6 ms·

“Just tell them you have a boyfriend”

33 points by DinahDavis 10y ago

sharemywin 10y ago
"I really thought I had made my disinterest clear, but here was a third party observer, convinced he was witnessing a mutual courtship. Apparently begrudgingly answering an extremely talkative stranger’s questions while trapped in an enclosed space is the same thing as wanting to spend time with them on purpose." Yep, that statement reaks of compassion. ---ooops, missed the part about him asking for her number...sorry.
- mikestew 10y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is, but those are not the words of the author.
  - sharemywin 10y ago
    why be compassionate for someone that show's no compassion for others. Not saying I wish them ill but it goes both ways. -miss read the original article.
    - smt88 10y ago
      > why be compassionate for someone that show's no compassion for others Because compassion is not a transaction. If you give someone compassion only when you get it in return, you're basically asking them to pay you for it, and it's not genuine. Wanting everything to "go both ways" is a recipe for having a lot of negative interactions.
    - geofft 10y ago
      First, I think it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of compassion to insist that it must be mutual. If you say that you'll only be compassionate to people who are being compassionate to everyone else, you are just not being compassionate. Second, I fail to understand how the speaker was not being compassionate. Do you think she was not being compassionate to her harasser, or to the third party? I think she was being very compassionate to her harasser by answering questions politely.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      In what way did the woman's story (in the linked article that this article links to) indicate a lack of compassion?
      - sharemywin 10y ago
        That poor person just trying to pass the time and start a conversation that felt awkward just standing there in silence. I'm a talker and sometimes I start conversations with people just because. I've generally stopped talking to women because 9 times out of 10 they assume I'm hitting on them. And they're generally rude about it. -- didn't see that part about him asking for her number. I agree that's not cool.
        dllthomas 10y ago
        The fact that you might have misunderstood is a good reason to try for compassion even when the other party doesn't seem to be.
        k__ 10y ago
        Strange thing. I'm talking to women all the time and only the one I hit on really assume I'm hitting on them. And I wouldn't call myself a rather introverted person, I think.
        dllthomas 10y ago
        As discussed in the OP, don't assume that everyone else's experiences are the same as yours.
        deleted 10y ago
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    - dllthomas 10y ago
      Could you expand on how a choice to quote those words is exemplary of a lack of compassion? That is unclear to me and apparently also to others.
    - rz2k 10y ago
      I also don't understand the point you are trying to make. It was a pull out quote from a post about a guy that was using Lyft to get 20-something minute-long captive audiences with women he thought were attractive. The driver said he'd done it about 25 times in his car. Regardless of the false premise and manufactured spontaneity being somewhat sleazy, some of the interactions may have been mutually pleasant. But, we also know that at least one of them was not at all. It shouldn't take so much imagination to remember how unpleasant it has been to be trapped in conversations you did not want to be in. It sounds like she was just being a nice person who was not interested in scoring points against someone by rejecting him. Expressing a lack of interest through neutral responses isn't a lack of compassion. It sounds like her "mixed signals" were an unwillingness to be openly mean to someone who was overly insistent. If he had been more compassionate he would have recognized that he was putting her in an uncomfortable position.
      - Jtsummers 10y ago
        > The driver said he'd done it about 25 times in his car. Correction: The guy told the driver he'd been successful with this method 25 times. The woman's encounter was the driver's first as well (or first where he'd had an ongoing conversation with the guy). Your version makes the driver complicit much more than he actually was.
        rz2k 10y ago
        You're right, and I didn't mean to make the driver sound complicit. From the post: > “So, that guy literally uses this as a dating app,” our driver explained. He clearly could not wait to spill the beans. “That girl you saw before he got in your ride — she was from another Lyft ride. He said he’s gotten with 25 girls through Lyft Line so far.” ... > “Yeah, so he told me all about it, he’ll specifically order rides that are really far — ” On a second reading, it seems possible that it is heavily influenced by the guy trying to portray himself as a really clever pickup artist to the driver.
smt88 10y ago
There's an even better reason that "tell them you have a boyfriend" is bad advice and deeply sexist. It implies that a woman only deserves to have respect and boundaries when another man has already claimed her. It tells the woman, "You'll never get respect on your own, so pretend there's a man demanding that you get respect."
- dsl 10y ago
  I've had to tell women that I have a girlfriend. It implies you are in a committed relationship. You seem to have taken it to the level of ownership, which is not healthy in a relationship period.
  - Blackthorn 10y ago
