8 ms·

"Catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, rape" - those are not nearly in the same category. And it is presumably offers of career advance

"Catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, rape" - those are not nearly in the same category. And it is presumably offers of career advancement in exchange for sex, not sexual demands. I'm sorry - I don't approve of sexual harassment, but with all the hysteria, I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. It seems to me sexual interest is a normal aspect of human life. And being attractive also has advantages, that the #metoo crowd never mentions. We don't really know how many women actually benefited from being attractive. Weinstein claimed many women took him up on his offer, after all.

api 8y ago
> I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. In this setting it's at a minimum incredibly unprofessional, especially between people who don't know each other well and are potentially customer/client or investor/investee. Imagine doing this stuff in a sales meeting.
neom 8y ago
I'm curious why they're not all in the same category, what categorization system are we using?
- ianamartin 8y ago
  If we're using a system that puts catcalling in the same bucket as actual rape, that's a little bit of a problem. Catcalling is offensive, tasteless, and disgusting, but it's not the same as forcing someone to have sex with you. I support laws against catcalling, or enforcing existing harassment laws to include catcalling. But you really lose me when you try to put saying anything--no matter how offensive or even illegal--in the same bucket as doing physical violence to another person. I think this is where the #metoo movement and other groups that promote women's safety and well-being lose a lot of support from people who would otherwise be in agreement with them. I can go really far supporting laws to protect women from all kinds of awful things. But I can't really stretch reality far enough to say that saying something is the same as raping someone.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    If we're using a system that puts catcalling in the same bucket as actual rape, that's a little bit of a problem. Catcalling is offensive, tasteless, and disgusting, but it's not the same as forcing someone to have sex with you. No one is suggesting catcalling is the same as rape; people are suggesting they're both in the same category. To use an analogy, a Ford Fiesta and a Ferrari FXX aren't going to compete in a race together but they're both cars.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      To use an analogy, a Ford Fiesta and a Ferrari FXX aren't going to compete in a race together but they're both cars. To use an analogy, public urination and murder aren't doing to result in the same penalties but they're both crimes.
      - neom 8y ago
        Sure, but in the context of workplace harassment catcalling and rape would be in the same category, fireable offenses, no?
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Sure, but in the context of criminal law, public urination and murder would be in the same category, offenses that can get you arrested, no? There is an unsavory political/propaganda purpose to putting catcalling and rape in the same category. The eliding of crimes of vastly differing degrees of severity is another warping of law enforcement and the judiciary which totalitarian states have used to oppress individuals. To do the constant work against this, we need to be careful about distinctions.
        neom 8y ago
        That's a fine perspective. While I do think catcalling should be illegal, I don't think it should carry the same punishment. Never the less, we're still talking about workspace harassment here.
notafraudster 8y ago
You should ask your wife how she feels about your presumption that women are exaggerating benign sexual interest into sexual harassment, and how you actually think Weinstein's casting couch was a good thing for women.
fisherjeff 8y ago
"I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment" There are lots of ways to address this, but I'll limit myself to probably the biggest issue involved: Power dynamics. If your boss expresses sexual interest in you, it puts you in a very difficult situation if the interest is not mutual. See result #4 in the article, and read through some of the comments here for examples.
- sp332 8y ago
  Right, what they have in common is the idea that the situation gives the woman less rights. Either she owes the man sex in exchange for promotion at work, or the man can take sex because his position outranks hers. Once the determination is made that she can't say no (or not without a fight), something has gone seriously wrong whether it progresses to rape or not. And yeah there's a spectrum and yeah there are other axes we can judge the situation on, but there's a litmus test here and it's not asking a lot to pass it.
bobbyT314 8y ago
