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How I Deal with Sexual Discrimination in a Positive Way?
- softbuilder 15y agoAnd... crickets. I know she's going for the high road but it seems like the most good would come from naming names or at least naming the conference.
- pquerna 15y agoYou should read this thread, about an incident last fall: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875718 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875718 She named names, and was given so much grief because of that.
- veyron 15y agoI think the issue really stemmed from outing individual people. The problem with that approach is that it boils down to a he-said-she-said, and its natural in such a situation to side with the more prolific character. If Tammy were to out the organizations, I would know which groups not to donate money to
- arkitaip 15y agoIt's embarrassing for the entire industry that men act like this. I can't imagine devoting yourself to the business of software with all your heart only to be treated like a piece of meat. Must have taken a lot of courage to write this. I would like to know who the conference jerks are, though. If you by 2011 haven't learned to treat women decently, you need to be publicly shamed and, if possible, brought to justice; anti-discrimination laws exist for a reason.
- jsprinkles 15y agoIt is not embarrassing for the entire industry and any attempt to paint this as an industry-wide issue is insulting to those of us who do not behave like this.
- j_baker 15y agoWhether you like it or not, whether it's true or not, computing has a reputation for being a mens' club. And things like this don't help. So yes, this is an embarrassment to the industry whether you're directly responsible or not.
- jsprinkles 15y agoAgain, wrong. The work force has a reputation for being a mens' club. There is nothing specific to computing about it. Please do not disrespect the industry you and I are a part of by kidding yourself that we are different and somehow a problem.
- jamesaguilar 15y agoActually as far as I can tell computing has a reputation of being especially this way. Personally I don't really understand why you'd want to defend the "there's nothing wrong, ignore this woman" point of view. You acknowledge there's a problem, although you don't think it's specific to this industry. Why take the course of action/defend the point of view least likely to improve the situation?
- jsprinkles 15y agoAnd your sweeping generalization of computing is based on? Some things you read on the Internet? A story you heard once from a female coworker? I don't know how your shop is but in my shop this shit does not happen because we are overly selective with our hiring and extremely quick to fire. One tactic we have in interviews is to take the applicant to dinner and get him drunk with a female colleague present. Multiple otherwise-awesome applicants have earned a circular file at dinner.
- jamesaguilar 15y ago> And your sweeping generalization of computing is based on? The same thing as yours. My personal experiences and what I've heard. You have no more evidence that there is nothing especially wrong with computing than I have that there is. > "but in my shop this shit does not happen" That you've heard about. Although I suspect that if you share the same kinds opinions around your coworkers as you are sharing here, you've made a fair number of your feel uncomfortable and unwelcome without ever realizing it. > One tactic we have in interviews is to take the applicant to dinner and get him drunk with a female colleague present. Wow. IANAL but using a female coworker as a honeypot is probably opening your company up to liability. The standard for harassment or unfriendly working environment is what a reasonable person would consider the same. I'd vote in favor of the plaintiff if a colleague of yours asked to perform this duty ever sued your company. As a matter of policy you're knowingly putting an employee in a situation where they are more likely to be harassed specifically for the purpose of seeing if they get harassed. Well, it's your ass on the line and not mine; for that I am thankful.
- jules 15y agoGo to the police, writing about it like this on a blog doesn't solve the problem.
- MoreMoschops 15y agoIt's been a crime for years and the police don't seem to have been able to stamp it out. Gosh, it's almost as if they can't be everywhere at once and that citizens will have to take some responsibility themselves for what constitutes acceptable social behaviour. Writing about it on blogs and news aggregates and raising awareness is the only way the problem will get solved.
- jules 15y agoStealing has been a crime for years, and the police haven't been able to stamp it out. Is that a reason for not reporting it? If victims weren't reporting stealing to the police, that wouldn't be helping in any way. What good does writing a blog post that as far as we can tell doesn't contain any checkable evidence do? (and I'm not advocating publicly shaming the guy -- again, the legal system is the established road for crimes, and this is no exception).
