Why isn't this being reported to the police? There is a whole department of law enforcement (funded by our money) that deals precisely with issues of violence. Just use it instead of blogging about your troubles.
That's pretty much what the entire article is about - the risks of taking this before a court or even just bringing it up internally in a company; the potential damage to reputation, career and wellbeing can outweigh the slim possibility of justice (and it is a slim one, because often there are no witnesses). Just talking about this would be a huge decision for anyone, let alone bringing charges against a former manager or colleague. Here are some of the bits you seem to have missed:
They worry that they will be seen as liabilities for the rest of their career.
Realistically, only bad things happen to the whistleblower.
People who don’t believe you will consider you an enemy and call you “traitor” or “attention whore,” but never whistleblower, and people who haven’t bothered to research enough to form an opinion will call you a “liability.”
People are going to pass you over for jobs because they think you might stir up trouble.
Courts of law are not the solution to this (or at least not the only solution), a massive change in the way we view women in the workplace, and a recognition that there is a problem with sexism in tech are the solution. That starts with taking accounts like this seriously and listening to what people have to say, not dismissing them with tired excuses about taking it to the police instead of boring you with it.
If you report an incident to the police and if they find evidence of sexual assault, what company or coworker is going to apologize for them or criticize you? Especially if they get convicted.
I can see how it poses a much greater issue when it's a "he-said she-said" scenario, but still, I think you need to at least try to escalate the issue. If you receive disbelief or even retribution for reporting it, then you leave the company and share your experience.
Here's some examples of the sort of reaction you can expect from company and coworkers:
https://plus.google.com/+KellyEllis/posts/L4wawXpNt25
I personally don't know if I would have the bravery to go through all that for months or years on end during a trial - strangers questioning your motives and morals, whether you're a liar or fantasist, spewing bile about you in public forums etc etc, and many people you knew well and trusted remaining silent because they're worried about their career. At best you can expect grudging acceptance you had a case, but from most people it seems you'll hear that what happened is simply impossible.
Just look at all the posts on this very story on HN:
I have never observed anything like this, ever, whereas this seems to be commonplace in that strange parallel universe where these women are living.
I have never seen it
I really would like to better understand the specific scenario that led to being raped repeatedly "several times over months" by a colleague
I want to believe this, but this is a society where a bunch of pepople on a football team got convicted for rape, and we had op-eds lamenting that these people's promising futures were "ruined" by the conviction.
What is it you think are the two sides here?
As many as 12% of rapes lead to a conviction, which is not slim when you consider the amount that are unreported.
It's also silly to compare reporting a rape to an NSA whistleblower. I would pass someone up for a job for giving away company secrets, even if they were ones I didn't agree with. I would never pass a woman up for a job for having reported being raped.
The window for prosecution has closed, so it is not possible to take it to court anymore.
Big events like this take years to heal from. I don't understand why so many people seem to believe that people are incapable of healing any more than they do in the first few days after the event. Like the passing of a loved one, with time, you can come to terms with even very unhappy things.
I got a feeling you made sure you go out with the story after the time to make a complain expired just so you won't have to actually prove that all the things you mentioned actually happened. I can't say it for sure but this is my subjective feeling.
You basically took your own personal experience and try to attribute it to all the faceless people in the industry, those people can't really defend themselves, what are they going to say? "We didn't rape anybody", after all you blamed the whole industry and by association everybody who is part of it. The same thing you did with your actual rapist, instead of bringing them to justice you have waited until you can't do it and now you can just spread rumours without any consequences.
You didn't begin interacting with the technology industry before you were an adult? No summer programs, meetups, or after-school activities? One of the points I wanted to make is that these issues start impacting people when they are still children, and we're going to have to include that knowledge in our solutions.
Personally, the last thing I want is someone who was repeatedly attacked to teach my daughter or my son how to behave in life. You obviously got no clue how to carry yourself around people, to be raped once is bad luck to be assaulted and raped so many times shows that something is wrong with you, not with the system. You were assaulted by different people and by the same people repeatedly as adults, a sane person would know how to prevent it, yes I blame you, the "victim".
The thing is, you were not raped, you invent this story for attention, that's why you go to the media rather than the police. I wouldn't let someone like you get close to my kids or to the education system, you are a danger to society.
The problem of someone using another person in a cruel and harsh manner will not be solved until you resolve the problem of massive power differentials in society. In general, when a man has money/power equal to the next 100000 people (literally worth 100000 times more than the next person in our capitalistic language), why on earth wouldn't he think he can use this 1/100000th of a person for his personal satisfaction? It is functionally no different than eating chicken.
The problem is not one of gender but one of power. The solution is NOT to see women differently, but to make society so that no person (or employer, let's not forget the huge power differential between an employee and employer) is worth so many more times another person that it warps their view of the other's worth.
Can we bring back labor unions already?
> The problem is not one of gender but one of power.
Your gender has an incredibly strong causative influence on how much power you have.
So no, unfortunately we don't get to just eliminate gender from the discussion. It would make things easier, but no.
> I am sure every powerless black man, just before he gets
> shot on the street like a dog, can take solace in your
> assertion that his gender has a incredibly strong
> causative influence on the amount of power he has in society.
Thanks for listening.
The solution is NOT to see women differently
I agree with you there, and think many feminists would too - people just want to be treated the same.
The unfortunate reality is that they are not. We should change that.
Or, you know, can't even be bothered processing DNA samples from rape kits.
The alternative is what many feminists seem to be doing these days, which is "I wish men were nicer..." That is borderline stupid. The world will never be a perfectly safe place. You have to report crimes, and hold people accountable, and use the mechanism for corrective justice.
That's a lot of downsides to this "main solution".
Anyway, the problem is not just sexual assaults, but rape culture. Reporting rapes to police does not end rape culture. Changing the culture does, and that's what this article is challenging us to do.
Disagree: That’s exactly what whistleblowing is.