Thanks for sharing this. Reading Dave's post the first time, all I could think was "this seems like the most bland, cop-out, vague apology I've ever seen." He didn't list the specifics of what he felt bad about, and the whole thing read like a PR release to get ahead of any potential fallout.
Reading the "kudos" from men who thought he was a great guy for coming forward only after years of harassment came to a head was unpleasant.
Not in any way to defend Dave, but I think it would have been wrong for him to publish specifics as that could cause further distress to the victims involved.
But I strongly support them coming forward and telling their own stories. That has value and gives the accusations their proper perspective and gravity. It truly is different to be confronted with the details.
> but I think it would have been wrong for him to publish specifics as that could cause further distress to the victims involved.
But he did publish specifics, selected to make it look as if he had just misread the situation. Which in fact did cause further distress to the victims, see linked article.
>With respect to the NYT article above and Sarah Kunst specifically, I’d like to sincerely apologize for making inappropriate advances towards her several years ago over drinks, late one night in a small group, where she mentioned she was interested in a job at 500. While I did not offer her a job at the time, a few days/weeks later I did refer her to my co-founder Christine Tsai to begin a formal interview process with 500, where Christine and others on the team met with her. Ultimately, 500 decided not to offer Sarah a job. Again my apologies to Sarah for my inappropriate behavior in a setting I thought was social, but in hindsight was clearly not. It was my fault and I take full responsibility. She was correct in calling me out.
>In 2014, Sarah Kunst, 31, an entrepreneur, said she discussed a potential job at 500 Startups, a start-up incubator in San Francisco. During the recruiting process, Mr. McClure, a founder of 500 Startups and an investor, sent her a Facebook message that read in part, “I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you.”
>Ms. Kunst, who now runs a fitness start-up, said she declined Mr. McClure’s advance. When she later discussed the message with one of Mr. McClure’s colleagues, she said 500 Startups ended its conversations with her.
For anyone for whom it's not obvious. The point is not that he spiked her chances to get hired for rejecting his advances, or that she wasn't treated fairly by in the remainder of the interview process.
The point is that he hit on her when she was expressing interest in a job, an advance backed by not only an (even if ultimately unfounded) fear that her application MIGHT be spiked if she rejected his advances, but a strong impression that ACCEPTING these advances would GET her the job.
Sex and romance in the workplace is always fraught, but this is why above almost all you never, never initiate them with someone in your chain of command or when they are attempting to move into it.
Contrary to what others are saying it is still in and of itself probably not a crime in most jurisdictions but it is a serious civil wrong that can cost immense money and goodwill, besides being just wrong.
And if you're the CEO of the organization, well, you should be appropriately compensated already.
Agreed, it's not an abuser's place to decide for their victim what details are made public.
But, the direct apology to a victim should be clear and not place blame on them for how they interpreted a situation, "I'm sorry if you felt X" is the opposite of an apology, it is redirecting blame.
Direct aplogies to victims are addressed to those victims, they do not tend to be written as open letters for the world to read and don't usually attempt to whitewash the situation in which the encounter took place so the perpetrator looks better. If he'd left that part out it would be a lot better, if he left out the self congratulatory bits it would look better still. If that had been the only case then the book could be closed but it appears that that one encounter really was the tip of the proverbial iceberg and I really hope for mr. McClure that there isn't any worse down the line for him because this could end up being both expensive and possible a legal issue. Just this encounter alone would be enough to get him booked in many places.
Oh, I agree with you on that. It's just easy for there to be a lookie-loo sort of situation where people want to know the sordid details and end up re-centering the narrative on the abuser and the story they want to tell.
McClure's public apology, above all, should have been honest and sincere; more detail isn't strictly necessary, to be honest and sincere. It sounds like it wasn't honest or quite sincere. And, it sounds like his private apology, in this case, was decidedly dishonest and redirected blame.
He wouldn't have had to name names. His "apology" went along these lines:
> I made advances towards multiple women in work-related situations, where it was clearly inappropriate [...] I put people in compromising and inappropriate situations, and I selfishly took advantage of those situations where I should have known better. My behavior was inexcusable and wrong.
Dave made it sound like he'd hit on women in the context of offering them a job or investment. His one example re: Sarah Kunst specifically mentions he hit on her in a group.
All of the above -- while clearly unethical -- are a world away from getting drunk with an investee / business partner in her apartment, waiting until everyone else had left, and making aggressive physical advances towards her, including having to be told no multiple times.
Dave's message underplayed his behavior and, I think, really reinforces that he doesn't understand that what he did was wrong. He could have apologized for all of the above and only Dave, Cheryl, and the handful of people Cheryl told would have any idea he was referring to Cheryl.
I frankly think Dave was still hoping to underplay his behavior to keep his job. Also, the fact that 500 let Dave represent them in Australia with no warning to their Australian partners makes Christine Tsai seem complicit [1].
When I read the original, I thought it was pretty reasonable as apologies go - it was directly saying what he did was wrong, which is better than the non-apology "I'm sorry you were offended"s you see (low bar, but still). Of course, it now looks like, at best, he was just copping to the "less bad" bits to try and quell it before the worst bits got out.
While "less bad" is obviously still damaging and there is a lot to talk about there, what's given in the post sounds like a clear-cut crime.
Reading the "kudos" from men who thought he was a great guy for coming forward only after years of harassment came to a head was unpleasant
Perhaps cynically, the only conclusion I can derive from this is them thanking him for not lifting the veil too high and revealing how the system has worked with these forces in play. In the absence of this I have to wonder if the SV VC industry is one big missing stair[1].
This is a really great post, both in the courage it took to write and the logical analysis it provides.
I have to provide a bit of mea culpa here. When this issue first surfaced, I thought it was much more towards the line of flirting which went overboard (to an unacceptable but understandable level). It's much worse than that. This is undoubtably sexual harassment and those differences/nuances matter.
All I can say is that I'm sorry I didn't believe it was more serious when first reported. I know it's difficult, but I wish more women had the courage to come forward with full stories so we could more accurately judge the context and actions involved (ex. with other VCs, like Chris Sacca).
> When this issue first surfaced, I thought it was much more towards the line of flirting which went overboard.
"Flirting which goes overboard" is perhaps understandable from a co-worker or peer. It is absolutely, 100% an abuse of power when a VC does it to a potential investee. Imagine it from the woman's point of view. Suppose you had an idea you worked long and hard on, and then when you present it to a VC, he starts flirting with you? What do you do? Are you worried that spurning his advances will jeopardize your potential funding? Worse, it has to be incredibly demoralizing to want to be treated in the basis of your accomplishments but then know the VC is judging you through the primary lens of sex.
I didn't say it was okay or acceptable, but I had a much easier time imagining how a powerful VC ends up making a woman uncomfortable through flirting than full-on sexual assault.
Like I said, that was my fault. This is a lot more serious than I first realized when stories surfaced.
As the father of three daughters I always cringe a bit when I read things like this. Thanks Cheryl for sharing your story, and men please remember it isn't how you feel about whether or not an action was appropriate or inappropriate, it is how they feel about it.
I think there's more to it than that. When peers proposition each other or express desire to have more than a professional working relationship (and a polite rejection ends the discussion), that's one thing. But a person in a superior position has a different and greater duty, as rejection can have a negative consequence for the other more vulnerable party. That's why many companies' ethics rules forbid, for example, romantic relationships between a supervisor and his/her direct reports.
I completely agree it would be inappropriate to seek a romantic or sexual relationship with someone who you report too, or who reports to you.
Generally though, when going through the various 'keeping it legal', 'managing within the law', etc type classes that managers often have to take a large corporation as part of their training, the reasoning behind forbidding relationships between employees in a reporting hierarchy was always presented as being there to prevent the appearance of favoritism or impropriety.
The idea being that you may be blindly analyzing everyone's performance against the same metric but in answer to a complaint you would have to prove a negative, that you didn't tip the balance for your partner.
"...presented as being there to prevent the appearance of favoritism..."
FWIW, I've been through sexual harassment awareness training 4 times at 3 companies. Part of settlement agreements when some yahoo screwed up (again).
My legal takeaway was the liability, to the company and to the harasser.
My personal takeaway is "Just don't."
I like clear boundaries, so that life is (more) predictable. There's some quote about "The mere appearance of conflict of interest is a conflict of interest." If there's the smallest doubt, anything less than a "Yes!", then the answer is a "No." Sure, I probably missed opportunities. But I'd rather be a dim bulb than a creepy stalker.
It's not really about how either party feels, it's about what is professionally/socially and legally acceptable. What he did was wrong, regardless of whether either of them thought it was.
No. If you think that is the only way - to interact without a shred of empathy or self-awareness of your own actions - then you may be part of the problem.
Try to recall the character of someone who doesn't get accused of assaulting or abusing other people, or making them feel uncomfortable -- someone who is respected by people of all creeds and demographics -- and then behave like that.
It's not that hard, really. Just be a grown-up. Put away the childish fantasies of finding self-worth by bedding lots of women and flaunting wealth and power, and treat everyone you interact with as though they're actual people.
It's interesting that you construct a whole evil persona for someone, just for asking a few logical questions on the web.
I don't come at this as the pushy sexual conqueror you seem to assume. My perspective is from social anxiety. I already am very hesitant to approach women, because everything seems forbidden and inappropriate.
What I hear OP saying is that there is nothing I can do to be sure some woman doesn't find my sexual or romantic propositions inappropriate, which means I'm a sexual harasser and possibly a criminal.
The standard of just becoming a person "who is respected by people of all creeds and demographics" is extremely ambitious. I don't think I can reach that in my life time. If you have, congratulations!
And even if I can identify a role model like that, how do I find out how he propositions women?
> I don't come at this as the pushy sexual conqueror you seem to assume. My perspective is from social anxiety. I already am very hesitant to approach women, because everything seems forbidden and inappropriate.
This social anxiety is not in the same category as the behavior of the perpetrator of sexual assault in this blog post.
There are plenty of sites that will pair you up with someone for a date. You can meet someone from such a site and easily judge whether they are interested in pursuing a relationship further. Once they know you have social anxiety, they will probably even give you some leeway about being awkward and uncomfortable as you try to gauge where the relationship is going. That is certainly not a guarantee against you doing something out of line. And it is still certainly helpful to get advice from someone you trust who is obviously more comfortable and intuitive with the less "logical" aspects of human interaction.
Completely unrelated to all of that-- this blog post was about a person who held a position of power over another in a professional business venture, tried to get the less powerful person in the venture drunk at a social gathering, then attempted to use that person's inebriation in order to increase the likelihood of sexual advances. Then, the victim of this unwanted and already inappropriate proposition explicitly said "no" and explicitly asked him to leave. Instead, he physically assaulted her.
Please tell me you understand the difference between that and your own potential to have an awkward encounter with a woman due to social anxiety.
The only point I really wanted to make is that "If anyone reacts negatively to anything you do, it is always because you did something wrong" is an insane standard for human behavior.
I think most everyone agrees with that in general. But when it's phrased "men please remember it isn't how you feel about whether or not an action was appropriate or inappropriate, it is how they feel about it", it's apparently a whole other story.
I was hoping there could be a sane and logical discussion about that, but that seems impossible, at least here and now.
> Please tell me you understand the difference between that and your own potential to have an awkward encounter with a woman due to social anxiety.
I do understand that. I wasn't commenting on the main story at all, only the "If anyone reacts negatively..." quote.
And I assume that when people say "and men please remember...", they really only mean pushy inconsiderate men, and forget that their word will be read by people like me who really need to hear advice about becoming more assertive.
Final nitpick: I'm not so concerned with an awkward encounter. I have a lot of those. My fear is doing something I think is within modern rules of courtship, and be branded a sexual predator. My other fear is being so scared of doing something inappropriate that I never do anything at all and remain forever alone...
It really, really isn't that complicated, I promise. Step one: communicate your interest politely and ask her on a date. Step two: if you are rebuffed, don't be a jerk.
You will notice that nowhere in here is "she will act shocked and think you are a harasser." Because that's not how it actually works, despite the considerable efforts of some folks to convince you that it is. Perhaps you should meditate on why they'd spend so much effort on that.
Role models are probably a bad idea; often we find out later that they've been going about it all wrong as well.
> nothing I can do to be sure some woman doesn't find my sexual or romantic propositions inappropriate
You can never be sure of anything in human relations. But I think the shorthand approach is to see it from her point of view. Basically, does she have a safe exit? In the situation described there are two ways in which she does not. Firstly, there's a business context - she's worried that if she says "no" firmly enough, it will jeopardize her contract; secondly, there's a physical obstructing of her and an initial refusing to leave her flat (he is eventually persuaded to).
Remember also the flip side of this: as a woman, there is nothing she can to do be sure that someone she does actually accept a proposition from isn't a rapist. And if she does, there are people who will blame her for it.
>I tried suggesting exactly this - not only down-voted, but then flagged!
I think that's because your post is of less quality than the one you're responding to, not because of the merits of the idea itself. pjc50 said "probably" instead of asserting an absolute, and provided a reason why that might be the case, instead of dismissing the concept with a snarky remark.
In other words, pjc50 provided an argument to support the idea in a neutral tone. That can be respected even by people who don't agree with the argument.
Why should I "support the idea" of role models when I see no value in it? Isn't the burden of proof on the user? Where is the "argument" that role models are a valid thing worthy of authority?
I didn't say that you should support the idea of role models. I said that the argument provided in pjc50's post supported the idea that "role models are probably a bad idea".
Your comment only included a sentiment, not a rational reason to support the idea you tried to express.
That's all that is needed when the burden of proof is not upon you. I don't need to argue why there is no teapot in space, anyone with such a claim themselves bear that burden.
MY 'idea' is the rejection if an unsupported claim, requiring no more rationalisation than that.
> I don't need to argue why there is no teapot in space
In that case you didn't needed to write down your rejection of it either, and your post became redundant. No wonder that it got downmodded into oblivion.
You left out commenting on the part where your post came as dismissive. If your post had made a neutral assertion that "role models have been assumed but that may be unjustified", it might have been acceptable. But that is not what your post did.
Now you may learn to avoid writing remarks like that and contribute with constructive dialog in the future, or keep defending a post which the community decided to flag dead and bury, by making rationalizations about it that were not explicit in the original.
What did it do instead? That's exactly what it said. It's your assertion that the comment was "dismissive".
> Now you may learn
the post ended up around -2 which is not "the community"; The remark "like that" was fine in my own judgement, and that's what matters to me, not the handful of internet points I might lose to people who care for no dialogue at all.
The comment was constructive as far as I'm concerned, and my "rationalizations" are clear - I think you've jumped the gun in assuming your opinions here.
> the post ended up around -2 which is not "the community"
The post is hidden from view once it becomes flagged dead; and before it happened, no one bothered to mod it up to undo what they'd think could be an unfair down vote.
You may rationalize all you want, but fact remains that pjc50's post was not flagged down, and yours was, even though they were "suggesting exactly" the same point.
