since that affects whether some people who may help pursue such ways of trying to address things may over look, but maybe it attracts those people even more, so maybe not!).
All in all, I'm still pretty hopeful that such interactions here and in derivative spaces like github/twitter can draw me towards people who want to think of/build something to address something like this one day. It's worked form getting me interested in decompiling firmware, network bruteforcing, learning different programming languages, writing code to mine twitter for social information corresponding to crowd sourcing campaigns and their influencers, etc…
> […]but a very base judgment of whether someone is with-us or against-us. Since you're not outraged, you must not share my exact values. Since you don't share my values, you must be part of the problem.
Yeah, I can understand that, but I just stated how such judgements can be construed as (with an intentional mocking touch placed in that train of thought). And this is coming from someone who had an official position at an Ivy League university before I dropped out, as a "Minority Peer Counselor". Funny enough, even there, people who normally initially associate with others (and me) on the basis of their skin (for a multitude of reasons, most predominantly surrounding some internalized fear of rejection/and derivatives from prior experiences or teachings) didn't like when I brought up such phenomena.
Well, considering that most people aren't willing to admit that words emanating from this account is the work of some amazing AI platform straight from DARPA, or a being not of this world that is traditionally accepted by the masses, what you really mean is that I didn't illicit a k̶n̶e̶e̶ ̶j̶e̶r̶k̶ reaction (human response: I was tempted) or provide more anecdota to illicit more k̶n̶e̶e̶ ̶j̶e̶r̶k̶ traditional socially accepted reactions?
Meta: But doesn't socially accepted reactions change over time? I wonder how that happened? Did no one try to study human behaviors and some how try to influence such, and we just magically change to the present?
If I took to the forums for all the ways people treated me for the color tint of my skin or other groups I may be subscribed to (black, male, college dropout [some of the things some people would describe me as], etc…), will I learn that all these people behind the their internet connections really give a fuck about me (and vise versa) and that will some how magically change the world now that my ego would have been pandered too? Sure, maybe more people would know that such things happen, but then what? We just keep on keeping on after we log off? Shame on me to even suggest that is/will take the form of actively maintaining the status quo?
Was that human response enough? Now what did we learn that could forward our understanding of such dynamics that take place in a society and change the way people interact for the "better"?
It just didn't happen when I'm around, because people who are jerks and abusers are, unsurprisingly, very crafty in doing it only in contexts when they are unlikely to get called on it. So male perception of this bullshit is almost totally unrelated to how much it happens.
As an aside, it made me really happy to come across a poster last week for the #stoptellingwomentosmile campaign: https://twitter.com/williampietri
I am upvoting both of you.
This is what people are like: only a minority of people will go through the motions of self examination, and only a minority of those will do that effectively. Where real change happens, or where outdated misbehaviors persist, it's basically a matter of primate see, primate do. Real change has to have a component of motivation at this level.
I would argue that there is a concept of "relatedness" encoded into Homo sapiens on the instinctive level. The notion of "family" is at least in part a cultural construct on top of that. Also, who said I was arguing against "mine-ness?" I certainly didn't. I'm just highlighting possible unacknowledged/unsupported assumptions in this thread. (Like your apparent assumption of a particular stance on my part.)
If women want to compete with men and not just be their toys, they need to exercise agency and own their decisions that "No, I am not up for a relationship with you. Because I say so, not because of some other man's property rights over me." If a woman says "I would get with you if I weren't with someone else" she needs to really and truly mean that. It shouldn't be a polite fiction. Such polite fictions tend to lead to worse trouble than the one they thought they were trying to cleverly sidestep.
It's the same logic behind insulting a man by calling his mother a whore. Why should he be insulted by an insult to his mother? Because a real man is supposed to defend the honor of the women in his family.
Also, at the risk of stating the obvious: there are potentially very serious ramifications for the person doing the naming and shaming too. Most people don't like being called sexist assholes even if they are, in fact, sexist assholes.
I think that what Heidi did is basically perfect - she's educating people that this does go on, it does have an effect on the women who are subjected to it, and they shouldn't have to put up with it. But she's doing it in a neutral, non-defensive tone, without calling out specific people. That's usually much more effective at changing behavior.
But if you could get over those hurdles, it should happen, regardless of those shamed "digging in". Seriously, this kind of behavior seems much more authentically shameful than a lot of illegal activities carrying multi-year sentences. Sorry but knowing that inappropriate behavior has hard consequences works as a deterrent, maybe not for the first guy confronted but for the tenth guy, who at that point knows they just better not do that.
In my view, the problem is the behavior of some guys, enabled by a much larger number of guys who are ignorant or indifferent. I think the solution mainly lies with waking up that latter group.
But if some sleazy fucker knows that the worst consequence of harassment is social disapproval it drastically lowers the stakes for him. You have to count on the harassed person to want to make the harassment very, very public so that the people outside his close also-sleazy social group find out, remember, and hold him accountable.
Beyond losing friends and contacts, any retribution would have to happen in the business world; how do you hold someone accountable inside a system were sociopathical ignorance of the social consequences of your actions (and the actions of other) is rewarded. My entire life has been a series of events crushing the pleasing ideals I was taught as a child regarding morals, they just don't matter in business. Some businesses have them, and it costs them money to exercise them.
Legal recourse is how society turns externalities into internalites.
It's great when that happens. But take a look at what happens to people who report rapes, a crime for which their is often physical evidence. E.g.: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2011/04/15/woman-pays-for-reporti... or http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/it-happened-to-me-i-... http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/38671/test-case-...
And I can't quickly find the links that were the stories I found most compelling, the ones with the enormous social consequences. The questioning of what "really" happened. Getting smeared as crazy, a bitch, manipulative, etc, etc.
It's great when people who are already traumatized willingly go through that. But it's a great deal to ask of someone in that state.
It's the whole reason presumed innocence is a cornerstone of every modern justice system.
I'm not sure how you know that the vast majority of men think that women complaining about being solicited for blowjobs are "being bitchy." That seems like a really jaundiced generalization of men.
Some difficulties with discussing this sort of misbehavior are the different contextual meanings of "often." Even if a bad behavior is rare, it can still cast a constant shadow, especially when it can happen without warning, and especially when it comes disguised as something else. Even more so when it's attached to highly personal subjects, and even more so when the circumstance is something one has been born into and experienced ones whole life. I'm not sure there is any effective way to understand such an experience without living it.
It bothers me too. The article is otherwise great.
google, define: girl "1. a female child. 2. a young or relatively young woman."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl: "A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman."
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/girl: "a : a female child from birth to adulthood
...
d : sometimes offensive : a single or married woman of any age"
In this case, it seems like she is trying to sound cute or informal while unwittingly reinforcing the perception of women as child-like.
And, she does call herself a girl once more, not just in the title. Perhaps someone said that sentence in a movie, so it will somehow not mean what it says either.
And even if it is an unspoken reference, that doesn't explain how the title should be interpreted differently. It's a pop song, and according to wikipedia the lyrics aren't especially relevant to the contents of her post.
So I started using 'lass' instead (I am not in an area where this is in common use). I haven't yet found anyone who bridles at this, when before I certainly did with 'girl' and 'woman'. No-one seems to particularly care for or against 'lass', with the exception of some elderly women, who seemed to like the suggestion of youth in the word. The experiment part was that I'd stop using 'lass' when someone complained about it, like they did with 'girl' or 'woman', and to see how long that would take.
I'm not particularly suggesting this as a course of action for the general public, it's just a story to relate.
When you can use your mobile as a universal recording device and you carry it everywhere I find stories like this incredibly hard to believe.
Is it that hard to download a recording app, like the aclu police recording app, and have the most water tight sexual harassment suit ever? I mean you don't need to know that's happening before hand, when things start to get weird just say you got a text message and start recording.
At the end of the day remember that stories are just that, and people, both men and women, lie. Without evidence believing anyone because they are a woman is just as sexist as the people who supposedly made those passes on her.
Historically, recording/taping conversations was a "spec-ops" act against someone, which could be only used by those in power to abuse/blackmail people, and it made sense to restrict it.
Nowadays, recording devices are ubiquitous, and easily available even to, say, poor disadvantaged teenagers, and the majority of their use actually seems to be for the "little guy" to protect against abuse by obtaining evidence of it. IMHO we should consider a way (details, conditions, restrictions, etc) to make it generally legal to make recordings of things that are said to you or done to you.
I think if a person made a complaint to law enforcement, they could get a waiver - or maybe even a court order - to record a specific person for a specific time for a specific reason. Maybe that should be easier, but I don't think the process should be any less regulated.