I'm sorry, why do you think how these things are categorized matters in this context? In the workplace all of these things can be inappropriate, and should not be taken lightly. Catcalling is an inappropriate way to show sexual interest, especially in the workplace. Sexual harassment is a legally defined term in most places, and is not just showing an interest, it is harassment. I hope we can agree that sexual demands for career advancement is not just sexual interest, and neither is rape. A person's sexual interest is theirs. When they chose to share that interest with another person in the workplace they better carefully gauge their position of power, and the appropriateness of the context. They should also respond in a mature and appropriate way if the interest is not appreciated or reciprocated. You should also be careful how you throw around the term "hysteria" https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-quackery/history-hysteria https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-quackery/history-h... as it is a loaded phrase
beat 8y ago
"All the hysteria". You might want to look at the etymology of the word "hysteria", and think about it in this context.
wpietri 8y ago
Ah, "hysteria", from the Greek for uterus. Basically the theory that those darned women just let their emotions run away with them. Keep digging, newly created account.
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  I for one prefer a world where 'hysteria' is a gender-neutral term rather than one where we shift it back to gendered for the sake of taking offense. That would be going backwards. There's plenty to object to in the parent comment without going there.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    That’s not how language works. These things have a history of usage which informs their meaning. The dictionary is the cliffs notes. The true meaning is how it has been used throughout time.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    You can't shift it "back"; the accusation of excess emotionalism has always been gendered in English. Look at Shakespeare talking about "womanish", for example. The comment from the throwaway account is already heavily gendered. Pointing out one of the gendered tropes used in service of that is entirely on topic. There's no reason to sweep it under the rug.
    - yourbandsucks 8y ago
      Except we've had about 75 years of it being increasingly ungendered, to the point where I'm pretty sure most people don't even KNOW the etymology you're referring to. The outrage junkies are the only ones keeping the gendered definition alive at this point. Great job everyone.
      - wpietri 8y ago
        If you are making the claim that the use has recently become entirely ungendered, then let's see your evidence. Note that there are two aspects: one would have to be that it's applied equally to the genders, and the other is that it no longer draws upon gender stereotypes. (As an example of latter, saying that somebody "hits like a girl" is highly gendered but is said mainly to boys.)
wpietri 8y ago
If you're not sure of the difference between interest and harassment, you're probably part of the problem. And I'll note that guys who say that rarely have trouble telling the difference when it's another guy expressing sexual interest in them.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  im honestly not sure what your point is here about guys hitting on guys, but in my experience being hit on by women it is a genuinely blurry line. in general, it makes me very uncomfortable to be touched by someone without giving explicit consent, and over the years this has happened quite a few times (ranging from touching my hair at a bar to forcibly trying to restrain me from leaving after i decline sex). but if someone who i already consider attractive grabs me and starts talking to me, i don't necessarily mind and i might even like it. a whole range of behavior goes from uncomfortable to enjoyable in proportion to how much i am attracted to the person. on the flip side, knowing how uncomfortable it makes me, i will basically never touch anyone (other than to shake hands), unless they have explicitly told me it's okay. i think people perceive me as being kind of cold because of this. my point isn't that the ambiguity condones bad behavior in any way, but rather that you shouldn't make such sweeping statements to shut people down who might be trying to have a good faith discussion. this stuff is complicated and we need to talk about it.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Yes, as a fellow human being living in this culture, I also understand sexual dynamics are asymmetrical and complicated. Thanks. That said, I don't think there's much reason to think that a person who created a throwaway account to undermine the legitimacy of #metoo is really trying to have a good-faith discussion. The point about my comment on men not understanding consent and boundaries is that it is very often a convenient lack of understanding. The claim that women are just too darned mysterious is used to justify violation of consent and boundaries. However, if those same straight men are hit on by other men, they suddenly develop a very clear idea of boundaries and consent. This suggests to me that the lack of understanding is not just convenient but willful. As Upton Sinclair says, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" The same goes, I think, for horny dudes. Especially horny dudes living in a patriarchal culture where women used to be effectively property of one man or another, and where that patriarchy is still being slowly unwound.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> "Catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, rape" - those are not nearly in the same category. Yes, they are in the same category of “unwanted sexual conduct”. Now, sure, there are narrower categories each could also be put in which exclude some others. > I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. Interest is an internal state; women may not want you to have interest, but short of some outward act they are unlikely to have anything to consider harassment. If you are expressing unwanted interest in the workplace, or particularly in a context where you exercise economic power over the subject of that interest, they aren't wrong to view it as harassment.
