In these situations how are things actually proved? Is it just a "he said, she said" situation? In any case, it's a bold move to go on record, though I'm curious what difference it actually makes.
EDIT: Ah, it seems going on record is necessary to actually bring charges to someone.
Are texts really an example of "sexual assault?" My understanding was that sexual assault had to be physical, though I may (probably) be wrong.
EDIT: Thanks for the clarification, all. As many have pointed out, there's also the harassment portion. I guess my question is now: how do you prove intent? I know nothing about due process, so I'm curious. I suppose in this case it really matters what it says in the texts.
Some types of sexual assault can be proven by medical examination, if the exam happens soon after, although many actions that qualify as sexual assault will either not show up on an exam, or can be proven to be "sexual" but not "assault." However, in cases like this where there is an ongoing relationship before and after the incident, the text messages will often refer to physical events. These can be evidence that a physical event happened, and what the attitudes and beliefs of the involved people were towards the incident at the time. Although even that is still a large amount of he-said-she-said and drawing large inferences from circumstantial data.
Sexual harassment exists and is a thing people can be publicly accused of even where it is not legally prohibited.
An action need not be legally actionable to be newsworthy, or to be important for people who might want to know of their risk of being subjected to similar action.
> Are texts really an example of "sexual assault?"
He is accused of sexual assault and harassment. The particular harassment is, in principle, more readily demonstrable (though perhaps not legally actionable, “sexual harassment” short of assault isn't always illegal, though it may well be newsworthy, without an employment relationship.)
OTOH, in the case of a VC against people seeking funding, some forms of what would analogous to quid pro quo sexual harassment in employment could shade into the crime of soliciting prostitution.
> I guess my question is now: how do you prove intent?
In a legal case (which is not now pending from any information published, but that could change), any facts from which an observer could infer that the intent at issue was more likely than it would be in the absence of those facts are evidence (providing that they aren't inadmissible for other reasons.)
Legal proof isn't mathematical proof; in general, the ways you'd forms belief about something in your daily life are how it is “proved” in a court of law.
The degree of certainty a juror is expected to have for a conviction in a criminal cases is very high, but that's not a matter of how it is proved, but how conclusively it must be proved.
When it involves serial harassers, the ability to get many she-saids becomes easy, too. Do you really think that founders are lining up to put their personal and professional reputation on the line, to smear this guy, as part of a vast female conspiracy?
They have fucking text messages to back their story up. Are those easy to fabricate too, when it comes to rich and powerful people?
That's exactly why we have due process - to evaluate evidence in an impartial and equitable way. GP's point was more about due process than anything else, so could you extend the assumption of good faith to their comment and engage with that point?
I'm not a court of law, I'm not locking him up in a prison, and I don't need proof of guilt beyond an unreasonable doubt to take these allegations seriously.
No, I don't. But do you think it's reasonable to crucify him before any investigation happens?
My comment was a bit too female-focused. It wasn't about she-said's or a female conspiracy, but rather the ease of getting people to smear someone that has enemies.
It's hard not to notice that the claim of sexual harassment is as equally damaging now as being called a communist was in the 50's. It's obviously quite different, but the damage is identical. And when it comes to something so powerful, we should at least respect due process.
> It's hard not to notice that the claim of sexual harassment is as equally damaging now as being called a communist was in the 50's. It's obviously quite different, but the damage is identical. And when it comes to something so powerful, we should at least respect due process.
It's not, and it's not.
Communist witch-hunts were conducted by secret, back-channel, anonymous snitches, and were all about guilt by association. Accusations of sexual harassment put the accuser incredibly out in the open.
They were also largely used as a weapon against the weak and unconnected - people without the resources, or even awareness necessary to fight back against secret blacklists.
Not to mention that there is a colossal distinction between blackballing people for being communists, and blackballing them for being sexual harassers.
And besides, if history's any indication, the latter don't have problem making a living. There's always someone willing to take a chance.
You don't appear to know the history as well as you think you do. The comparison is fair.
Communist witch-hunts were conducted by secret, back-channel, anonymous snitches, and were all about guilt by association. Accusations of sexual harassment put the accuser incredibly out in the open.
It was both. A lot of accusations were made in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, on public record, and those accusers were very visible. For example you can read through http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6458/ and see that Emil Lustig, Robert Burman, Herbert K. Sorrell and a number of others had no doubt about who they were accused by - they were accused by Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney.
There was also accusation by rumor mill, which might or might not ever lead to a public accusation.
I've seen both modes with sexual harassment claims. Indeed it is not infrequent that, as with this case, the public claims only emerge after someone has been tarred and feathered by anonymous accusations in the rumor mill.
They were also largely used as a weapon against the weak and unconnected - people without the resources, or even awareness necessary to fight back against secret blacklists.
Most of the people caught up had little actual power. The same is true today by virtue of the simple fact that most of us have very little actual power. But there were very prominent people affected of accusations of being communists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Aaron Copeland. Which is again no different than today.
Furthermore the THREAT of being called a communist was used against very prominent people. That was the heart of Joseph McCarthy's power - powerful people were sincerely afraid of him.
Not to mention that there is a colossal distinction between blackballing people for being communists, and blackballing them for being sexual harassers.
There is a distinction, but I suspect that it goes the other way from what you think.
Communists stood accused of being covert agents of a hostile foreign power that we were at undeclared war with. Their purported aim was to undermine and destroy our country to ensure the victory of said foreign power. And there really were such covert agents. For example Harold Ware, Julius Rosenberg, and Aldrich Ames - all real people and all actually agents of the USSR who worked to undermine the security of the USA.
Sexual harassers stand accused of a personal crime whose legal status is not dissimilar to burglary or arson. They are clearly bad people but not an existential threat to our country.
Which accusation sounds worse?
And besides, if history's any indication, the latter don't have problem making a living. There's always someone willing to take a chance.
Can you provide stories of accused communists starving to death due to the blacklist?
> But do you think it's reasonable to crucify him before any investigation happens?
No, and if you see anyone hauling an actual, physical tree around to nail him to, you can tell them I said that.
But commenting based on one's perception of the facts based on the published allegations and responses is not, even remotely, analogous to crucifixion.
> Do you think it's reasonable to destroy his reputation before an investigation has occurred?
I think people should be conscious of the uncertainty in the facts when commenting based on limited information, but that he is entitled to no more deference from private actors than, essentially, avoiding libelous statements (those known to be false or made with with reckless disregard for truth.)
General private commentary is not, morally or ethically, dependent on an investigation.
And, in any case, an investigation has occurred, preceding publication of the story.
Any ideas for recognizing situations where a bit of skepticism is warranted vs situations like this? In this case, I'm a little saddened that my comments caused some more stress for the founders. One of them personally came to correct me upthread.
I think it's still important in general to reserve judgement and to wait for due process, but is there much reason to hold so fast to those views anymore? The speed at which accusations can be confirmed or denied seems to have increased to the point where it might not be so bad to just assume that the truth will usually come out. I don't know.
> Any ideas for recognizing situations where a bit of skepticism is warranted vs situations like this?
Skepticism is always warranted, this situation was no exception (even though the admission that has since emerged seems to implicitly confirm the reports.)
But skepticism doesn't mean don't form and express a view on the facts based on what information you do have, it means be aware that you don't have the whole picture and refrain from action that is too extreme for the information you have, and remain willing to revise your opinion as more information becomes available.
The last bit takes active effort to counter confirmation bias and the desire to avoid having to admit error.
> I think it's still important in general to reserve judgement and to wait for due process,
Even in government, “due process” isn't a binary thing; what process is due varies based on the action being taken and other elements of context. Even if we extend the concept to include private action, things like posting a comment expressing concern would have much less process due than any substantive government action.
Even a government agent acting in their official capacity doesn't have to wait for a conviction to say that they believe someone is guilty.
What due process are you looking for, precisely? Is it a practical standard to apply? Sexual harassment is not itself a crime, so it's unlikely he'll be indicted and tried. Also, "due process" has a broad meaning that goes beyond "jury trial". A good faith investigation by a journalist with six sources, three on the record, could certainly be viewed as due process.
> A good faith investigation by a journalist with six sources, three on the record, could certainly be viewed as due process.
But @sillysaurus3 basically said that there is no amount of evidence that could satisfy "reasonable doubt" with this statement:
> When it involves rich or powerful people, the ability to get many she-said's becomes easier.
This statement basically says that gathering multiple claims and multiple accounts/allegations cannot be proof against a rich or powerful person because of some inherent propensity of women to come out of the woodwork to lodge harassment/assault claims against rich/powerful/famous people. So once you are rich and powerful you immediately win all he-said/she-said situations because people have to give you the "benefit of the doubt." (not that I agree with this statement)
No, it had nothing to do with women, and I resent that implication. I notice you saw the subthread where I articulated that it had nothing to do with women yet still posted a comment insinuating it does: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621640
It's not a controversial observation that rich and powerful people can acquire enemies, and some of them have been slandered by the press.
It was difficult to separate that situation from this one. I assure you, I'm a reasonable and thoughtful person and it's not fair to say that I basically said there's no amount of evidence that can satisfy a claim against a powerful person.
The original comment was "Maybe we should wait to see how this plays out before making any judgements." Nothing more.
This whole conversation was a request for more information, so if you're going to throw me under the bus for it, you'll just push those who want to ask harmless questions further into the camp of "I shouldn't say a word." And when people have beliefs that seem reasonable to them, this can be a harmful situation when those beliefs are false.
For example, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that a journalist shouldn't wield the power to destroy someone's reputation without any independent oversight. It's a simple proposition with simple, obvious consequences. But pointing out that no investigation is going to occur helped me realize that it's an absurd standard.
EDIT: Also, most of my comments received around 8 upvotes. They've been bouncing up and down, but the point is, clearly a lot of people felt similarly. So by voicing these concerns, it probably changed a lot more minds than my own. Talking this out and being open with it seems like a good thing.
Apologies, but I'm not claiming that you think that there is no amount of evidence that can satisfy a claim against a powerful person. My issue was that the claim:
> When it involves rich or powerful people, the ability to get many she-said's becomes easier.
when taken at face value is implying (indirectly) that it takes more "she-saids" to make a claim against a rich/powerful person believable than it would for a "normal" person.
It doesn't even have to have anything to do with women. It just implies that even multiple claims by separate parties might not be enough when the target is someone rich or powerful (or famous) if it's a "my word against yours" type situation. From my point of view, that's just giving more power to the rich or powerful.
Since you're asking seriously, I have a hypothesis that probably applies to a lot of the well-meaning skeptical responses in this thread:
Most of the men replying in this thread have an incorrect "prior" (in the statistical sense) of the odds that a woman will experience serious sexual harassment in the workplace. This prior emerges, one presumes, because we look at ourselves as the model for estimating that behavior, think "there's no way in hell I'd behave that way, so this must be really rare", and assign a relatively low probability to the occurrence.
