A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
A Backlash Builds Against Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/technology/silicon-valley-sexual-harassment.html
7 comments
The fact that a backlash against self-evidently disgusting behavior needs to 'build' is disturbing.
There are many facets to this backlash (if indeed there is one). At the most fundamental level nobody disputes that women have a right to the same kind of respect that men receive (including not being harassed), or that women have a right to the same opportunities as men do.
But the devil is in the details. For example, there are a lot of insane ideas thrown around as to how to fix the problem. There are people who argue accusations of harassment should not only be taken seriously (which everyone agrees with) but also be automatically taken as true regardless of their veracity and verifiability, and with the the social, personal and professional cost suffered by those accused being an irrelevant detail.
Second, is this is a Silicon Valley problem, or every-industry problem? How are women treated in the NY Times newsroom compared to Google compared to GM? This is always side-stepped or is treated in a sloppy manner. This sloppiness is evident in the original NY Times article which profiled personal experiences of a number of women in tech with no attempt to verify the claims or set it in a wider context. In the most memorable example, Dave McClure was outed by name in the article for asking one of the women out as she was applying for a position of at his company. Unprofessional? Yes. Creepy? Yes. But that crime relative to the public shaming in an international newspaper read by millions, isn't justified. The irony of that specific case is that there were more egregious examples of McClure's conduct that may actual warrant this public shaming, but that would require some actual journalism.
But the devil is in the details. For example, there are a lot of insane ideas thrown around as to how to fix the problem. There are people who argue accusations of harassment should not only be taken seriously (which everyone agrees with) but also be automatically taken as true regardless of their veracity and verifiability, and with the the social, personal and professional cost suffered by those accused being an irrelevant detail.
Second, is this is a Silicon Valley problem, or every-industry problem? How are women treated in the NY Times newsroom compared to Google compared to GM? This is always side-stepped or is treated in a sloppy manner. This sloppiness is evident in the original NY Times article which profiled personal experiences of a number of women in tech with no attempt to verify the claims or set it in a wider context. In the most memorable example, Dave McClure was outed by name in the article for asking one of the women out as she was applying for a position of at his company. Unprofessional? Yes. Creepy? Yes. But that crime relative to the public shaming in an international newspaper read by millions, isn't justified. The irony of that specific case is that there were more egregious examples of McClure's conduct that may actual warrant this public shaming, but that would require some actual journalism.
Second all the points you made.
There are other unintended consequences that are also worrying. I'm a bisexual/pansexual man and software engineer and the climate has become so antagonistic between the sexes in the past few years that I personally feel a massive relief whenever a professional setting is devoid of attractive women. I feel no such concern with attractive men or unattractive people of any gender. Even the most innocent interactions these days are liable be construed as harassment, especially by those with a socialized victimhood-mentality.
The fact that accusations based on perceptions/interpretations of the accuser involving situations and circumstances that are often highly ambiguous are accepted as unassailable fact is highly troubling. There is no room for nuance and misunderstanding anymore. The fear of public reprisal through shaming over misunderstanding and ambiguity is very palpable and meets the criteria for a hostile work environment.
Personally, I have the luck of being relatively attractive, but I have concerns for less attractive male colleagues whose innocent interactions will almost invariably be taken as creepy simply by virtue of being less attractive. The precariousness of their situation is made worse when some of these colleagues are on the aspie/autistic side of the spectrum and are often wholly unaware of how their interactions may be misinterpreted. Engineering used to be a safe haven for those on that end of the spectrum, where they didn't have to worry about their inability to pick up on nuanced social cues they don't possess the psychological skills to readily perceive in realtime so they are aware of a potential transgression before they commit it.
Work environments designed and curated by neurotypicals is actively hostile to those that are not neurotypical and we're witnessing the colonization of one of few professional areas where those who are not-neurotypical could safely operate. For all the talk of the value of diversity, cognitive diversity is never ever considered or even a topic of conversation.
To be clear, I'm not excusing overt and unambiguous sexual harassment. I'm merely making the point that human sexuality and human socialization are very messy affairs and that most situations are hardly ever free of ambiguity and misunderstanding. If we don't acknowledge that there often is a grey area, we risk creating very hostile social spaces for those who don't have neurotypical privilege and have little to no sexual capital to mitigate their interactions from being considered "creepy" by default.
