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I don't like how they buried what I consider the lede. "For the authors of this article, each negative story is overshadowed by dozens of positive experiences,

by MollyR 9y ago

I don't like how they buried what I consider the lede. "For the authors of this article, each negative story is overshadowed by dozens of positive experiences, where someone went out of their way to offer support, provide opportunities, and encourage us." I think this matters to encouraging both women and men. Yes, jerks exist. Sometimes its good people having bad days, some people are monsters hiding under a veneer (ex Hollywood's Weinstein). We need to stop dehumanizing each other, and understand all humans have the full expanse of positive and negative emotions. Most people in technology are not bros, sjws, ceos, and whatever. They are just people trying to get by.

huebnerob 9y ago
Does it matter to a woman whether their harasser is a "real" bad guy or they're just accidentally doing a good job at playing one? The idea that us 'good' men can have a bad day, misstep, or misinterpret things is definitely true, but the following idea that it some how disqualifies the action as harassment is very much not. If you don't want to be put in a bucket with Harvey Weinstein, then you need to realize that everyone has the capability to be the villain sometimes, and if you've found yourself toeing that line, you need to strongly consider what brought you there and you need to make amends in the right way.
- cyanexttuesday 9y ago
  So you want blame all men for what the authors even noted is a small few ?
  - newfoundglory 9y ago
    That's not how I read the comment and in fact seems almost unrelated.
  - eropple 9y ago
    You need not abuse women to bear some responsibility for the culture where it's tacitly okay to do so. #MeToo was nothing new; these problems were obvious to me as far back as my first job and while I've done what I've been able to do when it's arisen it has certainly not been an effort about which I have seen more than token work from the male-dominated, male-directed structures of power in tech and elsewhere. Doing nothing makes you complicit; to not be complicit, you need to do some work. But, then, your username has an obvious allusion in it that made me look at your posting history--and suddenly I understand what you are trying to project when you Just Ask Questions on this one.
- ethbro 9y ago
  I believe parent comment's point was that there's a difference between "Every man in comparch (or insert field here) is Harvey Weinstein" and "x% of men in comparch are y% of Harvey Weinstein" realities. With substantially different suggestions on how to make things better for each. (Respectively, 'murder all the men' and 'be aware of and active against misogyny and sexism around you')
ixtli 9y ago
I agree with everything you said but it still leaves me with nowhere to go in terms of combating the pervasive culture that results in sexist violence. Sure, everyone has struggles in their lives but certain groups have added difficulties that cant be fought without solidarity.
- meric 9y ago
  How does putting the lede at the top leave you nowhere to go...?
  - ixtli 9y ago
    Oh i meant everything but that, heh. Not sure I have an opinion on the lede; i think i see what the author was trying to do.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  > combating the pervasive culture How about: it's not the pervasive culture!?
  - ixtli 9y ago
    Not sure we can have this conversation productively on HN but I will say that I'd encourage you not to read what I'm saying as "all men are rapists," but more that we live in a culture that does many subtle things that encourage behaviors and thinkings that leads to violence against women.
    - mpweiher 9y ago
      And I am quite certain that is wrong. First, if you peruse the crime statistics, you will find that the vast majority of victims of violent crime are male. Second, if you actually look a bit more closely, you will find that our culture is vastly predisposed towards protecting women. So much so, in fact, that our perception is warped sufficiently that we think there is more violence towards women when in fact it is the other way around, by a large margin. And of course the public narrative is almost exclusively "violence against women", and again, this is taken as gospel so much that even mentioning that there might be men who are victims is viewed as offensive. Just as small illustrations (not "proof"), think back if you will of the story of Boko Haram kidnapping 200 girls. https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/africa/nigeria-girls-abducted/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/africa/nigeria-girl... It caused a huge outcry and activism from all quarters. Since there was no reporting, you might think that the boys were unharmed. Not so. The boys were actually either burned alive or forced into military service. This happened repeatedly, whereas the incident with the girls was a one-off. Media? Silence. Nobody cares. It's not a story. There have also been numerous experiments comparing public reaction to violence man vs. woman. If a woman is being abusive towards a man, there will usually be bemusement or laughter, and comments along the lines of "I wonder what he did to deserve it". If it's the other way around, people will intervene. Quickly and fairly decisively. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlHVANXh-yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlHVANXh-yg This is actually even more skewed as she abuses him (no reaction) and when he starts to defend himself, people immediately intervene. So in our culture that is supposedly so supportive of violence towards women, a man isn't even allowed to defend himself against an abusive woman. Closer to home, the whole idea of "what happens to us does not happen to you" is actually wrong. Sure, it's not the same things, we don't get asked about our pregnancies, but horrible bosses and working environment affect men just as much as women, and quite probably more, but when it's men that are affected nobody gives a crap. Case in point, if I told you the things that happened to me over my career and told you that they happened to a woman, you'd be appalled at the horrible treatment women receive and see it as definitive proof of the misogyny of the industry.
adamsea 9y ago
They say the same thing in the second sentence: "We are sharing these experiences in part because of encouragement by male colleagues who found them shocking. We are all still here because the rewards and great colleagues out weigh the bad experiences. However, we want to raise community awareness and instigate change." And, the support of their male colleagues exercising what should be common human decency is not the lede of this article.
- hateduser2 9y ago
  You missed the point: the jerks aren’t different people than the saeethearts. The women aren’t angels.
  - dang 9y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines and ignoring numerous requests to stop. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
typomatic 9y ago
What's your intention in writing this? I'm struggling to identify a good motive, because it looks like concern-trolling to delegitimize the stories of the terrible behavior these women experienced.
- hyperdunc 9y ago
  Why are you willing to question MollyR's motive, but not the motives of the story writers?
azinman2 9y ago
I really do not consider that the lede. It’s not even 95% of what the story is about. It was literally a collection of very negative experiences that women in tech faced because of their gender by men. It’s many examples of things men would never experience. It doesn’t matter if they’ve had many positive experiences — the consistent negatives are prevalent across most women in tech (and probably non-tech), not just isolated examples of a few. Most of these jerks probably don’t even understand what they’re doing or the impact they’re having. It’s important to raise awareness to prevent as much of this as possible, and I applaud the author for sticking her neck out and being willing to put her name on it.
mesozoic 9y ago
Obviously it's irrelevant because men are never jerks to other men. /sarcasm
- mpweiher 9y ago
  And women are never jerks to men or women. Ever. http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/women-reportedly-uncivil-women-work-men-article-1.3851460 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/women-reportedly-unciv...