neffy 8y ago
Not very often at all. We know the difference. We know, or learn quite quickly, as do the vast majority of men, how to politely say no, to those who wish to be polite. Stop assuming this is hysteria, it's not. It's a collective, we're just tired of this. And let me also offer some quick and dirty math to support that it's not a majority of men. Let's assume 1% of men don't know how to be polite and in fact enjoy being abusive. They do this on average 1/week to a randomly chosen woman. Within a relatively short time every woman will have had at least one unpleasant experience. For the most part these individuals pick on people they presume to be easy targets, so some women get treated much worse than others, just as men who are perceived to be easy targets equally have problems - probably with the same guys. That's also why the power dynamics play into it, the definition of easy target depends on that. And at some point, everybody just gives up, deals with their situation as best they can, and tries to never go upstairs ever again in Yale frat houses.
- sololipsist 8y ago
  Do you understand that if you perceive non-harassment as harassment, you're perceiving it as harassment, so of course you think you're not misperceiving it? Like, you get that reality is sometimes different from your perception of it? If someone suggests you're misperceiving something and your only reply is "I'm not because I know I'm not," you have an obvious epistemological problem.
  - neffy 8y ago
    That's the thing about personal experiences - they tend to transcend epistemology - but fortunately, at least in my case, not basic self-defence techniques.
    - sololipsist 8y ago
      Edit: Wow. I know this crowd understands that personal experience doesn't transcend epistemology. I know the vast majority of you know that's a terrible argument. This comment section is blatantly political. This is sad. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No they don't. People tend to ignore epistemological difficulties with personal experience, but that doesn't mean they transcend it. Do you know what epistemology is?
UncleMeat 8y ago
Of course they aren't in the same category. I wrote them in increasing intensity. But all of them happen more frequently than a lot of men think. This has nothing to do with being attractive. Ask a bunch of your female friends how many of them started getting catcalls at age 12. You might be surprised.
- beat 8y ago
  In my local non-software community, a key figure in the local Renaissance Festival was brought down by rape charges, which led to a plethora of #metoo among female friends who dealt with him. I brought this up to my daughter, who is 24. She said "Yeah, I was warned not to be alone with him when I was 10". And I, as a devoted father who has a very close relationship with his daughter (she's one of my closest friends, honestly) had no idea about this. This should give all men pause. What else do you not know about, that happens to your spouses, your sisters, your daughters, your mothers, your friends?
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Also worth asking: what have you said to or around those women that made them believe they can’t trust you with those stories?
    - beat 8y ago
      That's a good question, something all men need to ask themselves (after they get over the stupid idea that it isn't happening or women are making it up)... Here's the thing. It's so common for women that they don't detail every little incident in their lives to every man in their lives, because it's too much to track. Do you remember every driver who cut you off in traffic? That's kind of the level of the low-grade sexual harassment women deal with. It's just about every day. So no, I'm not told everything. And hopefully, most of the time, it's not that the women in my life are afraid to speak up to me about it. It's not that my then ten year old daughter was afraid or ashamed to talk to me about being warned about a lecherous, creepy man in a position of power. It's that even then, she knew it was part of life as a woman. By age 10, I had already asked a few female friends to be her "bad aunties". Their job was to be adult women she could talk to who weren't in her chain of command - not parents, or teachers, or officials of any sort. They were there to listen and advise when she needed it. And they were specifically asked to keep her confidence no matter what - even from me, and her mother. And she knew this. She knew she had adult women her life she could turn to when she didn't have anyone else she felt safe with, knowing that her parents trusted them with her. I recommend this to every father.