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
http://ozarque.livejournal.com/176349.html
There are other unintended consequences that are also worrying. I'm a bisexual/pansexual man and software engineer and the climate has become so antagonistic between the sexes in the past few years that I personally feel a massive relief whenever a professional setting is devoid of attractive women. I feel no such concern with attractive men or unattractive people of any gender. Even the most innocent interactions these days are liable be construed as harassment, especially by those with a socialized victimhood-mentality.
The fact that accusations based on perceptions/interpretations of the accuser involving situations and circumstances that are often highly ambiguous are accepted as unassailable fact is highly troubling. There is no room for nuance and misunderstanding anymore. The fear of public reprisal through shaming over misunderstanding and ambiguity is very palpable and meets the criteria for a hostile work environment.
Personally, I have the luck of being relatively attractive, but I have concerns for less attractive male colleagues whose innocent interactions will almost invariably be taken as creepy simply by virtue of being less attractive. The precariousness of their situation is made worse when some of these colleagues are on the aspie/autistic side of the spectrum and are often wholly unaware of how their interactions may be misinterpreted. Engineering used to be a safe haven for those on that end of the spectrum, where they didn't have to worry about their inability to pick up on nuanced social cues they don't possess the psychological skills to readily perceive in realtime so they are aware of a potential transgression before they commit it.
Work environments designed and curated by neurotypicals is actively hostile to those that are not neurotypical and we're witnessing the colonization of one of few professional areas where those who are not-neurotypical could safely operate. For all the talk of the value of diversity, cognitive diversity is never ever considered or even a topic of conversation.
To be clear, I'm not excusing overt and unambiguous sexual harassment. I'm merely making the point that human sexuality and human socialization are very messy affairs and that most situations are hardly ever free of ambiguity and misunderstanding. If we don't acknowledge that there often is a grey area, we risk creating very hostile social spaces for those who don't have neurotypical privilege and have little to no sexual capital to mitigate their interactions from being considered "creepy" by default.
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
http://ozarque.livejournal.com/176349.html
People have different thresholds where the perceived (or real) danger of speaking out is low enough. For some people, they don't need any backup. For others, they need to see a lot of people talking about it. Most people are somewhere in the middle. The snowball takes a while to reach the bottom.
Indeed. But it's a shame that speaking out has to be perceived as dangerous at all. And it's a shame that until now the tone of discussion has been sufficiently defensive and denialist that misbehavior has been perceived as acceptable and something certain people can get away with.
Susan Fowler tweeted that Chris Sacca has been DMing her on Twitter, tring to "manipulate" her to stop tweeting about him. This after his blog post claiming to be changing his ways.
https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/881198112923987968
https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/881198112923987968
Isn't such a statement without example a form of public manipulation? The NYT article that got this going only said about Sacca, "At a mostly male tech gathering in Las Vegas in 2009, Susan Wu, an entrepreneur and investor, said that Mr. Sacca, an investor and former Google executive, touched her face without her consent in a way that made her uncomfortable." And Sacca publicly responded, "Yesterday, the New York Times wrote that, back in 2009, a woman I knew well at the time accused me of touching her face at a mutual friend’s party in Las Vegas. At the time, we had known each other for years, were in a private party setting in Vegas, not a work event, with no investor-investee relationship, we were not in business together, we didn’t work together in any capacity, and I also wasn’t even a venture capitalist yet as I didn’t close my first fund until May of 2010. There was no imbalance of power between us."
Given this, would a message to Susan Fowler, concerning tweets, "That's really gross. And so many people praised him for it! Ew! No!" and "Wait, so: the day before a story is published in the NYT about him being a creep, @sacca writes a medium post about how much he's evolving" asking her to not continue attacking him be necessarily unjustified?
A message that encourages her to direct her energy more constructively towards the real perpetrators could be called manipulative, but if many would find them agreeable, they'd never be posted by Susan, as they'd reveal her to be acting manipulatively.