That prior is incorrect. There are enough harassers out there, each of whom harms multiple people, that, in fact, the average experience is of having been inappropriately approached, harassed, or outright assaulted, to the point where [1] a woman has a lifetime 1 in 6 chance of being the victim of rape or attempted rape, and in one survey, 1 in 3 women reported having experienced workplace sexual harassment. [2] Those numbers may be wrong a bit in either direction, but the decimal point is probably in the right place.
When we hear a claim like "X was sexually harassed by Y", we evaluate the likelihood of that statement in light of our own experience and prior - and assign to it a much lower likelihood of it being true than the true probability. In other words, you mentally calculate: P(harassed | X says harassed). By bayes rule, that's equal to P(X says harassed | harassed) * P(harassed) / P(X says harassed). So when our mental model of P(harassed) is too low, our estimate of P(harassed | X says harassed) is too low. And thus arises excessive disbelief in claims that are more likely to be true.
So, my very geeky suggestion for this is: Be very precise about the question you're asking about and the assumptions that go into it. You can often find a way to validate those assumptions to check what you're asking about.
pdf page 15 (document internal page 8): "Based on testimony to the Select Task Force and various academic articles, we learned that
anywhere from 25% to 85% of women report having experienced sexual harassment in the
workplace.
...
We found that when employees were asked, in surveys using a randomly representative sample
(called a “probability sample”), if they had experienced “sexual harassment,” without that term
being defined in the survey, approximately one in four women (25%) reported experiencing
“sexual harassment” in the workplace. This percentage was remarkably consistent across
probability surveys. When employees were asked the same question in surveys using
convenience samples (in lay terms, a convenience sample is not randomly representative because
it uses respondents that are convenient to the researcher (e.g., student volunteers or respondents
from one organization)), with sexual harassment not being defined, the rate rose to 50% of
women reporting they had been sexually harassed."
The cited EEOC report has fairly extensive citations backing up its claims.
As I said - I have no specific numbers I believe are The One True Answer, but it's fairly clear from a variety of sources that the decimal points are in approximately the right place. For the purpose of what I was discussing, 25% and 85% are approximately the same ("Very much higher than one might guess if we use our own behavior as a model").
What "investigation" are you planning to wait for? Who's doing it? What URL will the final report be published at?
Do you apply this standard in other areas? If someone tells you they had chicken for lunch, do you say, "Hold on, let's wait for the investigation to determine what you actually had for lunch"? Or if six people told you they had chicken for lunch?
Yes, it is the very definition of reasonable in this case. I believe a reasonable person, given the information available one or two clicks hence, would be completely unsurprised to learn that these 6 women are reporting events that happened, and extremely surprised to learn it was a conspiracy or series of unusually unfortunate misunderstandings.
If the sea change we observe as a result of these allegations is VC's and tech executives being scrupulously professional in their interactions with female founders and employees, to prevent even a whiff of impropriety, I think we'd all be better off.
If this guy could say "I was never even alone in the same conference room with any of these women, let alone at a bar where any impropriety is a matter of their word against mine" I think this story wouldn't have run.
Seriously guys, when you're at work, just fucking work and all this bullshit magically goes away. No dating, no uncomfortable discussions of race or politics or sex, just do your job and go home. Talk about tabs versus spaces if you need to spice up a Friday afternoon lull.
If you do that, they will call you sexist and that your behavior is a way to keep women from power.
For example see Mike Pence:
“In 2002, Mike Pence told The Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.”
> claim of sexual harassment is as equally damaging now as being called a communist was in the 50's
I dispute this very much. For example, you have people like Chris Brown that can turn their girlfriend into a human punching bag... and nothing happens to them. They just say that they are sorry, and keep in making money hand over fist (and even get women on Twitter saying things like "he can punch me any day").
It is documented that he was beating the crap out her, and he has suffered no ill consequences, or lack of popularity. I'm pretty sure that this does not match up with being called a communist in 1950's America.
> No, I don't. But do you think it's reasonable to crucify him before any investigation happens?
He has come out with a statement basically admitting to it after completely denying it.
>They have fucking text messages to back their story up. Are those easy to fabricate too, when it comes to rich and powerful people?
I believe you are wrong about this. Text messages are easier to fabricate than other forms of digital evidence, and less risky than something like paying people to pretend to be witnesses.
I am one of the three women who went on the record: Niniane Wang. I'm one of the "she-said"s.
I have nothing to gain from this. I am not suing. I'm founder & CEO of a Greylock-funded startup. Thankfully Greylock has come out in full support, but I didn't know that beforehand and was very nervous when I decided to do the article. The only way that any reporter would agree to publish was if I used my real name. I knew Justin was continuing to harass women, and this was the only way to stop him.
sillysaurus3, you may be thinking of cases where women go to accuse a "rich or powerful" person and are trying to get something out of it. I had nothing to gain and a lot to lose.
"The unfortunate truth is that I simply could not write this until Albergotti published, as I didn't have anyone on the record, which is virtually essential from a journalistic perspective. "
Write an anonymous blog about it on Medium or whatever and submit it to HN, you'll get views. You'll persuade or not persuade some people in the blog's truth no matter what you say from confirmation bias alone (e.g. rise in sexism in tech vs. rise in hoax charges). Some people will be more persuaded if you use your real name, for others it doesn't matter. Some people will be more persuaded if you give actual specifics about what was said and done (I'm one of those -- "harassment" is very broad, "groping" might be too, you need to either define your terms or state physically what happened, because you'd think we would all agree on what "grope" means but there are videos you can find of women screaming "help, he's raping me!" when it's just a cop using force to arrest her), but on the other hand too specific and people might find it literally incredible that someone actually grabbed you by the pussy without a tape of the person admitting as much.
There isn't really, because the moment you reveal enough actual details that it's possible to identify you, you also open yourself up for subtle forms of retaliation.
Victims report incidents, an their info is not shared at the time of report. Victims can elect to have their reports unsealed if subsequent accusations are made against the same individual. This mirrors the current status quo, where it's less common for victims to speak out if there are no other cases to corroborate, but makes discovery of other cases more feasible.
It's being rolled out specifically in the context of college sexual assault, but I imagine the approach could work elsewhere too.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cast doubts. All I meant was that we should reserve judgement. In this case, it sounds pretty clear-cut, but the point was about future cases that may not be so straightforward.
I can only imagine how stressful a situation like this can be, so I certainly didn't mean to increase it. Best of luck.
Come on, you totally meant to cast doubt. Still, it takes some degree of huevos to stand up in a semi-anonymous forum and admit your mistake (instead of deleting your comment or other dumb stuff). Kudos for that at least.
For what it's worth, I didn't mean to cast doubt on her character. It was more along the lines of "Maybe we should wait to see how this plays out." I'm also rather upset that my comment indirectly made HN a less welcoming place for founders. I've written extensively about the fact that HN has become less founder-friendly and they've had to flee to places like Bookface just to get some support. The idea that I contributed to that isn't a happy thought.
As a fellow lady who has bootstrapped her business, and knows nothing about the VC world - I just want to say thank you. You coming out in the open has made the environment better for all of us. Seriously, thanks.
Thank you for your courage. You almost certainly saved others from harassment directly and your bravery also will have saved hundreds of others since those in powerful positions will be more vary and those being harassed will be more vocal. This story is one more stepping stone towards progress.
Why are you talking about due process when there's no crime that has been committed?
This is about calling out shitty but legal behavior. The VC didn't even deny he was lecherous, just that he didn't do anything illegal. That's tacit confirmation that it did happen.
Except that people who "she said" often have a lot more to lose than the person they're accusing, and even if they're speaking the absolute truth they end up damaging their careers, reputations, and general well-being. The media scruitiny alone would destroy many people.
One journalist got six sources, three on the record, and claims to have verified parts of the stories (such as reviewing message history on phones), which led him to have the confidence to go to press.
Right, I read that, but is it necessary to be publicly on the record? Couldn't the information be privately confirmed, protecting the women from retaliation and still allowing the case/accusation to move forward?
It just seems like an unnecessary risk/vulnerability. Of course, there's also the fact that by going on the record you also encourage others to do the same, which is an immeasurable benefit.
I am one of the three women who went on the record with my name: Niniane Wang. I initially asked to be anonymous, but no reporter would publish unless they had named sources. I knew that Justin was continuing to harass women. Using my name was the only way to stop him. In other words, yes, it was necessary to be publicly on the record.
Niniane, I can only imagine the mental anguish you must have gone through. I applaud you and the other women for taking a stance, a public stance and standing up to these perverts. You are an inspiration.
Thank you for your courage, I'm sure putting yourself out there has spared other women the plight of enduring the same experience you were subjected to. That's real altruism.
@niniane - Thanks for being open with something so personal.
I know it must have been a hard decision to make because you were probably worried about how you & your company would be treated afterwards but this is going to help open so many people's eyes.
I could see how being publicly on the record might also protect people from retaliation. If any retaliation occurs now, won't it be easy to point to this story?
Retaliation isn't always obvious. If half of VCs used to return your calls and now none of them do, which ones are retaliating against you and which ones are part of the half that wouldn't have returned your call anyway?
Like stated higher up in the thread, non-testimonial proof is hard to come by in cases like this. Publishing a story with unnamed sources in such a case is very difficult to distinguish from a smear-campaign.
Not only does naming sources give more credibility, it also doesn't rely fully on the credibility of journalists. You can only say "it's true, just trust me" without being able to back it up so many times.
Testimony of anonymous sources are useful as corroboration, not as the main evidence. The sources here don't need to fear for their lives, nor are they able to produce documents to back up their claims.
I do not wish to diminish the courage that was needed to go on the record here. In fact, this is even more risky because hard evidence is so hard to come by in cases like this.
You could ask his employer, which said "...while The Information had found a few examples which show that Justin has in the past occasionally dated or flirted with women he met in a professional capacity , let’s be clear: there is no evidence that Justin did anything illegal and there is no evidence that any of his investing decisions were affected by his social interests.”
So it happened, it's just that he doesn't realize how wildly unacceptable it was.
> EDIT: Ah, it seems going on record is necessary to actually bring charges to someone.
This is an interesting comment and sheds some light on what is happening here.
There is no need to be publicly named in a news article to bring charges in a court of law; but in a court of law there is a clear and regular process for evaluating charges; and one does actually submit to the possibility of retaliation in a limited form: false accusations carry punishments of their own.
Justin has already quit. In some sense, charges were brought in the court of public opinion -- and for these to have any weight, there must be some element of credibility attached to them. Journalists are not cops and just quoting "unnamed sources" is not enough to substantiate the idea that someone should lose their job, in part because unnamed sources accept no scrutiny and no risk. Attaching one's name to something like this is the only way to lend any weight to it, in the absence of any judicial process.
One of the girls interviewed on Startup Podcast mentioned that a VC propositioned her; like these girls she was Asian. I wonder if this guy is the same alleged pervert?
this is a perfect example of why, in a globally connected world, this problem will never be solved:
different cultures have different standards for appropriateness and harrasement: you are trying to not be offensive and so used the world "girl", and someone else is offended because you didn't use the word "woman."