by MollyR 9y ago

huebnerob 9y ago

Does it matter to a woman whether their harasser is a "real" bad guy or they're just accidentally doing a good job at playing one? The idea that us 'good' men can have a bad day, misstep, or misinterpret things is definitely true, but the following idea that it some how disqualifies the action as harassment is very much not. If you don't want to be put in a bucket with Harvey Weinstein, then you need to realize that everyone has the capability to be the villain sometimes, and if you've found yourself toeing that line, you need to strongly consider what brought you there and you need to make amends in the right way.

cyanexttuesday 9y ago
So you want blame all men for what the authors even noted is a small few ?
- newfoundglory 9y ago
  That's not how I read the comment and in fact seems almost unrelated.
- eropple 9y ago
  You need not abuse women to bear some responsibility for the culture where it's tacitly okay to do so. #MeToo was nothing new; these problems were obvious to me as far back as my first job and while I've done what I've been able to do when it's arisen it has certainly not been an effort about which I have seen more than token work from the male-dominated, male-directed structures of power in tech and elsewhere. Doing nothing makes you complicit; to not be complicit, you need to do some work. But, then, your username has an obvious allusion in it that made me look at your posting history--and suddenly I understand what you are trying to project when you Just Ask Questions on this one.
ethbro 9y ago
I believe parent comment's point was that there's a difference between "Every man in comparch (or insert field here) is Harvey Weinstein" and "x% of men in comparch are y% of Harvey Weinstein" realities. With substantially different suggestions on how to make things better for each. (Respectively, 'murder all the men' and 'be aware of and active against misogyny and sexism around you')

ixtli 9y ago

I agree with everything you said but it still leaves me with nowhere to go in terms of combating the pervasive culture that results in sexist violence. Sure, everyone has struggles in their lives but certain groups have added difficulties that cant be fought without solidarity.

