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> There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work. We've had this discussion already, but claiming sexist views is going to be a problem for you w
by asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
> There is nothing to suggest the man acted improperly at work.
We've had this discussion already, but claiming sexist views is going to be a problem for you whether you do it at work or elsewhere because of how laws around hostile work environments and notice work. Particularly, if you go on to actually create a hostile work environment (as one might reasonably suppose you will, having publicly espoused the relevant views), then the company might be on the hook for enhanced damages based on the idea that they knew or ought to know you posed a risk. Best not to do it in a high profile way if you want to work for a big company where people are sensitive to that sort of thing.
If you want this to stop being the case, there are a few things that would need to happen. It might be that a combination of these would suffice:
You'd need to convince workers to not believe that someone who says sexist stuff in a book is going to cause a problem for them.
You'd need to convince workers to put aside their personal interests in this matter for the greater good (that being the right to write a book that says sexist things but still work at Apple, or wherever).
You'd need to change the law so that companies who know or should know that they have a risky worker don't pay any extra penalty if that worker goes on to harass someone.
There are probably more complex things you could do to solve this problem but I guess those three are the simplest.
- narrator 5y agoYou would never be able to hire a felon for anything since on that theory, the felon had done something outside of work that being a criminal act, might scare someone at work who had to work around them, even though their behavior at work was perfect.
- randoramax 5y agoEx-Felons have paid their debt to society, or at least get should be considered as such. And still, it's harder for them to get jobs.
- spoonjim 5y agoThey absolutely have not “paid their debt to society” unless they can undo the felony. You can’t pay back the debt of raping someone or stabbing them or killing them. Even if they let you out of jail.
- throway98752343 5y agoThen why do we let them out of prison at all? It's certainly safer for us law abiding citizens if all the criminals are locked up forever. Even if there are a few false positives.
- scoopertrooper 5y agoEven accepting your logic, not every felony involves stabbing or rape. Excluding all felons from future employment would be a great way to create more crime.
- suifbwish 5y agoBy that logic, anyone who is proven then to be involved willingly or not in the false accusation and wrongful imprisonment of anyone should be punished by the harshest means physically possible. Absolutely no mercy.
- spoonjim 5y agoWillfully? Absolutely. I think willfully trying to get someone convicted of a crime should carry 3x the punishment of that crime. It’s the deliberate misuse of state power to pervert the course of justice.
- Fordec 5y agoNo forgiveness for Martha Stewart!
- Ar-Curunir 5y agoI’ll care about sexists losing jobs when society cares about felons not being able to find employment decades after the fact. What had been happening instead was that sexists were failing upwards, until recently when employee power finally has a say in who works with them
- mmcgaha 5y agoCompanies that exclude felons from job consideration may want to rethink their policy. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/bmw-pay-16-million-and-offer-jobs-settle-federal-race-discrimination-lawsuit https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/bmw-pay-16-million-and-offer-j...
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI think there are some types of felons that probably don't get hired as managers after release, no matter how long it's been since their crime. For exactly the reason we're discussing. Who in their right mind would put a man who had been convicted of rape in charge of women? How much potential liability would the company be taking on if he were to happen to harm one of his reports? It would be astronomical. Who would hire a convicted embezzler as a CFO? I mean I'm sure it happens but I can only imagine it's the exception rather than the rule.
- narrator 5y agoWhat if it was assault and battery or grand theft? Wouldn't someone feel justified that they were going to be punched in the face or have their phone stolen while around the person thus creating a hostile work environment? In this case, it was something someone said outside of work which is a whole other level of paranoia.
- runako 5y agoAre felons convicted of grand theft frequently able to find employ in banks, jewelers, or in other places where valuables might go missing? Or are they largely shut out of those industries based on their criminal histories?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoProbably depends on the situation. Felony assault is serious business. It's normally not just a punch in the face. If someone committed a felony assault against a coworker while on the job, I expect it would be hard for them to get hired anywhere ever again. If it was against, say, a parent, or someone who was a rival in a love triangle, then perhaps . . . although probably never in a role like bouncer or security guard.