How about we all stop looking for reasons to be offended all the time and presume innocence and good faith until we actually do get a clearly expressed intent or do feel genuinely uncomfortable (as opposed to slightly annoyed)? I'm sure a lot of these situations can be explained by cultural differences or even language barriers such as in this case. English is the de-facto language of the tech scene, but that doesn't mean that everyone who joins in a discussion can be expected to master all the nuances of the language. It seems to be hard enough for Brits and Americans, just imagine how it is for us whose native language isn't English at all.
To be clear, I'm not talking about the harassment case here, I'm talking about the "call them women" comment.
We have to do better on our Education to get this going, I know in America they don't properly teach cultures (candy coated stories and stereotypes are vast) and social communication at early ages. They leave children to their own devices to figure it out.
Obviously, I am deeply disturbed by these allegations. While significant context is missing from the incidents reported by The Information, I deeply regret ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable. The fact is that I have been privileged to have worked with female entrepreneurs throughout my career and I sincerely apologize to anyone who I made uncomfortable by my actions. There’s no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it.
How do you get "I think they're full of shit" out of that? This reads to me like a tacit admission that if anything else, his behavior is inappropriate and sketchy by any conventional sense. Appropriate and professional behavior does not need "significant context" to back it up.
"I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week. To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement. Still, I need to say it: I am so, so sorry." ... "I will be seeking professional counseling as I take steps to reflect on my behavior with and attitude towards women."
That's about as far as a person can go without making an admissible confession, and seems to clear up basically all doubt.
At the moment it's allegations. The outrage should come after evidence is uncovered.
Not that it will matter in the end. Recent events have shown that you can flat out admit to drugging women in order to have sex with them and still be acquitted if you have adequate stature and fame. (Ok, I should be more fair. A mistrial is not an acquittal.)
I just want to say that this is the tip of the iceberg...more will certainly come out soon as other young ladies step forward. I've heard many many stories of much worse (note: jailtime) things done by Binary capital. I urge those who have a platform to further investigate the matter.
> Recent events have shown that you can flat out admit to drugging women in order to have sex with them
Quaaludes was a party drug in its day, taken specifically for its effects. The fact that he acquired the drug to have sex with women doesn't imply he used it to rape them.
- While at lightspeed, accusations from a female founder at a portfolio company was serious enough that the "situation rose to the broader board level, with the ultimate resolution resulting in non-disclosure agreements on all sides."
- While at Bain Ventures, a female founder accused Justin of inviting him over to his hotel room to "finish the conversation" even knowing she had a BF (not that being single would make it at all appropriate).
- Two other female founders with similar stories that don't want to go on the record
I also think it's worthy to note that all his (public) accusers are asian, as is his wife.
> I am surprised by the lack of outrage over this behavior.
How about we wait for due process first before we start tearing into it? There's a reason why "innocent until proven guilty" is an important part of our society and comments like these undermine that.
Due process is for criminal charges and sentencing. It doesn't apply anywhere else. [Edit: OK and other state stuff. Point stands.] Even if you sue someone, you only need a "preponderance of evidence" and not to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Outside of a courtroom, you can literally make up anything you want. For example, if you're a founder and you hear a rumor of a VC being a serial harasser, you might decide to skip that company. You don't have to justify yourself to anyone.
> Due process is for criminal charges and sentencing.
Due process is for any government action affecting life, liberty, or property, including civil proceedings.
But still not relevant to private reactions, though certainly one could argue that some of the principles which motivate due process protections have moral relevance in a private context as well.
Updating your risk assessment doesn't mean you 100% believe someone is guilty. I stand away from cliff edges even if I'm pretty sure I'm not going to trip and fall to my death. And it's not like we haven't heard both sides: he already released two statements.
His statements are pretty damning and all but confirm this is all true.
Edit: here is his statement
Obviously, I am deeply disturbed by these allegations. While significant context is missing from the incidents reported by The Information, I deeply regret ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable. The fact is that I have been privileged to have worked with female entrepreneurs throughout my career and I sincerely apologize to anyone who I made uncomfortable by my actions. There’s no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it.
Judge for yourself. Innocent, non-harassers, don't apologize when accused of such vile things (especially married, "family" men with kids - a daughter nonetheless).
Why the need to judge? Whether he's guilty or innocent, it's a tragic story for all involved, and it's not our job to make that decision: this is why we have a legal system on which our society is founded.
Now, if I had a direct relationship with Mr. Caldbeck I would certainly make my own estimations and act accordingly, but I don't understand why everyone feels this need to act as judge and jury of everything that happens. That tendency isn't one of the better aspects of our nature.
> this is why we have a legal system on which our society is founded.
No, we do not. Our society is not founded on the legal system; the legal system is one feature of our society, intended to deal with the most serious failures of normal operations.
You're arguing a point that's irrelevant to my conclusion, but it's difficult to see the rule of law as anything other than part of our foundation. Remove it and a whole lot of things stop working in a hurry.
The idea of the rule of law is arguably foundational; the actual legal system is not. More to the point, the rules that limit the government within the legal system are not foundational rules of society setting out limits on private interaction (they are, in some cases, foundational in that they express the ways in which government, including the legal system, is subordinated to the people rather than vice versa, but applying the rules of the legal system to private interaction inverts that foundational concept.)
especially married, "family" men with kids - a daughter nonetheless
You had me up until this point. There are plenty of married-with-children men and women in consenting open/poly/swinger/etc relationships; we don't know enough to judge their marriage.
This doesn't make sexual harassment ok, but maybe sharpen your pitchforks with a little less glee?
That's true, but we should also take into account how the nature of sexual harassment, and the often power imbalance between the harasser and victim, naturally provides the harasser with all the advantages.
You are free to judge for yourself, but from the Information and Axios article, there does seem to be a preponderance of evidence to suggest Justin is either a serial sexual harasser/predator, at worst, or a totally inappropriate jerk-douchebag, at the very least. Both deserve condemnation. Bad actors need to be rooted out and ostracized, especially bad actor VCs.
> the nature of sexual harassment, and the often power imbalance between the harasser and victim, naturally provides the harasser with all the advantages.
That is correct in cases where harassment has occurred, yes.
In cases of false accusation, though, the accuser has nearly all of the advantages. And it's not as if it never happens, either:
Which is why due process is important both legally, and culturally. While I understand how people directly impacted by the event (and their loved ones) have neither the inclination nor the capacity to withhold judgement, mob-like indignation on the part of the public about every story which is reported is a dynamic that hasn't served us well thus far, and the situation isn't showing any signs of improving.
Your links say we can believe these allegations with 90-98% confidence. Actually, multiply that by 6 women, and that's 99.9999% confidence, assuming the low end of that. My request services only have to have a 99.9% success rate.
That's assuming that the false accusations are statistically independent. I would expect false accusations to be more common in cases with more accusers.
I didn't provide that to indicate a confidence level in the guilt of the accused, but to say that the reason we have due process is because serious allegations should be treated seriously, and the comments section of a tech 'blog isn't the place to act as judge, jury, or executioner.
Else we're little better than places that hold mock trials and summary executions.
Serious accusations need to be tried in a manner that involves evidence, sworn testimony, counsel, etc., precisely because of their seriousness.
In the meantime, online conjecture by parties with no standing should probably presume innocence until guilt is found, because a mob mentality should be beneath us.
I know someone who was falsely accused of something serious–decades in prison type stuff–and the news coverage alone destroyed his business and put his family through hell.
Anyone who's opposed to capital punishment because it prevents the accused from ever finding justice should also be concerned about the effects the court of public opinion can have on someone's life, and err on the side of withholding judgement when, again, there's no reason for us to judge this person unless we have direct dealings with the individual and need to make our own estimations out of self-interest.
What's happening in this thread isn't about self-interest, it's about self-satisfaction. That's neither useful nor wise.
> What's happening in this thread isn't about self-interest, it's about self-satisfaction. That's neither useful nor wise.
You're making a reasonable, but I would argue, pedantic argument (as it applies to this situation). Caldbeck is not being tried in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion. The standards are looser, that's just a part of living in a community with others, there is a natural bit of self-policing. It's part of our instinctual nature as humans; we pattern-match, it can get us in trouble at times, but it's gotten us this far as a species.
If he is innocent he is free to defend himself and provide counter-evidence. He is being rightfully pilloried given the many claims, over a long period of time, against him. The abundance of evidence, must be considered.
Look at the Bill Cosby case. Legally, innocent, but would you leave your daughter, wife, mother alone with someone with this kind of reputation?
Hm, I am kinda against internet mobs. But I don't see a way to form a consensus about whether this guy is guilty or not, or what to do about it if he is. At the same time, we do need some kind of defense mechanism to make sure people are secure. We can't just let everything slide because we're perpetually waiting for more evidence.
Well, some downvotes should come your way for misattribution too then.
I didn't say that "Stopping sexual assault should not concern us" (or anything to that effect).
I said the case is of no concern to us. First, it's not our place to make judgements of guilt or innocence without knowing what transpired and not even knowing those people. Ee don't even know for sure whether it was actually sexual assault or not -- that's for the law to decide.
(Of course we might be suspicious of the law, or a specific court result, or the way a trial was conducted etc. But we are not even at that stage yet).
Plus, you're not stopping sexual assault by saying you are against it in an internet forum (and concerning an undecided case). Heck, even rapists would say they are "against sexual assault" in public.
Hitting on women inappropriately isn't illegal. Being a slimy VC and using your position to meet the ladies isn't illegal. Nor is sending explicit texts, as long as the target isn't underaged and you're not technically stalking them. Not investing in some guy's company because you think he is ugly or you hate his dad isn't illegal, either.
It all those things are not illegal, then it's probably not our job to call them immoral either.
Rich people use their position to attract girls all the time, it doesn't change if they are VC or not. You can always tell them that you're not interested or to get the fuck off if they insist. Besides their riches are part of who they are (it's not like they just won the lottery) -- a struggling artist or fair-trade hippie activist will also use his being as such to attract girls who are into that sort of thing.
I don't find "explicit texts" of concern either. What is this, victorian morality police? Some texts are bad because they are naughty? "I want to have sex with you" might even be more open and honest than "Let's have some coffee" (when the main reason is ending up in bed).
Threatening texts or actual sexual assault on the other hand, well, yeah, that's of concern.
Really glad to see people like this getting called out. Dealing with sexual harassment/assault from someone in power is the last thing you want as a female founder - you have a million other things you need to do to keep your startup afloat, and you don't want to rock the boat if it affects your likelihood of being funded. Feels like the valley is slowly but surely changing.
And yes, I recognize that this hasn't been "proven", but really what's the chance than there's a shadowy cabal of women who start companies in order to target individual VCs. These women have little to gain from this and everything to lose. Occams razor is that he's at the very least doing something that's inappropriate.
The sad part to me is that this is just the part of the iceberg that is visible above the surface.