    He's not implying anything. The sad truth that I've seen play out over and over again is that men won't respect a women saying no, but they'll respect another man's "claim" on her.
    - y4mi 10y ago
      this claim of yours is retarted. they'd respect a females 'claim' as well. its just that they don't accept "no" if the person in question isn't in a relationship. This is not sexist. nonetheless still annoying to the pursued person, but thats a different story
      - smt88 10y ago
        1) Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. 2) I love it when people call others "retarted". If you're going to attack someone's intelligence, you should at least spell the word correctly.
        karmajunkie 10y ago
        And also one should not use intellectual disability as an attack on another.
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
god forbid a little ol' lady gurl would have to take responsibility for themselves and their environment... she might catch the devil.
deleted 10y ago
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doktrin 10y ago
> That’s the advice from a prominent thought leader in tech to women suffering from harassment at tech events. “Just make it clear you’re in a relationship.” So I clicked on the linked article, and - sure enough - this suggestion is made, but it's also only 1 of 6 bullet points on the topic. The rest being : Don’t assume people are hitting on you. Make friends with the men. Make friends with the women. Leave before the party takes that turn. Recruit help. Honestly, those tips strike me as more germane and helpful than those put forth in this rebuttal : Be compassionate: just because your experience is different, it doesn’t mean the experiences of others are less valid or not real. Be compassionate: tactics that work for you may not work for everybody. Be compassionate: don’t blame the victims or those reporting negative behavior. That sounds like a great ideal to strive for, but doesn't strike me as particularly useful advice. The world would be a better place if we were all appropriately compassionate, but most people will probably get more utility out of advice that targets the world as it actually is rather than how it ought to be. Advising someone to avoid a dodgy neighborhood isn't victim blaming - it's risk mitigation.
- keyanp 10y ago
  Notice that the author writes: > Way to put all of the responsibility back on the people reporting the harassment. This is the key point. Notice that the six bullets above are all demanding preventative measures from the victim. We do not need to provide victims with > advice that targets the world as it actually is but instead we need to provide all members of the community advice that targets how they can (and should) be preventing transgressions against others.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Its not either - or. We can do all of the above.
  - powera 10y ago
    Telling people "not to blame the victim" is a completely useless way to avoid harassment. I couldn't possibly actively do that to avoid harassment if I tried, because it's not even an action. Unless I'm mistaken, you're literally saying that people who are harassed should just wait for the harasser to do something else.
dsl 10y ago
I work to better the long term economic state of my hometown and help people to find meaningful contributions to society other than a life of crime. However, I also don't let my aging mother go to the bad part of town. Having a solution for _now_ doesn't preclude you from working on a long term solution. Sure it is "victim blaming." But sitting on our hands for the perfect solution isn't progress either.
deleted 10y ago
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pfarnsworth 10y ago
I get it and I agree. What happens when the "I have a boyfriend" response stops working? Then what? People should just learn to stop harassing people.
- mikelyons 10y ago
  Never going to happen. If a guy is attracted to a girl, and the only chance is to engage with her right then and there, if that guy wants a shot at getting what he wants in his life, he's going to go for it. Then it's up to the girl to make her disinterest clear. If the guy can see she's disinterested then he backs off. If he's the kind of guy who respects women then he'll back off. If he's the kind of guy who harasses women, he'll harass. Teaching me that it was wrong to steal candy from the candy store when I was a kid didn't stop me, getting caught stopped me. I just happen to have respect for women and great social intuition, so one of two things happens in my personal experience. The girl is into me, and it ends up being a really cool start of a lot of fun for both of us. Or she shows me she's not interested and I tell her it was nice meeting and I move on. There's never going to be a world where all men behave as well as I do. Tell victims how to prevent it, maybe some will be prevented. Tell offenders not to offend, then maybe some of them will change their mind about what they think they can get away with...?
  - mikelyons 10y ago
    This adds an important angle to the discussion, and that's that people who want to harass someone don't care if you tell them not to. I am being downvoted simply because its an unpopular opinion and not because it doesn't add to the discussion.
brayhite 10y ago
I'm married so I may be ignorant to this, but how often is the hopeless romantic pursuing his love interest perceived as harassment? Thinking back, maybe asking my now-wife multiple times to go out on a date with me and formally be in a relationship despite going away to live with her parents would be seen as harassment. Neither her nor I see it that way though. I guess my point is I think making the assumption that guys realize they're harassing and not being a try-hard may be where the err is. But I haven't seen that kinda thing in person myself, so I may be way off.