The whole point is that you should be able to record now, and handle any permission/admissability later; and you shouldn't require cooperation of government beforehand - it's likely for police or court to say that your case is not important enough for them; but it's not a valid reason to restrict your ability to protect yourself.
What you intentionally say to me isn't your private secret anymore - if I had the right to hear it, then I have the right to remember it and to repeat that to any court; and I should have the right to remember it perfectly&permanently on a durable medium, and hand at to any court as valid evidence. In short, it makes sense to require permission of a participant in recorded conversation, but not all participants.
So you're suggesting the solution to sexual harassment is for women to go deeper into an already uncomfortable situation and gather evidence for the 'nuclear option' that can potentially ruin the careers of both parties? That's complete nonsense. Nobody wants to hire somebody they think might sue them. Since women who file big sexual harassment suits face serious repercussions in the job market later, it's usually an option of last resort.
Meanwhile, while it's easier for men to be taken seriously, and they much less often have to deal with sexual harassment, they often have trouble getting laid—especially with the aforementioned attractive young women. It may be true that "the vast majority of guys...are simply not aware that women...go through this stuff all the time". But it's also true that the vast majority of women are simply not aware of how hard it is for young men, especially nerdy young men, to get appealing women to have sex with them. They would be utterly flabbergasted if they learned just how many computer geeks, science grad students, etc., have never even kissed a girl, much less had sex with one.
We see that there are plusses and minuses to each respective situation, but arguably men have it worse off, because women can complain freely of the terrible things they have to put up with, and they're generally met with sympathy by the mainstream (and backed by the full force of Federal law). Meanwhile, men who complain that attractive young women won't sleep with them are shamed and belittled, and told that no one owes them sex. Which is true—but is hardly helpful to the proverbial 40-year-old virgin.
Both men and women are owed the respect of not being offered frequent unwanted sexual requests. Of getting people to take them seriously, based purely on the merits of their work.
Both men and women aren't owed sex. And it's not a "downside" to not have something you're not entitled to not be given to you. It would be a downside to have to pay for clean drinkable water. Or not be allowed to get public transport to work.
If someone approaches you in public and asks you to have a coffee with them, you don't owe it to them to have it, and your refusal is completely ok. They have no right to get upset if you refuse. Just because everyone else has refused them before doesn't make them suddenly entitled to have coffee with you now.
If no one wants to have coffee with you, you need to make it appealing for them to have coffee with you. This isn't just looks, and you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and blaming things you can't change.
This often settles down around age 30 when a woman no longer youthful settles down with a nerdy man.
It's also deeply offensive to compare as pressing a need as the healthy male's sex drive (typically stronger than the need to eat, as you can easily see when you offer a healthy man the choice between sex with an attractive young woman and food), with something completely frivolous like locking in a husband?
Seriously, no. Don't do this. Don't do "being attractive to men unsurprising comes at the cost of sexual assault." Don't do "not having sex when you want to is as bad as being forced to have sex when you don't want to." Don't do "attractive young women are the only women worth having sex with." Don't go for the mathematical impossibility that women get to have more sex than men. Don't go for "reporting sexual assault is a sympathetic experience with no negative consequences," when women are still basically put on trial for it.
In all sincerity, if you don't get why you are shamed and belittled when you complain about unfairness with respect to women, here's the key to make sense of it: you live in a caste system, and you are the higher caste. Women were literally second-class citizens under the law until very recently (assuming they no longer are in your country), and a society doesn't shake that off overnight. Men have real problems, but you can't talk sensibly about them until you get how stacked the deck is to start with. (And, honestly, a thread about a woman who was trying to cut a quarter-million dollar deal when the man on the other side put her hand in his pants? That's a thread that doesn't need to be about men's problems.)
http://dontmarry.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/the_manipulated...
Biology is no excuse for behavior. It can explain a tendency, but it does not justify yielding to that tendency.
In your delusion, you also conveniently ignore that (within certain limits) being attractive is very much a lifestyle choice that brings with it all manner of intense advantages. Your ex-coworker made the choice of being attractive precisely because of all these advantages.
The reason women complain about being 'discriminated' is because it works so well for them: there's always, in the lingo of modern social thought, a "white knight" who's willing to believe them because he's so desparate.
Probably the most bullshit thing I will have read this month.
Women tend not to report on minor sexual harassment incidents, since it is socially disadvantageous to do so. They only speak about it in aggregate terms, which will have zero effect, except in the very long term, on the number of sexual harassment incidents they will experience. Speaking about in aggregate terms, also draws in attention from people sympathetic to the woman's situation, at the expense of other people who may be in even more need of attention, (e.g. say starving children in africa, elder women unable to pay bills, foster children being abused), and enables the attractive women to earn additional privileges.
I agree it probably isn't their deliberate intention to have that effect on society, but I do think that effect exists.
There's a woman who's written a book about this sort of thing: http://dontmarry.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/the_manipulated...
I think this is mistaken. First, the burned-out hacker can always just say no. Second, he has the advantage, not the disadvantage.
(edit: obviously sarcastic)
The style of your post is typical for white-knights who, in my considerable experience, reflexively hit-out against any man who doesn't defer to the feminist/misandric party-line that woman must not be held responsible, that women have only rights, no responsibilities. The great Africa-American philosopher and gender-researcher Christopher Julius has pithily summarised the underlying motivation for this disposition.
I'm not debating this point because it is completely irrelevant. Your argument boils down to "if a woman is attractive, it's perfectly legitimate for her to suffer from discrimination, because she is privileged". There is a word for that, it's "misogyny" (as if your "white knight" dig wasn't sufficient). Women have the right to makeup and skirts, and they have the right to not have strangers grab their hand and put it on their dick. Of course, you're free to disagree with this statement, and you'll find a number of countries, particularly in the Middle-East, agreeing with your views, but that's not what I consider a part of modern western values.
Sometimes somebody says something offensive, and they don't even know they're being offensive. And in those cases, you can take them aside, explain to them why it's offended you, and hopefully they'll say, "Oh, dreadfully sorry, I didn't realize" -- and they won't do it again.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that people should always be let off the hook if they say/do something in ignorance; there are some things that one ought not be ignorant about.
But I think there's something fundamentally different about someone saying or doing something in ignorance -- especially if they appear contrite once they realize how it's made others feel -- and someone doing it purposefully, like the creep in the restaurant in Heidi's story.
Maybe I'm just too European, I don't know.
Not trolling, genuinely curious.
Edit: I can't reply to the children (might be my karma game) and so I'll reply here. The linked article is about specifically about power and privilege, and how being a woman in the tech business puts you at a severe disadvantage in your job, in your community of choice. The reason why I ask is justification "I'm European so..." seems dangerously close to "lighten up" or "get a sense of humor". It's fine to put yourself out there on a joke, humor is hard, but rewarding. But when someone takes offense, I find it problematic when all of a sudden it's their problem for not getting your style or sense of humor.
When a privileged person is forced to check their privilege and they respond with "oh, my bad, I didn't realize, etc." I accept maybe they don't have the experience or perspective that comes with being disenfranchised in that particular regard. When they respond with "lighten up" I find there is no attempt to internalize why someone could feel sadness, or discomfort, or frustration about the offensive topic at hand.
I find that people give you plenty of opportunities to poke fun at them without being lazy about it.
edit: The general idea is to only make fun of things people are completely secure and confident about, otherwise you're not being funny, you're being mean.
How do you know that's the case though?
I remember a conversation from a while ago when young me called a gf of mine the "prettiest black girl ever."
When she asked me, "why not just prettiest girl ever?" I was completely dumbfounded because while that's what I had meant, I realized that I no idea what a simple qualifier could do to the meaning of the phrase for someone.
I learned a valuable lesson that day that I won't ever forget. I don't considered myself 'censored' since then, just significantly more tactful in social situations.
I think that sort of thing is fine and generally accepted, provided you don't become hurtful or vicious with it.
Does it matter?
Basically, if you make a joke about a group you aren't a member of, don't expect to be able to tell someone who is a member that it's 'just a joke', and that goes double if you're a member of the dominant group (whichever that happens to be in context).
Personally, I hit almost all of the privilege checkboxes with the (very mild) exception of religion/ethnicity. Guess what? If you aren't Jewish, and you tell me a Jewish joke, and I take offense (and I might even if it is a joke I have used myself), and I then call you out on it, 'lighten up' just isn't an appropriate response, regardless of the fact that you may not have privilege in some other area.
It's almost impossible for me, as person advantaged by society, to fathom the death-by-a-thousand-papercuts feeling that people who are less advantaged experience. I've tried a lot, for years, and I regularly fail. Just today, I read a great piece titled, "Calling the White Man's Police": http://tressiemc.com/2014/05/02/calling-the-white-mans-polic...
