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There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second cl

There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen. It was this "equal" status that made the others feel that I got better treatment. I made no remark about anything else because I do not wish to speculate about anyone else's intentions or motivations - and that is not relevant to the point of this article at all.

tyingq 10y ago
>it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen That sounds like you're saying the supervisor didn't do anything wrong, but rather that your coworkers took a reasonable gesture the wrong way? If so, that doesn't really jive with "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism" I'm really not trying to be confrontational, just trying to understand. Is it that the "jumped to defense" thing was clearly sexist? Not asking for a direct quote, but what was the basis of the defense...something gender related, or the high quality of your work, or something else?
- smsowmya 10y ago
  There is no quote that can translate that context well. And it was sexist, perhaps even meant to be complimentary and not necessary. But it was not evil. What he did was not the point. The point is what followed and how it was handled. And every employee has more than one supervisor. I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.
  - mistermann 10y ago
    Please don't take this as confrontational, but maybe there is a point that you are missing, that maybe you have made an error in your assessment of what happened, of what people's actual motives are. I genuinely feel like you are unnecessarily secretive about the details of this. Of course there often are details that must be kept secret for various reasons, but my intuition is suggesting otherwise. Personally, I don't just take someone at their word. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case you seem reluctant to give any evidence. Can't you see how that might make some people a little suspicious, especially if they've observed this sort of thing before?
    - 794CD01 10y ago
      A claim of sexism at a tech company is not in any way "extraordinary".
      - mistermann 10y ago
        Oh, does this sort of thing happen routinely at Apple? I hadn't read that, could you provide your source?
        foldr 10y ago
        https://mic.com/articles/154169/leaked-apple-emails-reveal-employees-complaints-about-sexist-toxic-work-environment https://mic.com/articles/154169/leaked-apple-emails-reveal-e...
  - qb45 10y ago
    > What he did was not the point. But the way you talk about him totally is. You shouldn't defend people who give you undeserved favors at the cost of others, if this is what he did. And you absolutely shouldn't be surprised by the consequences, if you do. Your coworkers may have felt equally threatened by this supervisor as you did by them. Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good. > I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence. No doubt. People have their own agendas to play, not everybody will support yours.
    - digler999 10y ago
      > Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good. that's called "blaming the victim". how do you not "associate" yourself with your own supervisor ??
      - smsowmya 10y ago
        sigh. i did not take any favors - i want my career to be built on merit and not favoritism - that is why i left the company. but do people realize that's not actually fair ? and this happens to a lot of women, not just me.
        qb45 10y ago
        Hey, I didn't want to say that you were taking favors from the guy. I reacted to your defense of him here on HN - you initially described him as awkward and sexist but later said that he was just treating you fairly. If he was awkward there's no point pretending he wasn't. If he provoked others to hate you, there's no point pretending he didn't. It's not your fault anyway and coworkers were wrong to retaliate on you even if provoked. And maybe my yesterday post was too harsh. I take your word that you don't want favors. But be careful with how you present this guy - I doubt that he was exactly awkward, sexist, equal and fair all at the same time :) And you wouldn't want to give appearance of rationalizing somebody who actually happens to be unfair to others, that's what I wanted to say.
        10y ago
- sagichmal 10y ago
  tyingq, your line of inquiry reads as a rather aggressive litigation of someone who is a self-identified victim of harassment. I can't speak to your soul, so I don't know if it's intentional or not, but in so doing, you're actually contributing to the harassment in some small way. Other women who read this story and these comments could see the way you're doubting and questioning the author on her experiences, and easily take that as stay silent on her own negative experiences. Think about the effects of your words; defer to empathy over suspicion :)
  - tyingq 10y ago
    >Think about the effects of your words That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I do have sympathy, and I do believe that some people treated her in a sexist manner.
    - digler999 10y ago
      I dont think you read her blog post. she wasn't just treated in a sexist manner. That sparked the issue, which turned into alleged bullying an harassment by most of her team. You dont have to be a woman to understand how badly that would suck.
      - smsowmya 10y ago
        thanks for the defense. a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism". we just suck that part up as part of our jobs.
        digler999 10y ago
        > a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism". I disagree, and that's not what I intended with my use of the word "just". It seemed to me like the poster was saying "look, no sexism here in this sub-incident" and I meant that your post wasn't just about sexism, it was about harassment.
softawre 10y ago
What? You did actually say this: > One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism. He was treating you with respect and you think it was sexist? As a male manager of female employees, what am I even supposed to do?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- qb45 10y ago
  > what am I even supposed to do? Extracting information from self-contradictory accounts is a bit of a black art, but this being said my guess is that he actually did something to deserve these labels just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail. So calm down :)
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    >just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail I have to say, if the OP is comfortable in making these very grave accusations but not comfortable enough to explain what happened but just to give her assessment of the situation; it doesn't do her credibility any good. There are a number of red flags noted throughout the comments, and much of this criticism has been met with "omg so horrible you have to believe the victim". This is a very worrying trend that will only lead to polarizing individuals into either of the hate camps; where those that rush to sympathize will create fertile grounds for false accusations and those who feel are being deceived are going to be desbelieving of actual victims.
    - smsowmya 10y ago
      is the fact that Apple thought to issue me an apology not enough proof that I am not making things up ?
      - mixedCase 10y ago
        Where's this apology?