I just pointed out this factual difference, and proposed what I think is the most likely reason. If you keep thinking that you got downmodded not for the style of your post but for its contents, by "people who care for no dialogue", then how do you explain that pjc50's post was not downmodded as well?
But doo you know how many saw it at that point? Many nested comments see no active users in any case, other than those already participating in the thread. This means voting is biased by that.
The fact that pjc50's post was not down-modded is also consistent with the down votes being non-representative. You're applying "logic" where it doesn't apply, but feel free to apply probability or statistics.
It sounds like you've spent more time online reading about this subject than you have offline learning about what it's really like, I don't mean that as an insult.
In the same way that it is easy to conclude that there is a mass war between social justice warriors and the alt-right if you hang out in the right circles online, despite in real life it being a very minor fringe issue that the vast majority of people have no knowledge of.
You shouldn't be hesitant to approach anyone as long as you feel you are being respectful.
I wasn't describing you specifically. Maybe I was unclear, or maybe you're trying to steer a discussion about inequity towards a group of people into a discussion about your discomfort as a non-member of that group. Or maybe both.
I also don't think this is the appropriate time and place to write a manual on dating. Here's one hint though: when you meet a nice woman, your first thought shouldn't be, "how do I proposition her?"
As a father of a daughter and a son, I disagree strongly with what you say. Feelings are completely irrelevant here.
Asking to sleep with someone and trying to kiss her, and then leaving when being told "no", is not sexual assault; regardless of how either person felt about that. You can consider it awkward, ridiculous, or just normal human sexual behaviour. But it is not by any means assault.
> Asking to sleep with someone and trying to kiss her, and then leaving when being told "no", is not sexual assault;
That's not an accurate summary of her account. He'd been rebuffed repeatedly and clearly before forcing her into a corner and trying to kiss her. While the exact legal definition of "sexual assault" varies depending on the jurisdiction, if it came down to a court decision I don't like his chances.
I did nor interpret her text that way. To be fair, the whole text is very confusing for an article that purports to be "shedding light". The sentence that talks about the corner is this:
"On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me, and said (...)"
Now, this is extremely vague and can mean anything. He was already going out, but she was in the way, and the exit door was on a corner? He pushed himself without touching her (because the contact was later, during the kiss attempt)? This can be construed as assault or as a normal goodbye when leaving the house of somebody.
It is infuriating that this crucial part of the text (where the alleged assault happens), is extremely vague. Moreover, the fact that the text is riddled with bogus claims like "unwanted propositions", does not play in favor of its credibility. That's actually the whole point of propositions, to see if you are wanted or not! What does it matter if a proposition is wanted or not? This is ridiculous.
In the end, this noise plays against the victims of assault. When somebody is assaulted, she should go immediately to the police, not write a vague article three years later, mixing real problems with imaginary ones in the same list.
Now, this is extremely vague and can mean anything. He was already going out, but she was in the way, and the exit door was on a corner?...This can be construed as assault or as a normal goodbye when leaving the house of somebody.
A normal goodbye is not forced on someone who has repeatedly said no to advances. The account was really quite clear, far clearer than McClure's apology. And yet you feel the need to make up details (where the door was etc) in order to try to excuse his behaviour, and call her a liar. Why is that? Why do you think she would lie in this situation and he would not?
Your response says more about you than her. Also, your incredulous response is the perfect illustration of why this woman didn't go the police and go public with her story years ago - she was in a vulnerable position, and would be slandered and called a liar if she made the claims public, and likely disbelieved by most of the men she worked with and then calumnied in court by well paid lawyers. The woman has zero incentive to lie, and frankly very little incentive in our current society to come forward, it is highly likely she is telling the truth in this situation simply because the balance of power likes with McClure and if she lied her career would be over (it will be harder even if she tells the truth).
The reaction on HN to these stories has been damning (for the global tech industry) - it's clear tech has a long way to go before even confronting these issues truthfully and without prejudice, let alone actually dealing with them.
The first step to dealing with this problem properly is not to write long screeds about how this woman might well be lying (the implication being this is a common occurrence, not an outlier), but to accept her story at face value - leave it to the police or those investigating the incident to verify it.
I do not believe the author is lying. I honestly do not understand the relevance problem that she is reporting. She cried after an awkward interaction? This happened to me all the time when I was younger, no big deal really.
The "awkward interaction" here is being physically intimidated by someone who doesn't respect being told No, who is big enough to overpower you and who is in a position. Of power with clear conflict of interest.
It's great that you wouldn't be terrified in this kind of situation. It's also important to know that not everyone feels the same way that you do, and that it's entirely reasonable and expected for someone to be scared shitless given the situation described. It's not their fault to feel that way, and they're not the ones who should "grow a pair". Everyone here needs to make sure that physical intimidation doesn't happen, and if you're not sure about whether it's wanted, get a clear approval before you storm onto someone.
Maybe she was crying because she felt the encounter was more than awkward. Seeing as it she believes it constituted assault, she may have been emotional because she had worried that it could have become much worse for her, McClure being bigger and stronger than her, and also likely inebriated. She was probBly emotional, based on her account, because she was put in a terrible situation where she had to keep silent for the sake of her company.
It's going to be pretty impossible to sow doubt about the 'setting' on this one like he did with the previous instance. Makes you wonder how often this sort of thing played out, 10's of times? 100's?
At least 12 women according to the update in Cheryl's post. Most, if not all of these women, are also people of color according to Sarah Kunst.
<<Update>> I just spoke to Sarah Kunst and learned from her that at least 12 other women including me, have faced sexual harassment or advances from Dave of various degrees. Some of them are portfolio company CEOs like myself. They’re afraid to come out, but some eventually will. I had doubts publishing this, but after talking to Sarah, it is clear to me now that I can’t just sit silently and trust that Dave’s behavior will stop, or that we can just file his misconduct under “Dave being Dave.” This is about protecting other women who might otherwise be subjected to his future unwanted sexual advances.
Because there are tons of apologists in the valley. Men who also harass women like McClure and feel they're entitled to it, especially against women of color.
The overwhelming majority of HN votes don't come from "the valley". And to the extent we have data on this the geographical trend is probably opposite to what you're suggesting.
There's really been a considerable change in HN in the past few years. A couple of years ago, a thread like this would have been 100% apologists and victim-blaming, laced with a heavy dose of outright misogyny. It would have been flagged off the the front page in minutes. Today, the threads are much better with only a small amount of that.
I'm unclear whether this is because a) Silicon Valley is changing b) the user composition of HN is changing or c) the misogynist types are just feeling less confident. Regardless of the reason, it's a change for the better.
I have to credit 'dang and 'sctb's public moderation and tone-setting for a lot of it (and I've been a critic of weak and permissive moderation here in the past, so credit where credit is due). HN still has some really profound problems with punching down, but so does everywhere else and it's improved significantly; amongst the places I hang out it's gone from perhaps the most egregious example of the kind of nastiness in the industry to somewhere better than the median.
I will second that the moderators deserve credit for the change in "tone" as you put it. But it is not really a change in tone, but rather that the hold-on-a-seconders, whose "tone" is generally utterly anodyne in comparison to the reflexive vituperation they receive (not that it bothers me) have been warned off contributing. And so it goes.
The contributions of those anodyne 'hold-on-a-seconders' should not be missed. There was a reflexive script that they worked off that sounded all very mature but pretty much came down to people wandering into every thread and reminding everyone that sometimes victims lie.
They never had any specific reason to do this; it was never the case that these guys had new information. They just felt consistently moved to remind us all that No-one Really Can Know All The Facts every time an allegation turned up, like they had just invented epistemology and wanted to tell the world.
Exactly this. It's whataboutism designed to discredit and damage the victims and to that end I actively don't respect (and do downvote, and sometimes flag) those posts.
> There's really been a considerable change in HN in the past few years. A couple of years ago, a thread like this would have been 100% apologists and victim-blaming, laced with a heavy dose of outright misogyny.
I wonder how far back you mean; I haven't noticed that in past two or three years.
> It would have been flagged off the the front page in minutes.
Sometimes those topics get flagged simply because people might be getting tired of the pervasive guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude that's frequent with these stories, especially that they often turn out to be overblown, more complex than presented, or outright false.
Question for me is when did Christine Tsai know and why was nothing done sooner?
She tweeted (now deleted) about Caldbeck a week before asking “Where’s the Outrage?” when it now sounds like she kept the real reason why McClure was put in a “limited” role in April for reasons unknown to even the 500 staff (and obviously the public until this past weekend) https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/03/employee-email-claims-500-...
Hard for me to defend the public moral outrage she showed for the Binary cap situation when she clearly kept silent about similar issues with her own firm.
I'm male and I find it so bizarre that men behave in this manner. But it happens so often that I wonder sometimes if I'm the one who is not normal.
I love women. I am attracted to them constantly. But the thought of making sexual advances towards them when I have not received any sign of interest beyond friendship or business etc, repulses me.
I have felt this way my whole life. I'm just starting to think the same, that I'm the abnormal one. I had assumed that we, as a society, were on the downhill side of women's equality. Then Sessions became the AG and I watched women testifying in front of Congress treated like it was 1950.
I think all that progress we made over the last 50 years was partly in my head.
FWIW, I've never noticed signs of interest from the opposite sex; it was only after the fact, when I talked about an odd occurrence, or someone acting unusually, that people told me that it was probably a sign of interest. I didn't start a relationship until I started making much more active moves; that took many years.
My point being, I don't think it's that unusual for many men to simply not notice these signs you find obvious. To this day I can't tell. I'd be having dinner at a restaurant with my parents and my father would tell me that the waitress was unsuccessfully trying to flirt with me!
(I mean this as no defense of Dave. My fault is never noticing and never acting when it's welcome; I have never acted without verbal or written invitation. It took my current partner sending me a text saying that she was worried I wasn't into her, before I knew I could move further.)
Which is the part that puzzles me. Successful guy, plenty of money. Get a high priced call girl, go on a sex site and get a woman who wants what you want. I mean I used to be in a band and it was easy to have a woman in nearly every city you could call when you feel lonely.
If he was after something deeper, hire a dating consultant and find something worthwhile.
It just amazes me that people who have both the means and ability to get what they want do foolish stuff like he's doing.
> Get a high priced call girl, go on a sex site and get a woman who wants what you want. I mean I used to be in a band and it was easy to have a woman in nearly every city you could call when you feel lonely.
That's not the point. The point is precisely the power and coercion. Paying someone or finding someone like-minded doesn't hit that button anywhere near the same way that assault and blackmail does.
If you're strong-arming women into sex, it's not about the sex, it's about the strong-arming. The very inappropriateness itself is the goal.
People say this all the time, but is there any actual rigorous evidence or argument for it?
As far as I can tell it's just a way to demonize and dehumanize a group of really unpopular people in order to feel better about taking retribution against them. Comparable to saying, "She didn't murder her kids because of depression, but because she wanted them and her husband to suffer. The pain itself is the goal."
So is this really a rent-paying belief? Or is it rather a way to feel good about hating someone and absolve yourself from the responsibility to understand the internal experiences of people who do bad things?
This is important, by the way. If the goal is to feel good about hating people who did wrong, dehumanize away. If the goal is actually to prevent other people from doing wrong, you need understand accurately why the wrong was being done in the first place, and that's what I'm afraid isn't being done here.
I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who pays attention to the way good people are seduced into bad actions by the exercise of power beyond what's appropriate.
I do this precisely because I want to avoid situations where my behavior and viewpoint will be compromised by the level of authority I wield.
The very point I'm attempting to make, anyway, is that if you hand even the best humans inordinate power they will abuse it. That's how power is. It's not about the people - it's about the power structures we inhabit.
Reference the milgram experiment, the stanford prison experiment, whatever you like. They're not definitive, by any means, but they show you what is possible.
It's probably some mix of a lack of impulse control and enjoying the chase. He meets an attractive woman and pursues her, without stopping to think whether or not what he's doing is inappropriate or even assault.
Edit: I just finished reading the article. I hope this comment doesn't seem like I'm dismissing him as "Dave being Dave", because what he did was horrible. Plying her with copious amounts of alcohol and then backing her into a corner, refusing to leave her house. That's really messed up, like a frat boy's limited understanding of consent.
What I don't understand is why she kept drinking what he was pouring. (This is absolutely not a ”she was looking for it” remark... I'm just curious why in her initially sober state she had less incentive to avoid risk than when she was a little inebriated. His behaviour is absolutely nothing but despicable.)
Have you ever spent a lot of time around people you look up to and respect professionally and/or who are a bit famous? You get flustered and want to be liked and accepted. It's natural, and the burden is on the person in the more powerful position not to exploit that.
A long while ago I made the decision that I would never drink if I were not comfortable with the situation. Trying to impress somebody is a situation I am not comfortable with, so in this particular situation I would not drink. I consider this a sound policy (but then of course, of course I would, because it is my policy, so I'm biased).
That's nice in theory, but as long as sharing drinks with people is the world's most preeminent traditional method for socializing and turning casual acquaintances into close connections you're going to be necessarily swimming up stream with that policy.
It's not a theory, it's my practice. There's many cultures/religions where drinking is not allowed and somehow they manage to socialise too. I just say "thank you, but no thank you, I don't drink" and that's the end of it, the one time somebody was pushy I just remarked I'm on medication (little white lie there) and that was it.
Plus, incidentally, this is Malaysia... I lived in Malaysia for several years in the mid 2000s. There's a lot of heavy social drinking there but there's also a predominant Muslim culture (the Malays) who in theory should be barred from imbibing alcohol. As such, Malaysians are, in my experience, very adept at mixing in social situations where copious drinking is occurring while still allowing for some members that abstain from doing so on cultural grounds not to fell out of place.
It isn't impossible to do. It isn't even difficult to do. In fact it's an absolute non-issue.
Now, this is not terribly relevant in the present context (this was her house, I presume the alcohol was taken from her drinks cabinet, & cetera) but you should never allow anybody to pressure you into drinking because of social pressure. That somehow you seem to believe that the social situation begets the behaviour is a bit alarming.
I think I expressed myself badly. I'm English/Italian and live in Italy. However I lived in Malaysia in the mid-2000s. These events took place in Malaysia. As I understand it the victim is a Malaysian national. Therefore I consider my experience of the place and culture to be somewhat relevant, or at the very least, evidence that other modes of behaviour are possible.
Because drinking a bit too much during a party is no big deal. Remember the part where she was surprised to find herself alone with Dave? That's when she suddenly realized what was going on.
(By the way: any analysis on how the victim of abuse made sub-optimal decisions is _always_ victim blaming, even if you add a disclaimer stating otherwise.)
People like him may be bored of using money as a means to get girls (no need to resort to prostitution for this even). Instead, they probably get off from methods like these.