And another little bit fell into place for me. Yes, around here, they are effectively they white man's police. There are a number of factors around calling the police that I never thought about because I never had to. Because I'm white and educated and articulate and I've been well off for long enough that I have a lawyer who I can afford to pay.
It would be easy for me to think trolling is an awesome way of bonding with everyone because my life is pretty swell. I can hear offensive things and not sweat it because I'm safe. But for people whose regular experience is a lack of safety, hearing offensive things is entirely different. Then, an offensive comment isn't necessarily an endearing reminder of cameraderie, it's often a glaring reminder of inequality.
That's not to say I won't engage in clever banter. But I am very careful when it crosses lines of privilege or trauma. As John Scalzi says, "The failure mode of clever is asshole." http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/06/16/the-failure-state-of-c...
People are more than just their race and sex and sexual orientation. People can be discriminated against due to their disability (mental and physical), weight, appearance, intelligence, background, etc., etc., etc.
Consider Louis' example (paraphrasing): "'cracker' [...] bringing me back to owning land and people".
If we're to discuss this as something that might be offensive rather than just a joke (which we obviously are at this point), this could easily offend someone. Is it inoffensive to refer to people as slave owners, really? Or to refer to white people as guilty of that kind of thing by association (assuming that they're ancestors owned slaves; but it still isn't okay to project these "sins of the father")?
Privilege goes in both directions: It's now become standard to diminish any white male's opinions on matter of diversity or gender or race, because of their identity, and give explicit power to anyone who is not a white male to criticize that group. Some say it's "leveling the playing ground" but it often just turns into a straight-on attack. It is now highly possible for someone in the "most privileged" group to be accused of X -ism and then be publicly attacked by outraged people, often with real job consequences.
By the way, I'm not white, but I don't think that should give my argument any more or less power. The post-modernist focus on identity politics and who is making the argument gives another channel for an ad hominem attack merely phrased in other words.
Edit: I can't reply anymore, but there seems to be a spectrum of offensiveness - and "lighten up" means moving the bar of acceptability in one direction, when people disagree about crass or potentially offensive humor - though of course the bar is different in a professional setting. In general I try to be respectful and conscious of potentially offensive things in a work-place. But among my friends (or among co-workers who have become friends), or at a comedy club, I'd imagine we develop a different threshold of offensiveness and be more open to crass humor. That's the "breaking the ice" effect Roizen mentions in her last example
And it's not a straight white male that is always saying it.
Obviously every situation is different but in general white, straight males have historically set the bar for "offensiveness" and everyone else just had to deal with it. When people speak up and say they're offended by something, maybe dirty jokes in the office, they're told to lighten up.
Here is why:
"Why did the chicken cross the road? BECAUSE NEGROES CAN'T READ. HAR HAR HAR HAR!!!!!!! Pretty funny, huh? Oh, come on, lighten up."
^Typical context in which "lighten up" is used . You don't want to sound like that guy, do you? So don't say "lighten up', no matter what race or orientation you are.
If someone finds your joke uncomfortable (like I'm hoping we all found the joke above uncomfortable) trying to cajole them into comfort with it is wasted effort at best, continuation of harassment at worst, and a simple dick move most likely.
If I were to say "lighten up", it would basically be asserting that I am a better judge of the impact of a comment than the person who's upset. But as relatively privileged person, I am much less often on the receiving end of offensive comments, and I have more resources to deal with situations like that.
If I were to say something racially tinged to a black person and they thought it offensive, I would be strongly inclined to credit them because they've had a lot more opportunity and a lot more incentive to think about the nature of racism.
I agree it's not a perfect rule, but it's certainly the way to bet.
Another big reason to do so is power. Things like "lighten up" are used by privileged groups to suppress criticism because that helps maintains the power imbalance. Not consciously, mind you, but as apes we're hardwired for status.
Sometimes it takes a few minutes for the relevant 'reply' links to show up. It tends to happen on busy threads; I understand it's a mechanism to slow down flamewars.
Sure, agreed, and this is explicitly recognized by the US legal system (i.e. involuntary manslaughter vs. voluntary manslaughter/murder). That said, good intentions don't lessen impact on victims. Intention sometimes plays a role is determining what punishment is appropriate for the person who did the offensive/criminal act, but that's little consolation to those who are routinely targets of said acts. You're dead, whether the person that killed you meant to kill you or not. Something important to keep in mind in the context of harassment and conduct in the workplace.
Sometimes people are actively looking to be offended. Take this one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1zGRUPztc
That reminds me of a conversation I had nearly a decade ago with a black (African immigrant) friend. I don't remember the details, but basically he said that he was annoyed that the words "dark" and "black" had negative connotations. I knew him well enough to know that he wasn't trolling, and that this was something that had seriously taken an emotional toll on him.
Ever since then I've been thinking about this -- maybe it does bother a lot of black folks? And, think of very little whose conception of words is primitive, and how they might associate the words together.
I don't really know what I'm getting it. It's very hard to make any sort of conclusion here. I mean, what's the cure -- we make a prescriptive linguistic change that color-based words can't be used anymore? That's not happening.
The concept of dark/black being scary I'm confident pre-dates any racism towards african americans.
Also, there are a few things where black is used as positive.
- Finance; If you're "in the black", you're flushed with cash. There's some kinda dark irony here. ;)
- Rich people tend to wear expensive black clothes, expensive black cars... etc. Black is always in fashion and a symbol of wealth... which somehow, again, is ironic. ;)
The black finance thing is rather simple - in bookkeeping, a positive total is written in normal ink, which is (usually) black. A negative total is written in red ink, to make it stand out. Being in the black just means you're not making a loss, though when used colloquially, as you say, it means you are flush with cash.
Red is the color of life, of hearty blush in skin.
The verse starts: "Black cat is bad luck, bad guys wear black. Musta been a white guy who started all that."
Interestingly, the MC in question here is white-skinned. I think he's Jewish, but I might be wrong.
From the perspective of an African immigrant, I would imagine that it is easy to see discrimination everywhere. I think your friend is annoyed that the idea of "blackness being inferior" is omnipresent (from his perspective). It's even built in to the very way we speak.
I think that what your immigrant friend really wants is just to feel like he has the same shot a person with white skin does. He's kvetching about words because racism is on his mind a lot, but he's not expecting you or anyone to rewrite the English language. He probably just gets treated poorly on a regular basis because of his race, and he wants that to stop.
You (We) could likely cure his annoyances while stopping short of major linguistic changes.
Actions are generally equal regardless intent, but IMO words depend immensely on intent.
I fundamentally disagree with you on this, but I've noticed that people seem very divided on this issue.
Personally, if I'm offended by something and I learn that it was a fundamental misunderstanding and no harm was intended, then the anger/hurt/whatever emotion just goes away naturally, without me having to even consciously think about it or calm myself down.
My ex-wife was the opposite—once the anger happened it didn't go away no matter how much of a misunderstanding it was that triggered it.
I've come to think of it in terms of "Humpty Dumpty" from Alice In Wonderland[1]: "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
IE, if you are taking more from my words than I put in them (including offense), then that is on you and is not my problem, especially after I've explained myself.
I've since learned to just remove the other type of people from my life as much as possible—they just aren't worth the trouble.
[1] Technically "Through the Looking Glass": http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm#link2HCH0006
Even if I'm no longer angry per se some hard feelings may remain. I have dealt with men & women from very conservative backgrounds who honestly and with great love believe I should not do what I do for a living, because it involves public speaking and evaluation of some men, which they believe violates 1 Timothy 2:12. I disagree and I need to remain steeled against the unpleasantness this brings up, even if we are friendly -- it's in this sense that I mean "hard" feelings.
And then I do agree entirely that good intentions don't lessen impacts on victims. The folks who don't want me to teach have good intentions, measured one way, and that's not really relevant. The folks who tell girls not to take AP calc because it's too hard and they won't need it have ~good intentions, but that's irrelevant. The folks who think I'll naturally be nurturing and try to give me some cuddly job with young children have good intentions but they're scarring me and the kids for life. The folks who pass over a woman for a promotion because they think she should focus on her family have good intentions, but she's out the cash and the accrued interest and career advancement for the rest of her life.
You're thinking about how we deal emotionally with good intentions, while the above poster is thinking about the money that's gone, the job that disappeared, the promotion that didn't happen, the mortgage whose interest rate was 2 percentage points higher.
Every time I think I have a handle on how crazy people are, boom, a trap door opens. I'm sorry that you have to deal with nonsense like that. But I appreciate you mentioning it.
If someone pushes me hard because I might have been hit by a falling item, that has less impact on me than if someone pushes me hard because they want to start a fight or get the better of me in some way.
