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Regarding the propositioning for sex, a uni buddy of mine was propositioned during an interview for an internship by his male interviewer (buddy is gay, intervi

Regarding the propositioning for sex, a uni buddy of mine was propositioned during an interview for an internship by his male interviewer (buddy is gay, interviewer likely is too). It was absolutely vile, unsettling behavior, and it made me think it might be more common than I previously thought. Later, one of my sisters told us about how she applied for some job at a startup (not an IT related job), and after the interview she was told she wouldn't get the job because of other strong applicants and her lack of experience in the field, which is fine and true. But then one of the interviewers asked her out for drinks right after that, at which point she couldn't lose the feeling that maybe she was refused the job only so that this interviewer could hit on her later (which he probably couldn't have if she got her job and he became a superior to her). When - as a young(er) man - I did my mandatory civil services (which I had to do because I refused military service) in a hospital, there were not just one but few female nurses[1] who engaged in what I would consider inappropriate remarks ("I'd eat you up", "nice tushy, you should wear tighter pants", "if I was a few years younger I would...") and one nurse going so far as "jokingly" slapping me on the butt. There were a sizable amount of patients who also engaged in such remarks, as well as male patients non-nonchalantly asking me "how many of those nurses have you banged so far?". I am still mad at myself that I didn't report at least the slapping up the chain, thinking at the time "I don't wanna be that guy getting angry over a joke" and "I don't want to be seen overreacting or considered to be a victim"; and I didn't even have the additional problem of having to care about my career as this job was something I didn't want to keep doing anyway as soon as my mandatory time ran out. I talked to my dad about it, who happened to have done his own civil service in the exact same hospital in the late 1970s; his experiences were more or less the same, tho he said he didn't even consider reporting such behavior at all. What I guess I am trying to say is that this kind of vile behavior is in fact pretty common, unfortunately, and also not necessarily only something men do to women (although I am sure it is more prevalent in that direction). But most of it I wouldn't attribute it to sexism, but to assholes being assholes. [1] most of the people, especially the nurses, were nice or at least professional

danso 7y ago
> What I guess I am trying to say is that this kind of vile behavior is in fact pretty common, unfortunately, and also not necessarily only something men do to women (although I am sure it is more prevalent in that direction). But most of it I wouldn't attribute it to sexism, but to assholes being assholes. So it's true that being propositioned for sex by someone who has authority over you is not something exclusively suffered by women. And the fact that it happens more often to women than men at Uber may not necessarily an issue of "malicious" sexism, since it just so happens that men in Uber management far outnumber the women. What elevates Fowler's scenario is the systematic responses by HR and other management to ignore or otherwise suppress this issue, with Fowler and with many of the colleagues she talked to. After Fowler thoroughly documented this first incident, an ostensibly non-sexist HR/management would sanction the manager, not Fowler [0]: > Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part. I was then told that I had to make a choice: (i) I could either go and find another team and then never have to interact with this man again, or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that The second excerpt I quoted in my prior comment indicates that, according to Fowler, a sexist mindset had become enshrined in management's decision-making: > When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR. [0] https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
- username90 7y ago
  > an ostensibly non-sexist HR/management would sanction the manager, not Fowler Are you sure they would have sanctioned the manager if he was gay and harassing a gay subordinate? Everything I've seen says that women are taken much more seriously than men on issues like this, so I'd bet that they wouldn't. They took his side since he was more valuable to the company, not because she was a woman.

danso 7y ago

> What I guess I am trying to say is that this kind of vile behavior is in fact pretty common, unfortunately, and also not necessarily only something men do to women (although I am sure it is more prevalent in that direction). But most of it I wouldn't attribute it to sexism, but to assholes being assholes. So it's true that being propositioned for sex by someone who has authority over you is not something exclusively suffered by women. And the fact that it happens more often to women than men at Uber may not necessarily an issue of "malicious" sexism, since it just so happens that men in Uber management far outnumber the women. What elevates Fowler's scenario is the systematic responses by HR and other management to ignore or otherwise suppress this issue, with Fowler and with many of the colleagues she talked to. After Fowler thoroughly documented this first incident, an ostensibly non-sexist HR/management would sanction the manager, not Fowler [0]: > Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part. I was then told that I had to make a choice: (i) I could either go and find another team and then never have to interact with this man again, or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that The second excerpt I quoted in my prior comment indicates that, according to Fowler, a sexist mindset had become enshrined in management's decision-making: > When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR. [0] https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

username90 7y ago
> an ostensibly non-sexist HR/management would sanction the manager, not Fowler Are you sure they would have sanctioned the manager if he was gay and harassing a gay subordinate? Everything I've seen says that women are taken much more seriously than men on issues like this, so I'd bet that they wouldn't. They took his side since he was more valuable to the company, not because she was a woman.