3 ms·
I don't mean to split hairs but legally it looks like many or most states draw a distinction between sexual extortion and rape.[1] The difference being that sex
by abalone 12y ago
I don't mean to split hairs but legally it looks like many or most states draw a distinction between sexual extortion and rape.[1] The difference being that sextortion is a lesser felony.
I wonder if that is the case here. Certainly sextortion among engineers/scientists would be an extraordinarily troubling state of affairs. But based on the OP's comments here[2] she is referring to rape and that the enabling factor had something to do with social life being mixed up with professional life. So, not exactly extortion but it would have been costly to avoid the person.
This may be pie in the sky but I wonder if a concrete step that startups can take to reduce problems like this is to make a conscious effort to not penalize employees for not attending off-hours social events. Aside from acquaintance rape, obviously, there's also things like not penalizing older employees with kids to go home to or alcoholics who need to avoid enabling environments.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextortion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextortion
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9168365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9168365
- jrochkind1 12y agoI mean, well, you do mean to split legal hairs, clearly. Why are they relevant to the discussion? What do you think it is we're discussing?
- abalone 12y agoNot at all. It's that the strategies startups can adopt to fight sextortion are different from ones to fight being forced to see your rapist in social situations. That's why it's important to understand the specific scenario: solutions are different. Sextortion could happen even without pressure to hang out in social situations, for example. One person simply extorts another, forces them to meet in private. But what the OP is describing seems to be more in the realm of, I don't want to be alone around this person but I have to for professional reasons, and they keep taking advantage of it to rape. That might be something that startups can actually target with policies that ensure unsupervised social contact with colleagues is not necessary for professional advancement. That's not really on anyone's radar, it seems.