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There should be no abuse - sexual or otherwise - in tech communities. Please call it out whenever you see it, in a polite but firm manner, and don't be afraid o

There should be no abuse - sexual or otherwise - in tech communities. Please call it out whenever you see it, in a polite but firm manner, and don't be afraid or intimidated by it. The vast majority of people will support you, and it's important to do so not only for your own protection but for others that might not be so willing or able to do the same. That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why.

pkaeding 10y ago
I agree, such abuse should be called out. I also agree that the way this article is written makes me want to disagree with it (even though the message on the surface is a good one). It just sounds like "Just say no to rockstars!". Yes, it goes deeper, and outlines why rockstars are a problem, but the 'just say no' message makes me a bit uneasy.
sowhatquestion 10y ago
>something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. Points for honesty. Drawing from my own experience: sometimes this feeling happens for a reason, and sometimes it happens gratuitously when we encounter a perspective we're not used to hearing. As Daniel Kahneman (among many others) has pointed out: "familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth."
exstudent2 10y ago
I think this post is way off base because it equates being a difficult employee with being a sexual predator and full blown criminal. It then outlines how to "fix" the problem with some decent solutions combined with very specific politically motivated initiatives (many links to feminist sites...). It also has a tone of absolute authority that is mirrored in the flagging and downvoting of comments happening in this very thread. There can and should be discussion and debate around this issue especially when it casually calls for things like tossing due process and burden of proof out the window.
- NetTechM 10y ago
  Well said, it would seem that anything outside the realm of downright compliance/agreement is met with shutting down the conversation. Perhaps the piece is too weak to stand on its own merit. Everyone knows sexual assault is bad, jerks are jerks, not all jerks are sexual predators and Twitter is still the worst source possible, next to Tumblr.
- MBCook 10y ago
  Ignoring sexual harassment/etc. which you seem to agree is wrong.... why should I (or the rest of the tech community) put up with assholes? I'm not giving them a free pass either. Both behaviors are wrong (one MUCH worse), but neither need to be tolerated.
  - forgottenpass 10y ago
    why should I (or the rest of the tech community) put up with assholes? You shouldn't. But you also shouldn't let people appropriate the political capital of a topic as serious as sexually predatory behavior to argue points about assholes. Not only because the magnitude of the negatives they introduce into the world are so widely disproportionate, but also because "asshole" is a suspiciously flexible term. "Asshole" doesn't even describe behavior, it describes an assessment of behavior. From a mild but harmless annoyance, all the way to fireable and beyond.
    - MBCook 10y ago
      > But you also shouldn't let people appropriate the political capital of a topic as serious as sexually predatory behavior to argue points about assholes. I'm not. But I've seen FAR TOO MANY statements here and elsewhere that provable death threats or sending porn pics is wrong but anything no matter how jackassy up to that is fair perfectly acceptable. I'm VERY tired of that attitude. And I don't believe in the slippery-slope of assholeness. Everyone knows their definition, I don't think it will slip to anything trivial. Asshole will not equal annoying any time soon.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
adiabatty 10y ago
There's a weak undercurrent of condescension in the post (I've seen worse from Model View Culture); you may be picking up on that. I'm more interested in the un(der)examined assertion that, when it comes to accusations of sexual misconduct, the accused should have a presumption of guilt. Have there been any published arguments in favor of this?
- vkou 10y ago
  It's not a presumption of guilt, but for social censure, the bar should be far, far, far lower then it is in a court of law. If anyone's been following, for instance, the Jian Ghomeshi trial, any reasonable person should conclude that he is quite probably a rapist, and is most definitely a predator. (As he himself admitted in the Kathryn Borel trial). However, the jury failed to conclude that he is a rapist beyond reasonable doubt. Sending someone to jail when their odds of being guilty are say 50%, or even 75% is unconscionable (Although if you don't have a good lawyer, that most can most certainly happen). On the other hand, say, not banning that same person from your conference is grossly negligent. Additionally, in many environments, the consequences for reporting that you were a victim of sexual harassment are far more serious then for being an actual perpetrator of sexual harassment. By default, we bias ourselves to favour attackers.
- stale2002 10y ago
  If you see something happen yourself, then you should call it out. You just saw them do something so you know they are guilty (or maybe they just did something to you!), so it is your responsibility to call them out immediately. Don't let it slide or wait for later or wait for the police. Right then, right there, do something. If people do this as often as they see things happen, no matter how big or how small, then the problem people would soon become obvious to everyone. Each individual can decide for themselves who to believe, based on the full availability of the evidence, that is now right in the open for everyone to see.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  > the accused should have a presumption of guilt That may be how social media work, that's absolutely not how justice should work. Anybody can be accused of sexual misconduct on social media. It's not justice when one can't defend himself.