Most human actions don't result in the finality of death.
I'm REALLY really REALLY hoping.
A man who treats women poorly isn't ignorant, he's habitual, and the habit was developed and persists because he's been let off the hook or as is the case with the VC's in the story because of a disparity of power.
It's bullying and part and parcel of bullying is a lack of contrition.
The big takeaway is that straight white men's privilege gives them an advantage over everybody else since they face fewer obstacles such as having their hands forced onto a penis while closing a business deal.
It's not good business sense to make a bad business deal just to get someone to touch your junk. If you're working for a large company with lots of money, you either find women yourself or find a way pay for them on the company card.
Not that they promise sex or anything remotely that overt, only that a lot of men think with the wrong head and will go out of their way to please an attractive woman. That includes signing a deal they may not sign otherwise.
I don't fault women for this state of affairs.
The article didn't actually include the man's race.
"yea, but it did say she was dealing with [community organizers] 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess."
"yea, but it did say she was dealing with [an H1B immigrant] 10 years ago, so an educated person can make a pretty confident guess."
Subsets of academia focused on "critical race theory" might try to redefine "racism" to suite their specific agenda, but I'm content with the dictionary definition:
"the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."
If you're interested in arguing against that, do so. Posting definitions of words from dictionaries is the height of pedantic laziness in non sequitur form (unless the argument is actually about what the dictionary definition of a word is, of course).
Some definitions consider that any assumption that a person's behavior would be influenced by their racial categorization is inherently racist, regardless of whether the action is intentionally harmful or pejorative, because stereotyping necessarily subordinates individual identity to group identity.
Some people disagree with you.
When you equate power and privilege with my appearance and gender, not only do you dehumanize me and treat me like a caricature, but you seem to assume that I hold some sort of power that makes me immune to your hate -- or you just don't care.
Well, I'm not immune, and I'm sick of it, and if anything, I'd like you and people like you to take your message of prejudice somewhere else.
I never graduated high-school, much less from Stanford with a MBA, and as far as I'm aware, I've never even had a meeting with a VC. I guess we all just "look the same" to you.
"I agree that we should be judged as individuals, but if you are white and male, then you should also be aware that you are perceived differently and generally more positively in many situations than minorities and women. If you apply for a job or a loan, you [MAY] have an advantage. Even without a Stanford MBA, you [MIGHT] have an easier time getting VC funding than [MANY SIMILARLY QUALIFIED] women and minorities."
In your statement, you ascribed stereotyped attributes to me, and to every situation I might find myself. In doing so, you ask me to accept the core premise that I always have an advantage over others, in every situation, because of my appearance and gender.
Yet, Heidi Roizen, in many ways (but clearly not all ways, as evidenced by her experiences) started from a position of much greater privilege than me. I hope you can see how these things are nuanced, and that sexist/racist stereotypes are convenient but inaccurate, and in aggregate, those stereotypes become very wearing on those of us who, as is often stated by those with your point of view, "do not inhabit positions of power" relative to you.
The "white man" stereotype used to roll off me, because I only saw it on the fringes of impolite society. Now, I see it said regularly and publicly, in popular if not polite company, often in contexts where I don't have "power" and I do find it both demeaning and threatening.
Anyway, your appearance has power and privileges whether you (or I) choose to acknowledge it or not.
Yes, I think your position is essentially rooted in hate.
It is objectively much harder being male than being female.
Put another way: women's "jerkiness" does not make it harder for men in the tech industry, but men's "jerkiness" does make it harder for women in the tech industry.
This is mostly not about rights. It’s also about proper and polite behaviour.
So I'm going to try harder to avoid triggering those associations. And when I do, I'm going to try to be bolder in apologizing for it and learning from it. My good intentions may explain a fuckup, but they sure don't justify it, and they don't excuse me from taking full responsibility.
I think the expectation of a moral adult is to seek mutual understanding to continually improve yourself to be a positive and constructive element in others' lives.
If you unintentionally offended someone, it's an opportunity to learn more about their world.
Conversely, it's also an opportunity for them to learn about your world. Maybe not everyone they meet is that total asshole, and there are in fact good people in this world. Just be that good person.
It's a ridiculous world, and it's nobody's fault. But somebody has to take responsibility for making it better. I'm going to try. You can help if you want.
When somebody says something offensive, context is everything. If you're in a meeting with a group of adult men that are culturally similar to you and there's nothing pressing on the table, sure, a dick joke might be fine.
But in the case of the article, I think the author even let off lightly situations like the "dick in the hand" anecdote. It's one thing to make an off-color joke to ease the mood when the context is appropriate, but if you're sitting in a room with a woman, and you make a comment like that, you know for a fact you're crossing a boundary, no matter how small it may be.
For some reason, it reminds me of a former (male) roommate of mine who would always make comments containing indirect sexual references in the presence of our (only) female roommate. He would never say something sexually related pertaining to her, but things like "I watch too many TV shows? Nonsense. Are you calling me a whore??" Shit that would be subtle enough that he could easily shrug off an accusation that he was being offensive, yet he very much knew he was trying to spin the conversation toward sex as a means of flirting.
I don't think there are many excuses to be made in these contexts. If you've ever known your mother, or had a sister or a girlfriend who was attractive (and the recipient of suggestive comments), you know exactly what's acceptable and what's not. Picture it's your girlfriend getting harassed.
I'm hardly the whiteknight, social-justice type whatsoever, but for fuck sake, keep business as business and play bullshit kiddie flirt games at the bar.
Your argument is incomplete. I doubt most people have an attractive women in their lives, having either the role of mother, sister, or girlfriend, since such a minority of women are attractive, even if they might be the only women you notice every day.
But did anyone else feel that Brad Feld was very, very lucky that it was Heidi Roizen in the room and not someone less forgiving when he said, "well if you need a dick to hold you can borrow mine anytime"?
What Brad did in that one comment was underscore the power differential in the room between a number of males and a lone female who had just said she feels "very uncomfortable" (even if she couched it as a joke so as not to rock the boat.) Worse yet, Brad was essentially saying, you're here to service the males. Again, it was a comment made as a joke -- but what a crappy joke, to point out that there's an implicit hierarchy in the room.
The only way I can see how that comment would not have made a woman in the room very uncomfortable (or even any respectful male), is if he said it sardonically to make fun of guys who do say things like that without realizing why it's not acceptable.
EDIT: There are a lot of responses analyzing this particular situation and pointing out that Heidi said she wasn't uncomfortable. My point is not about Brad & Heidi, it is that you can't take this one very particular relationship and setting and extrapolate anything from it. The risk of misreading the situation and making someone feel harassed is so high and happens so often, that sexual innuendo in a professional setting is a bad idea. You can find another way to break the tension or team-build.
His second remark, however, is clearly innuendo. And that was described as having diffused the situation. As a reader, the first remark did not affect me, but this second one absolutely does feel weird and inappropriate.
All of which probably illustrates that I lack social awareness, but for some reason I find this example very confusing.
The issue is in his next comment when he jokes about Heidi handling his dick frequently. Yes, yes, it's a joke, so it's different from doing something physical like putting her hand on his crotch. But in telling the joke, he paints a picture of the one female in the room in a sexual position. Many people would be uncomfortable about that, even embarrassed. It's not a professional thing to do.
The meeting they were in was a very stressful one, in a very stressful era. The person who looked nervously at her to see her response was new to the group. Guessing based on his concern, he hadn't yet been "initiated" into a more casual relationship with the others in the room. He was still on a somewhat formal ground.
The person who made the comment was cutting through the unspoken fog underlying the meeting, and no doubt was intentionally using blunt language to assist in that.
She responded with mildly crude humor of her own to indicate not only that she wasn't taking offense, she appreciated the attempt to break through the unspoken fog. She was also bringing the new guy into the circle a bit.
The speaker continued with crude humor to sort of close the scene out. What a screenwriter would call a "button". It also emphasized his original point- "Let's get past this posturing we've been doing. We know what the game really is here, we're normal people and we've been fighting for our own interests."
That would be the end of that line of humor, since it had now served its purpose.
The same approach would usually (but not always) be inappropriate in a meeting of new acquaintances, but this was a different case.
This was an inner circle in a time of stress, bringing a new member a little closer in.
I've been in situations where the relationships between coworkers have been misread. In one case, two women reported a male coworker to HR after he sent out an email that many people, including other women in the group, seemed to think was innocuous.
So I'd hate for someone to read Roizen's post and think that that is the typical response to sexual jokes in the workplace. Even if everyone laughs in the moment, someone may walk away feeling ashamed. More to the point, if you're looking for a way to break the tension, you can probably find a way to do it without making a joke that could potentially make some uncomfortable.