arandr0x 8y ago
My understanding is sexual harassment is aggressive, in a way that goes beyond confidence or assertiveness. I suppose it feels like being in a fight in a way. Most fights don't have lasting consequences, most fights occur in environments or cultures where they're almost excused in a way, but if somebody wants to fight you, and even if somebody wants to fight you in an environment that's normally very sober, such as your office, you tend to know it. (And depending on your relative sizes and prior levels of acquaintance, it will make you uneasy).
GVIrish 8y ago
> I'm sorry - I don't approve of sexual harassment, but with all the hysteria, I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. Here's the thing, business interactions are not the appropriate venue for expressing sexual interest. If someone is giving a pitch to VC's to secure funding for their company, it should be about business, not about someone trying to satisfy their sexual desires. > It seems to me sexual interest is a normal aspect of human life. Lots of things are a normal part of the human experience, but are not appropriate in a professional setting. > And being attractive also has advantages, that the #metoo crowd never mentions. We don't really know how many women actually benefited from being attractive. No, no, no, this is wildly misguided. Full stop, #metoo is about sexual misconduct and the culture that allows it. Even if some women are given preferential treatment due to their looks, it in no way justifies sexual abuse/misconduct. It does not justify abusing power to suit sexual whims, even if some women acquiesce to it.
- tomp 8y ago
  > Lots of things are a normal part of the human experience, but are not appropriate in a professional setting. That's true, but I've given this a lot of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that it's simply impractical and inhumane to forbid romantic/sexual interest in a professional setting. Let's face it, most new people you meet in your adult life, you meet through your job, and many people start relationships and even marriages with their coworkers. I think we should encourage emotional maturity and sensible behaviour instead. Although this too is difficult, because most people can't achieve the former, and the latter is extremely elusive especially in the current climate.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Its about the balance of power. Expressing interest in someone you have authority over is inappropriate, and definitely should be forbidden. We mustn't just revert to 'boys will be boys', that hasn't worked out well at all.
    - jhfhhhf 8y ago
zacharycohn 8y ago
Which of catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, or rape do you consider acceptable expressions of sexual interest?
mwfunk 8y ago
Offers of career advancement in exchange for sexual favors are really really bad, regardless of whether or not someone took them up on it, and regardless of whether they benefited from it later. Not just from the victim's perspective- the person who made the offer of a quid pro quo is just literally a shitty manager or investor and I would question every other aspect of their leadership ability and character. If they can't figure out the blindingly obvious, simple stuff, who knows what other blind spots they have. It's a huge red flag about someone's judgement. For an investor, their main professional task is to determine if someone is a good risk for investment (possibly with other people's money, who are trusting this person to make good decisions). If their criteria is a quid pro quo for sexual favors rather than whether or not someone's startup is a good place to invest, they're not doing their job. They're doing the opposite of their job. Likewise, a manager who promises advancement in exchange for sexual favors is advancing someone based on their willingness to sleep with them rather than whether or not the person is a good candidate for advancement. Again, not only is that manager doing a shitty job at being a manager, they're almost doing the worst possible job at being a manager. It's akin to promoting someone based on their personal loyalty to the manager rather than their ability to do the job. It happens all the time but that doesn't make it any better. TL;DR, even ignoring whether or not someone is a victim in this situation, and not caring about any of the moral or ethical aspects, the harasser has still shown themselves to not be worthy of their job. The most selfish, amoral interpretation of the situation still demands getting rid of the harasser, even if all you care about is business success and are willing to overlook everything else.
- tomp 8y ago
  > It's akin to promoting someone based on their personal loyalty to the manager rather than their ability to do the job. Nah, it's way worse. Promoting based on trust can be good, trust is a very important commodity (and hard to come by). In contrast to sexual availability or whatever.
  - mwfunk 8y ago
    I agree, although I would distinguish between trust and personal loyalty. Trust is collegial, but loyalty is a submissive relationship, at least in the sense that I mean it here. I trust decisions based purely on trust, but I distrust decisions based purely on loyalty, which is unquestioning.

