4 ms·

Do you understand how repugnant you sound implying that some men need to use businesswomen as captive audience for their sex drives or they won't get sex? Let

Do you understand how repugnant you sound implying that some men need to use businesswomen as captive audience for their sex drives or they won't get sex? Let me remind you that a work setting is nothing like Tinder, nothing like a bar, nothing like any place where trying to get laid is considered OK. You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you?

roenxi 8y ago
> Do you understand how repugnant you sound implying that some men need to use businesswomen as captive audience for their sex drives or they won't get sex? No, I'm implying there is a very high background rate of men asking women for sex, and I havn't compared this instance to the background but I assume women get propositioned at a very high rate _wherever_ they are. > Let me remind you that a work setting is nothing like Tinder, nothing like a bar, nothing like any place where trying to get laid is considered OK. My parents met in the workplace. I have a friends who have too. I havn't looked up the statistics but I assume it is double-digit percentages of marriages start as workplace relations. It is unfortunate if you think that isn't acceptable, because it clearly is. > You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you? I wouldn't, but I don't see why it would be unacceptable. There are a lot of people at funerals who are't particularly committed to grieving but making a statement of social support, and they'd just be there doing what they do at any social event.
- dbt00 8y ago
  > My parents met in the workplace. I have a friends who have too. I havn't looked up the statistics but I assume it is double-digit percentages of marriages start as workplace relations. It is unfortunate if you think that isn't acceptable, because it clearly is. Conflating financial power relationship dynamics with garden variety workplace romance is some serious moving of goalposts. Seriously, one of the major reforms in venture capital in the last 25 years has been to reduce the amount of power tripping that goes on between VCs and founders. That's the idea that YC is founded on. This is another example, and an incredibly shitty one. Why defend it?
  - roenxi 8y ago
    > Why defend it? Because "unwelcome sexual advances" is a spectrum from acceptable to unacceptable. The acceptable part of that spectrum is very small (being a guy awkwardly asks a girl for sex, she says no, and that is the end if it) and the unacceptable part is very large (fondling, using pressure from corporate power, etc). However, despite the fact it is small, the acceptable part of that spectrum is important to protect because there are a lot of men who are not very socially adept, but want to have sexual relation with women and don't know many outside the workplace. They should be able to seek out relationships in their comfort zone without risk of formal censure. I assume there are a lot of women in a similar position. In this particular instance "unwanted sexual overtures or sexual badgering" is probably more of the badgering end that we don't want, but the language here is important - there needs to be /some/ tolerance of unwanted sexual overtures that do not lead to badgering. Being awkward, being wrong and misunderstanding a situation isn't a punishable offense. Being persistent, using threats or getting physical is. And so I'd like to see a little more clarity on what the low-end standard being used here is. It is important to the conversation. In a minor way.
    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      Great, just what more women need - a man telling them how they should feel about being sexually assaulted. "Come on baby, I only touched you a little bit, it's no big deal". Being asked by a VC about sex, going on a date, or grabbing a drink while trying to secure money from them is far worse than being fondled by some random guy in a nightclub.