- zdw 15y agoOr a lawyer. Especially if there's documentation involved. Making a private, nasty situation for the jerk who did this (and possibly a settlement) could probably deter future behavior, at least for this one person.
- Tichy 15y agoIs it illegal ban somebody from a conference for personal reasons?
- zdw 15y agoThere's no rule that a business has to serve everyone (except for in certain regulated cases like the water company, and even then there are limits). In the situation described, it's definitely not ethical.
- jsprinkles 15y agoI'm looking forward to the absolutely riveting discussion that will take place on this submission. Remember Noirin Shirley naming the Hadoop committer who fucked up at ApacheCon? Here's how this conversation goes and I remember because I was involved in one during that fallout: ------ She should name names. Why? Good to shame the asshole and get it overwith. And what good does accusing someone of something like this with an entirely one-sided account in public do for anyone? It lets other women know he's a scumbag! Why are you fighting this? You must be a chauvinist. No I just think everyone should be spared from trial by Twitter because character assassination is kind of a big deal and there is always the chance that facts are being misrepresented by either side. We do not have the full story but it will not matter because one story has already been presented and conclusions drawn. Any comeback the accused has is already lost. You're a pig and the problem with men in IT. It has nothing to do with gender or sexual assault and everything instead to do with having a chance to defend yourself. It has EVERYTHING to with gender and sexual assault. ------ Seriously, save yourself the involvement in this thread. We all know it happens but anything objective you have to say about the accusation or the person making the accusation will be drowned out by misandry. Do not read anything below my post. It is a complete and utter waste of time. Personally I think shit like this should not be blogged at all but whatever. I am not ready to fight this battle again.
- potatolicious 15y agoWhat is the alternative - accept that victims of sexual discrimination and harassment stay silent? If they don't name names, nothing changes; if they do name names, they're accused of submitting someone to trial-by-Twitter. A catch 22 if I've ever seen one! As to your "shit like this shouldn't be blogged about" comment, that seriously bothers me. Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that victims of sexual discrimination stay silent? Jesus tap-dancing Christ, the Rapture came and somehow I got teleported to the 50s.
- jsprinkles 15y agoWrong: if they do name names nothing changes. And I am suggesting that your first thought after being the victim of any crime should not be to broadcast it publicly on your blog. Blogs change things for the worse in a lot of cases and this is one of them. How can you expect an impartial trial when the victim has already laid out the entire crime publicly? This is why some civilized countries have insane legal controls on broadcasting a trial in progress. Seriously I am not going to fight this battle again only in the end to be accused of being a woman-hater.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 15y agoIf you want improvement in this area get your daughter to date a nerd in high school. Men who go into technical fields suffer serious scars from social rejection that's every bit as painful as apartheid. Considering that techie men spend their sensitive formative years being completely shut out and excluded from the company of women, a woman is pretty presumptuous to think she will be treated fairly by technically oriented men.
- stcredzero 15y agoIf you want improvement in this area get your daughter to date a nerd in high school. I'm a nerd. My sister's a choreographer. My parents encouraged my sister to date my nerdy friends. It generally had the opposite effect.
- khafra 15y agoGP must have assumed that people who've procreated have enough social awareness to know that if they really want their daughter to date nerds, they have to forbid her from even hanging out with that kind of guy--you never know when they're going to hack a bank, or make some kind of dangerous robot with lasers and rocket engines on it.
- asanwal 15y agoAs a nerd, I feel your pain but equating social rejection from women to apartheid is probably overreaching a bit, no?
- MoreMoschops 15y agoWell, it's interesting to hear how some people justify this sort of thing to themselves. I suppose at least the fact that they do need to justify it to themselves gives us some hope; if they didn't even realise it was wrong, they wouldn't need to give themselves excuses.
- anonymous_disc 15y agoWhat is "right" and what is "wrong"? There are no absolutes. You have your religion; I have mine. Each of us is always justifying whatever we do.