I've heard stories from several female founders/VC's (not naming names or specific details to protect anonymity) who have experienced repeated unwelcome advances even after it was made clear they had a significant other. That's not as egregious as groping (one of the accusations in this article), but that's still sexual harassment by the letter of the law and slimy as hell every other way.
Another common theme I noticed is when the man in question stays in the gray area where individual incidents aren't clearly over the line and might not qualify legally as sexual harassment, but in context and in aggregate it's clear why a woman would feel very uncomfortable. How do you confront something like that when they can just question your perception of reality?
In all but one case, the women decided against confrontation because the man was in a much more powerful position (such as a general partner of a VC fund), and the women were afraid of retribution and risking killing their careers by taking a principled stand. They all wished they could do more, but decided they didn't want to be martyrs. That's a bad position to be in.
I think it's damning of the industry that these women have accepted silence on the matter as part of the burden of being a woman and pursuing this line of work. Granted I'm looking at this with N < 10, but everyone I've talked to shares the sentiment that it's a pattern, not a coincidence.
I'm hopeful that everything going on around Uber will move the needle enough that more people are willing to come forward.
Yup, this one. It's a common tactic to bring up the significant other when it seems like the conversation might be going in a non-platonic direction and you want to head it off. It's a way to avoid taking on the personal risk related to giving an outright rejection.
It's a way to avoid taking on the personal risk related to giving an outright rejection.
Yes, and even if the person being rejected poses no risk it's nice to spare their feelings with what amounts to a little white lie. It helps everybody save face and ideally allows the conversation to move on to other things.
I am the very close relative of two women in tech. One of my relatives was on the receiving end of repeated, unwanted advances over the last several months, none of which were reported to HR because she didn't want to destroy her career at the company.
Last weekend she received an unsolicited, nearly naked photo from the same male co-worker. Needless to say, he is no longer at the company.
This is sad on two counts. First, it's sad that my relative felt she couldn't report because she thought it would harm her career. It sickens me to say this, but maybe she was right. Maybe it would have harmed her career.
Second, and I've seen this before, she had to endure further harassment until he really escalated so she could report something significant enough that she felt it wouldn't harm her credibility.
Though we're discussing this through the lens of the tech industry, the most horrifying thing of all is that this isn't even a problem that's unique to tech.
I mean, there's a line. If he hadn't crossed it yet, then he hadn't done anything that needed or deserved to be fired for.
That's why the line is there.
I have to wonder if the woman in question made it clear she didn't appreciate the attention? It could've just been an idiot who took her silence as implicit approval, playing coy, etc, causing him to escalate to naked pictures.
And I'm not saying it's her fault, but communication goes both ways. And like I said, he may have just been an idiot.
I think he's trying to distinguish between someone with poor ability to pick up on social cues (from someone with poor ability to communicate their wishes/feelings) and a sexual predator. That seems like a reasonable distinction to make, though both can have the same moral fault and/or commit the same crime; motivation is important when we look towards someone's character.
This is not the first time I've heard somebody try to fly the lame excuse that they're not guilty of doing something they actually did, because they were too stupid to know it was illegal.
> > That seems like a reasonable distinction to make, though both can have the same moral fault and/or commit the same crime; motivation is important when we look towards someone's character.
"And I'm not saying X, but X." where "X" = "it's her fault".
Just because you deny what you're about to say in the same sentence just before you say it, doesn't mean you didn't say it.
So what is your motivation for defending someone who's trying to shift the blame to the victim of sexual harassment, and how does that speak to your character?
You're mis-framing my position in a highly offensive way.
Ignorance of the law is not a defence against it. That's right and proper.
If I believe you are happy with me taking money from your wallet, and so take some. Can you see that would be a different category morally to if I believed you would condemn such action and yet still took the money. Both situations might be theft, both might be judged morally wrong. But to me the moral character of the person in the two situations is different. And, that differences is worthy of note.
You're mis-framing the right of a stupid man to send unsolicited naked pictures of himself to a non-consenting woman without getting fired in a highly offensive way. You're wrong that stupidity is a justifiable excuse for that behavior.
"her silence [...] causing him to escalate to naked pictures"
Don't blame the victim's silence for "causing" an "escalation" to sending naked pictures. He decided to do it of his own free will, she did not "cause" him to do that by being silent.
You've got to take responsibility for your actions and not make your problem other peoples' problem. If I'm nearsighted, it's irresponsible for me to drive without my glasses. Likewise, if you're bad at pickup up social cues, you probably should not be hitting on coworkers.
It was just the other day that that I read in the local news about a woman that was arrested for sending breast pictures to an ex, sending death threats to his new girlfriend, and stalking him from his home to work.
Stalking seems to be some form of obsessive behavior, and I suspect that sending pictures is an early stage of such behavior. It also describe a cure for it, ie similar cures we have when obsessive behavior makes someone a criminal.
I think this is a pretty important point. The default option for declining a proposition shouldn't have to be "I already have a partner". A simple 'no, thankyou' should suffice.
> Repeated unwelcome advances are not OK even if the person is single.
Definitely agree with you there. I added the extra "made clear they had a significant other" since it would help to push the line even further into unacceptable territory. I don't mean to imply that the relationship status is a necessary condition for unacceptability. The fact that women have learned to use the existence of an SO as an escape rather than outright saying no reflects poorly on the men that caused the learned behavior.
> that's still sexual harassment by the letter of the law and slimy as hell every other way.
IANAL, but legally it's not sexual harassment because they don't work at the same company.
Something is only sexual harassment in two cases: 1) a supervisor offers something to a subordinate in exchange for sexual favors 2) a company is found to have created a hostile work environment. In both cases it's the company that's liable, not the person or people doing the harassment. There may be some extra rules that exist in individual states, but this is the general idea.
Certainly it's bad behavior, but because there isn't any real power imbalance between entrepreneurs and VCs the problem can mostly be dealt with socially (as has happened here) rather than being a situation that requires some specific legal intervention. (Or at least that's the general legal theory.)
What? Anyone can be sexually harassed by anyone else, workplace has nothing to do with it. Sexual harassment in the workplace is egregious because the conflict of interests. E.g. my boss harasses me, but if I complain I jeopardize my livelihood.
Alex3917 is right that sexual harassment outside the workplace is not illegal, but it's incorrect to say it's not "legally sexual harassment." It is sexual harassment, it's just not illegal sexual harassment.
For example, catcalling on the street isn't illegal. It's still sexual harassment, it's still unethical, but it's not illegal.
That's fair. In many developed countries sexual harassment laws extend to any situation where there is a power imbalance such as in education or in housing (landlord vs. tenant).
Unfortunately this isn't true, from a legal point of view; in many jurisdictions, the legal definition of SH is specifically tailored (and constrained) to "the workplace".
Mind you I'm not talking about what's "slimy", "invasive", or what infringes on one's natural rights as a human being or anything about that. But rather, the legal definition. Which doesn't always jibe with what people would or like it to be.
You are right that it's not illegal because it's not within the scope of a company.
What I meant is that the EEOC decided to draw a line, and aside from the "in the context of a company" requirement, the behavior in the stories I've heard definitely crosses that line rather than just being an uncomfortable and sketchy situation.
I would argue however, that because VC's are holding the money and entrepreneurs are trying to raise, it might not be as bad as a boss/employee power dynamic, but the power is certainly held by the VC in the situation.
> I would argue however, that because VC's are holding the money and entrepreneurs are trying to raise, it might not be as bad as a boss/employee power dynamic, but the power is certainly held by the VC in the situation.
- The vast majority of highly successful companies don't raise venture. VCs need equity, entrepreneurs don't need money.
- The vast majority of companies that raise VC don't succeed.
- The vast majority of VC funds have lower than market returns.
I think the real situation is more that a lot of inexperienced founders glom onto VCs because they think that not having money is what's keeping them from succeeding.
There is also a common belief that the fact that VCs are predominantly male is creating a power imbalance that's keeping women from being more successful, despite the fact that the empirical evidence from other industries seemingly shows that there isn't much correlation between the sex of the gatekeepers and who they choose to back. E.g. LP is pretty gender balanced and most VCs are male, most literary agents and publishers are female but most published authors are male, etc. If there were more female VCs then it's possible that more women would get funded, but I think right now that theory is more of a truthclaim than anything else.
One person has $100 million that they'd like to turn into $1 billion. Another person has a plan that is likely to fail, but it's new territory with great potential. If no deal happens, one person still has $100 million while the other still has their unexecuted plan and hopefully a job or something.
The power imbalance is pretty obvious in that kind of scenario. It's less of an imbalance if the entrepreneur is also wealthy and just raising money to share risk or build alliances.
Point is, if you have multiple millions of dollars, "do nothing" is always on the table, which isn't so for many founders.
> If no deal happens, one person still has $100 million while the other still has their unexecuted plan and hopefully a job or something. The power imbalance is pretty obvious in that kind of scenario.
I don't see any power imbalance that exists within the relationship here. Compare this with the laws that prevent a therapist from dating a client, which are in place because one party can take advantage of the other or blackmail them or have them involuntarily committed. That's a power imbalance.
I also think this is a very orientalist view of the industry. How many founders actually raise institutional money off just a deck each year, who don't otherwise have the skills to earn a lot of money consulting or whatever?
I'm not trying to defend the behavior here in any way, I just think that the reason why it's wrong for a VC to aggressively proposition a founder or whatever is different than, for example, what makes it wrong for an employer to have a relationship with an employee.
Did you mean to say there's not a power imbalance between VCs and entrepreneurs? Because you clearly don't understand the situation if you believe that's true.
I think he meant it in the context required by law. Power imbalance shows itself in every human (maybe animal?) interaction, whether money is involved or not.
> I've heard stories from several female founders/VC's (not naming names or specific details to protect anonymity) who have experienced repeated unwelcome advances even after it was made clear they had a significant other. That's not as egregious as groping (one of the accusations in this article), but that's still sexual harassment by the letter of the law and slimy as hell every other way.
While I don't know the details of what happened here, there's nothing wrong or illegal about approaching someone and I'm more than a little miffed that anyone would consider it necessary (or good) to make "unwelcome advances" illegal. Yes, even unwelcome advances to married women.
The article does not mention any of the women were direct with him and said "No".
Infact, I would bet that they did not say "no". Because if they did... they would have used that to support their case.
Smart that these women didn't actually level legal charges on him. Therefore they can tarnish is reputation and not experience an investigation to see who is telling the truth and therefore risk their careers.
They even pointed out that it's so common place that they didn't think it was worthy of a police investigation.
Why don't they "come out" about the hundred men that cat-called them this week alone?
Oh right, because they wouldn't get fame or have the joy of taking down a powerful man.
Unfortunately the majority of these individuals haven't actualized that things in life aren't completely binary and attempt to apply a binary algorithm to solve non-binary problems.
According to the accounts I have read (that have not been upheld in a court of law "beyond all reasonable doubt" or whatever the standard for these things is), this man was definitely in the wrong and had to be stopped. I applaud those women who selflessly put their names out there to stop him.