- aphextron 5y agoThat's pretty much the case, though isn't it? Why else would companies do criminal background checks?
- ramblerman 5y ago> claiming sexist views This is a pretty vague statement especially as OP mentioned fiction. Not some book espousing his political views. You can pick most of the great authors and find a character or scene that was obscene, but it would be unfair to cherry pick 2-3 sentences, post them on twitter and pretend this represented them.
- mtalantikite 5y ago> This is a pretty vague statement especially as OP mentioned fiction. Not some book espousing his political views. The book in question is a memoir by Antonio Garcia Martinez from what I’ve read. While there’s an argument to be made that even memoir and non-fiction are in a way fiction, this wasn’t an outright work of fiction. It contained misogynistic statements you’d expect to be true to how the author thinks because of the context of the work.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- actually_a_dog 5y ago> there’s an argument to be made that even memoir and non-fiction are in a way fiction What argument is that? I don't see how you can even say that with a straight face.
- darkerside 5y agoUnreliable narrators are a known literary concept for a reason. Combine that with, isn't all fiction reflective of the author and thus narrative in some capacity? And you're about halfway there.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoI'm still not buying it, especially when it comes to non-fiction. Any argument that attempts to define "non-X" as "X" is something I can't swallow.
- throw7 5y agoYou, asdfasgasdgasdg, would need to convince anyone you are talking any sense at all.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoDo you have quotes that are sexist? The only quote I have seen in articles that is supposedly sexist is about Bay Area women.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoThe Apple employee letter shared a number of quotes. Now, I'm not going to debate whether they are or they aren't sexist. That seems to be something that people look at through their own prism, and it doesn't seem productive to try to convince one way or the other. What matters is that enough Apple employees felt that those statements were sexist, which is an objective fact that would also be very relevant if there were to be a later lawsuit surrounding this person's at work conduct.
- mattparcens 5y agoApple employees objectively claimed to feel that the statements were sexist. I don’t think we can objectively distinguish someone’s claimed feelings from, say, their getting caught up in the fervor of a movement and attempting to persecute an ideological opponent, or persecuting someone chosen rather arbitrarily.
- throwkeep 5y agoPeople are just taking quotes out of context: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who-canceled https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who...
- msrenee 5y agoI'm almost more disgusted with the context. Even the self-sufficient woman he claims to be attracted to isn't described as a person. No thoughts or feelings or personality. Just a physically description and a chance to make it known that he had sex.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hn_user82179 5y ago> You'd need to convince workers to not believe that someone who says sexist stuff in a book is going to cause a problem for them. This resonated with me. Anecdotally, I sometimes wonder if small, unpleasant interactions (e.g. getting talked over multiple times in a meeting) have anything to do with my gender (I'm the only woman on my team) or are accidental/benign. I usually assume they're benign because I like my colleagues and they haven't otherwise seemed to think I'm incompetent or weak. It would be hard to give someone like Antonio García Martínez the benefit of the doubt and I'd constantly be on guard, specifically because he's already established that he thinks Bay Area women are weak and "generally full of shit". It would start off as an exhausting work environment even on day 1.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoThat makes sense to me. If I was hired to work for someone and they were posting stuff on Twitter like, "<my group> people are all pieces of crap," or any other negative generalization, I too would probably sense animus in stuff that I normally let slide at work. I believe that this understanding is at least in large part the source of the protests that led to him being shown the door.
- friedman23 5y agoNah, I think you are racist for criticizing a hispanic person. I'd refuse to work with you.
- refurb 5y agoYour statements come across as paranoia and looking for a problem where one likely doesn’t exist. As a white guy should I examine every interaction to see if there are racial or gender undertones? If my African American boss tells me not to be late, is it because I’m white? Or my female boss says my work is subpar, is it because I’m a man? No, that’s silly without evidence. And Martinez’s statement was: 1) fiction, 2) satire/humor, 3) taking place in a post-apocalyptic world. Thus, the only evidence you could garner from his writing is he may judge you as “worthless” if it’s a post-apocalyptic world where he needs you to fight zombies. Is that a problem when he asks you to fill out an excel after you get your free catered lunch at Apple?