- steve_b 15y ago"Never speak ill of the wrong or negative person. It takes you down to their level." If someone is trying to force you into sex, and you stay silent about it, they're probably going to do it again. At some point you have to speak up. But being a guy, I have no idea how hard it would be to come forward with such allegations. I've never done anything comparably brave.
- gscott 15y agoIf I were a woman I would take a picture of the guy and post it to my blog and just let it out. There isn't enough for anything to be done otherwise it will get worse if the person is just left to do it again without any consequence... even if the only consequence is a blog post. It does appear all of the guys decend upon the women and try to take them apart but they have nothing to gain in this... well except for hopefully the next woman in line hopefully won't get harassed (and excluded) in such a way.
- X-Istence 15y agoYeah ... not a good idea: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571972 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571972
- Tichy 15y agoDoes "one of the organizers" imply that the other organizers know of the reasons for the ban and play along with it? Obviously there are many jerks in the world, but I admit I find it hard to believe that there could be such a random concentration of jerks. Or were they all jerks who bonded through their jerkiness and then decided to launch a conference?
- gscott 15y agoYour logic is that another organizer would step in when probably they won't because they have enough people to pull from they don't really have to battle it out to get any one person in over another persons objections. And the person with the objection isn't going to say outright what the vetting process was, just that there were other people he thought would be better (after passing her over for the lack of sexual exchange).
- anonymous_disc 15y agoSex appeal has been repeatedly demonstrated to yield significant advantages. Discrimination, although contemptible, is just the other side of the coin.
- MoreMoschops 15y agoDoes that mean we should accept it? Does that make it OK?
- ciupicri 15y agoNo, but it means women aren't always discriminated in favor of men.
- stcredzero 15y agoThis past week I was banned from one of my favorite conferences because I wouldn’t have sex with one of the organizers. This makes me wonder about all the quips like, "Who do I sleep with at [ ] to get featured in [ ]?" A part of the public image of companies like YC and Berkshire Hathaway involves their associating with good people -- because good people tend to produce real value. Likewise, if the Silicon Valley startup scene is more than just a hollow reputation market, then there is some real value on which a real stand for values can be based. Conversely, I feel that such behavior is one symptom of the economics of a possible reputation bubble at work.
- Meai 15y agoOkay, I'm going to reach far now: Sorry, but this is blogspam. You have to ask yourself: What is the purpose of this post here? What exactly do you want to achieve by posting it here? The answer is clear, this is posted here solely for generating publicity. Now let's dig again: Why do you want publicity for this? If there is a real issue here, take it up with someone who is actually responsible for fixing it. If you want to publicly shame people, then keep posting it on sites like HN. 99% of all the people visiting this site won't ever concern this issue, and as surprising as it is to myself, I'm actually a little offended by your insinuation that I should care about this. But that's not the actual problem I have with your post. The real issue is that this kind of topic has been discussed a million times, and therefore has no place on HN.
- veyron 15y ago"If there is a real issue here, take it up with someone who is actually responsible for fixing it." <-- the problem is that addressing the issue with the person who is actually responsible doesn't solve the problem. Unfortunately, in many cases, some sort of public shame is the only real way to rectify behavior. We see these issues of sexual discrimination and harassment all the time, and even with years of lecturing people still don't get the message. "If you want to publicly shame people, then keep posting it on sites like HN." <-- Unfortunately, I don't think that was her point. If others are made aware of the circumstances, and see that someone relatively influential is making a comment about it, other women won't feel like they are alone. Having been on the receiving end of other types of discrimination, I can empathize with the feeling of loneliness and desire to keep quiet.
- Tichy 15y agoWhat kind of helpful public shame is supposed to come about? Men who are not pigs will probably just think "this doesn't concern me". Men who are pigs are not shamed by the blog post in any way, so they are unlikely to change their ways because of it. Since no names were called out, there is nothing the innocent bystander could do (like boycotting the conference).