However, it seems to me, as a non-American, that the US is pretty hysterical on this topic. Humans make each other uncomfortable sometimes, some situations are inherently awkward, emotional anguish is inflicted on good people (I've had to fire a few... that's horrible on both sides of the desk)... there's no reason society should be ascribed the duty to guarantee that nobody ever finds themselves in situations they are not comfortable in.
As I mentioned, my partner pushed my boundaries a bit, but I'm doubleplusgood happy she did. In hindsight, my initial reticence was an error, and by persisting she allowed me the opportunity to correct that. Now our lives are significantly enhanced as a result. I don't see why such behaviour should be subject to censure. Did it make me uneasy? In a transitory way, yes. But it's part and parcel of existing in a social fabric.
I actually know one of the women in the article quiet well, and used to be friends. She groped my boyfriend which I witnessed but she didn't see me standing there. The man complained to me immediately after the event, she later said he groped her and warned me about him. I was standing there and this is man I was with for years and parted way amicably. Since there are a lot of complaints, I assume this guy in the article is a sleazeball, but honestly, I know how one of the women operated even going back a decade
I for one can't wait for it to pass. We have people running around calling words violence, catcalling rape, and normal human sexuality sexual harassment.
And you can't ask for balance and fairness in the discussion without being told you're pro-rape or part of the problem.
No one is pro-rape, but the things being labeled as rape right now are outlandish. Rape is a violent act, it's not some jackass standing on a corner cat-calling you.
Women who don't say "no" for the first time are widely considered low-moral, not to mention that the first approach may be unexpected for her, so timeout is needed. And men who can truly see whether she's really uncomfortable or just playing well-known game can be counted on fingers. It seems that this rule, as you state it, leaves no legal room for regular, not very confident or skilled people to "interact".
> Women who don't say "no" for the first time are widely considered low-moral
There is no "low morality" in a woman accepting an invitation to go on a date even in the most hidebound parts of the United States. But that's not what you mean. You don't mean "interact". You mean "screw". That you're conflating the idea of "regular, not very confident or skilled people" interacting with women with its very small subset, screwing, is telling as to your worldview and how you regard the women under discussion.
Of course it's no low morality in accepting a date. But I thought we discuss this in context of loose sexual behavior (implied by the article events), not of going on dates or making relationships. As of interact vs screw, it is the matter of accent, not of an objective view. Please don't take my words out of context, nor make a personal diagnosis. Proving [not your] point by attacking the person under his uncertain inferences is not a great way to deliver an argument anyway.
I think you're talking about something different to the main thread here. Most people here are talking about a professional context where there is a significant power imbalance between the parties.
I was specifically responding to the claim that 'unwanted advances' could be considered sexual harassment under the law.
yes, technically you could consider rape to be an 'unwanted advance', but no reasonable person would ever characterize it as so. The very fact that it's characterized as an unwanted advance tells you it's not sexual harassment, it's just someone chasing another person.
> Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Very generally, “sexual harassment” describes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.
VCs have a position of power when dealing with entrepreneurs. It is never okay to flirt or proposition someone whom you have temporary or prolonged power over. This is well accepted in modern society.
Bosses, professors, doctors, interviewers and every other situation I can think of have a bright line where it's not okay to try and romantically or sexually engage someone when you're in a context that you have power over them, even if it is ephemeral. VCs are no different.
I'm not even going to try and address groping or other forms of harassment, which are wrong even when a power dynamic doesn't exist.
> Another common theme I noticed is when the man in question stays in the gray area where individual incidents aren't clearly over the line and might not qualify legally as sexual harassment, but in context and in aggregate it's clear why a woman would feel very uncomfortable.
This seems like a slippery slope. I can imagine malicious but careful predators who constantly test boundaries in a conscious effort to achieve a sexual goal. But I can also imagine a poor socially awkward guy who just has a severe crush, but is doing his damnedest not to say or do anything to act on it- and a woman who would be particularly sensitive to his unwanted romantic desire.
Both would be "incidents that don't cross the line but in aggregate make the woman feel uncomfortable", but the latter deserves understanding and _perhaps_ a calm discussion, but definitely not punishment.
I'm just saying, even the gray area has a spectrum- but any policies people come up with to handle this, would need to establish a threshold higher than just "a woman felt uncomfortable around a specific man", or perhaps a gentle grade of responses.
The parent post is likely talking about unwanted advances and sexual references, not "awkwardness." If having a crush on someone causes you to make uncomfortable sexual inneundos at them or suggest they should sleep with you, the the problem is your self control, not a question of grey areas.
And if it was always going to be uncomfortable sexual innuendos or propositioning for sex, then it wouldn't be a grey area.
The point here was incidents that don't cross "the line", which means the location of the line is suddenly up for debate, so you don't even know if you did something wrong.
Isn't the location of the line always up for debate, though? Since people created the line and give it power, it moves with our consciousness and will. The line today is not where it was in 1890. As women gain a stronger voice, we should expect the line to move. Assuming that men actually care about their input, they'd cooperate in shifting the line to an acceptable standard for both parties.
If the line is up for debate, you would know if you did something wrong - unless you're not following the debate. If you're not following the debate, you really don't have anyone to blame but yourself.
How is it a slippery slope? Towards what? Will women eventually begin to feel uncomfortable about situations that are clearly not sexual?
Women are already reluctant to come forward when subjected to overt sexual harassment, let alone "gray area" harassment. I don't think anyone has to fear any kind of slippery slope here.
It is describing a continued change of standards over time, with no clearly defined end-goal other than "nobody ever feels uncomfortable".
> Towards what?
Towards a point where a woman can punish a man for being socially awkward because he has a crush.
> Will women eventually begin to feel uncomfortable about situations that are clearly not sexual?
"Clearly" is a useless word here. And sexual? What about romantic? What about platonic, but more than is welcome?
They already do feel uncomfortable as a result of unwanted attention. I've seen it happen. The person I was replying to was suggesting a world where that is actionable.
> Women are already reluctant to come forward when subjected to overt sexual harassment, let alone "gray area" harassment.
Some are reluctant, which is regrettable and we should support them. Some are not reluctant. And some are eager, in hope of a payday. All of those exist.
> I don't think anyone has to fear any kind of slippery slope here.
When a person is discussing a world where even the nebulously defined gray area is legally actionable, and the only standard is "a woman felt uncomfortable" - yes.
It seems like you're replying viscerally to the idea that sexual harassment is not real, or should not be punished? I never suggested such a thing. I just think that if we're going to try and un-blur the gray area, then we need objectively defined standards.
> I've heard stories from several female founders/VC's (not naming names or specific details to protect anonymity) who have experienced repeated unwelcome advances even after it was made clear they had a significant other.
Why should that even be a factor? Unwanted is unwanted, whether they're in a committed relationship or not is not relevant at all.
> Another common theme I noticed is when the man in question stays in the gray area where individual incidents aren't clearly over the line and might not qualify legally as sexual harassment, but in context and in aggregate it's clear why a woman would feel very uncomfortable. How do you confront something like that when they can just question your perception of reality?
This is where professionalism and propriety come in. One's behavior should simply be well outside the gray area and straying into it should, itself, be grounds for confrontation.
> This is where professionalism and propriety come in. One's behavior should simply be well outside the gray area and straying into it should, itself, be grounds for confrontation.
That doesn't actually fix anything, you're just defining the gray area to be further to one side. If people actually did that then expectations would change and more innocuous behavior would fall into the gray area, requiring you to move the line again.
The gray area exists because not everybody agrees where the line is.
In some cultures it is illegal for a man and a woman who are not married to even be alone in a room together. In some cultures physical contact between acquaintances is normal behavior. In a multicultural society, whose culture should have the force of law?
I don't mean that we should change the laws, so that the former grey area becomes the new illegal area; but rather that we should have a stricter attitude about the grey area. Sometimes people's attitude about these things is that, they acknowledge they are wrong, but since nothing illegal happened, they won't say or do anything. That's the grey area I'm talking about -- where there is broad acknowledgement that something is fishy, although it is not technically illegal.
This gray area exists because the law needs to operate under the presumption of innocence, defining crimes unambiguously and prosecuting them with due regard for reasonable doubt -- it is deliberately narrow and permissive, because the state is very powerful and if not held to strict limits it becomes very dangerous. However, those of us who wish to have a good social and professional reputation shouldn't expect to maintain it while doing things that are "barely legal"; and those who witness us doing so should not feel that those kinds of things are not to be mentioned or corrected merely because they are not illegal.
> This gray area exists because the law needs to operate under the presumption of innocence, defining crimes unambiguously and prosecuting them with due regard for reasonable doubt -- it is deliberately narrow and permissive, because the state is very powerful and if not held to strict limits it becomes very dangerous.
That is the theory everyone refers to when they're trying to justify imposing harsh penalties.
Have you read the laws that Congress actually passes? It would be nice if they actually lived up to that standard.
And you can't get out of the problem by appealing to a reputational shadow enforcement system. If reputational harm wasn't real or powerful then no one would be interested in imposing it. Imposing real penalties with a weak standard of proof on marginal behavior is equally problematic regardless of whether the penalties are formally imposed by the state. And today's attitudes become tomorrow's laws.
Gray areas are gray because they contain both baby and bathwater.
If something is clearly wrong it's easy to make it illegal (and it almost always already is), and if it isn't clearly wrong then we don't have any special knowledge the state lacks that allows us to mete out penalties in borderline cases without punishing good people.
> Gray areas are gray because they contain both and bathwater.
There is a grey area like that but that is not the grey area I am talking about.
To a consider an example you mentioned previously: it's fine to just not ever touch your coworkers. Another example is ethnic jokes: these are not illegal but do you need to do this at work? Staying out of the gray area is not a matter of harsh punishment but rather on insisting on professionalism and decorum.
It is only when people have strayed so far from that -- normalising deviance for themselves -- that you find yourself in a place where harsh punishment is even thinkable. One would not need or apply harsh punishments for matters of decorum.
You're assuming the benefit of staying away from the line is greater than the cost of losing every net-positive thing that isn't entirely white.
It's possible for a workplace to be a sterile environment where one turns one's wrench in silence without human connection, but that isn't how people should have to spend the majority of their waking hours.
And again, that policy is a ratchet. What people take offense to is calibrated by expectations and past experience. If you succeed in exerting social pressure to keep everyone away from the line, you move the Overton window and create a new gray area in what used to be accepted professional behavior. Continue to apply the same line-avoiding policy and you have a ratchet that leads to the imposition of radically Puritanical positions.
> Nonetheless, the standard percentage to tip waitstaff has risen over the decades. According to a PayScale study, the median tip is now 19.5%. In recent years, some waiters and restaurants have suggested that 25% or even 30% is the proper gratuity level, and that a 20% tip, once considered generous, is just average today. As recently as 2008, though, an Esquire tipping guide stated "15 percent for good service is still the norm" at American restaurants. An American Demographics study from 2001 found that three-quarters of Americans tipped an average of 17% on restaurant bills, while 22% tipped a flat amount no matter what the bill, and the gratuity left averaged $4.67. Meanwhile, in 1922, Emily Post wrote, "You will not get good service unless you tip generously," and "the rule is ten per cent."