ktRolster 10y ago
That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. To me the dissonance came from an unusual definition of the word "rockstar." In the programming context, I've usually heard it as "someone who is really good at programming," but here they are trying to define it as "someone who pretends to be good at programming and harasses everyone around them."
- tptacek 10y ago
  This post is using "rock star" in a far more conventional sense than programmers do. To these authors, a "rock star" personality is someone who receives frequent media attention, who is given numerous slots to speak at conferences, and who cultivates an active fandom. It happens that most of these people don't do much real work, but "not doing real work" probably isn't as central to the definition as those other things are.
  - Canada 10y ago
    I believe the most popular label for that is "media whore"
    - tptacek 10y ago
      That doesn't work either! There are rock star personalities in security who don't seek out media attention, but nonetheless cultivate fandoms and headline conferences. A lot of people are also uncomfortable the the gendering implied in the word "whore". It's not worth litigating here (please let's not), but it's worth knowing about.
      - Canada 10y ago
        What makes a media whore is the desire for attention at any cost. It's toxic behavior, thus the pejorative term for it. I wasn't suggesting the article use it. The label doesn't fit any of the other undesirable behaviors they enumerated.
SkyMarshal 10y ago
>That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. It may be b/c she's conflating "rockstar" with "asshole", begging the question are all tech rockstars assholes, and are all tech assholes rockstars? Her personal experience seems characterized by a preponderance of evidence in support of that, but others may not have the same experience. She also seems to define rockstars as attention whores who don't actually get any real work done (in the section on how you recognize one), which is not the definition the HN crowd is used to (quite the opposite), and begs the question why are they rockstars? Coasting on a single past achievement maybe?
- danielweber 10y ago
  In my personal experience of nearly 20 years in the industry, there is a nearly perfect correlation between "people who continually find themselves giving quotes to the media" and "assholes." That's among those I've worked with. I know there must be those who don't fit this type. But they haven't been in my personal circles.
droithomme 10y ago
It's mentioned in the first linked article from that one that she is one of the "three respected members of the computer security and privacy tech communities" she mentions who was assaulted. I hope that she will take the evidence to the police and file charges as soon as possible. Violent crimes such as are being reported can not be allowed to slide. It's critical that trained authorities take over the investigation at this point and determine the facts, gather evidence, interview witnesses, and proceed as needed with prosecution. Prosecuting a case through amateur blogs is not an effective or appropriate means of obtaining justice.
klagermkii 10y ago
> That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. I'm sure the authors of the article would recommend you read the linked piece on http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument For me what sits a little uneasily is that a huge amount of this directly conflicts with the startup culture and stories of early tech, especially ones which may actually have appealed to certain "nerdy" personalities. Be it your Apple or Microsoft with people staying extremely late living on pizza, throwing themselves entirely into the project, people being almost 100% responsible for their particular portion be it QuickDraw or the SID chip or CP/M or such things, building a sense of camaraderie through the shared struggle to deliver. I agree that long-term it's harmful, and I certainly wouldn't want to work in a company that tried to make it the indefinte norm, but I dislike the insinuation that it is so bad that there is never a time or a place for it (due to leading to harassment etc). If some people want to draw life satisfaction primarily from their work and getting acclaim for it, is there no place for that in the world?
- tptacek 10y ago
  Nobody is saying that there isn't a place for that; the reason it seems like a live argument is that people are deliberately taking the least charitable interpretation of the post possible and then beating up on it.
droopybuns 10y ago
The thing I find repellent is this: she is offering up a replacement set of rules that everyone else should follow. It reminds me of Jacob's behavior. That guy sat in judgement of and shamed people like a catholic priest. But she does it too, without any sense of irony or introspection. I think the repellence comes from cognitive dissonance. I recognize that most people are probably way more social than me. So maybe you are also averse to this kind of compassionless judgement of other people's behavior. For what it is worth, I find these people making proclamations about how everyone should behave (in particular, based on their field of interest) to be world champion fart sniffers. Hopefully some day they will grow up and stop demanding that other people conform to their whims.
diyseguy 10y ago
It's the way she broadly insults the reading audience by finishing up with the dismissive enjoinder not to send them any personal tales of woe.