- untog 10y ago
  The key part here is professional context. If you've met that person because you are both attending a tech conference it's very different than someone you've met in a purely social context.
  - brayhite 10y ago
    My only reply to that would be that I imagine a significant amount of couples met originally at work in what was likely supposed to be a professional environment.
    - untog 10y ago
      I'm sure you're right, and I'm not saying it should never happen, but that it's a different environment that you should be aware of. Tech conferences are a little different than the average workplace, too - it's not as if you have the time to get to know a person, or usually live anywhere near each other to be able to form a relationship.
- dkuntz2 10y ago
  "hopeless romantic pursuing his love interest" can be harassment, perception or no. Just because the person in question is a "hopeless romanic" doesn't mean that they can't possibly be harassing someone. They're not the person who gets to decide that.
  - 10y ago
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Overtonwindow 10y ago
The problem is much broader in society today. This is just my opinion, but I think we've become so sensitive to romantic advances that people subconsciously assume that when the opposite sex speaks to them it is for romantic or sexual reasons. I don't disagree that sexism exists, nor any of the concerns with sexism and sexual harassment. However I do think people have become conditioned to assume things that predispose them to negative reactions to others.
- beat 10y ago
  And that's where compassion comes in - we need to recognize that women are conditioned to expect men to be hitting on them (and oblivious to resistance), and why they're conditioned (because men actually do hit on them all the time and are oblivious to resistance), and respect that. Whining about how unfair it is that "Nice guys like myself get lumped in with all those jerks" is disrespectful and uncompassionate. It's not about you! You know that thing where other not-nice guys have conditioned women to be cautious? The next moves in that game are insults, name-calling, public humiliation, physical assault/rape, stalking, doxing, etc. Every woman - every woman - has experienced these behaviors themselves, or knows women who have experienced them. Every man knows women who've experienced them too, although many men don't realize it. That stranger asking a woman for her name, where she's from, trying to make social links online, etc... how is she to know that stranger won't be cyberstalking her and showing up at her home later? Because women have good reason to fear that.
Nadya 10y ago
Or be honest: "I'm not interested in a relationship" or "I'm not interested in you that way." Courting is what humans do. Flirting is what humans do. Being polite shows interest to most people. Be rude. Be absolutely disinterested. Tell them to fuck off. They aren't going to magically read your mind and know you aren't interested if you are either signalling that you are interested or they aren't picking up the (usually weak, when I read stories like this one) signal that you aren't interested. If you send a strong signal of your disinterest or communicate clearly (not trying to "signal") there are only two types of people who keep pushing on: 1) Actual harassers (far and few between) 2) People who think you're playing hard to get (which is an actual thing that people actually do) unfortunately this is equivalent to (1) for some portion of society I've mistakenly sent that "I'm interested" signal to others while trying to be polite. When Ender's Game came out I was speaking with a coworker and seeing as we were both interested in the book, she had asked if I wanted to see the movie when it came out. Not wanting to be rude, I said OK. It turns out she thought I had accepted a date. She was quite dressed up when we met up, while I was in extremely casual attire. And guess what? That was my fault not hers. I had accidentally communicated interest in some way, although unintentionally. She wasn't a harasser, it wasn't "her fault". She couldn't read my mind and know I wasn't interested. Almost every story I see about these scenarios (which often boil down to "unwanted flirting") I think of the above and I pity the person being made out to be a harasser when, in almost every scenario I've read, they were only "misreading the signals" if there were any signals at all. Her perspective: "He's obviously flirting and I'm just trying to be polite, I wish he would stop." His perspective: "I'm flirting and she's obviously playing along or she wouldn't be so polite! This is going well."
- powera 10y ago
  Your advice to women at conferences is really to "be rude"?
  - beat 10y ago
    And then when she's rude, she's a cold, nasty bitch, and fully deserving of the stream of insults and epithets she gets for it. And anything short of being rude is perceived as interest and encouragement. Sigh.
cmurf 10y ago
Lie to avoid harassment? Sounds like not enough women have brothers, and not enough men are brothers.
- mikelyons 10y ago
  Elaborate on this, what are you saying? Having a brother makes a women better able to show disinterest clearly? Being a brother makes a man better at not harassing women when making advances?
  - cmurf 10y ago
    Having a brother to kick the ass of some jackahole who thinks it's OK to harrass my sister? Most men who are brothers understand how irrationally angry a guy gets if his mom or sister are trash talked. It makes me crabby even thinking that a woman needs a brother to become a dick in order to keep a some random dude half way civil.