One of the most eye opening experiences I have ever had in the workplace was in a sexual harassment class which was required for a big corp. The instructor laid out the rules, but people in the class had a hard time grasping the logical structure. Two different scenarios which clearly had the same structure would trip people up by swapping out variables. I was never good with math, but I picked up on these structures right way. Maybe the class should have been taught as a philosophy class from the start. It was amazing to me how difficult such an important subject was for people to pick up.
As difficult as sexual harassment is to learn and teach, I imagine most smaller businesses / start-ups don't make much of an attempt, if at all. Obviously HR is lacking. This might be a good place for improvement for a start-up to tackle.
'Don't try to sexually force yourself on someone who just asked you to leave their residence' is not a complex issue limited by inadequate HR training. It's basic sane social behaviour. McClure didn't do this because he was unaware of the intricacies of workspace laws and regulations. He did it because he thought he could and would get away with it.
Good article - at first I was wary because of vagueness in the first few paragraphs, terms like "inappropriateness", "sexual harassment", "non-consensual sexual advances" etc. that are flung around so freely nowadays yet so open to interpretation, and which often go viral and get people fired.
But in fact that was the point - that the devil's in the details and specifics really help. And the specifics in her case were clearly not cool. Kudos for putting them out there.
In situations where men make initial inquiries and the woman turns it down, but does not cut all contact with him forevermore, men seem to pretty consistently interpret this as "she actually likes me and is playing hard to get." The problem for women with careers is that walking away entirely from a powerful man would mean walking away from all kinds of professional settings where she is likely to run into him. Cutting him out of her life entirely would be career suicide.
The one message we really need to get powerful men to get is this:
Working women are talking to you at all for the exact same reason working men are talking to you. And it isn't because they think you are hot. They are trying to make a business deal or further a career goal, not fulfill your wildest fantasies.
I think this is why so many men persist in saying things like "I just misread the situation." And we will keep hearing that until it is the cultural norm for men to assume that women they work with are there to work, and that's it.
A good point, but a grossly over-generalized one. Men "not taking no for an answer" after rejection is the exception, not the general norm, even if it's over represented in the VC scandal. That's why it's a scandal.
I think you are misunderstanding my remarks in some way. Nowhere did I use the phrase "not taking no for an answer."
I am not talking about normal situations where it is possible for clear, unambiguous communication to take place. I am talking about a gray zone that makes it inherently challenging. I have written about this before:
And I am saying we need to work at fostering a culture where people in power default to an assumption that if there is any doubt, they need to err on the side of assuming "This is about business, not romance. Period." Because my firsthand experience and pieces like the one under discussion agree that, all too often, a woman just can't seem to adequately signal "romance is NOT on the table here" and also remain on good working terms with a man in power. That is exactly the point I am trying to make. It has nothing to do with asserting that men don't take no for an answer.
I paraphrase, only because the exact quote was pretty long:
In situations where men make initial inquiries and the woman turns it down, but does not cut all contact with him forevermore, men seem to pretty consistently interpret this as "she actually likes me and is playing hard to get."
Perhaps your intent was more nuanced than your literal text. Either way, men in general do not "consistently" keep pursuing after rejection, just because the female doesn't cut them out of their lives altogether.
I chose the phrase "make initial inquiries" very carefully. It is not intended to describe a situation where men are openly and unambiguously hitting on a woman. In my experience, in delicate situations, there is a feeling out process. It isn't a bald question.
If you go back and read the article under discussion, he repeatedly asked her to have wine with him. Sometimes she said no. Other times, she said yes and it went fine. She herself was confused as to whether or not he was hitting on her. It wasn't clear to her until it crossed some incredibly unambiguous line.
If they were not working together, a woman sometimes saying yes to wine and sometimes saying no but remaining on warm friendly terms could be called dating. Studies show that it takes women longer to warm up to sex than it does men. Most men are used to having to work at getting to yes romantically. And the usual way you get there is by repeatedly pursuing social interaction. If the social interaction goes well, your hopes that it might lead to sex are not dead yet.
Given that fact, it isn't crazy for a man to interpret these situations as a potential budding romance -- unless you posit that she was ONLY there to do business and needed contact with him because of his position of power.
I am generally pretty sympathetic to the man's side here, so it aggravates me when I so consistently get accused of BS like this. Because when I try too hard to make it clear I am not accusing men of anything, then I get called a rape apologist.
I keep waiting for my long track record of even-handed remarks on the topic to pay off and get me interpreted as not a man-hating bitch. I am beginning to think that is expecting too much of the world.
I feel strongly this is very much a situational problem. But no one seems to want to hear that. People are too busy lining up on the side of the accusers and planning witch hunts or on the side of the defenders and excusing the behavior. And then everything I say gets interpreted through a lens of "which side of this war are you on?" The answer is "Neither. I would like to broker a peace deal." And that message goes unheard by people whose minds are made up, and don't confuse them with the facts.
Your post and bio give the impression of seeing yourself as an "HN celebrity", frustrated at people purposely ignoring your blog. Are you aware of HN's scale? I've been here for about 5 years, and have never heard of you prior to an hour ago. I'd be astounded if a full 1% of HN's readership has clicked on a single page on your blog, ever.
In reality, we seem to be in near-total alignment. Within a larger comment, you had one statement that seems over-generalized. After agreeing with the gist of your post, I mildly and respectfully challenged that one over-generalized statement.
That's not a big deal. It might catch a downvote or two, because HN is HN. But that's what normal healthy human conversation sounds like, outside of any particular echo chamber. It's not an attack, and not really even a defense.
Somehow you're now in a "witch hunt", or being called a "man-hating bitch", or otherwise under attack from the "other side", etc. I can't even... uhh... just, no... you're not. And if you feel like you have to take it to that level, in order not to be called a "rape apologist", then maybe you run with the wrong circles online.
I wrote a piece recently about the witch hunt atmosphere that is developing.
Just because you have never heard of me before does not mean I do not routinely run into people who clearly know who I am when I have never heard of them. That isn't delusion on my part.
After advising you that you misunderstood and clarifying, you basically doubled down, thus positioning yourself as an adversary. Now you are attacking me and making a lot of derogatory comments. This does not back up your assertion that you were engaging in good faith and I am just overreacting.
If you and I were really on the same page, my clarification would have been the end of the matter, not the start of escalating aggressive remarks on your side.
What a terrible story. I'm sorry she had to go through that and appreciate her sharing it.
I'm curious about the legal aspect of it. "Sexual assault" is a crime, right? The worst repercussions I hear from these stories are maybe a resignation at best. But if this is truly a crime shouldn't it be prosecuted?
Many victims decline to prosecute to avoid the mental toll the process takes, including having to relive their trauma, having their credibility torn to shreds and possibility of the perp being acquitted even in face of compelling evidence. Trying to recover and generally move on with their lives is already hard enough.
Depending on the jurisdiction, strictly speaking it's not up to the victim to pursue charges. The prosecutor can bring charges whether the victim wants to or not.
In practice if the victim doesn't want to testify there's usually no way to get a conviction so it won't be prosecuted. But the decision lies with the prosecutor.
It's a classic he said / she said situation. Based on how he isolates the women, this is exactly the scenario he wants. No witnesses and plenty of time and space to wiggle out of his own culpability if it should arise.
These accounts happened in Malaysia, so someone would have to initiate an investigation and then seek extradition. It's not likely to happen.
On the other hand, this man has apparently a history of this behavior, so potentially there are similar actions in the US and people have yet to reveal them.
I like it - the all or nothing approach is terrifying as a guy, and defining levels of inappropriateness with exact descriptions of actions is very helpful for those who are freaked out they are going to unwittingly harass someone they are attracted to even just acting naturally. I'm hopefully not belittling the recipients of undesired advances of VC assholes like McClure, but I hope it's also not wrong to say these scandals induce anxiety in a ton of well meaning lower level guys who get circled over as part of the problem, and thinking of a solution that considers this large segment of guys is nice to hear.
I have to agree... there are absolutely shades of gray. I've always had a personal policy of if you ask someone out, and they decline, give it a while, then ask a second time, in case of a timing issue, then never bring it up again.
Though, I'm not one to force myself onto someone like that, we all have feelings, emotions and desires. It's not always easy to read a given situation. And the those outlined in TFA are definitely over the line.
It would be great if people could just follow a maxim like "don't be a creep", but clearly that's impossible in today's culture and so some official guidelines do need to be adopted by some organizations.
However, Level A and Level B outlined near the bottom of the article takes it too far. Treating people like children is not going to solve anything, it's just going to promote further awkwardness, fear and resentment.
Suggestions like Level A and Level B are sucking the life out of life. When implemented, they punish everyone just because a small minority don't know how to set their own boundaries and respect the boundaries of others.
If you find this sort of example terrifying, imagine for a moment what it'd be like to be on the other end of aggressive advances from a guy who could make or break your career and wanted you to submit to sex.
Hopefully that puts your terror as a guy in perspective.
I understand - I never claimed equivalence or even a comparison. I don't believe its wrong to acknowledge other parties also affected, especially when designing an ideally lasting and widely adopted solution.
It was the word terrifying which seemed a little out of place, I don't agree men should be or are in terror over changing social norms. If you act naturally but respect the other person and what they say and do, you really have nothing to fear. Just treat people as equals and check they are comfortable from time to time.
In most of these cases we hear about it's very, very clear that someone was using their position of power to attempt to coerce others. If you don't do that, you have nothing to feel terror about.
Asking permission before touching people, and not arguing when they say no goes a long way.
Want to be able to touch someone without asking every time? Ask them permission for that! "Hey is it ok if I touch your arms and back without asking in the future?"
Often the counter-argument to this is that it feels artificial, unnatural, and it will definitely kill the mood. So I want to preemptively address it.
When a guy asks before touching me, and of course I'm already interested, it makes me melt. It is so sexy and it definitely improves the mood. I just want to point to myself as one data-point.
If you're having trouble believing it, imagine that a hot swimsuit model walks up to you and asks if she can rub your shoulders. Would you be like, "Uh, no, by communicating with me you have completely killed my interest"?
> If you're having trouble believing it, imagine that a hot swimsuit model walks up to you and asks if she can rub your shoulders. Would you be like, "Uh, no, by communicating with me you have completely killed my interest"?
I hate to be this person, but yes that would kill my interest. I'd be put off by her asking to touch me without any attempt at building a rapport first - that's sort of weird, just like it'd be weird if you switched the gender roles. And if she established a rapport, I'd very slightly lean towards wishing she hadn't asked. All things being equal, yes, I'd prefer she just initiated without asking (after establishing a rapport).
I don't mean to invalidate your point, but I have this feeling you thought that example would sort of just "make it click", and it didn't (at least not for me). It seems like this is probably a preference thing.
Going to have to agree with you here. I personally find it a bit off putting that the parent poster assumed that because their example involved a sexually attractive woman, men would automatically go for it.
I am the type of person who shies away from physical contact unless it is with people I feel close with. Physical attractiveness while important, is not enough to overcome the fact that I need to feel an emotional connection to let people near me in that way. If such a person asked me without building a connection with me, I'd turn cold towards them.
That being said, I don't claim to think that I am the norm or that my case is the case for every person. It is definitely a question of personal preferences and should not be treated as a universal.
Sorry, but this doesn't address a valid subjective feeling that many people have. Nonverbal communication can certainly be more exciting than verbal for people. But in a workplace setting, it's worth giving that up in order to avoid problems. I think it's better to explicitly acknowledge that is a trade-off for many people than to brush legitimate preferences and feelings aside.
(Writing this as someone who is happily married due to a series of verbal checks and confirmations. :) )
> Would you be like, "Uh, no, by communicating with me you have completely killed my interest"?
It's not about completely killing my interest, but my mood would be slightly lessened.
Also, there are some things where consent works better than others. Asking if you can give a back rub, that works pretty find. Asking if you can lightly brush their elbow, not so much.
I'm convinced the whole "kills the mood" line is coming from folks where the mood never existed but they thought it did. It's basically victim blaming :/
As a person who asks, I can tell you that you're wrong. My spouse confided in me (years after it happened) that when I asked to kiss them the very first time, they thought it was kind of a turn-off and wished I had just done it. (But they said "yes", so there's that.)
As a woman who is submissive sometimes, I totally want certain people to do things to me without asking, but there are other people I don't want to do these things.
Explicit communication is not a barrier for me experiencing submissiveness because the fact I consented years ago to my partner doing such things to me does not make it any less fun.
I'm definitely willing to forgoe some fun on the first date to avoid having it done to me by someone I'm not into or don't feel safe around (separate variables!).
> Asking permission before touching people, and not arguing when they say no goes a long way.
Honestly, that's just not realistic. Subtle touching is a key part of rapport and bonding (even in a platonic setting between men). It would be extremely bizarre if after a woman laughs at a joke I stopped and said "is it okay if I gently touch you on the elbow for a second as you laugh?"
I'm a huge fan of consent (ex. I almost always ask before kissing anyone) but that doesn't mean we need to extend it to absolutely everything. Humans are set up to be able to send touch-based signals which can escalate while allowing plenty of exit points.
We don't need hard rules like asking before ever touching another person (what if I accidentally brush against someone walking through a bar?). We need better training on reading social cues and a culture which calls people out when those cues are ignored.
A key part of healthy, mature flirting is leaving plenty of exit points and respecting them. Ex. it's normally fine to brush your leg against someone's leg. If they're not interested, they'll quickly pull away and it shouldn't cause too much discomfort. If they are, they'll maintain the contact.
TL;DR bodies can communicate. The problem isn't with these communications being non-verbal, but with people willfully ignoring those communications.
I find 'touchy' people to be really creepy. They ignore the body language of "go the [word] away before I find something to run through you". But you say that in a workplace and people look at you funny.
It's not bonding. It's a power thing, I think. "I can touch you, but if you call it out, then you're the one who is reacting and being 'sensitive'". (reversed, obv).
You may think it's an important part of platonic settings between men, but.. eh, stay away from me.
Accidentally brushing someone in a crowded bar is a red herring. (Unless it's an 'accident'.) That's completely different than invading someone's space to touch their elbow.
You're uncomfortable with touch, in a way that most people aren't.
That's totally fine. I'm guessing you send off signals that you're uncomfortable with it.
Part of social skills is knowing how to read those signals and respecting them. There are definitely people who I take pains to not touch (due to the signals they send), even in a crowded bar.
I'll tell you it's definitely not a power thing. Most of the time, it is somewhat reciprocal. If it's not, then any well-adjusted person backs off.
So to step back a bit, here's what this looks like:
"You're weird"
"I read signals well, therefore I wouldn't trigger this"
Maybe you do. That's great. Then again, maybe you don't and don't realize it.
The tech industry has a well known bias toward somewhat not socially adjusted people, or at least, not neurotypical, and the massive influx of money hasn't put the breaks on manipulators who are just there for the money and power.
So you get people who don't read signals well, and you get people who read signals and blow right through them on purpose. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
Asking permission beforehand is a good rule if you can't read body language and non-verbal cues, but not the best choice if you can. It goes without saying, of course, that you respect a verbal "no".