I don't agree that the comment underscored the power differential, rather than wryly acknowledging the reality that the expression didn't work well in a mixed gender group.
It is also worth bearing in mind, that when people aren't offended by a sexual suggestion, they tend to be complimented. Because the majority of people, regardless of gender, like to feel attractive. This is one reason why the area is so hard to navigate, the line between compliment and offense can be so hard to locate, but compliments are one of the primary ways we smooth over social awkwardness and bond.
I personally feel people should make a distinction between what makes them feel bad, and what constitutes someone else being wrong.
If I feel I am being treated disrespectfully, it is enough, and I will act accordingly. I don't need the disrespectful person to be "wrong." I just need to not experience that behavior any longer. Maybe I'm wrong. Who cares. I'm not going to embrace a situation which feels bad, regardless of objective "wrong." Whether I handle it by asking for clarification, leaving the room, firing something back, this is situational. But in any event, my feelings are my feelings, not someone else's responsibility.
a) unrealistic
and
b) especially true for a certain time and place
and
c) a standard for behavior which may have unintended consequences. If you want to regulate a behavior, you should be able to demonstrate that the harm imposed by the regulation is less than harm prevented by the regulation. In my opinion a blanket ban on sexual comments in the workplace probably does more harm than good.
I don't think it was meant to be taken the way you portrayed it at all.
“This is bullshit. Each one of us is just sitting here with
his dick in his hand asking for more money without truly
justifying it.”
Jason looked nervously at me, wondering how I was going to react.
“This is making me very uncomfortable,” I said. “Because I don’t
even have a dick to hold.”
Without skipping a beat, Brad replied “well if you need a dick to
hold you can borrow mine anytime.”
I also think you have it wrong that "any respectful male" would feel uncomfortable from that comment. From that one comment I can relate to exactly what Brad is describing, and I assure you it has nothing to do with actual dicks.
Who in this industry cannot identify with the feeling that everyone in some meeting is 'sitting here with his dick in his hand, asking _______'? I could never feel uncomfortable with someone making that comment, because I would understand exactly what they were saying.
http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/grow-set.htm...
Have an upvote.
but hard to think this way for those not natural at wit.
She indicates that they knew each other. So I suspect that it had nothing to do with luck that he addressed her; it might have been precisely because it was someone like her, that he said that.
Commenters: before posting, please ensure that your comments are both substantive and civil. You should always do that on HN, but for obvious reasons, this topic requires a reminder.
- The use of specific examples, rather than broad generalizations. - Explaining that the intent and attitude of the potential offender makes a huge difference (ie. Feld vs. hand in pants dude). - Acknowledging that even she has made some un-PC comments unintentionally. - Not offering any silver bullet solution, because there isn't one.
As a white guy, hearing stories like this are really helpful at getting a sense of what real world challenges women face in the entrepreneurship/tech world.
_what???_ You think INTENT was the difference between those two situations? You really don't see any inherent difference between using an expression that involves genitals but doesn't have anything to do with them and...sexually assaulting by forcing them to touch your genitals? The difference between those two examples had nothing to do with intent or attitude, but the actual action itself was explicitly malevolent in the latter case while accidentally offensive at worst in the former.
But as a white male, I feel powerless to do anything. I can't speak for women, or for other races, or really for anyone else. I want to help fix this, but where do I begin?
Here's an article with a bunch of options ("What Can Men Do? Men working with other men against patriarchy in technology"): https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 - and here's an allies training workshop that you can encourage your company (or your friends' companies) to do: http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/workshops-and-training/
I've read bell hooks, and I consider myself a feminist. But the problem is that there's no universally agreed-upon definition. How will we know when patriarchy is dead? What metrics are we judging this by?
When ideological lingo is used to communicate, it's going to, right or wrong, cause some folks to stop reading.
Shanley sees all men as de facto oppressors (of varying degrees) due to their gender and the existence of the patriarchy. (Don't believe me? Look at her point: "Men need to work with each other on sexism. It is not okay to lean on the class of people you oppress to solve your system or your discomfort with it.".) This is not a productive avenue for making progress IMHO.
As Roizen points out in her article, while she believes that things have improved, she's still often the only woman in the room. Other women, like Shanley Kane, believe that working within the system and ignoring or brushing off sexist behavior when it's experienced merely propagates the (unacceptable) status quo. They're different ways of looking at the problem from people who actually experiencing it, and they're both valid perspectives. Listening to the perspectives of women and trying to understand where they're coming from, even if it makes you uncomfortable, is literally the first step towards making progress.
And specifically, which of her points do you disagree with? Are you saying that men don't need to work with each other on their sexism? Or, are you saying that instead of men taking a responsibility to address sexism or overcome their discomfort with this issue they should instead lean on women?
Sorry, but an anecdotal story from a random anonymous person on Hacker News isn't very convincing. Put another way: I know several women in tech who think Shanley's approach is downright hostile and is not helping in the least and I tend to agree, so you should just disregard what she says.
You're saying that since you and others regard Shanley's approach as hostile, guys should disregard what she says.
I'm saying that guys who want to help should find away to get past their initial reaction to an approach they see as hostile, look at her concrete suggestions, and act on them.
As it stands, the comment you wrote could have been written by someone who hadn't read the post at all. I imagine that's not the message you meant to send.
That feels like a loaded question.
Terms like "patriarchy", "privilege", and even "problematic" serve to re-frame the debate in a way that causes many negative consequences. It is pretty much the same tactic used in politics to control the language in order to disarm your opponent before debate even begins.
First, it causes debates on issues to immediately have one side assume the premise. If we are having a discussion about privilege, then I am already conceding that in this instance I had privilege in the first place. Second, it turns small issues between individuals into illustrative examples of a wider power and class struggle, regardless of how appropriate such extrapolations might be. Third, it carves a lens through which all day-to-day human interactions may suddenly become viewed, where innocent actions that normally would have gone unnoticed become immediately magnified into sexist acts because they fit into a pre-conceived mold defined by this language and ideology (lets call it what it is) regardless of context. This is what the OP is talking about. Fourth, these terms provide no way to measure progress, similar to the "War on Terror", the "War on the Patriarchy and White Male Privilege" will never be won since it is by definition immeasurable against an enemy that is a concept. Finally, in this particular case it serves to cause women to see men, all men, as inherently flawed and part of a systemic regime of oppression, and men to see themselves that way too. This is all counterproductive, dare I say, problematic.
If you'd like, you can wait to start doing that until the principle becomes an HN guideline. You might have a couple of weeks left to ignore it ('dang has more or less said it's coming). But since it's just a good plan regardless of what the site rules say, I think you should start now.
The tendency for people to litigate framing, tone, and decorum instead of substantive points has a name in online feminist circles: "tone policing". I find the application of that term incredibly annoying. Which is why it's especially discomfiting to see someone directly play into the pattern of behavior the term was coined for.
If you'd like the "tone police" card to get played less often, stop burying the lede that you agree with all the substantive points of this-or-that feminist blog post under a mountain of concern trolling about tone.
You can buy yourself the rhetorical space to criticize someone's tone by demonstrating that you took their substantive points seriously. But read your comments; you can see clearly that you did nothing of the sort here.
In Australia we are having a debate about immigration. The actual debate is over the treatment of refugees (or "Illegal Immigrants" as the government calls them) that arrive by boat. The refugees (sorry "Illegal Immigrants") who arrive by boat are treated very differently from those that arrive by plane. In the last few decades, the refugees who arrive by boat aren't even just "Illegal Immigrants" anymore, they're "Boat People". And we need to "Stop The Boats".
So, in less than 20 years, we've reduced the words "Boat" and "People" into snarling invective that the masses can spit at each other in self justifying jingoism.
I agree that the "substantive points" in any statement are the ones that need to be considered, but if the majority of a country can be persuaded to be in fear of "People" who arrive on "Boats", then we need to recognise that the delivery is just as important as the substance.
When we live in a society where "tone" itself can cause offense, then "tone policing" is probably, although unfortunately, justified.
Obviously Shanley is unpopular among dudebros. If she weren't (and god forbid hit the top of HN) it's a sign she's doing something wrong.
I don't entirely disagree with some of your points but I certainly don't entirely agree with them either.
2) I don't view men as oppressors, but I do think we as men have privilege and that is why we need to work with each other on the issue of sexism. I do not find her language condemning, but I have been working on issues of gender for several years now.
In all honesty, I would love to hear more about why Shanley's language does not work for you as I think her core points are excellent and I would love to know what language to help share this with others.
I posted above my issues with Shanley's language, in general I am strongly against the tumblr-ization of language for a number of reasons.