trcollinson 10y ago
Just a fact check for a moment. I would rather not speak to the authors point, but how she is mounting the defense of her point. First, the article she wrote it named “Just tell them you have a boyfriend.” She then seemingly quotes "a prominent thought leader in tech" (Stormy, a VP of Developer Relations at Cloud Foundry) as saying "Just make it clear you’re in a relationship." This is all in the first paragraph of the article. Now she is quoting Stormy from an article "Events are not cesspools of harassment" [1]. Stormy makes 6 points which have helped her to enjoy conferences as a woman in technology. The first point is "Make your intentions clear." She then goes on to explain that when she is talking to people at conferences and she feels the need, she will explain she is in a relationship. To quote: "So for the past decade and a half I’ve made it clear that I’m happily in a relationship." She also makes this following caveat to this advise: "If you don’t have a partner or kids, you’ll have to work on a strategy that works for you but it’s still possible to make your intentions clear." I think the most upsetting part about the parent article is that the author, Cecy Correa, seems to mis-represent what Stormy has written. Stormy never says "Just tell them you have a boyfriend." Nor is there any wording in her article which says "Just make it clear you’re in a relationship." She does say "Make your intentions clear." Now, maybe this still leads to the same conclusion, if you have to make your intentions clean, this is victim blaming. Maybe it does not. But if you are going to quote, please actually quote. [1] Stormy's original article - "Events are not cesspools of harassment" - https://medium.com/@storming/events-are-not-cesspools-of-harassment-ebef6bf3e2b6#.cf6tbniem https://medium.com/@storming/events-are-not-cesspools-of-har...
mjolk 10y ago
edit: If I'm wrong, correct me with facts/logic/cogent arguments. Jumping to "burn the witch" whenever gender is involved _is the core of the problem_ -- differential treatment over gender identity. >https://medium.com/***code-like-a-girl***/.. https://medium.com/***code-like-a-girl***/... Weird to pull gender into the application of logic to solve problems. I wonder if there's a narrative that the author wants to sell. >Thank god I recently got engaged, otherwise all I’d have to look forward to is harassment at tech events. Oh neat, another inflammatory article about invented sexism and harassment! >Compassion is what lets me understand that even though I have never been harassed at a tech event, it doesn’t mean it is not a very real problem women face. The author doesn't even make it 50 words before showing that she's hungry to be offended: >"Thank god I recently got engaged, otherwise all I’d have to look forward to is harassment at tech events...even though I have never been harassed at a tech event" Never been harassed at a tech event, or expectation of harassment at tech events because it's omnipresent? Which one? > A woman recalls an attempt by a man to try to get her number during a Lyft Line ride in NYC: Are Lyft Line rides tech events? No. They're not. Quit it. --- This kind of hungry-to-be-offended garbage is detrimental.
- mikelyons 10y ago
  It's all harassment until it's from someone she's attracted to.
  - mjolk 10y ago
    It's not even about that, it's about authors importing drama into the tech community with self-indulgent rants about problems that didn't even happen or were intentionally misconstrued.
jiiam 10y ago
What about, instead of "I have a boyfriend", tell them you are uncomfortable and would rather them stop talking/harassing/being around you? Of course, I might be minimizing and, in fact, the molester might not be a rapist but still a fully fledged harasser. Isn't there any security service around at these conferences? Is it absurd to hope they are trained to deal with such situations if need be?
Nickersf 10y ago
Is there any data on "harassment" rates at Tech events? Also the article fails to clearly define harassment in the given context. When sexually developed human beings interact the possibility of flirtatious behavior is destined to happen. It's kind of hard wired into us. If someone hits on someone and they say they're not interested is the adult thing to do. If after that the person becomes aggressive or persistent there is a problem.
mikelyons 10y ago
Telling someone who sexually harasses others not to do it isn't going to stop him or her. Just like how gun laws don't stop criminals who are determined to own guns ... The best thing you can do is to teach people how to not be victims because you'll never breed-out the minority of people who are hell-bent on sexually harassing others. We already put all the onus on the offender not to do it by making it illegal!
mikelyons 10y ago
It's this type of discussion where you get downvoted simply for having an unpopular opinion, not because you're not adding to the discussion.
mikelyons 10y ago
Men should be taught regularly how not to harass all throughout public schooling.
- mikelyons 10y ago
  This is clearly a ridiculous suggestion, I wanted to see if I would be upvoted or downvoted.
aznpwnzor 10y ago
Although I understand her point, what else does she recommend that is an immediate solution for women dealing with immediate problems? Of course re-education or somehow restructuring the sexual arms race that results in aggressive males is the correct long-term solution, but what else would someone answer that isn't let's change an entire generation and the system?
mikelyons 10y ago
So the definition of harassment is when you tell someone "no" and they keep bugging you about it. Right?