- imgabe 5y ago> You'd need to convince workers to not believe that someone who says sexist stuff in a book is going to cause a problem for them. No. A million times no. If and when an employee creates a hostile work environment, then the employer may address it by disciplining or firing that employee. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is under any obligation to preemptively address things someone imagines might happen based on their misinterpretation of an out-of-context fragment of writing.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago> If and when an employee creates a hostile work environment, then the employer may address it by disciplining or firing that employee. I don't believe this at all, and more importantly, the way you've phrased your second paragraph, I don't think you really believe it all, either. That is, your first paragraph appears to be arguing that it's only OK to fire an employee for "hostile work environment" if that employee does something hostile at work, and never OK to fire based on stuff an employee has written before being hired. But your second paragraph actually shows you think the offense really wasn't that bad, that you think it was a "misinterpretation" taken "out of context". But what if the employee had been in the KKK, and had argued for white supremacy, and that other races were lazy and poor workers? Would you still think an employer would be out of bounds for firing that employee? My point is that I think it's perfectly fine to fire someone for egregious behavior or writings before they were hired. It's certainly worth debating whether Chaos Monkey rises to the level of egregious - I haven't read the book so I don't have an opinion. But I think some kind of blanket statement that "what you've written before being hired shouldn't matter" is pretty ludicrous.
- imgabe 5y ago> That is, your first paragraph appears to be arguing that it's only OK to fire an employee for "hostile work environment" if that employee does something hostile at work, and never OK to fire based on stuff an employee has written before being hired. What do you think a hostile work environment is? How do writings outside of work affect the work environment? The work environment is...things that happen at work. In order for the employee to have created a hostile work environment they would have to, you know, act hostilely at work. That is literally what it means. An employee proselytizing their religion at work might create a hostile work environment. If they go door-to-door and proselytize on the weekends, and never mention their religion at work, that does not create a hostile work environment and they shouldn't be fired for what they do in their own time. I don't see how that is hard to understand.
- linspace 5y agoI think that in an advanced society people should be able to work with people that maybe think you are going to hell after you die for not worshipping the correct God. We don't discriminate based on religion, at least we shouldn't by law. People by the way usually leave religion outside work. I think there is consensus this is a good thing but it seems some people don't want to extend this principle that works so well to other aspects of life. Cargo cult is not just for programming. I have worked with people coming from all the political spectrum and I prefer to evaluate their professional competence based on their acts, not their words. I have by the way seen misogynistic people change their opinion about women and homophobes change their opinion about homosexuals after some time being in the same company. Alienating people will just keep them in their bubble. And I'm completely sure of something: the company may have fired the guy that wrote the book but what they really wanted was to fire the people campaigning for it.
- overgard 5y agoFrom what I've read/heard, the "sexist" stuff is way out of context. Even if it's not, there's no need to pre-charge someone with a crime because they might have opinions you don't like. IF he did something to create a hostile workspace (which from what I've heard of the guy's character is super unlikely), then that's when something should be done.
- edem 5y agoYou are one of those fascist wokes I hope I never have to work with.
- kortilla 5y agoWhy is it acceptable for people who espouse currently popular racist ideas (e.g. the anti-white training put on by Coca Cola) to remain employed in your paradigm? Do you carve out an exception where it’s acceptable to cause problems for people as long as they aren’t a minority?
- nullifidian 5y ago>but claiming sexist views is going to be a problem for you whether you do it at work or elsewhere because of how laws around hostile work environments and notice work. Then that would be an equivalent to congress creating "anti-sexist"(in reality a particular interpretation of what sexist is) speech-regulating laws, since it automatically bars anyone who expressed something incompatible with the court-mandated speech standard from employment. It also in-effect regulates religious speech, since many religions are sexist according to the critical feminist jurisprudence.