- gscott 15y ago
- enneff 15y agoHow does this even work? I'm not accusing Tammy of making it up, but how does this even come about? The mind boggles.
- jsprinkles 15y agoJust enough details to start a flame war but really convey no context whatsoever. Cool huh?
- ascendant 15y agoThe second you provide context you start providing clues that can be used to piece together the person allegedly responsible for this, and then once that cat is out of the bag it turns into a full blown he-said, she-said thing with legal ramifications.
- BasDirks 15y agoThis does not tickle my intellectual curiosity. The issue is a very important one, but HackerNews isn't god_damn Oprah. Bring on the downvotes.
- lukejduncan 15y agoI don't know this person, but it can't be that hard to actually deduce the conference...
- sudonim 15y agoAny kind of accusation made public is a tricky beast. There are 3 possibilities for the accusation: 1. The accusation is correct in it's entirety and should be taken at face value 2. The basis of the accusation is correct, but additional information casts it in a different light. 3. The accusation is false. If you discuss it, publicly stating that option 1 is true is the only strategy that will keep your reputation intact. Anything else makes you look like a douche.
- mkramlich 15y agoAnd 4. we do not and cannot really know whether the accusation is fully or even partially accurate, and therefore should keep all our mouths closed about it and let the legal system handle it. "accusation == guilt" is never a smart default
- KuraFire 15y agoIt should be worth noting here that the accused have every bit the opportunity to deny the claims. If a woman—any woman—were to absolutely falsely accuse some guy of having raped her in a very public manner (with or without having gone to the police beforehand), by what logic would the guy, who knows he didn’t rape her, not deny the accusations? He could deny them in equally public fashion and/or go to the police himself. The thing is: women know that making such an accusation in public will get them harassed for it, whether it's true or not. But it's really only worth the immense vitriol that they will have to endure when their accusations are true. Additionally, women also don't have some kind of weird "inherent motive" to do this to men, but countless of reasons not to. Stepping to the police is always the right first move. Publicly outing rapists is a brave (as it is dangerous) additional step to take which, among other good things, will alert other women about the rapist. Anyone who argues that it is unfair should shut the hell up and first think about how fair it was to the woman that she got raped in the first place. Hint: she didn't deserve what happened to her. The guy who did the raping? Totally does.
- mkramlich 15y agoTwo quick comments. 1. there are many possible motives for a false accusation; all kinds of permutations have happened historically; it happens sometimes 2. no rape mentioned or implied in the OA. just a refusal to have sex, supposedly
- sp332 15y agoMaybe people aren't speaking up because they don't know what to say. If I witnessed this, what could I do? I'm looking for specific ideas here.
- neilk 15y agoI think this post is mistitled. Sexual discrimination is about unequal opportunities -- passing over women for promotion, asking inappropriate questions in job interviews, etc. The OP is describing something more like a crime. Extortion.
- jquery 15y agoIt's hard to take this blog post at face value. My experience with the industry has been that IT people are terrified of offending women and go far out of their way to avoid being perceived as sexist. I do know a couple guys that flirt with women at work but that's a far cry from sexual discrimination. As long as we're sharing anecdotes: * My girlfriend of 3 years also works in this industry, and she has never complained about an incident of any kind. * I worked with a female developer who was fired and complained about discrimination. But this was not the case, she was fired because she was terrible at her job. * I also worked with a gay developer who was fired. He complained loudly of homosexual discrimination... but I saw his check-ins (or lack thereof)--he was also terrible at his job. So the two major cases of discrimination I personally know about in Silicon Valley have both been frauds. Is discrimination real in Silicon Valley? Certainly, yes, there's always a few bad apples in any large community. Is the problem being blown out of proportion here? I think so.
- noahth 15y agoHey guys! My limited anecdotal experience on this topic TOTALLY explains the situation.