pkaeding 10y ago

I agree, such abuse should be called out. I also agree that the way this article is written makes me want to disagree with it (even though the message on the surface is a good one). It just sounds like "Just say no to rockstars!". Yes, it goes deeper, and outlines why rockstars are a problem, but the 'just say no' message makes me a bit uneasy.

sowhatquestion 10y ago

>something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. Points for honesty. Drawing from my own experience: sometimes this feeling happens for a reason, and sometimes it happens gratuitously when we encounter a perspective we're not used to hearing. As Daniel Kahneman (among many others) has pointed out: "familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth."

exstudent2 10y ago

I think this post is way off base because it equates being a difficult employee with being a sexual predator and full blown criminal. It then outlines how to "fix" the problem with some decent solutions combined with very specific politically motivated initiatives (many links to feminist sites...). It also has a tone of absolute authority that is mirrored in the flagging and downvoting of comments happening in this very thread. There can and should be discussion and debate around this issue especially when it casually calls for things like tossing due process and burden of proof out the window.

NetTechM 10y ago
Well said, it would seem that anything outside the realm of downright compliance/agreement is met with shutting down the conversation. Perhaps the piece is too weak to stand on its own merit. Everyone knows sexual assault is bad, jerks are jerks, not all jerks are sexual predators and Twitter is still the worst source possible, next to Tumblr.
MBCook 10y ago
Ignoring sexual harassment/etc. which you seem to agree is wrong.... why should I (or the rest of the tech community) put up with assholes? I'm not giving them a free pass either. Both behaviors are wrong (one MUCH worse), but neither need to be tolerated.
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  why should I (or the rest of the tech community) put up with assholes? You shouldn't. But you also shouldn't let people appropriate the political capital of a topic as serious as sexually predatory behavior to argue points about assholes. Not only because the magnitude of the negatives they introduce into the world are so widely disproportionate, but also because "asshole" is a suspiciously flexible term. "Asshole" doesn't even describe behavior, it describes an assessment of behavior. From a mild but harmless annoyance, all the way to fireable and beyond.
  - MBCook 10y ago
    > But you also shouldn't let people appropriate the political capital of a topic as serious as sexually predatory behavior to argue points about assholes. I'm not. But I've seen FAR TOO MANY statements here and elsewhere that provable death threats or sending porn pics is wrong but anything no matter how jackassy up to that is fair perfectly acceptable. I'm VERY tired of that attitude. And I don't believe in the slippery-slope of assholeness. Everyone knows their definition, I don't think it will slip to anything trivial. Asshole will not equal annoying any time soon.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

adiabatty 10y ago

There's a weak undercurrent of condescension in the post (I've seen worse from Model View Culture); you may be picking up on that. I'm more interested in the un(der)examined assertion that, when it comes to accusations of sexual misconduct, the accused should have a presumption of guilt. Have there been any published arguments in favor of this?

vkou 10y ago
It's not a presumption of guilt, but for social censure, the bar should be far, far, far lower then it is in a court of law. If anyone's been following, for instance, the Jian Ghomeshi trial, any reasonable person should conclude that he is quite probably a rapist, and is most definitely a predator. (As he himself admitted in the Kathryn Borel trial). However, the jury failed to conclude that he is a rapist beyond reasonable doubt. Sending someone to jail when their odds of being guilty are say 50%, or even 75% is unconscionable (Although if you don't have a good lawyer, that most can most certainly happen). On the other hand, say, not banning that same person from your conference is grossly negligent. Additionally, in many environments, the consequences for reporting that you were a victim of sexual harassment are far more serious then for being an actual perpetrator of sexual harassment. By default, we bias ourselves to favour attackers.
stale2002 10y ago
If you see something happen yourself, then you should call it out. You just saw them do something so you know they are guilty (or maybe they just did something to you!), so it is your responsibility to call them out immediately. Don't let it slide or wait for later or wait for the police. Right then, right there, do something. If people do this as often as they see things happen, no matter how big or how small, then the problem people would soon become obvious to everyone. Each individual can decide for themselves who to believe, based on the full availability of the evidence, that is now right in the open for everyone to see.
spriggan3 10y ago
> the accused should have a presumption of guilt That may be how social media work, that's absolutely not how justice should work. Anybody can be accused of sexual misconduct on social media. It's not justice when one can't defend himself.