Given this, would a message to Susan Fowler, concerning tweets, "That's really gross. And so many people praised him for it! Ew! No!" and "Wait, so: the day before a story is published in the NYT about him being a creep, @sacca writes a medium post about how much he's evolving" asking her to not continue attacking him be necessarily unjustified?
A message that encourages her to direct her energy more constructively towards the real perpetrators could be called manipulative, but if many would find them agreeable, they'd never be posted by Susan, as they'd reveal her to be acting manipulatively.
Hold on a second. You're making judgments about a situation you've only heard one side of. What is 'manipulation' in this context? Susan hasn't elaborated but wishes to convey that it is in some way nefarious. But is it? I'm sorry, I don't think it's fair to just pile on this individual for this with so little information, even if he was a dick in some other situation.
// //
I find myself playing a contrarian on these forums much more than I'd like to but this topic tends to have people dropping all semblance of nuance, and fairness.
// //
I find myself playing a contrarian on these forums much more than I'd like to but this topic tends to have people dropping all semblance of nuance, and fairness.
One interesting thing to me is use of the word "outed" to refer to people who commit sexual harassment:
> “Some men have the feeling that the conversation has turned into a witch hunt,” said Aileen Lee, a founder of Cowboy Ventures. “They’re asking when people will stop being outed.”
Now, when I think about being outed, it's definitely in an LGBT sense. But in general, I feel when you are "outed" it's about something that might be bad, but you can't change, and shouldn't really matter anyway. Some examples would be being gay, previously being convicted with an unrelated crime, etc. Being outed is usually bad, as it usually means that you're divulging information that reflects poorly on the person who to a group who doesn't know it.
So what's the difference between being "outed" and being "called out"/"reported"/etc? I'd say it's bad purpose/intent or harm to others. I don't say I outed that meth dealer to the cops right?
I also recently saw this in a reply to a comment I made here on HN, about how the commenter hopes people won't "out" those managers who don't feel it's appropriate for members of the opposite sex to have 1:1's alone.
It's an interesting choice of words, and it does get the point across. But to me, this sticks in my throat, because it seems like people are implicitly saying it's okay to do these things, as long as nobody knows. Which seems to be and have been the status quo.
> “Some men have the feeling that the conversation has turned into a witch hunt,” said Aileen Lee, a founder of Cowboy Ventures. “They’re asking when people will stop being outed.”
Now, when I think about being outed, it's definitely in an LGBT sense. But in general, I feel when you are "outed" it's about something that might be bad, but you can't change, and shouldn't really matter anyway. Some examples would be being gay, previously being convicted with an unrelated crime, etc. Being outed is usually bad, as it usually means that you're divulging information that reflects poorly on the person who to a group who doesn't know it.
So what's the difference between being "outed" and being "called out"/"reported"/etc? I'd say it's bad purpose/intent or harm to others. I don't say I outed that meth dealer to the cops right?
I also recently saw this in a reply to a comment I made here on HN, about how the commenter hopes people won't "out" those managers who don't feel it's appropriate for members of the opposite sex to have 1:1's alone.
It's an interesting choice of words, and it does get the point across. But to me, this sticks in my throat, because it seems like people are implicitly saying it's okay to do these things, as long as nobody knows. Which seems to be and have been the status quo.
Now that women can mostly route around the venture industry by doing crowdfunding, have the demographics of teams that raise money changed significantly? Already one of the biggest ICOs, Tezos, is run by a female entrepreneur, and so is the upcoming AI Gang ICO, but I don't know of any overall statistics.
I wonder to what extent, if any, these scandals are coming out now due to things like AngelList and ERC-20 being viable-ish funding options.
I wonder to what extent, if any, these scandals are coming out now due to things like AngelList and ERC-20 being viable-ish funding options.
There's a meme around that if you crowdfund the VC industry will see this as "negative signaling" and blackball you.
I have wondered first of all if it's true. Good numbers are good numbers right? Is a VC going to pass on a great deal because they crowdfunded a prior round?
Secondly if it is true it seems self serving protectionism, like taxi companies trying to scare you away from Uber and Lyft.