Presumably as a result of most people not wanting to leave a below average tip, which clips the low side of average from the distribution and thereby raises the average over time.
The accusations can be true, and at the same time it seems possible that the VC didn't take advantage of his "position of power", but genuinely believed the women liked him for his looks and personality, not because they needed his money.
What makes you think that the women liked him, or that he thought they liked him? They were pitching to him, that's a business transaction. He himself said he leveraged a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, and the linked article mentions groping and harassment with unwanted sexual propositions.
Now the question is, what motivates you to seek out a relatively far-fetched justification for this man's possible innocence?
Perhaps they see a trend of knee-jerk reactions to these kinds of cases where the defendant is presumed guilty before the entire story or evidence is out, or before any sort of due process occurs. I can see why someone would at least try, even weakly, to counteract this type of community pressure.
I realize this isn't a legal matter at this point but I'm speaking of the principle(s) on which those features are based.
It almost always seems to become a case of "you're either with us or you're against us," so let's try to steer clear of that.
In this case, I agree in the sense it defeats the point I made above, but for various reasons others may continue to push back on that pressure on principal rather than on the facts of the matter.
First, his initial statement sounds like that (like he is genuinely shocked that he is part of the problem after all). His updated statement might reflect his realization of the reality of what went down.
He looks pretty attractive - maybe there were other cases were the women were also attracted to him.
Maybe women also unconsciously flirted to make him more likely to give him money, and he misinterpreted. (No, women would never do that - they would never take advantage of their attractiveness, whereas men will usually take advantage of their "position of power", right?).
Pressuring women for sex is not generally that much fun, much better if they are actually into you. I would expect only a low number of psychopaths would enjoy sex with a woman who isn't into it. Therefore it seems more likely he expected them to be into it.
It seems pretty normal to develop attraction after a while of intensive talking.
What makes you think my "justification" is more far-fetched than your interpretation? Your prejudice that in general, "men are pigs"?
In general, people want to feel good - so he may have convinced himself that the women were into him.
Edit: well I am not trolling, but HN doesn't want me to comment further (as in, it doesn't allow me to). I think as long as people are not willing to have a honest discussion about the issue, and rather cling to their prejudices, it will never change. But as you wish, I will go away. Enjoy your circle-jerking.
>It makes those of us who are a bit more moderate start to distrust everything we hear in terms of these loaded words. I've said this many times, but when you start using these words for every little thing, you do a disservice to those who are ACTUALLY being sexually harassed, raped, etc.
>and now dang is going to harass him in an attempt to get him off the site.
That's a legit question (especially out of curiosity) but one that takes a surprising amount of energy to answer precisely. I might be able to do that tomorrow, but in the meantime here are some answers in the same vein. It's all the same principle, but the details vary.
I haven't read this thread yet but I'm curious why the downvote mechanism isn't sufficient moderation in a case like this.
HN has been a superb place for discussion of issues relating to workplace harassment and it seems that having certain ideas forbidden is likely to harm the discussion.
It's because comments can have troll effects even when they're downvoted or flagged.
There's a difference between expressing a view and setting this place on fire. There's no view that can't be expressed substantively and thoughtfully if one has a mind to, but it takes work. Throwing fuel on the fire or sand in the gears is different; that's vandalism, and it destroys the free exchange of views by ruining the container—the community and site—that supports it. The container is fragile and needs protecting.
People mostly do this without realizing how destructive it is. Dealing with it requires moderators whose role is to protect the commons. That's how HN still exists as a place for (hopefully) thoughtful discussion. We'll never all agree about where to draw the line every time, but that's secondary to the point that someone needs to.
A comment crosses into trolling when it does things that are known to ruin thoughtful discussion, whether intentionally or not. I chided the commenter upthread because they were going much further than merely (say) arguing against a rush to judgment about the OP—they were signalling bad faith with polemical swipes (e.g. 'Your prejudice that in general, "men are pigs"'). That is not thoughtful discussion, it's destructive of it.
When we ask commenters not to do this, reactions vary. Some react by taking responsibility and learning how not to produce such effects in online conversation. Many HN users have gone through that process. I had to go through it myself (it took years); I used to optimize for snark and venting as much as the next person. If HN has anything superb about it, to use your word, it's because of the community members who do this work.
Other commenters prefer the melodrama approach. They proclaim they're being 'censored' for their 'unpopular opinions' by mods who 'can't handle the truth', then storm out the front door with an 'enjoy your circlejerk' or two. (Typically they then walk around the building, come back in through the back door and start over with a new account.) This is the Pythonesque 'help help I'm being repressed' phase of the internet cycle of life. It's eternal and will never go way, but I'm confident that in most cases, most neutral readers observe the same signs of bad faith that mods were reacting to in the first place. How do I know that? Because otherwise our job would be impossible.
In the end the root distinction isn't about what view a commenter has on this or that topic, it's the difference between users who comment with care for the whole and those who don't. Sometimes that's because they're so agitated that they lack the self-control to do anything other than toss a hot potato into the thread. (It happens to everyone.) But often it's just that they haven't yet learned about this dynamic and why it matters. Once somebody gets that, they're motivated to participate in the community quite differently—but it isn't a question of changing their views, becoming more 'conformist' or 'groupthink' or any of that sort of thing people say. It's more akin to not littering in a city park, or to taking good care of a campsite.
That makes sense and I appreciate the thoughtful response. The one thing I'd say is that it seems like those types of comments tend to be accepted as long as they align with popular opinion around here. Snark and polemical swipes (I had to Google "polemical" :D) seem to be fairly common. It's understandable - it's difficult to see bad faith when the message is agreeable. It'd be pretty easy to pick out comments in this discussion that align with popular opinion, have a similar tone to anothercomment's, but are unmoderated. Being more lenient on "agreeable trolling" has just as much of a destructive effect and reinforces echo chambers.
People have differing perceptions of 'popular opinion' and read the same comments differently depending on their pre-existing opinions. Even perfectly even-handed moderation would routinely be accused of bias because most such perceptions are in the eye of the beholder.
To my mind, the price of admission into a serious conversation about this is some awareness of how prevalent these biases are, including in one's own case. They determine nearly everything. Mostly all we really think is "what I like is good, what I dislike is bad, and others are good or bad to the extent that they agree". That goes along with "I'm a noble freethinker nobly standing apart from this groupthink echo chamber" and the associated, "You should moderate this forum to defend those I agree with and smite those I disagree with." These feelings are so compelling that it's hard to wriggle into any freedom from them. One should make the effort anyhow. People who make that effort start to see the problem differently, even as we all retain our biases.
There are many counterintuitive aspects to this. One is that community cohesion remains an issue even when 'popular opinion' (assuming it exists and you know what it is) is wrong. There are ways of disputing popular opinion that cause harm even when they're right; it isn't a simple matter of just 'stating the unpopular truth' (assuming it exists and you know what it is) and then lording it over or angrily lashing out at those who 'can't handle it'. You actually have a greater responsibility by virtue of the fact that you know, or believe you know, more truth. Most people who fancy themselves to be expressing an unpopular truth don't take that responsibility—on the contrary, they use that truth as a weapon, to vent grievances, gain status, and so on. This harms discussion and community even if you are right about both popular opinion and the truth. Indeed, it does more harm the more right you are, because then you're discrediting the truth with your behavior and gifting the majority with an easy excuse to keep rejecting the minority view.
The commenter probably meant to say "enjoy your circle-jerking effect" ... :) Because it's the effect that they care about ... notice how silly that sounds, while not really effectively communicating, instead just getting your hairs up a little (maybe).
For the record, I don't agree with that commenter's opinion. And I also believe your actions on these moderation issues are well-intended (plus you're doing a great job, probably especially on the invisible parts, kudos).
But for all the talk about not throwing oil on the fire, maybe it's smart if you then also refrain from calling people "trolls" or "trolling" when they're not intentionally doing so. To use your words, it signals bad faith. Especially if you consider that such a person is probably in a bad or angry mood[0].
In fact, I don't think "trolling effect" is a very good term to use either. That's probably because I carry a sort of romantic idea about my dealings advanced and skilled trolls. Similar to how many people here feel about the term "hacker". Yes there exist criminal hackers, just like there exist mentally insane unstable bad evil trolls. But there are also performance artists[1], or you know, memetic/social hackers. Still not always good, and almost never welcome. They can use their eristic skills to make stuck up people lose face and/or their shit. They can bring to light collective hypocrisy by placing a very careful wedge in a community. Same reasons we need comedy, satire or jesters. Or just cause a scene for the art of it. If they wanted to, they could "set this place on fire" without snark, polemic or even knowing it was them that caused someone else to push a button and whoooommff.
Just like you don't call someone who steals your USB-stick a "hacker" but a "thief", someone who uses polemic swipes and snark because they angrily voice an unpopular opinion on HN, is not (necessarily) a troll. And to them it comes across as if you're just calling them names, which does not create listeners.
Just call it what it is. The "trolling effects" you talk about have a proper word actually, and are called "flame wars". Even better would be if you'd take some of the well-worded snippets from your post above (and possibly previous ones), for copy-pasting the relevant bits, because well it's not really more than about five typical situations on HN, is it?
Since you want to affect this person's behaviour, it helps to be specific, instead of using a catch-all term like "trolling". Pointing out "snark" and "polemic swipes" apply in this case, because that's undeniable and you can quote the words. Calling it "signalling bad faith" is a very bad idea for hopefully obvious reasons[2].
Finally, about your last paragraph. Of course you don't want conformist groupthink either. But just like the so-called "troll", your intentions may not line up with what effects you're causing. Depending on how carefully you tread, you may in fact be inciting groupthink, and ironically this attracts (proper) trolls because they love poking that kind of self-assuredness.
[0] often unrelated stress, but triggered on subjects they feel strongly about--I get this myself as well, but I usually manage to write such words in a textfile, that I keep in a very private very angry folder somewhere (throwing away the vitriol is less cathartic to me, and sometimes there's some useful eloquent bits that come in useful at a calmer moment).
[1] still not welcome here on HN, which I understand, but more for the same reasons why reddit-style pun-threads are not welcome here either.
[2] Because (especially in their eyes) they could say the same about you. Also snark and polemic swipes seem to be called out a lot more consistently when it involves "unpopular opinions on HN" (which exist), I notice this mys...
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think that depending on which stories on HN one choose to read, the community may feel entirely different. I think I'm lucky that for the most part the stories I read attract high quality comments.
The two topics I enjoy which are continually controversial are the "Russian Hacking" story and stories about Wikileaks. Wikileaks has been an interest for many HN readers for years, and so it's interesting to see how recent events have created political polarization where none existed before.