    - nfoz 8y ago
      > The acceptable part of that spectrum is very small (being a guy awkwardly asks a girl for sex, she says no, and that is the end if it) This is actually really inappropriate IMO. Who the heck thinks it's okay to "awkwardly ask for sex"? No. You awkwardly ask for a date or some such, and -- if that is accepted -- then within that context the rest can be opened up. Maybe we're just in extremely different cultures.
    - jancsika 8y ago
      > They should be able to seek out relationships in their comfort zone without risk of formal censure. I assume there are a lot of women in a similar position. People should not seek out relationships with those over whom they wield significant power professionally. That's a pretty decent and obvious rule most people live by. While there are exceptions, if someone doesn't intuitively understand the reasons for the rule they should seriously consider dating outside of their professional environment. This is especially true for people who are likely to make such advances to those under them through sheer ignorance of social norms. The set of people who make advances and badger others usually do so in bad faith and have practiced ways to hedge, mislead, and leverage the people around them to remain safely tolerated. That leaves the decent, socially inept people wide open to be made examples of by HR because they never thought to use their power or influence to threaten others. (Or, out of desperation they start to use that influence to save face.) That may sound unfair to the socially inept. But the point is that there is no way to separate the wheat from the chaff-- people acting in bad faith who get caught almost always claim social ignorance, or harmless intentions, mis-communication, etc. There is no credible way to signal to an underling that a sexual advance comes without the threat of badgering or other more subtle repercussions. (And esp. no way to explain one's actions as harmless after the fact.) And that's not even to mention situations where an underling says yes to an ostensibly "non-badgering" advance because a) they confused the wheat with the chaff and b) the power imbalance makes them think they have little choice. If the person making the advance is not particularly socially aware then it greatly increases the chances that they take the lack of error reporting as consent. Meanwhile, the underling is convinced that reporting an error would result in immediate or eventual termination. Not a particularly sound system for exploring romance IMO. Anyway, those are just a few reasons why most people believe strongly in the rule I stated above. It's a field of social land mines. If one is socially inept then an entire class of problems vanishes simply by following the rule. (Besides, widely-available web dating services do exist.)
- neotek 8y ago
  >I wouldn't, but I don't see why it would be unacceptable. If you don't see why it would be unacceptable, then why wouldn't you do it? You're admitting, whether you intended to or not, that you do in fact recognise that such behaviour would be inappropriate given the context – just like offering unwanted sexual advances to a subordinate in the workplace is clearly inappropriate.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    I feel pretty certain that you do not personally do everything you consider "acceptable behavior". I have a friend who has expressed to me that she thinks prostitution should be legal. By this logic, she would be a prostitute if it were. Do you really think that's true?
rhacker 8y ago
> You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you? https://observer.com/2015/08/better-bed-than-dead-why-mouners-often-hook-up-at-funerals/ https://observer.com/2015/08/better-bed-than-dead-why-mouner...
LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
What if all your life is work? Where should all the other stuff fit in?