Some people listen well to a quiet, compassionate word. But many need the application of a clue-by-four before they even begin to listen, and Shanley is excellent at applying that. She is also brilliant at expressing the anger that a lot of women feel. So I think her approach, although not the only useful one, has been immensely productive.
What does it say about the HN community that it was downvoted?
[And by the way, this is an example of the 'speaking up' that britta mentioned. Guys, when you see this kind of hostile-to-women behavior on HN, call it out.]
First off, check that you are never participating in the behavior you don't want to see. I'm amazed how often I have to check myself.
Second, use your position of power as a white male to call out other men, privately or otherwise, when you see them behaving like any of the reprobates in this article. You'll be amazed at how much weight your voice can have in these situations.
Third, proactively advocate for women.
Society stamped the male designation on my forehead, and feel like there's no end of wonderful things I do that have an immediate impact. Which improve people's dignity and quality of life. Do I attack patriarchy? Good. Do I attack the boss's ability to extract unconscionable hours, dignity and money from his wage-slaves? Good.
But you know that movie Avatar, which portrays the white male hero "leading" an army of poor blue savages? Avoid such corrosive social nonsense, and you'll spend a lot less energy. Simply assist and amplify the efforts of others, share literature which isn't afraid to be radical, and you'll go far.
Indeed, I'm curious how your being a male lets you do "no end of wonderful things that have an immediate impact". Either you're in a high socioeconomic position, or you're overstating your abilities significantly. "Attacking the patriarchy" doesn't mean much, and the latter sounds like it comes straight out of a parodic parable.
Finally, that colorful interpretation of Avatar was interesting, though not particularly innovative.
Never apologize for anything that is not your fault, and don't cry about the things you have no power to change.
There is no particular reason to wave someone else's war banner. You won't get any trophies or medals for it. So speak for yourself. And if anyone ever tells you to "check your privilege," translate that as "count your blessings," and let them go about their own business.
And I won't say anything more about it, since these sorts of topics tend to attract "downvote for disagreement" moderation.
Eh. I work in tech in the Bay Area, alongside people from Europe, Asia, South America, and North America. I would say the amount of diversity is far more than what I see working at other industries. Is there a gender imbalance? Sure, but I don't see it as a bad thing considering that not every industry has equal representation of both races and gender. For example, I rarely see public initiatives to get more Asian men to be hollywood stars, models, politicians, teachers, etc. and that doesn't bother me.
You can also do a lot to signal boost. Passing along stories, links, and books is one thing. (I'll often send people to Everyday Sexism or Project Unbreakable, for example, or to particular things on the geek feminism wiki.) And if you notice non-white-male people getting shortchanged at work, do something about it. For example, I've heard a lot of women in tech tell stories of saying things in meetings and getting totally ignored. So be the person who says, "Hey, Jane's point is really interesting, and we went right by it. Jane, could you say that again, and maybe expand a little?"
And you can do things right here. Among a number of groups, Hacker News is basically seen as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Call out bullshit. Point out the distorting effects of privilege. When people are derailing, don't let it slide.
That sexual harassment and the weirdly dysfunctional sexual culture of business is perpetuated on men as well as women.
I arrived on the scene in the Bay Area start-up culture ~5 years ago from a very different industry / cultural perspective.
I was in LOVE with the idea of the Bay Area tech-start-up culture - it's incredibly magnetic.
Within a month I'd closed a major deal with a new client - they'd just raised tens-of-millions in venture money from prominent VCs, the CEO was very visible in the SF bay start-up culture, etc.
I was living the dream - everything in their office was just as I imagined, the people were all hip and fresh and liberal-earthy-but-wise-and-techie just as I'd hoped.
Then the work day ended and I was invited out to drinks to celebrate our deal with the "boys" from the office.
Drinks led to more drinks, led to a strip club, led to the CEO literally going home with a hooker (and he was dating another prominent valley founder at the time no less).
And nobody batted an eye.
Like the author I don't quite know how to wind this up other than to say this is a two way street.
And the more time I spend with rich and powerful SV men, the more I see a "women as toys" culture perpetuated.
Yes, we're all human susceptible to our very human flaws and needs, but it's insane how completely acceptable sexualized behavior is behind the scenes.
EDIT: nevermind, the language was fixed.
Isn't this "just" the distasteful behaviour of rich and powerful people. Don't rich and powerful people who engage in all types of sexual behaviours, of both sexes, objectify people.
When a rich and powerful woman goes to a strip club, or uses a prostitute or engages in drunken fornication do we demand that her industry sector be reformed?
What I mean to say is, is this issue really about men being obnoxious or is it about rich people being obnoxious and those rich people happen to be men?
[It's a question, not a supposition. I find all such behaviour to be abhorrent FWIW]
Sorry you are having some trouble with it. (I would have emailed you these remarks, but, again, no ready means to do so.)
For what it's worth, these threads are always train wrecks, and many here avoid participating and even reading because of it. Usually, they just get flagged straight off the front page, though that hasn't happened here.
HN hits a lot of high notes, so if you learn to tune out the noise, you'll probably enjoy your stay here much more.
You don't have to be active on HN to apply for YC. There's a technical requirement to have an account, just because YC's software systems were built that way, but there's definitely no requirement beyond that. I hope you'll participate, but if this has been your introduction to the "community" I can understand why you might not want to.
What I can tell you as someone who has spent altogether too much time on HN is that for the most part, the people writing the worst comments on these threads are drive-by anonymous trolls, and not serious members of the community. Further, people who have a serious HN presence who contribute to the muck on these threads are, as you can see from the grey cast their comments take, driving themselves into pariah status. You'll notice that even when a creepy comment is written by someone with a lot of karma... they're gonna tend not to have their real names on their profile.
There's probably not a whole lot HN can do in the near term to keep hostile, offensive noise off threads like these. Anyone can make an account, and some people keep a whole battery of sockpuppet accounts handy so they can stir shit up on the threads. All I can tell you is that if you feel like you need to stand up for yourself on a thread like this, there are lots of long-time serious people on HN who will have your back. If you don't want to do that, nobody can blame you.
Welcome to HN, by the way. Stick around.
Java type system debates don't usually come with a side of blaming all men (especially low status men like most engineers) for the actions of a few (usually extremely high status) men. I would expect a lot more angry comments on Java typechecking if that topic impacted directly on every man's chance of social and professional livelihood.
Also, as a man, I have benefited from literally millennia of people advantaging my gender. If I occasionally get blamed for that, I think I can handle it. Maybe you can too?
Too much of the community here is unable to have either an intelligent, or empathetic, response to articles like this. Many comments are not even trying to learn something from the OP, which should be the baseline approach. Even a small proportion of these comments can completely derail the thread.
They employ a variety of diversionary tactics (probably unconscious!). Like hyper-rational "what if"/"did they consider"/"yes, but" reactions, objections to language in the original post, objections to hypothetical language or attitudes in other places on the internet.
I assume that it's a maturity issue, although I've known immature people who have healthier reactions to issues regarding equal treatment in the workplace than the ones here.
(Incidentally, before taking these opinions too seriously, it might be funny to peruse https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5326511)
Looking at my comment history, I have several points from random, off-the-cuff observations and negative two points from well-thought-out comments that are related to programming. That's HN for you. Of course, there are also fascinating, interesting, and relevant comments posted all the time, or I'd never visit HN.
Also, tptacek's comment is very correct. Stories like these seem to light HN on fire. Just look at the front page right now - this story has 100 points more than its closest competitor, and almost as many comments.
It is obviously wrong to demand of victims to take specific actions (or not). Telling a victim (especially one you do not know personally) what to do is definitely never ok. At most you might recommend a certain action, but depending on how that is framed such a recommendation might already be problematic.
That said, I’m not sure I see the problem with naming those who are responsible. Had she done that I really don’t see what would be wrong about that.
One of the problems with naming names is that there are two sides to every story, so it tends to lead to "he said, she said" and tends to get very ugly -- the man has reason to defend himself and often feels he didn't do anything wrong and may not have been intentionally bad. Another is that the woman who does so harms her own reputation. Who the hell will want to work with her if they know that should they crack an off color joke or make some other faux pas, she will go all SJW on them and seek to publicly hang them high?
Women are never going to get anywhere if they continue to jump on their high horse every time they have a run in with some guy. It is the men who have power. We (women -- as I am one) have to find a way to work with them if we want to get anywhere. And learning to sidestep trouble and frame things as innocently as they are reasonably able to be framed is a path forward. Jumping to ugly conclusions and starting a shitshow every time something happens is not.
The author was a CEO who apparently did multi-million dollar deals. I suspect she knows whereof she speaks. The shitshows we have seen posted to HN mostly seem to be women who are less successful than that.