- mkramlich 15y agoUnfortunately this is one topic area on the Internet where one person's limited anecdotal experience is treated as Gospel Truth and another person's is considered, well, mere limited anecdotal experience. Oh well. This particular flame fest has been going on (on the net) since at least the 80's. I don't expect it to ever end. Have fun solving it folks!
- _pius 15y agoThis particular flame fest has been going on (on the net) since at least the 80's. I don't expect it to ever end. Have fun solving it folks! And what's the controversy, exactly? The people trying to claim that discrimination and harassment don't exist just aren't credible.
- jgesture 15y ago
- blumentopf 15y agoIt is appalling that sexual harassment and discrimination is not outlawed in this industry. Florian Leibert, the harasser who was identified in the incident last November is still working at Twitter. Why haven’t the founders and/or executives at Twitter taken any consequences?
- tzs 15y agoWhy should they take consequences for what is quite possibly a false accusation?
- haberman 15y agoA few days ago I ate at the Sales/HR cafeteria instead of the engineer cafeteria. A table of HR people I didn't know that was 80% female invited me to join them for lunch, and eagerly chatted me up for the next half hour. This was a really illuminating experience that highlighted for me what an impact the male/female ratio can have. Getting that level of female friendliness/attention at work is totally foreign to me (I don't work directly with many women), and was kind of nice. I think there is a vicious cycle where women in technology get too much attention from female-deprived men, which conditions them to have a guardedness about them, which conditions the men to feel even more female-deprived (and leads some of them to be creepy). It's unfortunate. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with a conference organizer who demands sex (it certainly doesn't excuse it, even a little). But I do think there are a lot of lonely guys in tech.
- KuraFire 15y agoThere would be a lot less lonely guys in tech if it wasn’t such a generally female-unfriendly field in many areas. Also, there is a fair bit of overlap between the “lonely guys” and “guys causing this problem.”
- jasonmcalacanis 15y agoWhat conferences are there next week?
- Ratufa 15y agoFor the people saying she should go to the police about this: what crime (meaning something that would be criminally prosecuted as opposed to something that might be the cause of a civil suit) do you believe has been committed in this case (I'm not a lawyer; I don't know)? There was no mention of physical assault in the blog post. Even if this incident broke some law, how would there possibly be enough evidence to prosecute? Wrt the argument that these things happen because guys will be guys or because nerds have grudges against women: That may be a reason, but it's not an excuse for this sort of behavior. People should be expected to act professionally when in a professional context. As for whether publicly naming names accomplishes anything: If a person's sense of professionalism (not to mention simple human decency) is low enough to engage in blatant sexual harassment, they clearly need some external incentive to not behave in this way. How does that incentive get provided if the people being harassed keep it to themselves?
- KuraFire 15y ago> For the people saying she should go to the police about this: what crime (meaning something that would be criminally prosecuted as opposed to something that might be the cause of a civil suit) do you believe has been committed in this case (I'm not a lawyer; I don't know)? There was no mention of physical assault in the blog post. Even if this incident broke some law, how would there possibly be enough evidence to prosecute? Imagine a store owner standing by his entrance, letting people in one by one without even batting an eye. Then a woman approaches, he likes the look of her. He holds up his hand and says “Hold it! You may not enter unless you have sex with me.” That doesn’t sound like extortion, sexual coercion and unlawful discrimination to you? Well, it does to any sane judge. As for evidence: testimonies and/or email trails can produce plenty of evidence, easily.
- Ratufa 15y agoI'd rather not "imagine" anything or speculate what a "sane judge" would think. What criminal law is being broken, given what we know? If you think it's obvious consider that sexual harassment in the workplace is usually considered a civil, not a criminal matter (though, in some circumstances it can be criminal). As for the evidence, we don't really know what evidence exists in this particular case, but it seems premature to assume an e-mail trail or testimony other than the "he said/she said" variety.