Like, it's not mysterious magical rocket science. Leave a graceful exit path, start small and safe, and gauge their response before escalating. If you're not a dickwaffle, this'll get more positive responses without coming across as creepy or pressuring. If you're not making a game of pushing boundaries or starting with a huge power discrepancy, this process fails really gracefully. Like, really gracefully. Neurotypicals have probably done this dance with you without you or them noticing it.
but none of this exists in a vacuum. context is everything and i don't think there's a one size fits all for what would be considered creepy or not in the dating/relationship world. it depends on each other's attraction to one other, situation, mood, blah blah blah. sometimes it's romantic and bold(!) and other times it's creepy af.
THAT SAID, i think it's absurd that 1) given their working relationship and the hierarchy and 2) his knowledge of her current bf and the fact that it wasn't a date that he'd think any of that any of his actions were okay. and even doubly so if she refused your first advance. i mean how can you not read a situation like that?
> Want to be able to touch someone without asking every time? Ask them permission for that! "Hey is it ok if I touch your arms and back without asking in the future?"
Sorry but this is just absurd. Courtship doesn't (and will never) work that way.
Proposing that standard for human contact implies a lot of negative things about how all of us have conducted our relationships, about how all of our families and parents met and fell in love, and I'm honestly a little offended by your suggestion.
> Sorry but this is just absurd. Courtship doesn't (and will never) work that way.
Im a woman and it works well for me. Do you have a specific technical reason for thinking it wont work?
> Proposing that standard for human contact implies a lot of negative things about how all of us have conducted our relationships
Saying explicit communication is useful and best-practice is not saying that everyone who doesn't do it is evil or every time it wasn't used someone was hurt. It's just a useful method for avoiding hurting people.
> Do you have a specific technical reason for thinking it wont work?
Yeah, it's robotic and, in most courtship contexts, weird. If a woman said "hey, I want you to ask permission before making any physical contact", I would certainly respect that, but I would find it odd and would probably be looking for a way out. Simply because "odd" means "red flag." Though I suppose it depends on the girl and how it's presented. I've never experienced that though, and my impression is that most girls I was dating wanting me to make the first move and read their nonverbal signals. That was certainly a learning process.
Now maybe it does work for you. But I think what people are saying (and I agree with them) is that it is very unusual for that expectation to exist in the context of courting. Thinking back to all my past relationships (including the one that led to my marriage), I can't think of a single one who wouldn't have been weirded out if I asked permission to put an arm around her, touch her neck, or go in for a kiss (in a setting that most people might find those actions to be an option). Everyone sitting here with me agrees (3 guys including me, 3 women, all early 30's).
Maybe my circle of friends is just different then yours in some fundamental way (we're all physicians, who maybe tend to be a bit more direct). But I think you'll find that most people think your position on this issue is too rigid and mechanical.
Preamble: I am not defending the guy mentioned in the article, his only defense could be that he was drunk(not good enough imho).
What about when at a nightclub? What about women who rely on easily misinterpret-able body language?
What if two people have totally consensual intercourse where one has more power over the other one?
The issue I take here is that people pretend like the issue is black and white, while it's incredibly nuanced. The other issue is that when gender comes into play, people become emotional, I would love to talk about this topic as if instead of sex the guy demanded money from the women in exchange for the deal, then I feel we could have a much more rational conversation about this.
Is there so much anxiety involved in following simple rules like don't touch people at work and don't talk about sexual topics?
There might be more anxiety involved in trying to find the line and getting as close to it as possible. Is a shoulder rub allowed? Can I touch her arms? Can I make a suggestive joke? I'd definitely be more anxious trying to keep that straight in my head.
Sorry but the rules aren't black and white like that, "Too much eye contact" "Your vibe get flirty" (or conversely "Your vibe gets weird") gets thrown in; it's anxiety inducing when you have to worry about anything that's natural or involuntary when in the presence of someone you're attracted to being policed as causing discomfort to someone. Hence enshrining detailed coordinates means you don't have to worry about that (presuming the list actually excludes such involuntary innocuous behavioral changes as extra eye contact).
Where do they get thrown in? Outside of internet forums where men come up with absurd situations to justify their feelings of prosecution, who is exactly reporting co-workers in the Valley for too much eye contact?
You're in a comment thread about sexual assault for reference.
Oh c'mon, it's a thread about solutions too, which was the focus of my original comment; I intended it to be "Thanks for a solution that is helpful to guys anxious about all of this," not a detailed discussion about the validity of those feelings or anxiety. If you insist on the latter,
This has nothing to do with "men forums," thanks. People I know working in tech actually think holding eye contact is harassment. I had a female coworker complain about the vibe of another coworker who was clearly attracted to her; just the vibe, imagine how that affected other coworkers when that got around? You're free to dismiss this sentiment, but it's still something on the mind of a large group of well meaning guys.
Again, enumerating detailed descriptions feels like a good solution for everyone.
Imagine a 300-lb biker dude at your workplace seemed to hang near you a lot. Made a lot of eye contact. Stood maybe a few inches too close. Seemed to have an interest in you. And didn't seem to notice your non-verbal "go away" signals like walking away, turning your back, stepping away to regain your personal space, etc.
The guy clearly has an interest in you. There's nothing specific you can accuse him of, but he makes you uncomfortable. By persisting despite your attempts at rebuff he's implied that he doesn't respect your boundaries.
Maybe it'll turn out that he'll leave you alone entirely. He hasn't done any one thing you can accuse him of. But he's giving off a "vibe" (which is an inarticulate way of saying "engaging in subtle behaviors") that in your past experience have been a prelude to anything from uninvited touching to stalking to physical attack. Thus his presence makes you anxious and interferes with your ability to do work because your brain is in constant fear/alert mode.
There is one point i am curious nobody mentions. If we do not want companies run like fraternity houses, how about not hiring actual fraternity alumni as executives?
The mass flagging / censoring of comments people disagree with below seems a little petty, I'm curious what the original posts are. I'd rather hear a dumb opinion and make my own choice.
I had the gaul to cite personal experience as reason to legitamitely question the narrative, as there was something I didn't understand.
Rather than take this as an opportunity to bring someone onto their side, I was met with a barrage of down votes and flaggers for doubting the wrong narrative.
This kind of community censorship hinders progress.
If I recall correctly, I responded to your comment before it was flagged. Did my comment help you understand at all?
You seemed like you were asking in good faith, unlike a lot of other commenters in here, so I tried to legitimately engage you. But you never responded to my comment to let me know if I missed the mark or not.
Wow. Reading that, I would be too grossed out to touch the hand of someone like Dave. Creep is not putting it strongly enough - serial sexual assaulter is correct.
The obvious answer to avoiding workplace issues seems to be never mix business with pleasure.
If the person who you proposition only has to consider the singular question of whether or not they are interested in you their decision will be natural and unforced.
Anyone in a workplace has to constantly consider how this interaction will help or harm future prospects and even if no power differential exists may feel pressured. Many people are weak and may feel dissatisfied or put upon, many are shitty at expressing themselves, asserting themselves, or even at analyzing their own feelings. Then people have to work together after inevitably some of those interactions go bad.
People express this issue as its some complex minefield. It's easy. Just don't do it. Get a hobby and meet people there.
Go to work do whatever you are paid to do and find romance on your own time.
Due to the diversity of human preference and desire, I don't think that's a realistic course of action for a broad swath of humanity. People are going to be attracted to each other irregardless of principle. In fact, you could even argue that by pushing this sort of relationship towards the forbidden or taboo, it highlights the appeal. When people are going to spend hours and hours of time together, there's no helping the fact that feelings are going to happen eventually.
It's also not hard to conceive of a person who wants a power relationship with a strong, motivated, and ambitious person. That being said, where are you likely to meet someone who is grinding out the hours to reach success?
None of this is to say your proposed approach is invalid. It's an approach that works for some people. I just don't think it's realistic to expect that it's going to be widely followed. As this article notes:
"Workplace romances are commonplace. Statistics indicate that anywhere from 40-47% of employees surveyed had been involved in a workplace romance. Beyond the 47% involved, about 20% indicated they were receptive to an office romance."
Thanks for stepping forward. It takes a lot of courage to come out publicly with such a personal story, especially when the offender is as well-known as Dave McClure.
As YC has a very strong policy in regards to sexual harrassment, are these incidents going to affect how they deal with other VCs (either individuals or companies)?
We have half of the comments here trying to figure out what "sexual harassment" actually entails which makes a pretty darn good point in my opinion - people get triggered in different ways. This could be anything from an actual sexual advance to a poorly placed bad joke or a simple misunderstanding due to inability to read social cues. Some employers, usually large corps, blur the lines even more by allowing and even encouraging dating co-workers which presents a whole different perspective on this issue. Bottom line is it's a grey area and I don't really see how we fight this by improving incident reporting. I think if anything it would just make interacting with female co-workers terrifying (it already is to some extent if you're a male). I think this is a social issue and there has to be a mind shift of some sort in order to combat this. Maybe even taking this to schools and teaching kids workplace etiquette.
I've seen a few comments on this and articles like this to the effect of "so any time you proposition a woman it could be assault?" and I think it's worth responding to that idea in general.
Yes, there is generally an expectation that men initiate romance, and that is an unfair burden both on men (who have to do the propositioning) and women (who have to decline unwanted propositions). For game-theoretic reasons, this is difficult to change, but it is changing slowly.
In the mean time, restrictions on how to initiate disproportionately affect men, and a lack of restrictions disproportionately affects women. Even more so in situations of gender imbalance (look up "Petrie Multiplier" for more on this). I believe it's for this reason that some men are resistant to "err on the safe side" type policies; as long as they are expected to initiate, they can't succeed without taking risks.
But it's impossible to address this without also including the effect of power imbalance. Even in a world where women initiate 100% of the time, men would in almost all cases still be more physically powerful, and sometimes hold other kinds of social or institutional power. This power can be used to coerce, assault or rape but, even if it isn't, the consequences of a power disparity can be an implicit part of the equation (cf "I hope you can see your way clear to letting Flynn go").
So, what was wrong about Dave McClure's behaviour with Sarah Kunst? Not propositioning her at all, but propositioning her in the context of a power imbalance as a potential employer that made it more difficult for her to say no. Worse still, "I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you" makes that relationship explicit.
And what was wrong about Dave McClure's behaviour with Cheryl Yeoh? Not propositioning her at all, but propositioning her in the context of a power imbalance as a physically stronger man alone with her in her bedroom, and then forcing himself on her when she said no. I repeat: he could only have done this because he was physically stronger, and even if he didn't, the possibility was there.
So to anyone who's wondering if this means men hitting on women is now outlawed, I hope this can provide a healthy framework for thinking about it. It's okay to hit on people, but avoid doing so in situations with a power imbalance that could mean there are consequences for saying no. And also if they do say no don't assault them.
Unfortunately, as a man, you probably have the ability to physically overpower most women if you want. Hopefully you don't want, but it's worth considering that you have that ability, and she may not know whether you're going to use it.
I am pleased to see you attempt a logical exploration of this topic.
However, I object to a couple points. First, there is almost always potential for consequences for saying no, so long as you allow a physical power imbalance.
Second, and most importantly, you are neglecting that power imbalance forms an entire framework for human sexual interaction, one which is as old as our species. This is at a minimum a biological imperative (hormonal, genetic) and an emergent psychological imperative (physical size/strength/endurance differences). These natural drives are responsible for most men desiring power and most women desiring powerful men.
Now suddenly, over the last few decades, we've turned this intrinsic human nature on its head, and I think that is why this is such a difficult topic for people to grasp/discuss.
I think people underestimate how far removed the current push for gender parity is from human history. This is more of an experiment than most people realize.
Let's stop perpetuating this myth that this is a "few rotten apples".
This is a systemic problem in our industry, and we need to all realize this, so that we can start teaching each other what behavior is and is not appropriate in a very clear, concise, and precise manner.
I think it's important to clarify what "our industry" means, though. I think it's a mistake to lump it all into "tech", because that misses some important root causes. I think there are a bunch of different things going on:
1. With respect to VCs preying on female entrepreneurs, this doesn't shock me in the slightest. Wherever you have this huge power imbalance, coupled with large numbers of people who are extremely reluctant to jeopardize their "big break", you will see this kind of abuse. It was/is common in Hollywood, and I think the Catholic Church sex scandals have a ton in common. If you have a situation with that type of power imbalance, unless you have a very detailed and specific process to deal with predators, that kind of abuse will happen.
2. I think what Susan Fowler described re: Uber has a ton to do with the extremely aggressive culture Uber set up. In fact, a lot of the "villains" in Susan's story were, surprisingly, women. I think the tough question is how to you "rein in" that type of aggressive culture when it was so successful for Uber originally.
3. Finally, with regards to how women are treated in general in tech, I think a lot of the unconscious biases people hold, how people react differently to men's ideas vs. women's, need to be discussed more openly and with a goal of making everyone more aware of their own prejudices without fear.
I agree that we can teach each other what kind of culture we want to instill, and one that allows people to work in an environment that boosts their potential.
However, from my observations, to flat out list a finite list of behaviorism, will manifest yet another set of behaviorism, which will manifest another list.
I do not view this as a simple systematic problem, but rather a deep-wedged symptom of a sick society. We all are complicit.
A society that is focused on results and ego and success will always encourage such behavior (of debasing others, exploiting others regardless of their being — even white men are exploited and debased by other "higher-paying" white men). No set of rules will change this until we change our society's culture.
The culture cannot change through scolding, but rather a deep, opening conversation that will be conversed again and again until people find no use for the word harassment or sexual harassment or the desire to hurt or debase others in name of success.
My thoughts exactly. There's a gold rush in Silicon Valley (or the tech industry in general) and usually, these rushes attract jerks. You can't create a system of fierce individualism and predation and then act surprised if this behaviour extends to every facet of life.
I read somewhere, a while ago, that assholes moved in herds to Wall Street in the 80s-90s, and now they've decided to move to California.
It is not just a handful of rotten apples. The enablers are right there in the Twitter quotes.
It isn't enough for the assholes to stop assholin'. We all have the opportunity to contribute positively by moving the norms, and we will all be better for it.
The people that have the ability to fix it are the incredibly brave women coming forward. That's what's changing things.
Otherwise, most of us have already been doing all we can. We don't do bad things, and we don't enable people doing bad things. It's ok to admit that we didn't cause this nor have the ability to fix it.
We're all in this together, and even when it falls to others to lead, we can all contribute in a supporting role.
For example, there's lots of victim-blaming in these threads. We have an opportunity to speak up and counter it. In so doing, we support the brave women on the front lines.