api 8y ago

> I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. In this setting it's at a minimum incredibly unprofessional, especially between people who don't know each other well and are potentially customer/client or investor/investee. Imagine doing this stuff in a sales meeting.

neom 8y ago

I'm curious why they're not all in the same category, what categorization system are we using?

ianamartin 8y ago
If we're using a system that puts catcalling in the same bucket as actual rape, that's a little bit of a problem. Catcalling is offensive, tasteless, and disgusting, but it's not the same as forcing someone to have sex with you. I support laws against catcalling, or enforcing existing harassment laws to include catcalling. But you really lose me when you try to put saying anything--no matter how offensive or even illegal--in the same bucket as doing physical violence to another person. I think this is where the #metoo movement and other groups that promote women's safety and well-being lose a lot of support from people who would otherwise be in agreement with them. I can go really far supporting laws to protect women from all kinds of awful things. But I can't really stretch reality far enough to say that saying something is the same as raping someone.
- onion2k 8y ago
  If we're using a system that puts catcalling in the same bucket as actual rape, that's a little bit of a problem. Catcalling is offensive, tasteless, and disgusting, but it's not the same as forcing someone to have sex with you. No one is suggesting catcalling is the same as rape; people are suggesting they're both in the same category. To use an analogy, a Ford Fiesta and a Ferrari FXX aren't going to compete in a race together but they're both cars.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    To use an analogy, a Ford Fiesta and a Ferrari FXX aren't going to compete in a race together but they're both cars. To use an analogy, public urination and murder aren't doing to result in the same penalties but they're both crimes.
    - neom 8y ago
      Sure, but in the context of workplace harassment catcalling and rape would be in the same category, fireable offenses, no?
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Sure, but in the context of criminal law, public urination and murder would be in the same category, offenses that can get you arrested, no? There is an unsavory political/propaganda purpose to putting catcalling and rape in the same category. The eliding of crimes of vastly differing degrees of severity is another warping of law enforcement and the judiciary which totalitarian states have used to oppress individuals. To do the constant work against this, we need to be careful about distinctions.
        neom 8y ago
        That's a fine perspective. While I do think catcalling should be illegal, I don't think it should carry the same punishment. Never the less, we're still talking about workspace harassment here.

notafraudster 8y ago

You should ask your wife how she feels about your presumption that women are exaggerating benign sexual interest into sexual harassment, and how you actually think Weinstein's casting couch was a good thing for women.

fisherjeff 8y ago

"I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment" There are lots of ways to address this, but I'll limit myself to probably the biggest issue involved: Power dynamics. If your boss expresses sexual interest in you, it puts you in a very difficult situation if the interest is not mutual. See result #4 in the article, and read through some of the comments here for examples.

sp332 8y ago
Right, what they have in common is the idea that the situation gives the woman less rights. Either she owes the man sex in exchange for promotion at work, or the man can take sex because his position outranks hers. Once the determination is made that she can't say no (or not without a fight), something has gone seriously wrong whether it progresses to rape or not. And yeah there's a spectrum and yeah there are other axes we can judge the situation on, but there's a litmus test here and it's not asking a lot to pass it.

bobbyT314 8y ago

I'm sorry, why do you think how these things are categorized matters in this context? In the workplace all of these things can be inappropriate, and should not be taken lightly. Catcalling is an inappropriate way to show sexual interest, especially in the workplace. Sexual harassment is a legally defined term in most places, and is not just showing an interest, it is harassment. I hope we can agree that sexual demands for career advancement is not just sexual interest, and neither is rape. A person's sexual interest is theirs. When they chose to share that interest with another person in the workplace they better carefully gauge their position of power, and the appropriateness of the context. They should also respond in a mature and appropriate way if the interest is not appreciated or reciprocated. You should also be careful how you throw around the term "hysteria" https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-quackery/history-hysteria https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-quackery/history-h... as it is a loaded phrase

beat 8y ago

"All the hysteria". You might want to look at the etymology of the word "hysteria", and think about it in this context.