33 points by DinahDavis 10y ago

"I really thought I had made my disinterest clear, but here was a third party observer, convinced he was witnessing a mutual courtship. Apparently begrudgingly answering an extremely talkative stranger’s questions while trapped in an enclosed space is the same thing as wanting to spend time with them on purpose." Yep, that statement reaks of compassion. ---ooops, missed the part about him asking for her number...sorry.

mikestew 10y ago
I'm not sure what your point is, but those are not the words of the author.
- sharemywin 10y ago
  why be compassionate for someone that show's no compassion for others. Not saying I wish them ill but it goes both ways. -miss read the original article.
  - smt88 10y ago
    > why be compassionate for someone that show's no compassion for others Because compassion is not a transaction. If you give someone compassion only when you get it in return, you're basically asking them to pay you for it, and it's not genuine. Wanting everything to "go both ways" is a recipe for having a lot of negative interactions.
  - geofft 10y ago
    First, I think it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of compassion to insist that it must be mutual. If you say that you'll only be compassionate to people who are being compassionate to everyone else, you are just not being compassionate. Second, I fail to understand how the speaker was not being compassionate. Do you think she was not being compassionate to her harasser, or to the third party? I think she was being very compassionate to her harasser by answering questions politely.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    In what way did the woman's story (in the linked article that this article links to) indicate a lack of compassion?
    - sharemywin 10y ago
      That poor person just trying to pass the time and start a conversation that felt awkward just standing there in silence. I'm a talker and sometimes I start conversations with people just because. I've generally stopped talking to women because 9 times out of 10 they assume I'm hitting on them. And they're generally rude about it. -- didn't see that part about him asking for her number. I agree that's not cool.
      - dllthomas 10y ago
        The fact that you might have misunderstood is a good reason to try for compassion even when the other party doesn't seem to be.
      - k__ 10y ago
        Strange thing. I'm talking to women all the time and only the one I hit on really assume I'm hitting on them. And I wouldn't call myself a rather introverted person, I think.
        dllthomas 10y ago
        As discussed in the OP, don't assume that everyone else's experiences are the same as yours.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - dllthomas 10y ago
    Could you expand on how a choice to quote those words is exemplary of a lack of compassion? That is unclear to me and apparently also to others.
  - rz2k 10y ago
    I also don't understand the point you are trying to make. It was a pull out quote from a post about a guy that was using Lyft to get 20-something minute-long captive audiences with women he thought were attractive. The driver said he'd done it about 25 times in his car. Regardless of the false premise and manufactured spontaneity being somewhat sleazy, some of the interactions may have been mutually pleasant. But, we also know that at least one of them was not at all. It shouldn't take so much imagination to remember how unpleasant it has been to be trapped in conversations you did not want to be in. It sounds like she was just being a nice person who was not interested in scoring points against someone by rejecting him. Expressing a lack of interest through neutral responses isn't a lack of compassion. It sounds like her "mixed signals" were an unwillingness to be openly mean to someone who was overly insistent. If he had been more compassionate he would have recognized that he was putting her in an uncomfortable position.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      > The driver said he'd done it about 25 times in his car. Correction: The guy told the driver he'd been successful with this method 25 times. The woman's encounter was the driver's first as well (or first where he'd had an ongoing conversation with the guy). Your version makes the driver complicit much more than he actually was.
      - rz2k 10y ago
        You're right, and I didn't mean to make the driver sound complicit. From the post: > “So, that guy literally uses this as a dating app,” our driver explained. He clearly could not wait to spill the beans. “That girl you saw before he got in your ride — she was from another Lyft ride. He said he’s gotten with 25 girls through Lyft Line so far.” ... > “Yeah, so he told me all about it, he’ll specifically order rides that are really far — ” On a second reading, it seems possible that it is heavily influenced by the guy trying to portray himself as a really clever pickup artist to the driver.

smt88 10y ago

There's an even better reason that "tell them you have a boyfriend" is bad advice and deeply sexist. It implies that a woman only deserves to have respect and boundaries when another man has already claimed her. It tells the woman, "You'll never get respect on your own, so pretend there's a man demanding that you get respect."

dsl 10y ago
I've had to tell women that I have a girlfriend. It implies you are in a committed relationship. You seem to have taken it to the level of ownership, which is not healthy in a relationship period.
- Blackthorn 10y ago
  He's not implying anything. The sad truth that I've seen play out over and over again is that men won't respect a women saying no, but they'll respect another man's "claim" on her.
  - y4mi 10y ago
    this claim of yours is retarted. they'd respect a females 'claim' as well. its just that they don't accept "no" if the person in question isn't in a relationship. This is not sexist. nonetheless still annoying to the pursued person, but thats a different story
    - smt88 10y ago
      1) Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. 2) I love it when people call others "retarted". If you're going to attack someone's intelligence, you should at least spell the word correctly.
      - karmajunkie 10y ago
        And also one should not use intellectual disability as an attack on another.