ktRolster 10y ago

That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. To me the dissonance came from an unusual definition of the word "rockstar." In the programming context, I've usually heard it as "someone who is really good at programming," but here they are trying to define it as "someone who pretends to be good at programming and harasses everyone around them."

tptacek 10y ago
This post is using "rock star" in a far more conventional sense than programmers do. To these authors, a "rock star" personality is someone who receives frequent media attention, who is given numerous slots to speak at conferences, and who cultivates an active fandom. It happens that most of these people don't do much real work, but "not doing real work" probably isn't as central to the definition as those other things are.
- Canada 10y ago
  I believe the most popular label for that is "media whore"
  - tptacek 10y ago
    That doesn't work either! There are rock star personalities in security who don't seek out media attention, but nonetheless cultivate fandoms and headline conferences. A lot of people are also uncomfortable the the gendering implied in the word "whore". It's not worth litigating here (please let's not), but it's worth knowing about.
    - Canada 10y ago
      What makes a media whore is the desire for attention at any cost. It's toxic behavior, thus the pejorative term for it. I wasn't suggesting the article use it. The label doesn't fit any of the other undesirable behaviors they enumerated.

SkyMarshal 10y ago

>That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. It may be b/c she's conflating "rockstar" with "asshole", begging the question are all tech rockstars assholes, and are all tech assholes rockstars? Her personal experience seems characterized by a preponderance of evidence in support of that, but others may not have the same experience. She also seems to define rockstars as attention whores who don't actually get any real work done (in the section on how you recognize one), which is not the definition the HN crowd is used to (quite the opposite), and begs the question why are they rockstars? Coasting on a single past achievement maybe?

danielweber 10y ago
In my personal experience of nearly 20 years in the industry, there is a nearly perfect correlation between "people who continually find themselves giving quotes to the media" and "assholes." That's among those I've worked with. I know there must be those who don't fit this type. But they haven't been in my personal circles.

droithomme 10y ago

It's mentioned in the first linked article from that one that she is one of the "three respected members of the computer security and privacy tech communities" she mentions who was assaulted. I hope that she will take the evidence to the police and file charges as soon as possible. Violent crimes such as are being reported can not be allowed to slide. It's critical that trained authorities take over the investigation at this point and determine the facts, gather evidence, interview witnesses, and proceed as needed with prosecution. Prosecuting a case through amateur blogs is not an effective or appropriate means of obtaining justice.

klagermkii 10y ago

> That said, something about the tone of this blog post is utterly repellent to me and I'm struggling to put my finger on the reason why. I'm sure the authors of the article would recommend you read the linked piece on http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument For me what sits a little uneasily is that a huge amount of this directly conflicts with the startup culture and stories of early tech, especially ones which may actually have appealed to certain "nerdy" personalities. Be it your Apple or Microsoft with people staying extremely late living on pizza, throwing themselves entirely into the project, people being almost 100% responsible for their particular portion be it QuickDraw or the SID chip or CP/M or such things, building a sense of camaraderie through the shared struggle to deliver. I agree that long-term it's harmful, and I certainly wouldn't want to work in a company that tried to make it the indefinte norm, but I dislike the insinuation that it is so bad that there is never a time or a place for it (due to leading to harassment etc). If some people want to draw life satisfaction primarily from their work and getting acclaim for it, is there no place for that in the world?

tptacek 10y ago
Nobody is saying that there isn't a place for that; the reason it seems like a live argument is that people are deliberately taking the least charitable interpretation of the post possible and then beating up on it.

droopybuns 10y ago

The thing I find repellent is this: she is offering up a replacement set of rules that everyone else should follow. It reminds me of Jacob's behavior. That guy sat in judgement of and shamed people like a catholic priest. But she does it too, without any sense of irony or introspection. I think the repellence comes from cognitive dissonance. I recognize that most people are probably way more social than me. So maybe you are also averse to this kind of compassionless judgement of other people's behavior. For what it is worth, I find these people making proclamations about how everyone should behave (in particular, based on their field of interest) to be world champion fart sniffers. Hopefully some day they will grow up and stop demanding that other people conform to their whims.

diyseguy 10y ago

It's the way she broadly insults the reading audience by finishing up with the dismissive enjoinder not to send them any personal tales of woe.