wpietri 8y ago

Ah, "hysteria", from the Greek for uterus. Basically the theory that those darned women just let their emotions run away with them. Keep digging, newly created account.

yourbandsucks 8y ago
I for one prefer a world where 'hysteria' is a gender-neutral term rather than one where we shift it back to gendered for the sake of taking offense. That would be going backwards. There's plenty to object to in the parent comment without going there.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  That’s not how language works. These things have a history of usage which informs their meaning. The dictionary is the cliffs notes. The true meaning is how it has been used throughout time.
- wpietri 8y ago
  You can't shift it "back"; the accusation of excess emotionalism has always been gendered in English. Look at Shakespeare talking about "womanish", for example. The comment from the throwaway account is already heavily gendered. Pointing out one of the gendered tropes used in service of that is entirely on topic. There's no reason to sweep it under the rug.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    Except we've had about 75 years of it being increasingly ungendered, to the point where I'm pretty sure most people don't even KNOW the etymology you're referring to. The outrage junkies are the only ones keeping the gendered definition alive at this point. Great job everyone.
    - wpietri 8y ago
      If you are making the claim that the use has recently become entirely ungendered, then let's see your evidence. Note that there are two aspects: one would have to be that it's applied equally to the genders, and the other is that it no longer draws upon gender stereotypes. (As an example of latter, saying that somebody "hits like a girl" is highly gendered but is said mainly to boys.)

wpietri 8y ago

If you're not sure of the difference between interest and harassment, you're probably part of the problem. And I'll note that guys who say that rarely have trouble telling the difference when it's another guy expressing sexual interest in them.

leetcrew 8y ago
im honestly not sure what your point is here about guys hitting on guys, but in my experience being hit on by women it is a genuinely blurry line. in general, it makes me very uncomfortable to be touched by someone without giving explicit consent, and over the years this has happened quite a few times (ranging from touching my hair at a bar to forcibly trying to restrain me from leaving after i decline sex). but if someone who i already consider attractive grabs me and starts talking to me, i don't necessarily mind and i might even like it. a whole range of behavior goes from uncomfortable to enjoyable in proportion to how much i am attracted to the person. on the flip side, knowing how uncomfortable it makes me, i will basically never touch anyone (other than to shake hands), unless they have explicitly told me it's okay. i think people perceive me as being kind of cold because of this. my point isn't that the ambiguity condones bad behavior in any way, but rather that you shouldn't make such sweeping statements to shut people down who might be trying to have a good faith discussion. this stuff is complicated and we need to talk about it.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Yes, as a fellow human being living in this culture, I also understand sexual dynamics are asymmetrical and complicated. Thanks. That said, I don't think there's much reason to think that a person who created a throwaway account to undermine the legitimacy of #metoo is really trying to have a good-faith discussion. The point about my comment on men not understanding consent and boundaries is that it is very often a convenient lack of understanding. The claim that women are just too darned mysterious is used to justify violation of consent and boundaries. However, if those same straight men are hit on by other men, they suddenly develop a very clear idea of boundaries and consent. This suggests to me that the lack of understanding is not just convenient but willful. As Upton Sinclair says, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" The same goes, I think, for horny dudes. Especially horny dudes living in a patriarchal culture where women used to be effectively property of one man or another, and where that patriarchy is still being slowly unwound.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> "Catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, rape" - those are not nearly in the same category. Yes, they are in the same category of “unwanted sexual conduct”. Now, sure, there are narrower categories each could also be put in which exclude some others. > I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. Interest is an internal state; women may not want you to have interest, but short of some outward act they are unlikely to have anything to consider harassment. If you are expressing unwanted interest in the workplace, or particularly in a context where you exercise economic power over the subject of that interest, they aren't wrong to view it as harassment.