Wow, that's really incredible optimism. I'd be more than happy if there was a 50/50 split between the kinds of apples but I fear that it is more along the lines of 20/80 or worse based on what I see and hear around me when no women are within earshot.
possibly could have been better phrased: I was trying to point out that a woman 'using her sexuality for personal gain' only works if men treat her solely as a sexual object
At the workplace, the supposed appropriate authority is Human Resources. The obvious problem with this is that since Human Resources' role is literally to treat the humans at or attempting to be in, the company as resources, during a case of sexual harassment their systematically correct behavior is to weigh the assessed value of all parties involved, predict the value deltas for each possible way to resolve the case, and implement the resolution with the predicted net highest value to the company.
> If you're aware of harassment and assault of women, please contact the appropriate authorities.
Are you kidding? I wouldn't have enough time in a day. Just some stats, 1 out of every 6 women has been the victim of attempted rape or rape.
I'm aware of several such cases in the last 2 years alone, none of these resulted in an arrest or a court case and I have absolutely no reason not to believe the women.
Besides that I do not have the right to go to the authorities on behalf of someone who does not want to go to the authorities herself because more often than not they are part of the problem and tend to make the whole affair into an exercise in victim blaming.
This is an extremely complex issue and even if we can all agree that it is not normal there is no set recipe for how to deal with such situations.
Apparently we cannot agree that it is not normal, because you claimed that, optimistically, half of men are like that, with a more "realistic" estimate of 80%. The point is that, if the numbers are that bad in your experience, then you do have a very not normal experience.
> if the numbers are that bad in your experience, then you do have a very not normal experience.
That would be good news. But I fear that it isn't. Here's an experiment for you: ask the women you are close to in your life if they've been raped or assaulted. The answers may surprise you. If you feel brave ask someone who spent time in an orphanage or jail or some other place where they have little access to representation and are at the mercy of people that have power over them.
>ask the women you are close to in your life if they've been raped or assaulted. The answers may surprise you.
That is not the number under dispute. There are two fundamentally different theories about what is going on: 1) Most men sexually assault women, or 2) A minority of men sexual assault a large number of women. Based on statistics of victims, it is impossible to distinguish between these two scenarios. However, understanding which scenario we are in is vitally important to forming our response. You seem to believe that we are in scenario 1.
I will admit, I do not have any evidence handy that we are in scenario 2, because it is not a proposal I have ever seen seriously suggested. However, you have presented no evidence that we are in scenerio 1, which seems to be the less believable situation. Until such evidence is presented, I will continue to believe that it is a minority of men that cause a majority of sexual assault [0].
[0] Yes, not all sexual assualt is by males, but I am reasonably confident that it is enough that this general statement holds.
What I've seen professionally makes me believe this, definitely. And that view is consistent across 30 years in the industry with stints in various sub-branches of IT and/or fields that require IT services (which is pretty much anything nowadays).
Let me reprhase this in a more direct way so there is no misunderstanding:
I have yet to see a female friendly company in IT.
If you know of such companies it would be nice to list them.
If there is such a thing I would love to be surprised, I suspect that it is going to be the ones run by women, but they are rare enough that I have not had much exposure to them.
>I have yet to see a female friendly company in IT.
This is a very different claim than what you made above. Even within a company, a minority of people can cause a majority of the problems. Indeed, for any toxic behavior I can think of, it only takes one employee to take down a team, and the problem often spreads beyond that team. I see no reason to believe sexual assault is any different.
Again, the question of if we are in situation 1 or 2 is vitally important. If we are in situation 1, then we are looking at a generational struggle to change men's attitudes towards women. Essentially, we need to wait for the old guard to die off, then wait for the new guard to die off, then hope that our actions made the new-new guard behave respectably.
If we are in situation 2, then the above solution is almost useless. Instead, we are facing a managerial problem where we fail to root out the bad actors. As with any other toxic behavior, this can cause them to contaminate the entire environment. Of course, in this context, "manager" does not only refer to the managers of companies, but also the "managers" of social communities. Effectively, in this scenario, the problem description is not so much that too many people rape, but rather that we are ineffective at dealing with those who do.
I strongly believe this is a societal problem, not a 'women in tech' problem, though it is quite probably a fact that women in tech have it somewhat harder than women in society on average but judging by who run the worlds corporations and who make the worlds laws it's probably a safe bet that that gap is smaller than it seems just because we happen to look at the world through a filter shaped by technology.
If every time I hear about a woman being harassed I would get myself mixed up in the case I don't think I'd have many friends left. Just in the last year alone one of my female friends was raped in her own home and if she wanted me to do something I'm pretty sure she'd be more than willing to ask, all I can do instead is to be there when she wants to talk about it.
What bothers me is that people seem to think this stuff is rare.
What I can do - and do - is when something is happening around me and I'm aware of it when it is happening to step in, but after the fact if you are not a party to something then you are not going to help matters if you on your own without the consent of the victim approach the authorities, and you also don't have the right to take matters in your own hands.
So seriously, what the fuck, realize that if you are not in any way shape or form a party to an event that you may not have the right - and definitely do not have an obligation - to approach the authorities.
I'd like to apologize for the misunderstanding, I said what I said because of the phrasing in your original post "[...] based on what I see and hear around me when no women are within earshot."
I get what you're trying to say, but I don't agree with your defeatism. While I cannot single-handedly stop all sexual assault, every person that I can indirectly protect is precious. I will never stop trying.
Protection is useful before and during some action. In the few cases that I was a witness I definitely stepped in and did something about it, but in most cases you only hear about things long after they've happened (in many cases years afterwards).
So you will 'never stop trying', but tell me, how often have you been there when it happened? For me those instances are a small fraction of the number of cases that I'm aware of and I suspect that the whole reason this number is so low is because of how these things play out, see the linked article here: mr. McClure did not bother to harass her until he'd isolated her. Who would stop him other than the woman?
Could be due to the location. Might be different in different countries. In the places I have worked (always women in the team, startup and more enterprise-world), I never seen sexism happen apart from once.
Of course there is the problem that it could be hidden (IMs or whatnot). Hence my optimism :-)
I am seeing an enormous percentage of comments here flagged, including one of mine which is a first for me on this site, or any site.
Upon trying to figure out what's going on I think we need a meta-instruction for comments here?
Like, perhaps the intention is to keep comments focused more on the general problem of sexual harassment in the industry and to not start making a bunch of assertions regarding the specifics of the author's story?
Although I personally think khazhoux's comment pointing to alcohol being a common factor is a pretty good one.
I'm actually having trouble understanding where the line is here so personally going to run away from the thread, but I think a better indication of the ground rules might be helpful to everyone.
First of all, let me just say I don't think your comment reflects poorly on you as a person. Your perspective is very common, and it's easy to accept it uncritically. It's interesting that you mention khazhoux's comment, because I think they come from largely the same place, and I flagged both of them for similar reasons.
I flagged these comments because, though you probably don't realize you're doing this, you're providing tools for abusers to justify and minimize their abuse. Obviously flagging isn't going to solve the problem on its own, but maybe if I go into more detail it will help a little more.
Both comments focus on what their authors imagine themselves doing in a similar situation:
> …I never drink more than a wee amount (one glass max) when I'm with co-workers in any sort of work setting.
> …I can't imagine it haunting anyone for years, especially not someone who has the strength of will to start a company.
Then they generalize their imagined behavior to what all people should do or should be able to do:
> But on general principle, he shouldn't have gotten drunk (which I assume he was??), nor she.
> Just because someone else did something wrong is no reason to carry it with you for years.
Who are these comments being written for? In both cases, the person being imagined is the person being abused. It's possible to read these as advice for people potentially facing abuse: don't drink, don't dwell on the past.
There are a few problems with this interpretation. First of all, they take abuse as a fixed part of the world that we just need to deal with: "Because in my world people do that." The conclusion is that people being abused need to change their behavior to avoid it. But the truth is that the abusers are the ones who need to change their behavior.
The second problem is that the advice doesn't work. People are abused whether they drink or not. Memories and thoughts have a way of surfacing whether you intentionally dwell on them or not. If you can't imagine an event haunting Cheryl for years after she has explicitly told you that one has, the problem is with your imagination, not her experiences.
So as advice, these comments are relatively weak. Is there a sense in which they have a stronger function? Let's see:
"I never drink more than a wee amount" isn't excusing Dave's behavior directly. But it makes a strong implication -- if you do drink more than that, you're less responsible for what happens. Do you think Dave kept pouring scotch into her glass on accident? He knows society has a tendency to excuse behavior from a drunk person that they'd never accept from someone sober.
"I can't imagine it haunting anyone for years" doesn't mean Dave's behavior was inconsequential. But it makes a strong implication -- that the consequences of his behavior would be much less if Cheryl didn't make such a big deal out of it.
Both of these perspectives enable abuse. Abusers intentionally use alcohol to provide cover for their behavior. Even when they were planning to do it all along. Dave McClure abused his power to put Cheryl Yeoh into a position she "shouldn't" be in -- so he could turn around and use the very fact she was in such a position to minimize people's reaction to his abuse!
Then, when she admits how much the abuse affected her, he relies on comments like yours to remind us that his role in this was incredibly minor -- just one event that probably lasted less than a minute. The real abuse was just in her head. I don't think you would put it this bluntly, but that's the story the abuser is hoping you take away.
That is to say, the primary function of comments like these is not actually providing advice to people who might be abused. Following this advice will not help them. Whether intentionally or not, their primary function ends up as tools that abusers use to justify and minimize their abuse. That's why I flagged them -- to take these tools out of abusers' hands in whatever small way I can.
So the mere idea of avoiding drinking, or that different people will react to an event in different ways is so dangerous and empowering to potential abusers that the entire HN readership needs to be protected from seeing it? Are we adults here? Sorry to be critical, I'm sure you meant well. For a weak comment though, "flagged" seems like a really extreme reaction.
It's not the idea of avoiding drinking: it's the creation of a situation (being drunk with coworkers) which you shouldn't be in. Once an abuser can get you into such a situation, they have an excuse for their abuse -- you shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.
And it's not that different people will react to an event in different ways: it's the idea that you could always have reacted to an event in a certain way. If you didn't react to it that way, that's on you -- it's not the abuser's fault.
Put enough of these "mere ideas" together and you get the culture responsible for this environment of abuse that women are facing. We should try to chip away at as many bad ideas as we can!
You're right that flagging may not be the right tool to use here, though. Everyone says they want a reply, but in practice that tends to produce long discussions that rarely end up anywhere useful. What would you suggest? Maybe a mod could weigh in?
Agreed, ideas create culture - I guess I've found personally that respectful discussion with those of opposing viewpoints is more productive than 'fighting' them or shutting them down entirely, which flagging kinda seems like. Those have the paradoxical effect of making the person more defensive and angry and work harder to promote their point. So a downvote and a reply with a more convincing argument seems reasonable. I don't know the HN systems that well though, I only post occasionally. And yeah, the discussions may not go anywhere. That's democracy :)
I don't know if it's still true, but the system used to let you either comment or downvote, but not both. That is, if you replied in a comment any downvote to what you replied to would not be counted. Always struck me as a bit of a misaligned incentive, but I've always had many concerns about the way karma is used/applied on this site.
> If you want a reasonable discussion, downvote and comment.
That's exactly what `panic` did -- and put considerable effort into the reply. HN users don't have the ability to "flag" comments distinct from downvoting -- comments instead acquire the "flagged" state through an accumulation of downvotes from multiple users.
I hope you will reconsider and read all the way through `panic`'s comment.
EDIT: I was mistaken about flagging vs. downvoting, per detaro's reply.
> By the way: any analysis on how the victim of the abuse made sub-optimal decisions is _always_ victim-blaming, even if you add a disclaimer claiming otherwise.
No, no, a thousand times no! You make state these opinions with an absolute tone but that does not necessarily make them absolute truths. I can raise any issue I wish, provided I do so with the necessary respect, and nobody else has any right to shout me down or shut me up.
”I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” — Richard Feynman
Wait, so you have the right to raise every issue you wish but I don't have the right voice my disapproval or attach a negative label to what you say? The hypocrisy should make your head spin.
Besides, this isn't about your _right_ to say something inappropriate, but to point out that something _is_ inappropriate. Depending on context some subjects are just off limits. Some type of comments are inappropriate in a thread about sexual harassment, just like some comments are inappropriate at a funeral.
You are completely mischaracterizing qubex's point. The objection is not that you are pointing out a specific statement is victim blaming, it's that you are painting an entire topic as "off limits" by trying to label anyone who brings up the topic, however respectfully and with a view toward future prevention, as a "victim blamer."
Hacker News is one of the last places in the internet where I think there is (comparatively) a minimum of tribalism in discourse. What qubex and I are pushing back against is the idea is branding anyone who brings up this topic (or any topic, really) as essentially "the enemy" regardless of their intent.
Sexism is off-limits, and victim blaming is sexist and so as a consequence off-limits. What is and what isn't victim blaming is well-defined: I'm not making this up as I go along. So this isn't about me or my tribe.
I don't blame you or consider you "the enemy". Your understanding of victim blaming is simply wrong, and I encourage you to look it up on Google if you don't believe me.
That is an absolutely tendentious mischaracterisation of my statement and my intent. You are trying to define a taboo that places my line of inquiry out of bounds so that the topic it subtends does not need to be addressed. That's a technique beneath the standards of this community where respectful inquiry is always pursued.
Do you think Dave kept pouring scotch into her glass on accident? He knows society has a tendency to excuse behavior from a drunk person that they'd never accept from someone sober. You're not excusing his behavior directly, but by suggesting that alcohol is relevant to this situation, you're promoting a narrative that abusers love to exploit.
Excellent point. I opened up the book "Why Does He Do That?" about abusers to find a relevant quote, but when I got back to the thread you had beat me to the punch. Here's what I was going to post:
Alcohol does not a change a person’s fundamental value system. People’s personalities when intoxicated, even though somewhat altered, still bear some relationship to who they are when sober. When you are drunk you may behave in ways that are silly or embarrassing; you might be overly familiar or tactlessly honest, or perhaps careless or forgetful. But do you knock over little old ladies for a laugh? Probably not. Do you sexually assault the clerk at the convenience store? Unlikely. People’s conduct while intoxicated continues to be governed by their core foundation of beliefs and attitudes, even though there is some loosening of the structure. Alcohol encourages people to let loose what they have simmering below the surface.
The book argues that the common thread among all abusive people is a sense of entitlement.
To an untrained eye, this looks more like an "MO". Maybe it's insecurity, maybe it's inability to relate, maybe he needs something to "relax" him [and target], maybe it's what's worked in the past for him. I don't know him. But it appears that his MO involves getting people to drink alcohol and him laying it down thick [in parlance, "put his moves on"].
Intimacy is one of the only things we (should) entirely get to choose who to share with. For everything else, there's societal expectations of some degree of doing things even though you don't really want to - but intimacy is the one case where as a society, we supposedly strongly believe that there should be no expectations that you are intimate with anyone you don't want to be intimate with. Women tend to get taught this idea more than men, who are instead taught that if they don't want to be intimate with someone, then something is either wrong with them or wrong with the person in question.
Now have someone force you to perform intimate acts with them, after a lifetime of being taught that you get to decide who to be intimate with.