I have wondered first of all if it's true. Good numbers are good numbers right? Is a VC going to pass on a great deal because they crowdfunded a prior round?
Secondly if it is true it seems self serving protectionism, like taxi companies trying to scare you away from Uber and Lyft.
The biggest issue here is not that Dave is a creep and that
he has been let go.
The biggest issue is that the leaders of this 500 Startups organization let this go on for years without taking action.
Who are the people who let their organization's logo and name appear in this guy's slides together with the words "GET YOU LAID (=SEX)"?
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/dmc500hats/how-to-pitch-a-...
It does not matter if they are men or women. THEY ARE COMPLICIT in this mess.
The biggest issue is that the leaders of this 500 Startups organization let this go on for years without taking action.
Who are the people who let their organization's logo and name appear in this guy's slides together with the words "GET YOU LAID (=SEX)"?
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/dmc500hats/how-to-pitch-a-...
It does not matter if they are men or women. THEY ARE COMPLICIT in this mess.
Slide 12 is creepy enough; 14 is over the top; 16 is perverted.
Is this real? This seems like some sort of poor excuse for a joke.
Even removing the context of his resignation, his slides are a poor attempt to be funny and shocking and memorable. I'm pretty sure he was not a comedian.
Things get weird when money is involved. It was probably tolerated in 2010 because of that. 2017 was the breaking point (Why it took 7 years to reach a breaking point is a dark mark for Silicon Valley)
Things get weird when money is involved. It was probably tolerated in 2010 because of that. 2017 was the breaking point (Why it took 7 years to reach a breaking point is a dark mark for Silicon Valley)
You assume a company should be all serious. There are way worse stuff in South Park, Monty Python or Naked Gun. The slide is just an attempt at being funny. It may not make you laught, you may find this humor borderline, you may want this should never happen in your company, but it's not shocking that they allowed this in there.
What are shocking are sexist actions. Any agressive/unfair action toward somebody actually, this is not a gender issue.
The dubious slide ?
Meh.
What are shocking are sexist actions. Any agressive/unfair action toward somebody actually, this is not a gender issue.
The dubious slide ?
Meh.
But those movies are clearly meant as comedy and everyone watching it knows that.
Some comedians say things that are accepted because they are comedians and anyone repeating their jokes in public in a setting where it might be taken quite differently than as a joke might get into some trouble for doing so.
I really do not see how the two compare..
Some comedians say things that are accepted because they are comedians and anyone repeating their jokes in public in a setting where it might be taken quite differently than as a joke might get into some trouble for doing so.
I really do not see how the two compare..
If I watch this slide, I'm not going to take it to the letter. Only an idiot would. "bigger is better" ? You take that phrase seriously in a corporate slide ? It's clearly an attempt to humor. I get you don't find that funny. I just don't get how shocked everyone is.
The US elected a president that "grab them by the pussy". You have real problems. Those slides are not.
The US elected a president that "grab them by the pussy". You have real problems. Those slides are not.
> You assume a company should be all serious.
Except nothing about this is funny, and if you think it is, it only shows how detached you are from reality and humanity. It's like casual racism.
Except nothing about this is funny, and if you think it is, it only shows how detached you are from reality and humanity. It's like casual racism.
You could say that for most TV, cinema and youtube. We don't all agree on what's funny and what's offensive.
The slide-deck is from 2010. This was around the time when overtly sexual tones in conference talks started to become unacceptable. Attitudes change.
Don't forget this clusterfuck from Mr. McClure http://gawker.com/5985094/tech-bros-google-sponsored-trip-to...
Wait, what? This is an article about some people who were planning on attending a trip organized by McClure, who showed up early, got drunk and naked, and then one guy (Jesse Thomas) took pics/videos of the other (Matt Monahan) and posted it online.
How is that a clusterfuck 'from Mr. McClure'?
How is that a clusterfuck 'from Mr. McClure'?
I'd love it if someone with the skills could do a sentiment analysis of all the comments under SV sexism/sexual harassment articles posted to HN, and quantify the amount of denialism versus recognition there is, as well as graph whether there is at least a downward trend in denialism, whether the tipping point mentioned in the article is happening.