tyingq 10y ago

>it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen That sounds like you're saying the supervisor didn't do anything wrong, but rather that your coworkers took a reasonable gesture the wrong way? If so, that doesn't really jive with "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism" I'm really not trying to be confrontational, just trying to understand. Is it that the "jumped to defense" thing was clearly sexist? Not asking for a direct quote, but what was the basis of the defense...something gender related, or the high quality of your work, or something else?

smsowmya 10y ago
There is no quote that can translate that context well. And it was sexist, perhaps even meant to be complimentary and not necessary. But it was not evil. What he did was not the point. The point is what followed and how it was handled. And every employee has more than one supervisor. I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.
- mistermann 10y ago
  Please don't take this as confrontational, but maybe there is a point that you are missing, that maybe you have made an error in your assessment of what happened, of what people's actual motives are. I genuinely feel like you are unnecessarily secretive about the details of this. Of course there often are details that must be kept secret for various reasons, but my intuition is suggesting otherwise. Personally, I don't just take someone at their word. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case you seem reluctant to give any evidence. Can't you see how that might make some people a little suspicious, especially if they've observed this sort of thing before?
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    A claim of sexism at a tech company is not in any way "extraordinary".
    - mistermann 10y ago
      Oh, does this sort of thing happen routinely at Apple? I hadn't read that, could you provide your source?
      - foldr 10y ago
        https://mic.com/articles/154169/leaked-apple-emails-reveal-employees-complaints-about-sexist-toxic-work-environment https://mic.com/articles/154169/leaked-apple-emails-reveal-e...
- qb45 10y ago
  > What he did was not the point. But the way you talk about him totally is. You shouldn't defend people who give you undeserved favors at the cost of others, if this is what he did. And you absolutely shouldn't be surprised by the consequences, if you do. Your coworkers may have felt equally threatened by this supervisor as you did by them. Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good. > I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence. No doubt. People have their own agendas to play, not everybody will support yours.
  - digler999 10y ago
    > Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good. that's called "blaming the victim". how do you not "associate" yourself with your own supervisor ??
    - smsowmya 10y ago
      sigh. i did not take any favors - i want my career to be built on merit and not favoritism - that is why i left the company. but do people realize that's not actually fair ? and this happens to a lot of women, not just me.
      - qb45 10y ago
        Hey, I didn't want to say that you were taking favors from the guy. I reacted to your defense of him here on HN - you initially described him as awkward and sexist but later said that he was just treating you fairly. If he was awkward there's no point pretending he wasn't. If he provoked others to hate you, there's no point pretending he didn't. It's not your fault anyway and coworkers were wrong to retaliate on you even if provoked. And maybe my yesterday post was too harsh. I take your word that you don't want favors. But be careful with how you present this guy - I doubt that he was exactly awkward, sexist, equal and fair all at the same time :) And you wouldn't want to give appearance of rationalizing somebody who actually happens to be unfair to others, that's what I wanted to say.
        10y ago
sagichmal 10y ago
tyingq, your line of inquiry reads as a rather aggressive litigation of someone who is a self-identified victim of harassment. I can't speak to your soul, so I don't know if it's intentional or not, but in so doing, you're actually contributing to the harassment in some small way. Other women who read this story and these comments could see the way you're doubting and questioning the author on her experiences, and easily take that as stay silent on her own negative experiences. Think about the effects of your words; defer to empathy over suspicion :)
- tyingq 10y ago
  >Think about the effects of your words That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I do have sympathy, and I do believe that some people treated her in a sexist manner.
  - digler999 10y ago
    I dont think you read her blog post. she wasn't just treated in a sexist manner. That sparked the issue, which turned into alleged bullying an harassment by most of her team. You dont have to be a woman to understand how badly that would suck.
    - smsowmya 10y ago
      thanks for the defense. a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism". we just suck that part up as part of our jobs.
      - digler999 10y ago
        > a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism". I disagree, and that's not what I intended with my use of the word "just". It seemed to me like the poster was saying "look, no sexism here in this sub-incident" and I meant that your post wasn't just about sexism, it was about harassment.

softawre 10y ago

What? You did actually say this: > One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism. He was treating you with respect and you think it was sexist? As a male manager of female employees, what am I even supposed to do?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
qb45 10y ago
> what am I even supposed to do? Extracting information from self-contradictory accounts is a bit of a black art, but this being said my guess is that he actually did something to deserve these labels just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail. So calm down :)
- mixedCase 10y ago
  >just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail I have to say, if the OP is comfortable in making these very grave accusations but not comfortable enough to explain what happened but just to give her assessment of the situation; it doesn't do her credibility any good. There are a number of red flags noted throughout the comments, and much of this criticism has been met with "omg so horrible you have to believe the victim". This is a very worrying trend that will only lead to polarizing individuals into either of the hate camps; where those that rush to sympathize will create fertile grounds for false accusations and those who feel are being deceived are going to be desbelieving of actual victims.
  - smsowmya 10y ago
    is the fact that Apple thought to issue me an apology not enough proof that I am not making things up ?
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      Where's this apology?