As a terrible analogy: a lot of middle-class people for whom part of their primary goal in life is to own a house tend to never quite recover from being burgled. The reason for that is that they consider their house the one safe place they have. For many women, intimacy is the one safe thing they have.
Edit: For clarification, the (now flagged) parent commenter was expressing that he did not understand why women are so affected by unwanted sexual advances. He mentioned that men have come onto him without his consent, and he was (on a separate occasion) beaten up bad enough to end up in the hospital, but his quality of life did not decrease to the same degree that he sees in women who are kissed against their will. He said he didn't understand why being kissed without permission is such a big deal in comparison with actually being beaten up. Following is my response:
Sexual assault & sexual harassment are not isolated events. They are symptoms of a world that can be very fucked up if you're a woman. You've been beaten up, but after the beating you were still (I assume) physically bigger and stronger than ~50% of the human population. That might influence how you feel about the things that have happened to you.
Here is an excerpt from the link above:
Credibility is a basic survival tool. When I was very young and just beginning to get what feminism was about and why it was necessary, I had a boyfriend whose uncle was a nuclear physicist. One Christmas, he was telling–as though it were a light and amusing subject–how a neighbor’s wife in his suburban bomb-making community had come running out of her house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. How, I asked, did you know that he wasn’t trying to kill her? He explained, patiently, that they were respectable middle-class people. Therefore, her-husband-trying-to-kill-her was simply not a credible explanation for her fleeing the house yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. That she was crazy, on the other hand….
Even getting a restraining order–a fairly new legal tool–requires acquiring the credibility to convince the courts that some guy is a menace and then getting the cops to enforce it. Restraining orders often don’t work anyway. Violence is one way to silence people, to deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist. About three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in this country. It’s one of the main causes of death in pregnant women in the U.S. At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible.
I tend to believe that women acquired the status of human beings when these kinds of acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us were addressed legally from the mid-1970s on; well after, that is, my birth. And for anyone about to argue that workplace sexual intimidation isn’t a life or death issue, remember that Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach, age 20, was apparently killed by her higher-ranking colleague last winter while she was waiting to testify that he raped her. The burned remains of her pregnant body were found in the fire pit in his backyard in December.
I may be tilted, but I don't intend to intentionally break the site rules just to force a ban. It'd just undermine the point I'm trying to make about wanting to have a fair and reasonable discussion.
There's legitimate criticism to be made of that comment but taking the worst part of it, exaggerating that uncharitably, then doubling that and flinging it in outrage is the kind of cheap trick users need to avoid here, regardless of how righteous their cause. The blood sport of the internet is not welcome on HN; there are other places to play it.
You have a long history of posting abrasively and indeed abusively to Hacker News. Even though we've cut you a ton of slack and given you more warnings than most, that path leads to getting banned, so please stop.
My comment was hardly "abusive". And this is probably the second time in ten years that I've been called out for a comment I've made here, which is hardly a "ton of slack" or "more warnings than most."
Not that it surprises me. I'll never forget this is the site that shadow-banned me for saying the world "needs more Snowdens".
> I'll never forget this is the site that shadow-banned me for saying the world "needs more Snowdens".
I call this kind of comment the "linkless martyr": the romantic tale of a noble freethinker cruelly repressed by the mods, supplying full interpretation for the reader yet mysteriously omitting any link that people could make up their own minds about. The idea that we ever banned an HN user for Snowden advocacy is silly.
More seriously, you've posted so many genuinely nasty comments to this site, and we'd really appreciate it if you'd stop. It's doable. Other people have done it before you (I'm one).
> I propose to call this category of comment the "linkless martyr": the romantic tale (somehow always the same) of a noble freethinker cruelly repressed by the mods, always offering full interpretation for the reader, yet mysteriously including any pointer to the original source, where people could decide for themselves what happened. This is a classic of the genre. I feel confident making fun of it because the idea that we ever banned an HN user for Snowden advocacy is silly
Well, obviously you didn't read enough of my "genuinely nasty comments" to find it, but here's the comment that got me banned:
I checked the logs, and no, it was for the garden-variety nastiness of the predecessor comment ("Have you been anywhere near technology for the past 20 years?"), and even that was probably just a last straw since I'm pretty sure you'd done it lots before.
Nowadays we tell people when we're banning them for comments like that; for a bunch of reasons it wasn't feasible to do that at the time. Even now, though, when we give a public explanation, some people love to fabricate a self-flattering story and post it melodramatically in later threads. They're careful never to supply the original data so readers could make up their own minds; hence the linkless martyr.
I guarantee you we would not have banned someone merely for supporting Snowden in summer 2013. It would have meant banning most of the site.
Right, I was only told flat-out that I was banned for the Snowden comment, but by all means, go ahead and rewrite history and make it about the totally innocuous comment that preceded it. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen it done on HN.
It's really no wonder this site has the reputation it does in the tech community these days.
"Told flat-out" by whom? When? I'll happily apologize if I'm wrong about this, but having just looked at the data, I'd be shocked.
There are only two people who would have been in a position to tell you such a thing. One doesn't show up in that data set, the other is me, and I know I wasn't banning people just for a yay-Snowden. More definitively, the ban trail starts with the predecessor comment (i.e. 6170753 not 6183189). Had we banned you for 6183189 the prior comment would never have been killed.
Not OP, but thanks for taking your time here. You've shown a level of customer service that the vast majority of commercial products/companies fail to show.
> But all I can glean from this article is that the woman who wrote it is blowing her interactions with him a bit out of proportion.
Where do you get this from? It read pretty factual and dry to me.
It also puts the lie to his statement about that other encounter that he 'misread the situation', there clearly was no misreading the situation here and yet he persisted, twice.
You've crossed way over the line into trolling. Since you don't appear to have a history of doing this on HN we haven't banned you, but if you don't stop, we will.
It's one thing to bring up real questions and/or complexities of the broader issues—people have been doing that a lot in these threads recently. The timing for that hasn't necessarily been good but one can at least see how it might come up in good faith. Outright denial is something different.
If you tell someone to leave (NOW!) after they indicate they want to sleep in your bedroom when they've been offered the couch and then they forcibly kiss you that is in fact sexual assault, in fact even if none of the former had happened it would still be sexual assault. Force => assault.
When someone has sex with another person without their permission it is rape.
I'm by no means a burly red-blooded gentleman, but I can't think of any example from my previous relationships that did not start with either myself or the other making a move which could later have been construed as assault.
Of course adding context to all those situations, it's easy to see that I or the recipient would in all probability welcome the advance, and so it is not assault, however the fine line between "assault" and "relationship" at that point is entirely down to perception, and it makes this entire area massively ugly to try and delineate.
Asking for a written legal waiver before planting a kiss on someone you're passionate about seems essentially where all this is leading, and I really can't stand the thought of that.
You're confusing the absence of explicit consent for its explicit denial. Yes means yes, no means no, and starting things up without an explicit conversation is a long and convoluted debate... And what happened here was not that. This was firmly "no means no" territory. Once somebody has asked you to leave, that's a pretty goddamned firm "no".
Yes, there are long and troubling discussions about how so much of sexual advances are silent and how it's hard to discuss consent with those, but this story was way the hell outside of that grey area.
> I can't think of any example from my previous relationships that did not start with either myself or the other making a move which could later have been construed as assault.
That's funny, I can't think of any examples from my past which could be construed as assault. And I rather doubt you can either; implicit consent is still consent.
> Asking for a written legal waiver before planting a kiss on someone you're passionate about seems essentially where all this is leading
I think that's quite an absurd conclusion. How do we jump from "don't kiss people who don't want to be kissed" to "obtain a written legal waiver"? That's like going "you shouldn't break into someone's house...so you need a written waiver before entering, even if they're literally walking next to you and offering you a drink", because maybe you've misread the situation, and when they said "come on in, but mind the dog" they meant "go away"?
In the real world body language and conversational hints make is very clear what's going on in most cases, and in a small minority of cases when those prompts are misread, there will be a clear "no", and then you apologise and move on.
"Then I went into my own bedroom but Dave followed me there, and that’s when he first propositioned to sleep with me. I said no. I reminded Dave that he knew my then-boyfriend and that we’d just talked about him earlier that night. At this point, I led him to the door and told him he needs to leave. On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me..."
Can you honestly read that and, taking the account at face value, go "wow, Dave was just making an honest mistake; he should have been more careful and asked for a written waiver before he forcibly tried to kiss a resisting woman who had repeatedly told him no and was in the process of evicting him due to his inappropriate advances"? Really? Truly? That's your takeaway here?
The problem here, as described, isn't that he didn't get her consent in writing, its that there was no consent at all. These are not comparable things!
You seem to be identify a valid problem of defining "assault". This is a real problem, and something that policy makers will need to tackle at all levels, but it is not what is being discussed. After someone responds to your request to sleep with them by asking you to leave, you have left the realm of ambiguity.
If you are hanging out with a friend and start getting a bit handsy, then I could see the grey area. But it the cases where it is not wanted, a simple "no", or movement away, or pushing his hands off, etc would be enough to clarify where the line is, and ignoring that would turn it into unambiguous assault.
The situation and context matters. David McClure knew that the event at her apartment was a business meeting, there were many other colleagues, he followed her into her bedroom after the business meeting finished despite her objecting, he propositioned her and she objected and moved away, and THEN he finally tried and failed to kiss her after pinning her into a corner until she could no longer escape. Were your actions in your previous relationships like this? I hope not - for your own sake. Your strawman about a "written legal waiver" does not apply to this scenario.
> Asking for a written legal waiver before planting a kiss on someone you're passionate about seems essentially where all this is leading, and I really can't stand the thought of that.
You won't need a written legal waiver, you could simply ask if it is ok.
If you don't ask you're taking your chances that the other person reads the situation just like you do. Just yesterday a friend of mine ended up in an elevator with someone she ended up having dinner with because their flight got canceled. He tried to force himself on her in the elevator, I'm sure he thought it was ok and I'm also 100% sure that she did not give him any reason to think that kiss would be welcome. Now maybe there is a chance that such a kiss would be welcome, but if it is there is no harm in asking and if it isn't there is a lot of harm in assuming that it is welcome.
It's pretty clear cut to me. And I've never kissed any one of my former partners without making sure that such an attempt was welcome, but then again I haven't had that many opportunities to put this to the test.
I think the written legal waiver was mentioned because it would be the only verifiable evidence to defend yourself against someone claiming such advances were unwarranted.
That's one more reason to make sure they are. If there is ambiguity it is safer to err on the side of caution. Note that anybody that you were in a room with could make up such a story, so you're always going to have to rely on good faith to some extent and false accusations really do happen.
> and then they forcibly kiss you that is in fact sexual assault, in fact even if none of the former had happened it would still be sexual assault. Force => assault.
"Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."
I understand this incident occurred in Malaysia, which doesn't follow US law, but I don't believe they consider it sexual assault either. Some cursory review of LEO online forums is indicated a forcible kiss would be considered the lesser "sexual battery".
"The primary difference between sexual battery and rape is that with battery there is no penetration between the sexual organs. With sexual battery, all that matters is the non-consensual touching of another person's sexual organs. Sexual assault, like the broader crime of assault, constitutes the threat of force."
Even under that definition, I'm unsure if a kiss is considered either sexual assault or sexual battery, since sex organs aren't involved.
IANAL.
Edit: Appreciate the replies! You learn new things every day.
This isn't how you evaluate whether something is criminal in the United States. Virtually all sexual assault (or sexual battery, depending on the jurisdiction) is prosecuted under state statutes. In many states, any coerced sexual touching done for the purposes of gratification constitutes sexual battery. If you search for cases, you will indeed find forced kisses on the mouth prosecuted.
Obviously, the physical coercion McClure used to trap this woman against a wall is, even without the sexual component, itself an assault
"Usually a sexual assault occurs when someone touches any part of another person's body in a sexual way, even through clothes, without that person's consent."
A forced kiss could definitely be interpreted in that way, especially after being told to get lost.
The involvement of 'sex organs' is optional.
Let's parse that statement that you quoted:
> Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.
Lack of consent: check
Sexual contact or behavior: check
Note the 'any type'.
> Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape
Force: check
These are things that definitely fall under the term sexual assault, and a kiss goes quite a bit further than 'fondling', especially if it has already been indicated that such a kiss - and then there are kinds of kisses - is not welcome.
If I was on the defending side I'd hate to have to try to present the McClure case in a way that it might end up in this bracket, possibly that list is exhaustive and as long as the word 'kiss' isn't in the list you might get into 'sexual battery' but frankly I think that's just terminology, if the lady felt assaulted I don't fault her for picking the wrong narrow legal term and I suspect that in plenty of places the judge would see it in the same way.
If you're going to toss out legal language you might want to learn the difference between "battery" (contact happened) and "assault" (no contact required).
Thanks! I've made a note to dive deeper into the difference between the two, although I think the confusion might be more common:
"Historically, battery and assault were considered separate crimes, with battery requiring that the aggressor physically strike or offensively touch the victim. In that way, a battery was a “completed” assault. Many modern statutes don't bother to distinguish between the two crimes, as evidenced by the fact that the phrase "assault and battery" has become as common as "salt and pepper." These days, statutes often refer to crimes of actual physical violence as assaults.
Really?! Does it matter what she was wearing, too?
From the story, she had a bunch of people over, most of them left, one stayed, propositioned her (not assault), heard no, was asked to leave, then forced her into a corner and kissed her (very clearly assault and very clearly sexual harassment IMO [1]).
There are many "grey area" situations surrounding behavior in apartments with alcohol. This, IMO, isn't one of them.
[1] - This previously said "clearly sexual assault" in the parentheses.
He didn't proposition her, he physically sexually assaulted her even when she was very firm that it was not welcome.
I get that there are cases where you can be sympathetic to the guy for misreading the situation or coming off creepy when he was just clumsy about what he thought was a respectful advance. I get that those things happen - this is an industry full of awkward nerds, mistakes are made.
But that's not what happened here, and nobody should pretend otherwise.
As a matter of law you are incorrect (at least in the United States).
"Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."
That's what the DOJ says. But the standards in the individual states, where these cases are certain to be prosecuted if at all, vary wildly. In some, the assault has to involve an intimate body part. In some, the contact has to be (ugh) "penetrative". In some, any form of coerced touching done for sexual arousal will qualify.
Also interpretations of "coerced," "unwanted," "consent," etc vary, so even when standards appear similar their applied meanings may differ.
Just to state the obvious though, behavior that is legal can be nonetheless morally deplorable. Not saying that's inconsistent what with anyone in this thread is saying (I can't see what crispytx wrote). But some HN comments over the past few days seem to view the putative wrongs in exclusively legal terms, as if legality is dispositive of morality.
I was responding to "Sexual assault is when someone has sex with another person without their permission" which is incorrect in that it too narrowly defines sexual assault.