meric 9y ago
How does putting the lede at the top leave you nowhere to go...?
- ixtli 9y ago
  Oh i meant everything but that, heh. Not sure I have an opinion on the lede; i think i see what the author was trying to do.
mpweiher 9y ago
> combating the pervasive culture How about: it's not the pervasive culture!?
- ixtli 9y ago
  Not sure we can have this conversation productively on HN but I will say that I'd encourage you not to read what I'm saying as "all men are rapists," but more that we live in a culture that does many subtle things that encourage behaviors and thinkings that leads to violence against women.
  - mpweiher 9y ago
    And I am quite certain that is wrong. First, if you peruse the crime statistics, you will find that the vast majority of victims of violent crime are male. Second, if you actually look a bit more closely, you will find that our culture is vastly predisposed towards protecting women. So much so, in fact, that our perception is warped sufficiently that we think there is more violence towards women when in fact it is the other way around, by a large margin. And of course the public narrative is almost exclusively "violence against women", and again, this is taken as gospel so much that even mentioning that there might be men who are victims is viewed as offensive. Just as small illustrations (not "proof"), think back if you will of the story of Boko Haram kidnapping 200 girls. https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/africa/nigeria-girls-abducted/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/15/world/africa/nigeria-girl... It caused a huge outcry and activism from all quarters. Since there was no reporting, you might think that the boys were unharmed. Not so. The boys were actually either burned alive or forced into military service. This happened repeatedly, whereas the incident with the girls was a one-off. Media? Silence. Nobody cares. It's not a story. There have also been numerous experiments comparing public reaction to violence man vs. woman. If a woman is being abusive towards a man, there will usually be bemusement or laughter, and comments along the lines of "I wonder what he did to deserve it". If it's the other way around, people will intervene. Quickly and fairly decisively. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlHVANXh-yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlHVANXh-yg This is actually even more skewed as she abuses him (no reaction) and when he starts to defend himself, people immediately intervene. So in our culture that is supposedly so supportive of violence towards women, a man isn't even allowed to defend himself against an abusive woman. Closer to home, the whole idea of "what happens to us does not happen to you" is actually wrong. Sure, it's not the same things, we don't get asked about our pregnancies, but horrible bosses and working environment affect men just as much as women, and quite probably more, but when it's men that are affected nobody gives a crap. Case in point, if I told you the things that happened to me over my career and told you that they happened to a woman, you'd be appalled at the horrible treatment women receive and see it as definitive proof of the misogyny of the industry.

adamsea 9y ago

They say the same thing in the second sentence: "We are sharing these experiences in part because of encouragement by male colleagues who found them shocking. We are all still here because the rewards and great colleagues out weigh the bad experiences. However, we want to raise community awareness and instigate change." And, the support of their male colleagues exercising what should be common human decency is not the lede of this article.

hateduser2 9y ago
You missed the point: the jerks aren’t different people than the saeethearts. The women aren’t angels.
- dang 9y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines and ignoring numerous requests to stop. Would you please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

typomatic 9y ago

What's your intention in writing this? I'm struggling to identify a good motive, because it looks like concern-trolling to delegitimize the stories of the terrible behavior these women experienced.

hyperdunc 9y ago
Why are you willing to question MollyR's motive, but not the motives of the story writers?

azinman2 9y ago

I really do not consider that the lede. It’s not even 95% of what the story is about. It was literally a collection of very negative experiences that women in tech faced because of their gender by men. It’s many examples of things men would never experience. It doesn’t matter if they’ve had many positive experiences — the consistent negatives are prevalent across most women in tech (and probably non-tech), not just isolated examples of a few. Most of these jerks probably don’t even understand what they’re doing or the impact they’re having. It’s important to raise awareness to prevent as much of this as possible, and I applaud the author for sticking her neck out and being willing to put her name on it.

mesozoic 9y ago

Obviously it's irrelevant because men are never jerks to other men. /sarcasm

mpweiher 9y ago
And women are never jerks to men or women. Ever. http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/women-reportedly-uncivil-women-work-men-article-1.3851460 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/women-reportedly-unciv...