- Mz 15y agoI've been "banned for life" from things having nothing whatsoever to do with a sexual situation. I've chosen to walk away from other things where sexual stuff (including but not limited to discrimination) was a big part of the problem. I'm wondering if anyone else here can raise their hand and say "yea, verily, I am also banned for life from something and it had nothing to do with sex/gender". I'm sorry for this person's experience and I don't wish to talk bad about them but I really think folks blow some things way out of proportion and make it about "I'm female" or "I'm black" or "I have X issue and everything in life that goes wrong is about that issue". Just looking for some perspective.
- sgentle 15y agoWow, lots of hysteria. I was hoping to find a comment that said something like the following: It sucks that things like this still happen. I've seen or heard about a few stories like this and it's heartbreaking to think that the industry I love can cause such pain to people. Worse still is the thought that these incidents punish everyone, from the women who are turned away to other, less risky fields, to the managers who struggle to find competent female hires, to the other men who get unfairly tarred for just being in the same gender. I understand it's tempting to say "but this might be made up!" - yes, it might. We don't have any facts and we should be cautious not to use it as an excuse for a witch hunt. But would you be surprised if it was true? Put-money-on-it surprised? If not, that's problem enough. These things happen and we know it. The thing that gets me is that theoretically HN is a place for people who aren't satisfied with "oh well, that's how it goes", who instead disrupt and innovate, who find novel solutions to problems nobody thought solvable (or even worth solving), and who change the world for the better in the process. Where's that spirit now? Surely we can find a way to make things like this less frequent or less damaging?
- Mz 15y agoSurely we can find a way to make things like this less frequent or less damaging? I hesitate to say this, but I think women have some power to make this better. Yes, there are men who are real pigs. It happens. But I'm a former homemaker and now have a job with BigCo and a) most of the women's fashions shown in magazines and such would get me sent home if I showed up at work dressed like that b) in spite of that fact (I mean that the dress code is intended to prevent this), there are still women who show up at my place of employment looking hookerific c) the last time I saw a story of this sort (ie some woman talking about her negative experiences with sexism) on HN, I was dumbfounded that the woman who wrote it stupidly said things that could be interpreted as a come-on/opening after the man had made it clear he was hitting on her, so I then googled her image and in most pictures of her she was displaying cleavage and so on. I don't say this to "blame the victim". I say this because if you are a woman and you want real power, acting on the piece of it you have control over is a much more empowered position than whining about how "men are still pigs" or some such. Just trying to respond to your actual request for something positive and pro-active. Peace.
- 15y ago
- essayist 15y agoI'm sorry that this happened to Tammy Camp, for her, for the other organizers of the conference, and for the attendees. Regarding many of the HN posters here who argue that Camp shouldn't have blogged about this, or that she must be lying: why assume that it's about you? As another comment notes, what happened to Camp is attempted extortion. If you've not done this to someone, Camp's blog post is not about you. Presumably, you're able to read about someone's experience of burglary, non-sexual assault, or other crime without immediately impugning the victim's motives or truthfulness, arguing that the crime was an isolated incident, or requesting that the victim just shut up. Camp deserves the same respect her, unless you can demonstrates she is lying. And for those who doubt that Camp's blog post can achieve anything: it's not about HN. This thread demonstrates, mostly, the same tired back and forth. But there is a whole world beyond HN (really). In that world, if you've experienced something like what Camp went through, you've just discovered an ally, and maybe the world feels a little less lonely. A win. And if you have ever been the perpetrator of this kind of extortion, you know not to try this with Camp - a win for her - and maybe the world feels a little less safe for you and your crap. A win for all of us. Not bad results for a simple blog post.
- shaunkoh 15y agoDon't you guys see that she's writing for other women – and anyone else that's encountered some form of ugly discrimination? She spends most of her post describing what's it like to be on the receiving end, and more importantly, what she's done to deal with it.
- tammycamp 15y agoHiya Hackers! How did I make it all the way over here?
- jackie_singh 15y agoI can't believe she edited my original comment on her site.