neffy 8y ago

Not very often at all. We know the difference. We know, or learn quite quickly, as do the vast majority of men, how to politely say no, to those who wish to be polite. Stop assuming this is hysteria, it's not. It's a collective, we're just tired of this. And let me also offer some quick and dirty math to support that it's not a majority of men. Let's assume 1% of men don't know how to be polite and in fact enjoy being abusive. They do this on average 1/week to a randomly chosen woman. Within a relatively short time every woman will have had at least one unpleasant experience. For the most part these individuals pick on people they presume to be easy targets, so some women get treated much worse than others, just as men who are perceived to be easy targets equally have problems - probably with the same guys. That's also why the power dynamics play into it, the definition of easy target depends on that. And at some point, everybody just gives up, deals with their situation as best they can, and tries to never go upstairs ever again in Yale frat houses.

sololipsist 8y ago
Do you understand that if you perceive non-harassment as harassment, you're perceiving it as harassment, so of course you think you're not misperceiving it? Like, you get that reality is sometimes different from your perception of it? If someone suggests you're misperceiving something and your only reply is "I'm not because I know I'm not," you have an obvious epistemological problem.
- neffy 8y ago
  That's the thing about personal experiences - they tend to transcend epistemology - but fortunately, at least in my case, not basic self-defence techniques.
  - sololipsist 8y ago
    Edit: Wow. I know this crowd understands that personal experience doesn't transcend epistemology. I know the vast majority of you know that's a terrible argument. This comment section is blatantly political. This is sad. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No they don't. People tend to ignore epistemological difficulties with personal experience, but that doesn't mean they transcend it. Do you know what epistemology is?

UncleMeat 8y ago

Of course they aren't in the same category. I wrote them in increasing intensity. But all of them happen more frequently than a lot of men think. This has nothing to do with being attractive. Ask a bunch of your female friends how many of them started getting catcalls at age 12. You might be surprised.

beat 8y ago
In my local non-software community, a key figure in the local Renaissance Festival was brought down by rape charges, which led to a plethora of #metoo among female friends who dealt with him. I brought this up to my daughter, who is 24. She said "Yeah, I was warned not to be alone with him when I was 10". And I, as a devoted father who has a very close relationship with his daughter (she's one of my closest friends, honestly) had no idea about this. This should give all men pause. What else do you not know about, that happens to your spouses, your sisters, your daughters, your mothers, your friends?
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Also worth asking: what have you said to or around those women that made them believe they can’t trust you with those stories?
  - beat 8y ago
    That's a good question, something all men need to ask themselves (after they get over the stupid idea that it isn't happening or women are making it up)... Here's the thing. It's so common for women that they don't detail every little incident in their lives to every man in their lives, because it's too much to track. Do you remember every driver who cut you off in traffic? That's kind of the level of the low-grade sexual harassment women deal with. It's just about every day. So no, I'm not told everything. And hopefully, most of the time, it's not that the women in my life are afraid to speak up to me about it. It's not that my then ten year old daughter was afraid or ashamed to talk to me about being warned about a lecherous, creepy man in a position of power. It's that even then, she knew it was part of life as a woman. By age 10, I had already asked a few female friends to be her "bad aunties". Their job was to be adult women she could talk to who weren't in her chain of command - not parents, or teachers, or officials of any sort. They were there to listen and advise when she needed it. And they were specifically asked to keep her confidence no matter what - even from me, and her mother. And she knew this. She knew she had adult women her life she could turn to when she didn't have anyone else she felt safe with, knowing that her parents trusted them with her. I recommend this to every father.

arandr0x 8y ago

My understanding is sexual harassment is aggressive, in a way that goes beyond confidence or assertiveness. I suppose it feels like being in a fight in a way. Most fights don't have lasting consequences, most fights occur in environments or cultures where they're almost excused in a way, but if somebody wants to fight you, and even if somebody wants to fight you in an environment that's normally very sober, such as your office, you tend to know it. (And depending on your relative sizes and prior levels of acquaintance, it will make you uneasy).