On this topic I've been disappointed in HN more often than not. HN users pride themselves on objectivity, but sadly much of it is ditched in favor of defensiveness (or the other dismissive reactions mentioned in the article) when SV culture is put under a critical microscope.
On this topic I've been disappointed in HN more often than not. HN users pride themselves on objectivity, but sadly much of it is ditched in favor of defensiveness (or the other dismissive reactions mentioned in the article) when SV culture is put under a critical microscope.
> HN users pride themselves on objectivity, but sadly much of it is ditched in favor of defensiveness (or the other dismissive reactions mentioned in the article) when SV culture is put under a critical microscope.
Can you clarify how exactly objectivity clashes with opinions on fairly subjective matters(e.g. sexism)? Is there an objective standard of sexism that was applied in a rigorous analysis of "SV culture"(whatever that is..) that HN users are being defensive about? Can you provide some examples to what you mean?
Can you clarify how exactly objectivity clashes with opinions on fairly subjective matters(e.g. sexism)? Is there an objective standard of sexism that was applied in a rigorous analysis of "SV culture"(whatever that is..) that HN users are being defensive about? Can you provide some examples to what you mean?
What's necessarily subjective about sexism?
I had two objections to parent's point, so forgive me for ranting on a bit here.
The strict definition of sexism is a mindset, and the only way to reliably determine that mindset is to have a mind-reading device. That means that almost every time we evaluate sexism, we use a heuristic, and choosing which heuristics to apply is necessarily subjective. For example, I find most of the sexism controversies do not have clear indicators of sexism, but I acknowledge that I applied my own opinion to determine those, and opinions can differ.
Since the strict definition of sexism is difficult to apply, it's also possible to use an operative definition and still remain objective. If we could agree to a set of heuristics, a set of measurable actions through which we can objectively determine that something is "sexism", then we could use that to make our judgement calls. However, I don't see such a standard proposed and agreed upon - in fact, the reason the issue is so controversial is that it seems there is very little "standard" about sexism that we agree on, and opinions about it have a lot of variance. I think it's normal for HN users to then express skepticism and criticize an ad-hoc application of rules to slap a label on someone when we can't agree on what that label means.
This is why I was looking for an objective standard to replace the dictionary definition of the word, which HN users agreed upon and then failed to apply when "SV culture" was put under a microscope.
EDIT: reduced repetition and improved wording.
The strict definition of sexism is a mindset, and the only way to reliably determine that mindset is to have a mind-reading device. That means that almost every time we evaluate sexism, we use a heuristic, and choosing which heuristics to apply is necessarily subjective. For example, I find most of the sexism controversies do not have clear indicators of sexism, but I acknowledge that I applied my own opinion to determine those, and opinions can differ.
Since the strict definition of sexism is difficult to apply, it's also possible to use an operative definition and still remain objective. If we could agree to a set of heuristics, a set of measurable actions through which we can objectively determine that something is "sexism", then we could use that to make our judgement calls. However, I don't see such a standard proposed and agreed upon - in fact, the reason the issue is so controversial is that it seems there is very little "standard" about sexism that we agree on, and opinions about it have a lot of variance. I think it's normal for HN users to then express skepticism and criticize an ad-hoc application of rules to slap a label on someone when we can't agree on what that label means.
This is why I was looking for an objective standard to replace the dictionary definition of the word, which HN users agreed upon and then failed to apply when "SV culture" was put under a microscope.
EDIT: reduced repetition and improved wording.
Lots. Interpretation of some specific event, action, or person as sexist (or not) can be very subjective. For example, if a woman applies for a job and is rejected, she may think it was due to sexism, whereas the interviewer may not.
Can't you just approximate the result by finding the most upvoted comments?
HN doesn't expose vote counts
I've never seen a graph or attempt of proof that SV has an issue any worst than normal society.
There is denialism and lack of objectivity going on, but I'm not sure you get what side it is.
Until we see the science, many of us think articles like these specifically blaming the Valley are just tabloid fodder.
There is denialism and lack of objectivity going on, but I'm not sure you get what side it is.
Until we see the science, many of us think articles like these specifically blaming the Valley are just tabloid fodder.