I've noticed that some users will use the tactic of shaming to try to make a point in a discussion. It's hard to describe this, but it's much more like the sort of comments one finds in other discussion fora than what is typically found on HN. Politics brings these out, yet I would be very disappointed if political topics were discouraged on HN, since political ideas and participation are an important part of citizenship and community. And it may take the sort of retort one would get on HN to break someone out of a lazy "comfort zone" belief that they hold simply because it's popular.
Thanks for your efforts moderating, I know it is a thankless duty, but your comment makes me realize that there are likely threads that I don't participate in which get much worse.
You seem very passionate about defending alleged harassers. I just wonder what fuels that. Perhaps you think these events are not that bad, or some degree of inappropriate behaviour is ok?
This comment is a microcosm of 'ddoolin's point. Step back and read it a few times, and think about what you're saying: you've presented an alternative view from my own, so sexual harassment must be acceptable to you.
I agree my reply was not helpful, but there was a point I was trying to make:
Sometimes people who are keen to defend harassers might do so because they exhibit similar behaviours themselves or hold similar beliefs and want to defend themselves.
Here is an example from this very story: Caldbeck tweeted in support of Uber: "Also mob mentality w @Uber right now. Guilty before proven innocent on everything".
I genuinely think it's worth self-examining one's motivations if someone's first instinct is to defend the man in such a case. I say this without trying to accuse anyone, sexism is subtle and affects everyone, and it's through self examination that we can grow and improve.
I'm aware of the point you were trying to make; it was what spawned my comment, because it is wrong. Adding words to it makes me agree less, not more. You're basically saying anybody who lobbies for not persecuting someone based on allegations must be sympathetic to the allegations, in every case, and you cite going through Twitter as if you're compiling oppo to make your point. If you don't see the danger in that line of thought, or how it makes you complicit in mob-style behavior when the incentives line up, I'm not sure how best to show you.
Ad hominem being acceptable on a few pet issues is a value system I've noticed that many people, including you, have. I would ask why. I've had this turned on me, too, hence why I'm not surprised; I'm reminded of defense lawyers who receive death threats and actual violence, as well.
or they do so because they've gotten seriously tired of the unfairness of it all.
When everything becomes sexual harassment, how can you trust accusations of sexual harassment?
It's like when people use the word violence to describe words, or call it rape when a man says something they don't like.
How can you trust the allegations in that sort of an environment?
It makes those of us who are a bit more moderate start to distrust everything we hear in terms of these loaded words. I've said this many times, but when you start using these words for every little thing, you do a disservice to those who are ACTUALLY being sexually harassed, raped, etc.
I for one cannot wait for this hysteria to end. I obviously don't believe men should be sexually harassing women (or vice versa), but the current climate has gone off the deep end. Things that would be considered simply misunderstandings, ackwardness, and so forth are getting people (mostly men) completely lambasted.
"Everything" hasn't become sexual harassment. I've dated coworkers. I have been rebuffed by coworkers. I have even been under the impression that a coworker might be into me who was not. And--somehow--I have not been accused of sexual harassment. Maybe because I am respectful in my approach, cut it out if it's not appreciated, and never persist past being rebuffed.
The "misunderstandings" about which you wring your hands are weaponized against women in the spirit of "don't be hysterical". You're not being moderate when you express viewpoints like this. You're just rationalizing bad shit. And, judging from your sterling work throughout this thread, you know it, too.
This isn't about "differing opinions", this is about "your opinion has a demonstrable harmful effect on the culture in which we all live." Choosing to excuse sexual harassment is real awful but you can always choose to not be awful. So cut the pity party and get down from that cross you've put yourself on.
“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
> I genuinely think it's worth self-examining one's motivations if someone's first instinct is to defend the man in such a case.
Why do you assume it was his (or her?) first instinct? This HN thread has already well-established that Caldbeck's behavior is repugnant. Do we need every single poster to +1, or can people propose questions for discussion without being accused of being part of the problem?
It seems to me that accusations of harassment can be as damaging as harassment itself, and that the presumption of innocence applies to both (or all) parties.
> Now the question is, what motivates you to seek out a relatively far-fetched justification for this man's possible innocence?
You're implying he supports sexual harassment.
He's bringing up a perfectly valid question for discussion: what if the person has an outsized opinion of his attractiveness, and also happens to be a VC -- is that still sexual harassment or just stupidity?
Well, the answer is that in this case it's still harassment.
And so now there's question, answer, discussion, etc. No need to accuse the poster of being complicit himself in harassment.
>> The accusations can be true, and at the same time it seems possible that the VC didn't take advantage of his "position of power", but genuinely believed the women liked him for his looks and personality, not because they needed his money.
This type of behavior is about boundaries. Boundaries are about power.
His behavior crossed what our culture generally says are the boundaries of a professional situation. That's what makes it inappropriate; it doesn't matter what he believed.
It's totally acceptable to meet someone in a social situation and, after a bit of due diligence, it's totally acceptable to ask them out.
People date in the workplace all the time, so I don't think your rules about "professional situations" are generally accepted.
I also reject the notion of "position of power" just because he is a VC. Nobody is forced to take his money. You could just as well say the applying women are in a position of power because the VC desperately needs somebody to invest in. I guess a startup should avoid seeking investments where the investor is "in a position of power", anyway.
I am also not justifying his behavior, obviously he made mistakes. But I reject the immediate interpretation of "man abusing his power to pressure women into sex".
The "boundaries" talk is also not really helpful - at some point, somebody has to make a move. If their estimate of the situation is correct, they are not "crossing boundaries". Otherwise they are crossing boundaries and need to withdraw.
Grabbing a knee under the table is of course not a good first move, but we might be missing context.
> I also reject the notion of "position of power" just because he is a VC. Nobody is forced to take his money.
Nobody's forced to work for a boss that harasses them, yet making unwanted sexual advances against someone who reports to you is illegal as hell.
You have a poor legal understanding of sexual harassment. I strongly suggest that you educate yourself as to what kind of advances and relationships are, and are not appropriate in a professional setting.
First, a pitch meeting with a venture capitalist is generally accepted by our culture to be the kind of professional environment that is inappropriate to sexualize in any fashion. While I understand your basic point, you seem to be very interested in denying that there are many situations in life where notions and hints of sex and romance are just not appropriate.
* I hate to think that you might have trouble understanding this, but we're not talking about dating a co-worker. We're not talking about a pitch that didn't succeed followed by three months of radio silence followed by them meeting at a social event and realizing that they are attracted to each other.
* The mutual realization that you are attracted to a coworker is not the same as sexual harassment, it's not the same as being asked out by your manager, and it's not the same as receiving unwelcome sexual advances during a pitch meeting from a man who works at VC firm.
* Asking an available coworker out on a date, however unwise it may be depending on your place of employment and working relationships, is not the same as making remarks about her looks, clothes, or anatomy. It's not the same as denying her an investment or promotion because she rejected your advances.
I hope that clears things up for you.
>> But I reject the immediate interpretation of "man abusing his power to pressure women into sex".
Oh but that's exactly what this was. It was a man abusing his power to pressure women into sex.
>> Grabbing a knee under the table is of course not a good first move, but we might be missing context.
Grabbing the knee of someone you are not mutually involved with is not appropriate behavior in the workplace. Depending on the situation, it may be inappropriate even if you are mutually involved. But without mutual involvement, it's absolute inappropriate.
> And yes, I recognize that this hasn't been "proven", but really what's the chance [...] Occams razor is that he's at the very least doing something that's inappropriate.
Occam's razor is a tool to winnow down proven scientific theories, not to bypass the need for evidence. I'd rather vest power in the courts than outrage media.
Although I agree with you that if it's definitely like the presumed victims say I just want to remember that often people are called out for base motives. Since I live in germany I remember the case of Kachelmann, who due to false claims of rape lost everything from his job to his freedom of a half years worth and much of his friends and family - because of a lie.
So for me this means that I wait for the judges to decide. Before he's found guilty it's nothing more than gossip to me, although this is a rather unpopular opinion I guess.
Since he at least didn't deny the accusations this fosters the believes in his guilt.
For this case it's fine then. However, I tried to make a more general statement in my post before, since the zeitgeist tends to prejudgements nowadays, which also was a thing in the middle ages and does more harm than good.
> I recognize that this hasn't been "proven", but really what's the chance than there's a shadowy cabal of women who start companies in order to target individual VCs. These women have little to gain from this and everything to lose. Occams razor is that he's at the very least doing something that's inappropriate.
Seriously? I mean then why do we need courts, judges and juries if it's that simple. Details matter and both sides of the story. [1]
And what do you mean by 'at the very least doing something that's inappropriate'?. By what and by whose standards?
[1] What if you were charged with the crime of assault (non sexual in this example) and nobody had seen what had happened prior to you throwing (what they thought) was the first punch without any knowledge of the provocation prior to that point (as only one quick example).
Serious question, does free speech apply in these situations? You have the unalienable right to speak your mind and some people may be offended but that is not illegal. I totally understand if you are employed by someone you can't easily get away if you are made uncomfortable but this is entirely a voluntary situation.
Also, if you really think about it making something that makes someone uncomfortable illegal is weird. So by the same logic I should be able to sue my employer if he farts too much or is annoying in general?
If you read the article, the allegations include him groping women without their consent. That's not just making someone uncomfortable, that's sexual assault.
Have you ever heard the term "assault and battery?" Battery is hitting someone. Assault doesn't have to include physical contact to be a crime, it just has to include action that demonstrates an attempt to harm or threaten.
It's true that there are a lot of things that a creep VC could say to a female founder that would be creepy, that would be harassment, that should probably get him fired, but wouldn't be criminal.
But if he makes a creepy statement while physically blocking the woman from exiting the room, or approaches her in a gropey manner but doesn't make contact, that's still assault. Probably not something he would get convicted for unless it was caught on video, but nevertheless...
> Serious question, does free speech apply in these situations? You have the unalienable right to speak your mind and some people may be offended but that is not illegal.
"Give me all your money right now or I'll stab you with this knife!
What? What? I'm just speaking my mind, officer! Just because this guy feels offended? Hey, I thought this was America! First amendment!"
The canonical example of the limits of free speech: You can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Similarly, you can't run toward someone screaming, pull back like you're going to throw a punch, then claim innocence when charged with assault. There are numerous court cases that draw various lines. Courts have recognized people sometimes say "I'll kill you" but without any actual intent. They also recognize sometimes threats are veiled and spoken in coded language to give the superficial appearance of acceptability... but the threats are just as real as pulling back in a punching motion.
Much sexual harassment falls into the latter category. Rarely to abusers (male or female) come right out and say "sleep with me or you're fired / I'll tank your funding round / I'll call your loan", though that does happen. By far the most common case is subtle suggestions or inferences that things will be easier for you if you go along with it.
In general it is best to avoid anything that appears romantic whenever there is a power imbalance. As a VC, you shouldn't be hitting on founders. If you think there is mutual attraction there then send that person to a friend at a different VC or wait for the funding rounds to close and assign the company to a different partner. Even then it is risky - the target of your affection may feel like they need to play along or you'll start bad-mouthing them and it will crush their business. When the target of your affection says "Sorry, I have a partner / boyfriend / girlfriend" it is a very clear signal they are not interested.