I say this as someone who was molested and raped as a kid, who talks openly about that fact and what it did to me yet I have protected the identities of the perpetrators, for quite a lot of reasons. So this is something I have firsthand experience with.
The other problem is that naming names tends to not let it be a growth experience for men who screwed up because they just did not know any better. We all inherit an awful lot of shit culturally (I grew up in the deep south -- here is me talking about stupid racist assumptions I did not know I had and how I became aware of them: http://ask.metafilter.com/261222/How-can-I-practice-gratitud...) You have to start with the assumption that men are just as much a victim of circumstance as women if we are ever going to find a path forward.
Once you out a man, he is publicly branded. Once that is done, he is much more likely to feel compelled to justify his actions to himself. That means he is likely to keep being an asshole and not become more sensitive to the issue. That does not let us, as a culture, move forward. Nailing men to the cross for relatively harmless assholery keeps all of us, as a group, pinned in place. I would like to move forward. The status quo sucks. I do not wish to do anything which prevents progress.
I am not saying that names should never be named. But the kinds of things described in the article, while definitely deal-breakers socially and in terms of business, are relatively harmless. She is not talking about being beaten and raped. She is not talking about the sort of thing that would justify calling the police and having him charged, criminally.
EDIT: Dear downvoters: This statement is a favor to the guy above me, who probably thought the statement was referring to Al Bundy like behavior of watching TV with hand in pants.
EDIT 2: Removing some needless name-calling. Was just annoyed.
Dragging the subthread back on topic, while I don't doubt Ms. Roizen or anyone else who describes having encountered such abhorrent behavior, it amazes me every time I hear about it, and not so much because it's sexual assault as because I have such a hard time believing any man, indeed anyone of any sex or gender, could be so incredibly déclassé.
I don't know -- maybe it's because I'm gay, or because I gravitate toward the company of people who deport themselves with something which at least vaguely resembles good taste, or I don't know what all, but honestly? Who actually does something like that? Who can even contemplate doing something like that without shriveling in well-deserved shame?
Guys also like to make dick jokes. Because dick jokes are funny. See Louis CK net worth. And guys build rapport by being funny. I showed a guy at work my Chromecast. "It's smaller than I thought". "That's what she said", I replied. Laughs by all genders.
Accept dick jokes. Punish actual harrassment. Don't think it only happens to women.
An unwelcome grope is criminal behavior.
This is probably the most common-sense, insightful piece of advice that our news cycle does its best to make people forget.
In a broader sense, intent is nearly impossible to determine, and it's dangerous to put the responsibility for understanding intent on the party that is being offended. I edited a comics section in college, and I am not sure how I feel to this day around the nature of offense and intent, but taken to an extreme this feels similar to someone telling girls to dress conservatively to avoid rape - its not HER job or MY job to make sure that something dumb is not done by another party.
It's just giving the benefit of the doubt - not attributing malice to what might be just ignorance.
I think it was a refreshingly balanced perspective.
What is sexist about "sitting here with our dick in our hands", anyway? Does it say that men are better because they have... dicks to hold on to? That she doesn't have a dick so she can't join in some literal circle jerk later? It's an expression. Sure, it's "othering" in a sense, but all it really is as an expression of a sentiment of passiveness and inactivity. I think most people have felt passive and complacent at some point.
Goodness knows I've been judging myself by intention more than deed for over 40 years. It's probably a courtesy I could extend to others more often.
EDIT I bring this up because of how she ended her blog post and felt it was relevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrence
A person who did not mean ill warrants different treatment from one who did; but can we ignore their bad behaviour?
It seemed to me like the person asking about it tried as hard as he could to ask it in a positive way (i.e. not accusatory, but offering opportunity to explain).
However, I think tactfully having and voicing concern of how the pregnancy would affect her job performance in a ceo to investor meeting was valid. I wasn't sure myself, so I did a few google searches and which came up with headlines like "Why 43% of Women With Children Leave Their Jobs, and How to Get Them Back", and the legal right for 3 months of maternity leave in the US. It's perfectly reasonable to wonder what kind of preparation the company has to handle these issues.
Offering a candidate an "opportunity to explain" a question that shouldn't have been asked in the first place isn't a positive thing.
People like you see stupidity, lack of focus, and incompetence in men as simply individual traits. At the same time you treat women as some sort of broad idiot class, implying that women need to justify to you that popping out a kid won't jeopardize the business. You're the reason one of my friends in grad school wouldn't tell anyone she was pregnant for months and months and months, so that no one would deny her a research or teaching assignment or put her on some involuntary leave.
edited for asterisks. And one last comment: if you think the woman you are doing business with is not good at business, stop doing business with her. If you think she is, give her enough respect to figure she'll deal with children appropriately, and don't ask stupid questions about whether she'll lose interest in her own company. If you want to ask who will handle x business aspect if she takes leave, that's fine, as it is not a stupid question.
Same to you buddy. Guess we'll have to fight it out in the political arena like anything else people can't agree on.
PS I didn't even say the things I believe that would really make you angry, like "pregnant women and women with young children probably shouldn't be working at all, and definitely not running a startup".
PPS That's a hell of a lot of wild assumptions about what "people like me" believe" off of one sentence.
I agree with her and I blog about such things. I could not have returned to Hacker News had I begun attacking men publicly for some of the shit that has gone down. I am glad to be back and I think I did the right thing, not "morally" but pragmatically.
In many situations, my answer is, you have to simply walk away.
I am still working on trying to blog about other options, not just walking away and not having a shitshow. I struggle with it. My last few posts on the topic have not gotten any attention. I wish I knew how to get some additional feedback so I could figure out how to communicate more effectively. Some of that is just happenstance -- I have had a rough month and just haven't been at my best for writing -- but some of that is that many of the things I want to discuss frequently either get attacked or dismissed. It is thus difficult to get good constructive feedback. It is such a hot button issue for so many people. Perhaps in the future I can figure out how to invite more meaty discussion and feedback. I am certainly not just looking for fanlike adulation and the opposite -- the ugly attacks, where my thoughts are not taken seriously at all -- is generally useless for determining how to communicate more effectively.
I am glad to see this here. She was a CEO and has bigger public accomplishments under her belt (than I do). It gives some of the principles I am trying to promote more credibility. My lack of public stature makes it all too easy for a lot of people to ignore and dismiss me.
I would maintain that her blogging about her experience is "not just walking away" and is "not having a sideshow." The feminist movement produced tremendous cultural benefits through "consciousness raising" and I think consciousness raising worthy of the name is a good thing as any truth revealing self-examination is. Unfortunately, some of what happened under that rubric has devolved into labeling and name calling. (Granted, this could be an effect of the most strident voices being the least valuable.) The population as a whole has to be actively brought into such consciousness raising for it to benefit society as a whole. Also, I don't think that it can happen under something called "feminism" in a manner that's non-sexist any more than "mankind" can represent all of Homo sapiens in a non-sexist manner. I think there are some valid points raised by "Men's Rights" activists, but I see so much angry and anti-intellectual nonsense from under that banner. I wish there were an egalitarian movement.
I know it is a hassle dealing with the police and the legal system, but good god until a few of these assholes get publicly shamed and thrown in jail for a while, I'm not sure we're ever going to be rid of them.
There are plenty of studies which show that men are very unlikely to report sexual assault -- for example, recently http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_...
Sexual harassment is an important issue; but it affects both genders. Starting out with examples of unwelcome sexual touching in the workplace and saying "it's different for girls" drags the debate back twenty years.
I'm a man and I've faced unwelcome touching in the workplace and I'm sure I'm not exceptional.
Yes, men can also be victims. And it's also important to fix that. But you can make that point without instantly demanding equal air time or suggesting that a woman telling stories about her life is placing an enormous burden on you.
From "Syrup" (2013), Amber Heard, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8jBcL0oAQ
Not saying this is the solution. You should get respected no matter what.
But... if everybody you meet is a shallow asshole, why not start manipulating them?
As a practical matter this is a legitimate question. For example, "why are you taking this job when you plan to be busy for the next 6 months?" (or even longer).
As a practical matter, if someone in my company asked a candidate a question like that, premised on the candidate's ability to perform a job based on pregnancy status, I would fire the interviewer --- both because they were playing games with the most important function of the firm, and because they'd have exposed us to legal risk.
Story: at a friend's place of employment, they were having an interview for a secretary, as the previous two secretaries had both left after their maternity leaves. During a group interview, one guy asks a candidate "hey, you're not planning on getting pregnant, are you?"
Did I mention this was at a law firm, and that the guy asking this was a lawyer? Yeah.