Replace "sex" with "sexual act" and you've got it almost word for word. I suppose you could say there's a difference there, though one just seems like a shorthand for the other.
If you two were alone, you had sex, and you go to a doctor later and there are no signs of violence, how can you prove you actually said "no"? Honest question.
It's damn near impossible. Given the amount of pushback women get from the system, something should be done to help. Suffering systematic abuse then having a system that basically says, "You wanted it," must be extremely draining.
Our system is only slightly above ones that require a male relative to have witnessed the assault before accepting that it wasn't the woman who committed a crime.
You probably can't. That affects whether or not you can reasonably pursue it, but doesn't change the objective fact of whether or not it was consensual.
From the article: "After the meeting, Khailee, Dave, and a few others (including two other females), came over to my apartment to brainstorm about 500 Startups’ new Growth / Distribution Accelerator, Cerebro (later rebranded as Distro Dojo) and also a hashtag for MaGIC, the organization that I was leading."
Does this sound like "inviting someone over to your apartment to drink scotch"? Do you think it's appropriate for someone to "come on to you" in this scenario?
Your definition of sexual assault is also completely incorrect. The definition of sexual assault from the US Department of Justice is: "Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient."
I don't know in which country you live but I'm pretty sure that your definition of sexual assault (specifically where you say it is "where someone has sex") isn't what the law says in most countries of the world.
And remember that in most legal systems "ignorance of the law is not excuse".
"At this point, I led him to the door and told him he needs to leave. On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me, and said something along the lines of “Just one night, please just this one time.” Then he told me how he really likes strong and smart women like me. Disgusted and outraged, I said no firmly again, pushed him away and made sure he was out my door."
WTF? Where on earth did you get your definition of 'came on to' ?? In my mind, 'coming on to' someone was usually just trying to catch their eyes, attempting to start an awkward conversation to gauge their interest in you etc. etc.
In what universe does forcibly pushing someone physically smaller than you up against a corner and planting your lips on theirs against all their protests count as a standard every day pick up routine????
If a guy who is bigger than you and had the kind of leverage he had did that, I wonder if you would say "aw let's give him a break, he's just hitting on me".
He forcibly backed her into a corner and kissed her, after Cheryl had already rejected his previous advance and asked him to leave. How is that at all okay? WTF is wrong with you?
> Sexual assault is where someone has sex with another person without their permission.
You keep posting that in this thread, but that is wrong both as a matter of common usage AND as a matter of law, at least in Western, english speaking countries.
Good luck as a foreigner in Malaysia approaching the local police to file a complaint for assault based on a forced kiss against another foreigner who happens to be a millionaire. But that doesn't make it right.
Note that it is extremely hard to get these cases to go anywhere in the West where you know the law and where the lines tend to be drawn rather sharper than in Asia (unless there is drugs involved).
I do not believe that Malaysian police take a laidback attitude to sexual assault reports sd you have implied here. Even cases of a woman being sexually assaulted by another woman is also taken seriously in Malaysia. I think you need to stop having preconceived ideas about South East Asian countries. They might look similar but they are not.
"Rape and Domestic Violence: Rape, including marital rape, is a criminal offense,
as are most forms of domestic violence. The penal code states that rape is
punishable by a prison term of up to 20 years and whipping. Marital rape does not
have a minimum penalty, but the maximum penalty is five years’ imprisonment.
According to women’s groups, an average of 10 women were raped each day;
more than half of these women were under 16. A study by All Women’s Action
Society found only one in 10 reported rape cases came to court. A report by the
Women’s Centre for Change showed that perpetrators were convicted in only 4 to
6 percent of cases. The latest police statistics available showed 2,718 rapes were
reported in 2013, of which 52 percent involved girls age 16 and below.
Cultural attitudes and a reported lack of sympathy from the largely male police
force resulted in many victims not reporting rapes. Many government hospitals
had crisis centers where victims of rape and domestic abuse could make reports
without going to a police station. NGOs and political parties also cooperated to
provide counseling for rape victims. Women’s groups asserted that courts were
inconsistent in punishing rapists."
So, how much do you think would happen if a foreigner reported a forced kiss by another foreigner?
I think you have misconstrued understand about the culture of Malaysia. I suggest if you want to know more to read more perhaps report originating from Malaysia to give a better context.
There is a shame associated with rape hence many victims chose to be quiet, most families would prefer for the perpetrators to marry the victim.
Furthermore, statutory rape in Malaysia is quite prevalent so the 52% is actually statutory rape.
"So, how much do you think would happen if a foreigner reported a forced kiss by another foreigner?"
If you have any evidence, even anecdotal evidence that a foreigner reported a forced kiss by another foreigner but was ignored in Malaysia, please share it.
> I think you need to stop having preconceived ideas about South East Asian countries.
I am not familiar with Malaysia but since you clubbed all South East Asian countries, let me share an anecdote.
I personally know someone who was raped in Indonesia and when she reported it to the Police, they literally laughed at her and said you were drinking you deserve it.
I have edited my comment in light of your response to more precisely reflect my claim that it is assault and sexual harassment, but depending on jurisdiction I agree that it may not meet the legal definition of sexual assault.
Not really a big deal to be honest. Innapropriate but not enough for a scandal. She was inebriated and she gracefully fails to mention if he was, and he was probably. Its not exactly the next cosby is it?
'Censorship' has become more pejorative than informative, but you're right that users are downvoting and flagging comments; I think pretty fairly. Wherever moderators have intervened (in any way that affects comment visibility), we've posted comments saying so. That goes for the previous threads too.
Not every kind of comment is welcome here. HN is trying for higher-quality discussion. (Trying and failing, of course. But we can always fail better.) Comments that destroy the possibility of higher-quality discussion should certainly be flagged—otherwise the community is hostage to every kind of trolling.
Every comment I've seen so far that has been dead or flagged down had these two properties:
1. Honestly attempting to contribute new information and views to the conversation, or asking new questions.
2. Opinion or assumptions would be considered immoral from a certain (currently dominant) point of view.
It seems pretty clear to me that "high-quality" is being conflated with "reinforces my moral convictions" or "upholds my tribal sacred values".
There should be an effort to push back against this (though it'd take a really deep commitment to free speech and against moral/tribal orthodoxy as a general principle). It seems unlikely but one can hope.
EDIT: Hilariously, I'm getting downvotes for this. There's an Inception joke in here somewhere.
HN isn't an ideological battleground. In general, it's for whatever gratifies intellectual curiosity. The flagged comments may have contributed information, but most of them share a common trait: they're incendiary.
The way to introduce a controversial idea on HN is to be substantive and neutral. It's not easy to do. People are generally passionate about their points of view, and I've been guilty of this myself. But the ideal is worth striving for.
In particular, complaining about downvotes is also against the rules. I did this the other day and regretted it; it unfairly catapulted my comment to the top of the thread due to the overcorrection, and by then it was too late to edit. It's better to let a comment stand or fall on its own merits, as difficult as that is.
>The way to introduce a controversial idea on HN is to be substantive and neutral.
I agree in principle. But standards should be applied the same way to all comments with regard to viewpoints.
What I'm seeing is that the same standards aren't being applied to different viewpoints.
An orthodox viewpoint can be written casually, unsourced, tinged with moral judgment, etc, and still get away unflagged and not downvoted. An unorthodox viewpoint will get ripped apart on the tiniest error, missing source, or mis-chosen wordage.
I understand people are tribal and some just want to suppress dissent and maintain the power of their orthodoxy. But I also hope a place like HN can rise above such tribalism.
(regarding downvote complaints I don't disagree with the general policy.. if you're referring to my comment you replied to here I didn't intend to complain, only to point out the irony and perhaps try to cue some downvoters to consider what they're doing from a further remove).
You can see the content of flagged comments by going into your profile settings and turning on the [showdead] option. Currently there are 26 flagged comments, so to pick a few random ones:
"By that standard, the only way to never do anything inappropriate is to never do anything."
"It's interesting that you construct a whole evil persona for someone..."
"When your worth is defined solely by how horny you make the opposite sex..."
"I cannot understand why sexual harassment takes such a toll on women. I've been sexually harassed by other men before, and somehow it wasn't as big of a problem..."
I didn't cherry-pick the above examples; they were just the first few that showed up with Command-F [flagged]. "Incendiary" is still probably the best way to describe these comments, which is why they're flagged. The other reason is shallowness on a controversial topic, which usually leads to flamewars.
If you see a comment that breaks a specific guideline in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html then you're encouraged to flag it. (You need a certain amount of karma to see the flag button.) The main reason that the comments you mention aren't flagged is usually because they don't violate any of the guidelines. The system isn't perfect, but it seems to work remarkably well given the size of HN's audience.
Regarding talking about downvotes, I understand and can relate to the point of view. To clarify, I didn't mean anything by the word "complain." The reason to avoid mentioning "downvotes" at all is because (a) talking about downvotes spawns low-quality subthreads almost instantly, and (b) it gives your comment an unfair advantage. HN's voting system fluctuates wildly thanks to the diversity of the people that now have the privilege of downvoting, but in general, high-quality substantive comments tend to rise.
If you want to give a few examples of comments you feel were unfairly flagged, or unflagged comments that you feel break the guidelines, I'd be happy to chat about those. (We're currently in a flagged subthread, so there's no harm in continuing our conversation.)
EDIT: To address one specific point more thoroughly:
An orthodox viewpoint can be written casually, unsourced, tinged with moral judgment, etc, and still get away unflagged and not downvoted. An unorthodox viewpoint will get ripped apart on the tiniest error, missing source, or mis-chosen wordage.
Unorthodox, controversial viewpoints are indeed held to a higher standard, but the reason is because it fosters better conversation. For these, HN is optimized for substantive-but-neutral. Deviating from either axis tends to produce flamewars of the worst caliber.
On this topic, it absolutely is. Whenever these threads happen, they go one way or the other.
If the all-genders-equal, non-feminist side swings the discussion, the entire thread disappears off the front page, inexplicably sitting at position 500+ with no flagged indicator. The lambdaconf debacle comes to mind, but it's hardly the only example.
If the feminist, women-are-victims-side swings the discussion, the thread is left up, full of moral chastising, with a graveyard of flagged comments serving as a warning to the evil dissenters.
On this topic, HN is unquestionably biased from the top, and the pretense otherwise is laughably non-credible and deluded.
Furthermore, while meta-complaining is against the rules, this rule is again only enforced against those who question the party line, not those lamenting the amount of immoral thought on display.
The bigger message being sent is obvious though: men, don't bother apologizing for your missteps or character flaws. Forgiveness is not coming.
If a woman got drunk at a guy's house, and was being insistent upon being shown the door, throwing it in her face would be considered cold and insensitive.
Not every flagged comment has been flagged undeservedly, but some of them have.
I agree that there is a trend on HN where comments that go against the "moral convictions" or politics of the majority are flagged. It's disappointing to see this happening.
Flagging a poorly worded or clearly incendiary comment is fair. That's not what has happened to some of the comments for this article. I hesitate to call it censorship, but it comes close.
I feel that my two comments, although tone deaf, possibly misguided, and certainly not well worded, were good faith comments that did not overtly violate guidelines.
I've never had my comments on hn flagged before and can't help but think I wandered into a minefield. Nearly half of the top level comments on this thread are flagged. If you include the ones that are downvoted into oblivion it is fully half at the time of this writing.
Is that because this article is beset by trolls, or because the conversation is being stifled?
Hard to say. But I know my intention was good faith.
This was a tough one. I ultimately decided not to vouch it, and I'd like to try to explain why. It doesn't have anything to do with the content or my own feelings on the matter, but rather the way in which the idea was presented.
I agree that it was in good faith, and it was also substantive. But it's not really neutral:
"But seriously? Do I live in an alternate reality where drunk people do all sorts of borderline illegal inappropriate stuff on a regular basis?"
"It may seem insensitive, but I am being pragmatic: whether or not something "haunts" you has as much to do with your way of framing an event and your attitude towards trauma as the actual event.
Just because someone else did something wrong is no reason to carry it with you for years."
I can only describe my own perspective on the comment, which may not represent everyone else's. But the reason that I feel the flag is deserved is that even though the comment is written in good faith, it presents your side as clearly correct. The implication is that if anyone disagrees with you, they must be mistaken.
The phrasing "Do I live in an alternate reality...?" sets up the reader to want to disagree with you. It's argumentative rather than pensive. It's entirely possible that your life experiences are an outlier rather than representative. E.g. I agree that drunk people tend to do risky things, but in my own life, my friends manage to restrain themselves pretty well. I'm probably the outlier rather than you, but the point is that framing the argument as can't-possibly-be-wrong is poisonous to thoughtful conversation.
That leads to the other issue, which is that it blames the victim of harassment for feeling harassed. It's certainly possible that whether you're harmed by an incident is a matter of perspective, but it's not automatically up to the victim to fortify themselves. If someone is legitimately distraught over an incident, they'll carry that with them in ways that alter their future behavior to their own detriment. The core difference is the betrayal of someone you trusted and respected: if you're harassed by someone on the street, you can shrug it off. If someone you respect tries to force you into a corner and plant their lips on you, you're going to freak out and wonder how many other people in power are secretly this way, and how you could possibly be so naive to think they weren't. That sort of betrayal can stay with you for years.
So it's not that your comment was mistaken, but rather the nature of your phrasing tends to exclude thoughtful replies from forming, combined with the fact that the topic itself is extremely controversial. It's very difficult to react well to someone who both blames the victim and sets up an argument as if their life experiences are representative of the norm. (But I totally agree with you that it was written in good faith! I was just trying to explain some of the reasons why it got flagged, not call you out on anything.)
One thing that helped me in this regard was to phrase my controversial ideas as questions. "Drunk people tend to do reckless things. Would it be a good idea to cut him some slack in this case?" is far more likely to generate thoughtful comments than "Drunk people do reckless things. I can't believe that we're not cutting him some slack."
Hope this helps clarify a bit. The overall point is that if you put a lot of conversational passion into your side of the argument, this typically causes the other side to give an equally passionate rebuttal. But that's just another name for a flamewar. That's why it's better to be dispassionate yet substantive.
Also, I wasn't meaning to imply anyone should cut someone slack for behaving poorly while drunk. I was saying drunk people can be a menace, kinda like muggers. But although I've been mugged it doesn't exactly haunt me so much as make me cautious in certain situations. But whatever maybe my whole idea was stupid.
But why was my subsequent comment also flagged. And now I'm getting downvoted for pointing out that the user first flagging, and then commenting violates HN guidelines which clearly state not to do that. This feels completely out of control.
I wouldn't read too much into it. When users see a flagged comment, they're more inclined to flag subsequent comments of the same tone. Saying that you didn't read half the reply didn't really help matters, plus it was very energetic overall. Energy tends to be met with energy in the opposite direction, which tends to spark flamewars.
In general though, it's better to email hn@ycombinator.com with concerns about the site rather than comment about it. They're very responsive.
I did email them, and I do appreciate your feedback. At this point my concern is understanding flagging criteria and your analysis of my tone was helpful.