GVIrish 8y ago

> I'm sorry - I don't approve of sexual harassment, but with all the hysteria, I am still not sure how often women simply consider sexual interest to be harassment. Here's the thing, business interactions are not the appropriate venue for expressing sexual interest. If someone is giving a pitch to VC's to secure funding for their company, it should be about business, not about someone trying to satisfy their sexual desires. > It seems to me sexual interest is a normal aspect of human life. Lots of things are a normal part of the human experience, but are not appropriate in a professional setting. > And being attractive also has advantages, that the #metoo crowd never mentions. We don't really know how many women actually benefited from being attractive. No, no, no, this is wildly misguided. Full stop, #metoo is about sexual misconduct and the culture that allows it. Even if some women are given preferential treatment due to their looks, it in no way justifies sexual abuse/misconduct. It does not justify abusing power to suit sexual whims, even if some women acquiesce to it.

tomp 8y ago
> Lots of things are a normal part of the human experience, but are not appropriate in a professional setting. That's true, but I've given this a lot of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that it's simply impractical and inhumane to forbid romantic/sexual interest in a professional setting. Let's face it, most new people you meet in your adult life, you meet through your job, and many people start relationships and even marriages with their coworkers. I think we should encourage emotional maturity and sensible behaviour instead. Although this too is difficult, because most people can't achieve the former, and the latter is extremely elusive especially in the current climate.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Its about the balance of power. Expressing interest in someone you have authority over is inappropriate, and definitely should be forbidden. We mustn't just revert to 'boys will be boys', that hasn't worked out well at all.
  - jhfhhhf 8y ago

zacharycohn 8y ago

Which of catcalling, harassment, sexual demands for career advancement, or rape do you consider acceptable expressions of sexual interest?

mwfunk 8y ago

Offers of career advancement in exchange for sexual favors are really really bad, regardless of whether or not someone took them up on it, and regardless of whether they benefited from it later. Not just from the victim's perspective- the person who made the offer of a quid pro quo is just literally a shitty manager or investor and I would question every other aspect of their leadership ability and character. If they can't figure out the blindingly obvious, simple stuff, who knows what other blind spots they have. It's a huge red flag about someone's judgement. For an investor, their main professional task is to determine if someone is a good risk for investment (possibly with other people's money, who are trusting this person to make good decisions). If their criteria is a quid pro quo for sexual favors rather than whether or not someone's startup is a good place to invest, they're not doing their job. They're doing the opposite of their job. Likewise, a manager who promises advancement in exchange for sexual favors is advancing someone based on their willingness to sleep with them rather than whether or not the person is a good candidate for advancement. Again, not only is that manager doing a shitty job at being a manager, they're almost doing the worst possible job at being a manager. It's akin to promoting someone based on their personal loyalty to the manager rather than their ability to do the job. It happens all the time but that doesn't make it any better. TL;DR, even ignoring whether or not someone is a victim in this situation, and not caring about any of the moral or ethical aspects, the harasser has still shown themselves to not be worthy of their job. The most selfish, amoral interpretation of the situation still demands getting rid of the harasser, even if all you care about is business success and are willing to overlook everything else.

tomp 8y ago
> It's akin to promoting someone based on their personal loyalty to the manager rather than their ability to do the job. Nah, it's way worse. Promoting based on trust can be good, trust is a very important commodity (and hard to come by). In contrast to sexual availability or whatever.
- mwfunk 8y ago
  I agree, although I would distinguish between trust and personal loyalty. Trust is collegial, but loyalty is a submissive relationship, at least in the sense that I mean it here. I trust decisions based purely on trust, but I distrust decisions based purely on loyalty, which is unquestioning.