The poo instantly hit the fan from about a billion different directions. Everyone in the room, not just the guy who asked the question, got a very very long talk with HR. It entered company lore as "really stupid and expensive mistake this one guy did."
Whenever I'm on the questioning side, I always go over this with my coworkers.
When I made a mistake I was asked 'Are your children affecting your sleep? Perhaps you should take some time off as you seem to be losing focus.'
Other feedback that came in was 'He seems disinterested in the tasks assigned' with the implication that my children were more interesting than my work ( which of course they are ).
Would you also fire anyone who asked those questions of a man?
Furthermore, from an objective point of view how can you argue that pregnancy doesn't affect an individual's expected ability to perform as an entrepreneur after the birth? In my opinion this is a valid question to ask both expecting parents. One of my male coworkers recently had a child and his work performance in the month since then has been noticeably worse than it was prior to the birth. Babies take a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of lost sleep no matter help much help you have. We're not talking about hiring someone - we're talking about investing in the business they are running. Any major pending commitments, pregnancy included, seem fair to ask about.
It's an interesting question as to what, if any, discrimination laws actually apply in practice with investors.
It is a legitimate question because from a purely practical employer's point of view it IS important. As opposed to irrelevant questions such as ethnicity/religion/sexual orientation which don't affect performance, having a baby does require taking some time off, and does have an impact on performance, sleep, ability to work 100hour weeks, etc - a number of medical conditions fall into this category as well; you can't require a candidate to disclose that they have cancer and have planned chemotherapy, but if you could, then it would make sense to do so.
Knowing the answer is an advantage to the employer and disadvantage to some employees; therefore, if it wasn't legally prohibited, 100% of HR handbooks would actually mandate to always ask such questions - as far as I know, before those laws were implemented, it was the recommended practice to do so. And since the particular scenario of the original post isn't an employment scenario and it's not prohibited - it's likely in the investor's best interests to ask that question; the only downside is a possible PR impact.
I am not convinced that it doesn't still suck more to be unattractive (as in male).
There are no interesting stories to be told. You don't rant about the awful party - you weren't invited to the party to begin with.
Those experiences she describes sure sound awful, but they are the extreme end. In between there are probably lots of encounters that she get because non-creepy people were attracted to her. Maybe people even rationalize they like her startups because they like her.
Men also get rejected from VC companies all the time. Also if I would witness men doing awful stuff to women, I wouldn't want to work with them either.
(Not that I disagree at all! Serious question.)
Wrecking people's reputations and careers with mob justice is unacceptable. You must not burn situations with fire.
However it should be said that so many of these things are dependent on the people involved. I’ve never been accused of/(praised for) acting chivalrous in nearly 40 years on the planet. I suspect I can get away with things that people who open car doors can’t.
However I bet those people have plenty of tools at their disposal to make it clear that they aren’t defending anyone - but rather attacking poor behavior. I say they should act and use those tools, rather than not acting.
We all want to live in a world where people are treated professionally.
So, please just step into that world. Expect others to do so as well. Hold those that behave abhorrently to account by all means, but take the high road.
/me rolls his eyes.
“Every time I see the word ‘Girl’ used in scenarios that are supposed to empower women, it really grates on me,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/01/30/girls-lad...
It bothers me too.
"A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl
For instance, what if you are a black man? What if you are short? What if you don't have the right "swagger"? What if you visit the VC when he happens to be having a bad day? What if you have a different accent?
This is why feminism is ridiculously unfair to all men except the "ideal" men, and also not applicable to the vast majority of women, who are not "ideal" women.
It's still not very interesting, though. If you were to read as much as a book on feminism, you'd know that there are reasonable answers to these questions.
And if my argument is novel, I'm not sure how a book on feminism could have already answered it.
No advantage is absolute, and all generalizations describe tendencies. That there is also white privilege or tall privilege doesn't negate that their is male privilege, or prevent people from thinking about it. So as a white guy, there are many circumstances where I get boosts from one, the other, or both that non-white, non-guy people may not get. There are some circumstances where being a fat person costs me, but that doesn't erase the advantages from being male.
Some sorts of feminism focus purely on the male-female issues. That's often fine; the problems, evidence, and solutions are often specific, and there's plenty to deal with. Others view various sorts of prejudice as part of a connected system. You can read about intersectional feminism for more: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Intersectionality
It is also impossible to balance that against reasons it is easier for the genders. How often did Heidi have an easier time being trusted or otherwise "invited in" because of being an attractive woman? No one can really claim to know who has it easier at the end of the day.
What is true is that it is different.
>You can't lure a client with your looks >And if instead, you just want to pin all the blame on men for being pigs and expect them to change, well good luck with that.
It's perfectly reasonable to expect men to not commit sexual assault in the workplace. What world are you living in where anything like this is remotely acceptable?
I'll show you what I mean:
>If you are an attractive woman and want to do business under such potential circumstance, then your best bet is to try to make yourself look unattractive.
This is the exact same kind of victim blaming as in "She was asking for it". He's telling women to make themselves look unattractive, implying that they are partially to blame for their own harassment because of what they were wearing, or how they looked. Saying "well, it's bound to happen" isn't good enough.
>You can't have it both ways.
>And if instead, you just want to pin all the blame on men for being pigs and expect them to change, well good luck with that.
These two quotes both show that he really is talking about harassment and assault. The OP article wasn't talking about relatively harmless (if inappropriate) workplace flirting; some couples meet at work. That happens. The difference is that those kind of things generally begin with very subtle signals over an extended period of time. The context of this article, this thread, and implicitly this comment (by explicitly agreeing that women are asking for this harassment to stop) is one of harassment and assault.
>You can't lure a client with your looks and then always expect totally platonic behavior from them.
>Mother Nature quite clearly has other designs.
I don't need to break this down. It's so shitty.
People are attracted to all kinds of things. Go out to a big box store in an unfashionable suburb some weekend and look at the couples walking around. It's not as if The Real America is living in a PUA utopia where only attractive people find a mate. All kinds of facial and body types are walking around with each other.
If people can pair with unconventional types, they find them attractive enough. Some people will harass what they find attractive. Therefore some people will harass non-conventionally attractive people.
Which is a long way of saying, by no means will conventionally attractive women be the only ones to find themselves receiving such harassment.
This pretty much defeats the purpose of the rest of your comment.
>and confident men are going to act on their desires.
What do we mean by "act on their desires?"[0] There is enough ambiguity to drive a rather alarming truck through.
[0] http://www.hackcanada.com/canadian/zines/spacemoose/take_bac...
In both cases, the outcome is that the perpetrator is going to repeat the same offensive behaviour. People who are offensive should be shunned and told why they are shunned. If they are borderline criminal, others should be told about them. If they are criminal, government should be involved.
Being afraid of what others will think, or of them potentially closing their doors (why?), is a sanction of evil and encourages further victimization.
It's easy for you to say what other people should do. But if somebody has been harassed or sexually assaulted, reporting it or suing has to be up to them. There are enormous personal consequences to doing so. Blaming people who decide not to do that is putting an additional unfair burden on somebody who has already been victimized.
What I said is a pretty common response to your point, and often comes from people who have been through the wringer: not just the initial harassment, but also the enormous difficulty of speaking up. Read more on the topic and you'll see what I mean.
In Sweden women, and men, don't tolerate any of this kind of behaviour, and are certainly not taught to keep quiet. Since you position yourself as knowing everything and dispensing lessons, you surely already knew all about how women are treated and expect to be treated in different cultures. Or maybe you think it's really wrong that in Sweden we teach girls that none of this sexual harassment or obscene language is tolerable and none should be treated with silence.
I'm not saying anybody should be taught to keep quiet. I'm saying that you judging other people's actions without knowing their situations (as in "Walking away silently is not the appropriate response.") does not demonstrate thought or empathy. There are legitimate reasons why victims of sexual harassment and assault choose silence, and I think it's important to respect those choices.
If we want to fix their silence, the solution isn't to moralize and say that they're doing it wrong. They already have enough to deal with. The solution is to change things so that the incentives around reporting are better.
When I worked my male bosses asked me to give them a blowjob in exchange for a promotion or drop my pants and be sodomized instead. I refused and was never promoted. They told me they did this with everyone. I complained to HR, but they refused to do anything about it.
I don't really consider myself an attractive man, I think they were doing it to be mean and have some dirt on me. In order to be promoted they need dirt on you to keep you in their control. It is more of a bully and domination thing.
Manager of HR, said she would fix it if I slept with her, by the way.
You will find that a lot in big businesses, smaller businesses not so much. Which is why I try to startup my own small business and never do those things and go by ability to do the job, experience, talent, and skills as well for promoting people.