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

god forbid a little ol' lady gurl would have to take responsibility for themselves and their environment... she might catch the devil.

deleted 10y ago

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doktrin 10y ago

> That’s the advice from a prominent thought leader in tech to women suffering from harassment at tech events. “Just make it clear you’re in a relationship.” So I clicked on the linked article, and - sure enough - this suggestion is made, but it's also only 1 of 6 bullet points on the topic. The rest being : Don’t assume people are hitting on you. Make friends with the men. Make friends with the women. Leave before the party takes that turn. Recruit help. Honestly, those tips strike me as more germane and helpful than those put forth in this rebuttal : Be compassionate: just because your experience is different, it doesn’t mean the experiences of others are less valid or not real. Be compassionate: tactics that work for you may not work for everybody. Be compassionate: don’t blame the victims or those reporting negative behavior. That sounds like a great ideal to strive for, but doesn't strike me as particularly useful advice. The world would be a better place if we were all appropriately compassionate, but most people will probably get more utility out of advice that targets the world as it actually is rather than how it ought to be. Advising someone to avoid a dodgy neighborhood isn't victim blaming - it's risk mitigation.

keyanp 10y ago
Notice that the author writes: > Way to put all of the responsibility back on the people reporting the harassment. This is the key point. Notice that the six bullets above are all demanding preventative measures from the victim. We do not need to provide victims with > advice that targets the world as it actually is but instead we need to provide all members of the community advice that targets how they can (and should) be preventing transgressions against others.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Its not either - or. We can do all of the above.
- powera 10y ago
  Telling people "not to blame the victim" is a completely useless way to avoid harassment. I couldn't possibly actively do that to avoid harassment if I tried, because it's not even an action. Unless I'm mistaken, you're literally saying that people who are harassed should just wait for the harasser to do something else.

dsl 10y ago

I work to better the long term economic state of my hometown and help people to find meaningful contributions to society other than a life of crime. However, I also don't let my aging mother go to the bad part of town. Having a solution for _now_ doesn't preclude you from working on a long term solution. Sure it is "victim blaming." But sitting on our hands for the perfect solution isn't progress either.

deleted 10y ago

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pfarnsworth 10y ago

I get it and I agree. What happens when the "I have a boyfriend" response stops working? Then what? People should just learn to stop harassing people.

mikelyons 10y ago
Never going to happen. If a guy is attracted to a girl, and the only chance is to engage with her right then and there, if that guy wants a shot at getting what he wants in his life, he's going to go for it. Then it's up to the girl to make her disinterest clear. If the guy can see she's disinterested then he backs off. If he's the kind of guy who respects women then he'll back off. If he's the kind of guy who harasses women, he'll harass. Teaching me that it was wrong to steal candy from the candy store when I was a kid didn't stop me, getting caught stopped me. I just happen to have respect for women and great social intuition, so one of two things happens in my personal experience. The girl is into me, and it ends up being a really cool start of a lot of fun for both of us. Or she shows me she's not interested and I tell her it was nice meeting and I move on. There's never going to be a world where all men behave as well as I do. Tell victims how to prevent it, maybe some will be prevented. Tell offenders not to offend, then maybe some of them will change their mind about what they think they can get away with...?
- mikelyons 10y ago
  This adds an important angle to the discussion, and that's that people who want to harass someone don't care if you tell them not to. I am being downvoted simply because its an unpopular opinion and not because it doesn't add to the discussion.

brayhite 10y ago

I'm married so I may be ignorant to this, but how often is the hopeless romantic pursuing his love interest perceived as harassment? Thinking back, maybe asking my now-wife multiple times to go out on a date with me and formally be in a relationship despite going away to live with her parents would be seen as harassment. Neither her nor I see it that way though. I guess my point is I think making the assumption that guys realize they're harassing and not being a try-hard may be where the err is. But I haven't seen that kinda thing in person myself, so I may be way off.