roenxi 8y ago

> Do you understand how repugnant you sound implying that some men need to use businesswomen as captive audience for their sex drives or they won't get sex? No, I'm implying there is a very high background rate of men asking women for sex, and I havn't compared this instance to the background but I assume women get propositioned at a very high rate _wherever_ they are. > Let me remind you that a work setting is nothing like Tinder, nothing like a bar, nothing like any place where trying to get laid is considered OK. My parents met in the workplace. I have a friends who have too. I havn't looked up the statistics but I assume it is double-digit percentages of marriages start as workplace relations. It is unfortunate if you think that isn't acceptable, because it clearly is. > You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you? I wouldn't, but I don't see why it would be unacceptable. There are a lot of people at funerals who are't particularly committed to grieving but making a statement of social support, and they'd just be there doing what they do at any social event.

dbt00 8y ago
> My parents met in the workplace. I have a friends who have too. I havn't looked up the statistics but I assume it is double-digit percentages of marriages start as workplace relations. It is unfortunate if you think that isn't acceptable, because it clearly is. Conflating financial power relationship dynamics with garden variety workplace romance is some serious moving of goalposts. Seriously, one of the major reforms in venture capital in the last 25 years has been to reduce the amount of power tripping that goes on between VCs and founders. That's the idea that YC is founded on. This is another example, and an incredibly shitty one. Why defend it?
- roenxi 8y ago
  > Why defend it? Because "unwelcome sexual advances" is a spectrum from acceptable to unacceptable. The acceptable part of that spectrum is very small (being a guy awkwardly asks a girl for sex, she says no, and that is the end if it) and the unacceptable part is very large (fondling, using pressure from corporate power, etc). However, despite the fact it is small, the acceptable part of that spectrum is important to protect because there are a lot of men who are not very socially adept, but want to have sexual relation with women and don't know many outside the workplace. They should be able to seek out relationships in their comfort zone without risk of formal censure. I assume there are a lot of women in a similar position. In this particular instance "unwanted sexual overtures or sexual badgering" is probably more of the badgering end that we don't want, but the language here is important - there needs to be /some/ tolerance of unwanted sexual overtures that do not lead to badgering. Being awkward, being wrong and misunderstanding a situation isn't a punishable offense. Being persistent, using threats or getting physical is. And so I'd like to see a little more clarity on what the low-end standard being used here is. It is important to the conversation. In a minor way.
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    Great, just what more women need - a man telling them how they should feel about being sexually assaulted. "Come on baby, I only touched you a little bit, it's no big deal". Being asked by a VC about sex, going on a date, or grabbing a drink while trying to secure money from them is far worse than being fondled by some random guy in a nightclub.
  - nfoz 8y ago
    > The acceptable part of that spectrum is very small (being a guy awkwardly asks a girl for sex, she says no, and that is the end if it) This is actually really inappropriate IMO. Who the heck thinks it's okay to "awkwardly ask for sex"? No. You awkwardly ask for a date or some such, and -- if that is accepted -- then within that context the rest can be opened up. Maybe we're just in extremely different cultures.
  - jancsika 8y ago
    > They should be able to seek out relationships in their comfort zone without risk of formal censure. I assume there are a lot of women in a similar position. People should not seek out relationships with those over whom they wield significant power professionally. That's a pretty decent and obvious rule most people live by. While there are exceptions, if someone doesn't intuitively understand the reasons for the rule they should seriously consider dating outside of their professional environment. This is especially true for people who are likely to make such advances to those under them through sheer ignorance of social norms. The set of people who make advances and badger others usually do so in bad faith and have practiced ways to hedge, mislead, and leverage the people around them to remain safely tolerated. That leaves the decent, socially inept people wide open to be made examples of by HR because they never thought to use their power or influence to threaten others. (Or, out of desperation they start to use that influence to save face.) That may sound unfair to the socially inept. But the point is that there is no way to separate the wheat from the chaff-- people acting in bad faith who get caught almost always claim social ignorance, or harmless intentions, mis-communication, etc. There is no credible way to signal to an underling that a sexual advance comes without the threat of badgering or other more subtle repercussions. (And esp. no way to explain one's actions as harmless after the fact.) And that's not even to mention situations where an underling says yes to an ostensibly "non-badgering" advance because a) they confused the wheat with the chaff and b) the power imbalance makes them think they have little choice. If the person making the advance is not particularly socially aware then it greatly increases the chances that they take the lack of error reporting as consent. Meanwhile, the underling is convinced that reporting an error would result in immediate or eventual termination. Not a particularly sound system for exploring romance IMO. Anyway, those are just a few reasons why most people believe strongly in the rule I stated above. It's a field of social land mines. If one is socially inept then an entire class of problems vanishes simply by following the rule. (Besides, widely-available web dating services do exist.)
neotek 8y ago
>I wouldn't, but I don't see why it would be unacceptable. If you don't see why it would be unacceptable, then why wouldn't you do it? You're admitting, whether you intended to or not, that you do in fact recognise that such behaviour would be inappropriate given the context – just like offering unwanted sexual advances to a subordinate in the workplace is clearly inappropriate.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  I feel pretty certain that you do not personally do everything you consider "acceptable behavior". I have a friend who has expressed to me that she thinks prostitution should be legal. By this logic, she would be a prostitute if it were. Do you really think that's true?

rhacker 8y ago

> You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you? https://observer.com/2015/08/better-bed-than-dead-why-mouners-often-hook-up-at-funerals/ https://observer.com/2015/08/better-bed-than-dead-why-mouner...

LifeLiverTransp 8y ago

What if all your life is work? Where should all the other stuff fit in?