Was not in the same tone and was flagged. It was an overtly conciliatory comment. When that comment was flagged, followed by the flagging user ignoring guidelines, I stopped debating.
There's a problem here that goes beyond my comments per se.
That comment was eminently flaggable for being unrelated meta-discussion - it's mostly about you, has nothing to do with the post and is bound to generate a pointless meta-thread. The guidelines and endless moderation comments specifically ask you not to do this.
When you wrote "that's why I flagged the comments" it didn't occur to me that you meant both the comments you were referring to: mine and khazhoux's.
Instead I misinterpreted that as both of my comments.
Which frustrated me because I felt my second comment was not similar to the first, and then I couldn't understand why you continued the discussion on a comment you had just flagged.
Now that I see what went on, I do appreciate you sharing your view as to why you flagged the first one and think it's basically all good from my pov.
I don't think it was off the front page. Minor point, but people make so many sensitive comments to us about this kind of thing that it seems worth clarifying.
Trying to re-frame a discussion about the victimization of women to include offhand comments about men is not just off-topic but insensitive too. In the general case, you can't do that in any discussion where tensions are high without either doing it deftly and articulately or being quickly shouted down.
Out of all the topics that come up from time to time on HN, this one is pretty much unique in that there is strictly one point of view acceptable to put forward, and every other one is guaranteed to get you instantly flag-killed under the guise of "wanting high quality discussion". If I valued my Internet Points, I'd just steer clear of these altogether and go click through to a React vs. Angular discussion instead.
That's not true at all, as anyone who skims through the last few days' threads on the topic can easily see.
The one thing that ideologically committed HN readers all seem to agree on is that the community is full of (and the mods secretly in league with) their enemies. If you were in our shoes you'd find it as surreal as I do how consistently we hear this from all sides. The sincerity is similar in all cases, but obviously they can't all be right because their interpretations are opposite.
I don't think 'we must be doing things right if all sides are criticizing us like that'; that's a bad argument because the truth doesn't average out that way. But I do think that perceptions of the HN community and moderation are dominated by cognitive bias in way that makes it hard to have a clear conversation about it.
Hey, dang, I agree mods in any public forum have a thankless job, and there will always be people assuming you're part of whatever conspiracy they think exists to censor them--it goes with the territory. You guys do your best to keep this place troll-free, and because of that, HN seems to be, for most topics, one of the last bastions of civil discussions left on the net. I'm sure it's why a lot of us keep coming back, so thank you.
My point was, whenever you have that mix of 1. an emotionally charged topic, 2. strong, existing community norms, and 3. a public, linear (up + down = 0) voting/flagging system, you're bound to get the results we're seeing in this discussion: comments that reinforce the community's norms being promoted and comments that don't being demoted. This shouldn't surprise anyone who's been on the Internet for more than a few days. Reasonable people can debate the normal run-of-the-mill HN topics, but ones like these don't seem to have much room.
Anyway, I wasn't planning to continue this discussion, but since you provided a thoughtful reply I figured I owed an attempt to do the same.
That's a good analysis but somehow you (seem to?) end up at the wrong conclusion that the community has a single norm about this. What I see is a deeply divided community. The hopeful aspect (maybe) is that it's (perhaps) inching its way into more substantive discussion across those divides. That's a capacity the community has to build extremely slowly. The flagging phenomena that people are observing in recent threads are both a sign of this and integral to it.
There are exceptions, but most of the comments being flagged contain some element that is destructive of thoughtful conversation. Having those be marked as beyond the community's tolerance—and I mean 'tolerance' literally, as in, 'more than this will cause the nervous system to go into overwhelm'—is critical to de-escalating the remainder of the discussion enough that people can disagree without ceasing to hear each other.
The important thing to realize is that most flagged comments are not being flagged purely because of the point of view they express. In most cases they add a little extra something—or maybe a lot of extra something—and there are other, unflagged comments that express similar points of view, just more thoughtfully. In most cases, if the flagged commenter got calm enough to explain their point of view more neutrally, the odds of getting flagged would be less. (Inveterate trolling is also a thing, of course, but rarer.) They're welcome to do that and rejoin the land of the living at any time.
It does tend to require some work of self-reflection, though, to avoid getting flagged straightaway again. Most elements that result in flags are things the commenter was unaware of, but which land rather abrasively with the reader. The work is to develop some awareness of what those things are and then avoid them. For bonus points one can consciously replace them with something indicating respect for the opposing point of view or person. That can often be something quite small.
It is true that the ideological distribution of the flagged comments is skewed, but that's a separate question. And there are flagged and moderated comments on every side of the issue.
Maybe the flagging/downvoting system should be revisited, then. It seems like dissenting opinions are simply downvoted rather than challenged out in the open, as they should be. This means that discussions turn into a single-sided affair, as the other side simply flag kills their dissenters until only one opinion is visible.
I don't mind downvotes much, but it's hard to feel like I'm contributing to a worthwhile discussion if my responses are hidden and my ability to reply is removed.
I'm not sure what to tell you because we have such wildly differing perceptions. The threads I'm seeing have a lot of different points of view in them—fundamentally disparate points of view with tons of disagreement.
These are entirely reasonable statements, and they're flagged. Not just downvoted, flagged. Censored. Removed from the discussion.
That's my only problem right now. I understand user comment flagging is useful in lieu of moderation, but I'm personally seeing myself silenced persistently in this discussion and it's extremely discouraging.
In at least one instance, I've even been told that directly challenging a sexist call to action is "off-topic" and "insensitive".
This is all happening on an article that is a direct result of sexism being repressed in the industry. Should I just wait a few years for the sexism to fester, then make a blog post of my own once the damage has already been done? Because that seems to be the only acceptable way to express myself here.
Ok, I've now had time to look at those comments and they're not 'entirely reasonable'; they contain elements that many people could reasonably object to and indeed flag as inflammatory.
To pick the most obvious, you use the word 'sexism' in a contentious way that is bound to land with many readers as trolling—and you didn't just do that once, you dropped it in numerous times. That's the sort of thing that leads to the feeling that the reasonable aspects of your comment are just a pretext, while the subtext is gratuitous provocation. I don't think you did that on purpose, but your claim that people were flagging 'entirely reasonable' comments arbitrarily is inaccurate. Just to be clear, my point isn't about the correct meaning of 'sexism'—it's that if you throw explosive footballs around, however unintentionally, your comment becomes subject to flagging for the sake of a non-flamewar discussion.
Many commenters are blind to the things in their comments that land objectionably with others. They're much (much!) too quick to conclude that the fault is all on the other side, that my 'entirely reasonable' comment is unjustly suppressed, and so on. If you want to get out of that loop you need to take a deeper, more reflective look at your own expressions. Then you can find ways to express your substantive point of view that aren't accidentally bound up with things that produce troll effects and you can participate in a (hopefully) higher-quality discussion.
As I mentioned upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14693838) flagging provides an important service by making a distinction between gratuitously provocative comments and the ones that express similar points of view more thoughtfully. The actual effect in the threads is to make substantive discussion between opposing points of view possible, because otherwise the flamebait would be overwhelming. Indeed it has been so impossible in the past that it's rather astonishing to see it beginning to happen, i.e. people beginning to hear each other and offer at least tentative respect across division lines. That would definitely not be happening if the more inflammatory comments weren't being flagged.
I'll second dang in saying this is not true (thanks dang for the moderation by the way, it really does help, even if no-one agrees with every decision). Here's an example of a viewpoint you probably think of as part of the orthodoxy being voted down and flagged:
There definitely is not only one viewpoint allowed on these threads, with others flagged or voted down.
The threads attract more flagging and up/down voting wars than usual, but the votes are not all one way, and frankly if anything I think the comments on HN on these threads are pretty male dominated and hostile to the women concerned, plenty of those comments are allowed to stand.
All it takes is one incident to indicate the possibility that something can occur. It can profoundly change your outlook on the world. Depending on the event this can be irreversibly negative.
How many times do you have to choose to not walk down a particular street at night because of the real risk that you will be raped?
How many times have you have to 'politely' brush off some random creep, without hurting his feelings, to avoid being intimidated, coerced and assaulted?
It's almost impossible to comprehend if you don't live with the very real possibility hanging over your head that today is the day when someone, most likely someone you know, is going to try to rape you
This. I find it hard to believe the entire "teach English in Asia" industry is fueled by people who base their decision on some fantasy to have sex with Asians (or just their students? I'm not sure what they are implying), and it certainly doesn't mesh with my experience of English teachers abroad.
Moreover it's not only westerners (or only men) who go teach over there. I see people teach English (and to lesser degree other languages) who are not white [diff people from Africa, South America, etc.,] who teach English --moreover, those teachers typically stay in a country a year or two and return home or go onto another country and region; inexplicably, there seem to be an overrepresentation of Canadians. Many of them take the job because it pays relatively better than the alternative back home.
Do _some_ suffer from some fetishism[1], I'm sure --but in my estimation, it's not many.
[1] Charisma Man speaks to the stereotypical western geek who suddenly finds himself attractive in a different culture trope.
Don't date women from work. Don't dip your pen in the company ink, guys. Just from a power perspective, there's no way to get it right, even if you think she's your peer.
That's good advice for people _already_ in a relationship. I don't think that's good advice for singles. Outside of school (writ large) work is one of the places people get to know each other, socialize and mingle. It would be sad to see one of the main places people get to meet to be set "off-limits".
There is nothing mysterious. Just don't be crude. Don't buck convention. Know accepted social norms.
Oh goodness, why take that risk? Why would a single guy aching for sex start their hunt in the workplace? Your concept of what the workplace is for is really screwed up. Unwise. Foolish danger.
I have been told stories of companies with no-dating rules where inevitable attraction and secret love affair between coworkers led them to both quit in order to go public with their romance.
That's not what I'm talking about. Obviously, nature is powerful, and attraction between coworkers can just simply happen. I'm not talking about accidents, which are hopefully few and far between. I'm talking about conscious choices that men make.
It's not like there aren't equally convenient ways to meet women to those at work. If you want a (chaotic) hookup, get on Tinder or Craig's List or the local club. If you want the thrill of the meat market, try Match. If you'd like to get married, goto eharmony.
Not defending McClure but it's worth noting sexual assault and 'unwanted touching' are different problems that require different solutions. Any classification system used here should probably differentiate the two. When you combine them you suggest they're the same which does a disservice to those who have been sexually assaulted (defined as assault with/on a sexual organ). The low-fidelity of language here confuses people which then confuses statistics which leads to ineffective policy.
I do think there is a possible SAAS app here for employees to report these incidents in a confidential way and to help shape the culture by providing an immediate notification to the McClure-types that their behavior is both being tracked and isn't going to be tolerated. This would promote immediate action on the part of the company instead of needing a dozen or so claims, a viral blog post, and or a nytimes article before action is taken.
That's not the definition of "sexual assault". It varies by jurisdiction, and has been discussed extensively elsethread. "Unwanted touching" and "sexual assault" overlap. More important than anatomy is consent.
It's the definition in California. See penal code 243.4 By blurring the lines you contribute to the problem - the author's entire goal in reliving and blogging her experience is that the details matter and we need a sensible framework to define and understand these issues or we can't address them.
Thanks for the statutory reference. I decided to research this more closely, and looked into several specific definitions. The most widely known (and the one I'd already seen) is the Justice Department's:
Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior
that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.
Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual
activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy,
child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.
However, the DOJ reference is not a statute. The other state statutes I looked at (New York, Washington, Delaware, Texas) seem to define "[aggravated/unlawful] [sexual/intimate] [assault/abuse/contact] similarly to California, with "intimate parts" enumerated.
So, backing someone into a corner and forcibly attempting to kiss them might not bring a sexual assault charge unless accompanied by groping. Nevertheless, such actions can still result in charges of battery or false imprisonment.
I agree that we need clearer collective understanding of the issues involved. However, the main concern remains consent. It's not "kisses OK, groping not OK" -- coerced intimacy is always problematic because it is coerced, no matter which statutory lines are crossed.
> Generalized sexist statements and behavior that convey insulting or degrading attitudes about women (e.g. Insulting remarks, obscene jokes or humor about sex or women in general)
This should be generalized to include both sexes. I often see insulting or degrading comments about men by people in the tech world, especially with terms like "mansplaining".
I have experienced similarly persistent (or arguably even more persistent) unwanted sexual advances from other men, but I certainly didn't feel "assaulted".
As a socially clueless gay man, I was hoping someone could help elucidate the most problematic parts of McClure's behavior here. The two factors that stand out for me are
1) McClure controlled the funding of the agency Yeoh was heading, so he was in a position of power
2) McClure is a man and Yeoh is a woman, so McClure can be assumed to be more physically imposing
Would it be correct to say that these two factors are what make McClure's behavior inappropriate? In any other context, I would consider asking someone something a third time after two "no"s to be an example of annoying badgering, but not necessarily harassment.
> In any other context, I would consider asking someone something a third time after two "no"s to be an example of annoying badgering, but not necessarily harassment.
You would be incorrect. It's not really a grey area.
> I have experienced similarly persistent (or arguably even more persistent) unwanted sexual advances from other men, but I certainly didn't feel "assaulted".
Good for you. But legally in the country I live in, what she described was assault. And if you experienced the same thing, it would also be assault. If you didn't feel it was assault, then you don't have to report it, of course, but that doesn't change what it is.
When someone says no, you can't decide that what they really meant is "would you please grab me and forcibly kiss me". That is not "annoying badgering".
Would it be correct to say that these two factors are what make McClure's behavior inappropriate?
No, it would not be, at all.
"At this point, I led him to the door and told him he needs to leave. On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me,"
With complete sincerity and honesty, I think either sequence of events I described could match what Yeoh wrote.
If I said to someone, "You really gotta go, sorry", I might well describe that later to a friend using the words Yeoh used: "I told him he needs to leave."
If a guy took two steps right into my personal space as I was up against a sofa and a wall, I might well describe that as "he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner".
If a guy put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in for a kiss -- I could see that being what Yeoh described: he "made contact to kiss me". (Frankly, that's not the phrase I would use; it seems vague.)
You keep repeating 'sincerity and honesty' but keep mis-describing what actually happened. This was not 'lean in for a kiss'.
He (rather awkwardly) stayed behind after everyone had left. She went out of her way to be a generous host - offering him a place to stay for the night. He immediately abused that offer by propositioning her. When she asked him to leave, he tried to force himself on her. That's what her story says.
If you don't believe her, have the decency to say so. But stop trying to say it's anything less than a profound abuse of trust instead of misrepresenting it as 'leaning in for a kiss'.
I believe what she wrote, and I believe you do too, which is why we both keep quoting her. I disagree that either of my imagined scenarios are inconsistent with what she wrote. But thanks anyway for trying to answer my questions.
Reading the "kudos" from men who thought he was a great guy for coming forward only after years of harassment came to a head was unpleasant.