untog 10y ago
The key part here is professional context. If you've met that person because you are both attending a tech conference it's very different than someone you've met in a purely social context.
- brayhite 10y ago
  My only reply to that would be that I imagine a significant amount of couples met originally at work in what was likely supposed to be a professional environment.
  - untog 10y ago
    I'm sure you're right, and I'm not saying it should never happen, but that it's a different environment that you should be aware of. Tech conferences are a little different than the average workplace, too - it's not as if you have the time to get to know a person, or usually live anywhere near each other to be able to form a relationship.
dkuntz2 10y ago
"hopeless romantic pursuing his love interest" can be harassment, perception or no. Just because the person in question is a "hopeless romanic" doesn't mean that they can't possibly be harassing someone. They're not the person who gets to decide that.
- 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Overtonwindow 10y ago

The problem is much broader in society today. This is just my opinion, but I think we've become so sensitive to romantic advances that people subconsciously assume that when the opposite sex speaks to them it is for romantic or sexual reasons. I don't disagree that sexism exists, nor any of the concerns with sexism and sexual harassment. However I do think people have become conditioned to assume things that predispose them to negative reactions to others.

beat 10y ago
And that's where compassion comes in - we need to recognize that women are conditioned to expect men to be hitting on them (and oblivious to resistance), and why they're conditioned (because men actually do hit on them all the time and are oblivious to resistance), and respect that. Whining about how unfair it is that "Nice guys like myself get lumped in with all those jerks" is disrespectful and uncompassionate. It's not about you! You know that thing where other not-nice guys have conditioned women to be cautious? The next moves in that game are insults, name-calling, public humiliation, physical assault/rape, stalking, doxing, etc. Every woman - every woman - has experienced these behaviors themselves, or knows women who have experienced them. Every man knows women who've experienced them too, although many men don't realize it. That stranger asking a woman for her name, where she's from, trying to make social links online, etc... how is she to know that stranger won't be cyberstalking her and showing up at her home later? Because women have good reason to fear that.

Nadya 10y ago

Or be honest: "I'm not interested in a relationship" or "I'm not interested in you that way." Courting is what humans do. Flirting is what humans do. Being polite shows interest to most people. Be rude. Be absolutely disinterested. Tell them to fuck off. They aren't going to magically read your mind and know you aren't interested if you are either signalling that you are interested or they aren't picking up the (usually weak, when I read stories like this one) signal that you aren't interested. If you send a strong signal of your disinterest or communicate clearly (not trying to "signal") there are only two types of people who keep pushing on: 1) Actual harassers (far and few between) 2) People who think you're playing hard to get (which is an actual thing that people actually do) unfortunately this is equivalent to (1) for some portion of society I've mistakenly sent that "I'm interested" signal to others while trying to be polite. When Ender's Game came out I was speaking with a coworker and seeing as we were both interested in the book, she had asked if I wanted to see the movie when it came out. Not wanting to be rude, I said OK. It turns out she thought I had accepted a date. She was quite dressed up when we met up, while I was in extremely casual attire. And guess what? That was my fault not hers. I had accidentally communicated interest in some way, although unintentionally. She wasn't a harasser, it wasn't "her fault". She couldn't read my mind and know I wasn't interested. Almost every story I see about these scenarios (which often boil down to "unwanted flirting") I think of the above and I pity the person being made out to be a harasser when, in almost every scenario I've read, they were only "misreading the signals" if there were any signals at all. Her perspective: "He's obviously flirting and I'm just trying to be polite, I wish he would stop." His perspective: "I'm flirting and she's obviously playing along or she wouldn't be so polite! This is going well."

powera 10y ago
Your advice to women at conferences is really to "be rude"?
- beat 10y ago
  And then when she's rude, she's a cold, nasty bitch, and fully deserving of the stream of insults and epithets she gets for it. And anything short of being rude is perceived as interest and encouragement. Sigh.

cmurf 10y ago

Lie to avoid harassment? Sounds like not enough women have brothers, and not enough men are brothers.

mikelyons 10y ago
Elaborate on this, what are you saying? Having a brother makes a women better able to show disinterest clearly? Being a brother makes a man better at not harassing women when making advances?
- cmurf 10y ago
  Having a brother to kick the ass of some jackahole who thinks it's OK to harrass my sister? Most men who are brothers understand how irrationally angry a guy gets if his mom or sister are trash talked. It makes me crabby even thinking that a woman needs a brother to become a dick in order to keep a some random dude half way civil.

trcollinson 10y ago

Just a fact check for a moment. I would rather not speak to the authors point, but how she is mounting the defense of her point. First, the article she wrote it named “Just tell them you have a boyfriend.” She then seemingly quotes "a prominent thought leader in tech" (Stormy, a VP of Developer Relations at Cloud Foundry) as saying "Just make it clear you’re in a relationship." This is all in the first paragraph of the article. Now she is quoting Stormy from an article "Events are not cesspools of harassment" [1]. Stormy makes 6 points which have helped her to enjoy conferences as a woman in technology. The first point is "Make your intentions clear." She then goes on to explain that when she is talking to people at conferences and she feels the need, she will explain she is in a relationship. To quote: "So for the past decade and a half I’ve made it clear that I’m happily in a relationship." She also makes this following caveat to this advise: "If you don’t have a partner or kids, you’ll have to work on a strategy that works for you but it’s still possible to make your intentions clear." I think the most upsetting part about the parent article is that the author, Cecy Correa, seems to mis-represent what Stormy has written. Stormy never says "Just tell them you have a boyfriend." Nor is there any wording in her article which says "Just make it clear you’re in a relationship." She does say "Make your intentions clear." Now, maybe this still leads to the same conclusion, if you have to make your intentions clean, this is victim blaming. Maybe it does not. But if you are going to quote, please actually quote. [1] Stormy's original article - "Events are not cesspools of harassment" - https://medium.com/@storming/events-are-not-cesspools-of-harassment-ebef6bf3e2b6#.cf6tbniem https://medium.com/@storming/events-are-not-cesspools-of-har...

mjolk 10y ago

edit: If I'm wrong, correct me with facts/logic/cogent arguments. Jumping to "burn the witch" whenever gender is involved _is the core of the problem_ -- differential treatment over gender identity. >https://medium.com/***code-like-a-girl***/.. https://medium.com/***code-like-a-girl***/... Weird to pull gender into the application of logic to solve problems. I wonder if there's a narrative that the author wants to sell. >Thank god I recently got engaged, otherwise all I’d have to look forward to is harassment at tech events. Oh neat, another inflammatory article about invented sexism and harassment! >Compassion is what lets me understand that even though I have never been harassed at a tech event, it doesn’t mean it is not a very real problem women face. The author doesn't even make it 50 words before showing that she's hungry to be offended: >"Thank god I recently got engaged, otherwise all I’d have to look forward to is harassment at tech events...even though I have never been harassed at a tech event" Never been harassed at a tech event, or expectation of harassment at tech events because it's omnipresent? Which one? > A woman recalls an attempt by a man to try to get her number during a Lyft Line ride in NYC: Are Lyft Line rides tech events? No. They're not. Quit it. --- This kind of hungry-to-be-offended garbage is detrimental.

mikelyons 10y ago
It's all harassment until it's from someone she's attracted to.
- mjolk 10y ago
  It's not even about that, it's about authors importing drama into the tech community with self-indulgent rants about problems that didn't even happen or were intentionally misconstrued.

jiiam 10y ago

What about, instead of "I have a boyfriend", tell them you are uncomfortable and would rather them stop talking/harassing/being around you? Of course, I might be minimizing and, in fact, the molester might not be a rapist but still a fully fledged harasser. Isn't there any security service around at these conferences? Is it absurd to hope they are trained to deal with such situations if need be?

Nickersf 10y ago

Is there any data on "harassment" rates at Tech events? Also the article fails to clearly define harassment in the given context. When sexually developed human beings interact the possibility of flirtatious behavior is destined to happen. It's kind of hard wired into us. If someone hits on someone and they say they're not interested is the adult thing to do. If after that the person becomes aggressive or persistent there is a problem.

mikelyons 10y ago

Telling someone who sexually harasses others not to do it isn't going to stop him or her. Just like how gun laws don't stop criminals who are determined to own guns ... The best thing you can do is to teach people how to not be victims because you'll never breed-out the minority of people who are hell-bent on sexually harassing others. We already put all the onus on the offender not to do it by making it illegal!

mikelyons 10y ago

It's this type of discussion where you get downvoted simply for having an unpopular opinion, not because you're not adding to the discussion.

mikelyons 10y ago

Men should be taught regularly how not to harass all throughout public schooling.

mikelyons 10y ago
This is clearly a ridiculous suggestion, I wanted to see if I would be upvoted or downvoted.

aznpwnzor 10y ago

Although I understand her point, what else does she recommend that is an immediate solution for women dealing with immediate problems? Of course re-education or somehow restructuring the sexual arms race that results in aggressive males is the correct long-term solution, but what else would someone answer that isn't let's change an entire generation and the system?

mikelyons 10y ago

So the definition of harassment is when you tell someone "no" and they keep bugging you about it. Right?