Even better advice is: don't. There is a wide pool of potential partners. Why are you so desperate to find a pickup among your founders / subordinates? Hint: usually because you're taking advantage of them! In this case the most likely explanation is the guy wanted to have some affairs and thought hooking up with founders would be an easy score. What those women thought or felt was entirely beneath his notice.
> The canonical example of the limits of free speech: You can't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater.
That's the iconic example, but from what I've heard (IANAL) lawyers and judges mostly don't consider it an especially compelling rhetorical argument, let alone representative of an actual legal standard.
As you're talking about legal things I feel a degree more pedantry is needed. You can yell "fire!" but not without an expectation of subsequent deleterious consequences. You have the freedom to speak, you don't have the freedom from consequences of that speech.
>When the target of your affection says "Sorry, I have a partner / boyfriend / girlfriend" it is a very clear signal they are not interested. //
I'd say that is "somewhat clear"; it's still relying on implicit communication. Far better IMO would be "I'm not interested in a romantic/intimate/sexual relationship with you.". Just saying you have a partner is not as clear; maybe your'e the sort that hops around, or has an open relationship or is turned on by infidelity; if a person thinks you're flirting with them but they mention a current sexual partner you might imagine that you're just being warned to keep things clandestine or being told to compete.
>most likely explanation //
I imagine the most likely explanation was that he was attracted to them, they mirrored his attraction and it went on from there without any thought from him that they were doing it in order to win/not_lose business positioning.
> I'd say that is "somewhat clear"; it's still relying on implicit communication. Far better IMO would be "I'm not interested in a romantic/intimate/sexual relationship with you.". Just saying you have a partner is not as clear; maybe your'e the sort that hops around, or has an open relationship or is turned on by infidelity; if a person thinks you're flirting with them but they mention a current sexual partner you might imagine that you're just being warned to keep things clandestine or being told to compete.
If you hit on someone, and they respond "I have a boyfriend" full stop, then unless they're taking their clothes off as they say it, there is zero chance that they mean anything but "I am not interested in your advances."
And, frankly, there's no reason to tell yourself otherwise unless you're planning on sexually harassing that person.
> Serious question, does free speech apply in these situations?
Free speech does not extend to groping. It's quite likely that many acts of mere harassment (supposing they don't, e.g., explicitly or implicitly condition exchange of money for sex,where then it gets into soliciting prostitution) is legal in a VC-to-founder rather than employer-employee situation.
OTOH, even the acts that may be legal are still newsworthy; not every act of public concern violates a law.
First off, groping is very clearly not free speech. Next up, power dynamics matter. A random person hitting on you may be annoying. Your boss hitting on you and implying that you will lose your job unless you comply (or in this case, that you will lose funding) is coercion and also pretty clearly not okay.
You're reducing some pretty vile behavior - "groped women who sought out advice or pitched him for investments, sent them lurid texts late at night and harassed them with unwanted sexual propositions" down to its least objectionable description - free speech, and "something that makes someone uncomfortable" like someone who "farts too much".
Do you think that groping women, lurid texts late at night, and harassing them with unwanted sexual propositions is objectionable behavior? If so, why are you trying to downplay it to just "annoying behavior?"
BTW no lawsuits have been filed (yet) so "illegal" doesn't enter into it.
> defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.
Binary Capital is a sleazy VC, no ifs ands or buts about it.
The valley is really small, and I've heard horrific stories of what this firm has done to their employees and founders. This includes Jonathon Teo as well.
This really is just the tip of the iceberg for Binary Capital. I wouldn't take any investments from them ever.
I understand, and being ignored is okay. If someone affected by them sees this, they may feel empowered to step forward. I'd feel wrong putting names, situations, etc. out there, but the fact of the matter is, this isn't the end of this drama.
Do you expect this is voluntary scape-goating as a distraction for worse things? If so, what are these worse things. To me, the statement read as sincere.
I'll say one. I was on a phone call with Jonathan from Binary Capital when they were looking at an investment in a company I am investor in. They were pushing overly onerous terms, and were changing the original terms that had been agreed upon, including requiring the founders to revest 100% of their vested options/equity despite being multiple years into the company building journey.
The company was at a low point and Binary was trying to squeeze them. Now the company is flying, and Binary missed out. The entire experience made me feel compelled to caution to every entrepreneur who has approached me about working with them since, including another who did, and now regrets it for other reasons.
Gillian Morris, Co-founder and CEO of Hitlist, left this comment on The Information's original article [1]:
> I’ve never met Justin but can attest that his questionable behavior extends past allegations of sexual harassment.
> In early 2016, I spoke with Jonathan Teo, Justin’s partner at Binary, about funding Hitlist, my company. In the course of due diligence, I sent bios of the key engineers on my team. Justin approached my star iOS engineer and attempted to poach him to join one of Binary’s portfolio companies.
> There’s something rotten about a firm that holds out the promise of funding while secretly trying to poach your employees. (aside: I’m not sure if Jonathan had anything to do with this and have had nothing but pleasant, professional interactions with him).
This is an absurd accusation. I've seen plenty of VCs try to recruit developers of companies that they've met with or even invested in. The Valley is tiny and it happens all the time. Moreover, not all this information is communicated to every partner, especially as it relates to seed deals.
As someone who had 3 male teachers in middle and high school fired because of sexual commments I'm still not sure how to respond to stuff like this. I'm always concerned how someones carrier might be altered considering someone could be lying.
If someone is accused of sexual assault, a police report should be filed. If he's hitting on women in inappropriate and aggressive ways, then he deserves to be villified but without details it's hard to understand what he did.
I lost my job and got involved in a complex legal matter trying to defend girls from a predatory person. Most people simply do not care, and will avoid getting involved at all costs.
That is not the point. There are two ways to view the problem: it is either a women's problem, or a people problem that dissproportionantly affects women. By framing it as a womens problem, you are turning it into an issue of identity politics, with all the pros and cons that come with it. (eg, stronger solidarity from the in-group, at the expanse of alienating the out-group, as well as the growing backlash to identity politics in general.)
Also, even if relativly rare, we do not want to needlessly ignore male victims.
From what I have seen, this is more about who has power. Men tend to have more power than women. When the roles are reversed, women will sexually harass men.
We need to work on coming up with ways to create a world in which power is less likely to lead to this type of abuse. I think that starts with generally having healthier attitudes surrounding sexuality.
It's not just power. Men and women have somewhat different distributions of personalities. Women, on average, are more willing to try to smooth things over rather than engage in explicit conflict.
If you flip the genders, then on average, abuse of power will cause outright conflict sooner rather than after it has built up to completely unacceptable levels.
I'm a woman. I feel strongly that it is nigh impossible to clearly determine how much of gender difference is really due to innate biological tendencies and how much is due to social crap shaping the genders differently.
A cousin of mine commented on being a Navy recruiter and calling his wife to come sit at the office because of teenaged girls showing up at the recruiting office and trying to hang on him. He was very worried about how this would be perceived and he did not know how to turn them away. He was over 6 feet tall and scared of what these "little girls" would do to his career. The only effective solution he could find was to call his wife and have her in the office when they showed up.
I really think it is far more complicated than most people want to believe. Seeing the world in black-and-white, simple terms is just easier to cope with. But it usually is not an accurate assessment of reality.
> I really think it is far more complicated than most people want to believe.
So do I, and thanks for bringing some balance to the discussion. I noticed Mr. Calbeck's apology makes it sound like the situation is simple and not complicated.
In our present culture, men rarely report sexual harassment or domestic violence, believing (correctly) that they won't be believed or will be expected to endure (or enjoy) it. And direct confrontation often leads to male victims being charged.
I disagree, and think that what's more illuminating is what happens if they DO report it, and the tone of which they report it. Of which this is not very far off:
I am in no position to watch your video, so I am not entirely sure what your point is. But given your bald statement that you disagree with the above comment, I will note that I was romantically involved at one time with a man who had been sexually abused by a grown women when he was about 13. Not even his best friend knew. He had all kinds of serious personal problems.
Men do tend to hide it when they are the victims. There is substantial evidence that male victims of sexual assault have an even harder time coping in the aftermath than women, in part because it is seen as emasculating and they face bigger challenges than women in getting some kind of meaningful support if they try to tell anyone.
It seems to me that you've just proved my point by openly stating that you expect male victims to enjoy it, but perhaps I misunderstood what you intended to imply with the link to that video.
>There are two ways to view the problem: it is either a women's problem, or a people problem that disproportionately affects women.
Well, it's the latter to a huge degree. Which means that by framing it as a "people's problem" in general (without the qualification) it is misrepresented.
Speaking of one group is not ignoring the other. Nobody said that sexual harassment against men is okay. It's okay to recognize that social norms affect the genders asymmetrically and structure language around that.
My original response doesn't ignore them, it was my additional commentary adding that all founders shouldn't have to deal with it. The discredit to the response itself is evidence that one side weigh more sway based on gender. No one should have these types of issues.
Right, and that should be obvious to any reader. My point is that this is an issue that is asymmetric between the sexes. Acting like it's not just makes it seem like we're trying too hard to ignore genders when they exist and affect us.
This is a common view point, and it is false. There's a fixed amount of attention that can be directed towards certain issues. Accordingly, paying attention to certain issues is ignoring others.
In fact some definitions of attention define it as the ability to ignore unwanted or unneeded things. In general, I do think it is correct to focus on a specific, salient example of harassment, that is, women's harassment than the abstract. Just as I think it's better to focus on sexism or racism rather than "discrimination"
Engaging in identity politics opens up pandora's box :).
Men have a more difficult time obtaining social, emotional and physical intimacy with other people (in both romantic and platonic contexts). For the purely romantic context, there is a huge disparity in the required effort to obtain intimacy in a romantic relationship.
Women can obtain intimacy and have a very successful romantic life without making any advances at all. A man will have a very unsuccessful romantic life if he never makes any advances.
Society fails men on the social/physical/emotional intimacy front.
These are natural, primal needs have huge consequences on happiness. This lack of intimacy naturally causes men to seek intimacy in sometimes inappropriate contexts and situations.
Since a large cause of the behavior is the failing of society, it may be prudent to give higher leniency to men for these situations. The intimacy gap should at least be acknowledged whenever identity politics are brought up in these situations.
> A man will have a very unsuccessful romantic life if he never makes any advances.
#NotAllMen But seriously. I'd like to talk more about this in a different setting. This sentiment rang true for me before I got out of high school. After that, it mattered much less.
> Society fails men on the social/physical/emotional intimacy front.
This specific problem is a womens' problem. That doesn't make it gender politics. The number of women VCs is so small that there's no power imbalance to wield. What we're talking about here is individual assholes using the power of their "group" to take advantage of women. If, theoretically, a man were harassed by a woman investor she's being an asshole. But he can move on the other 9 investors who aren't women.
It's similar to police and citizens. Police who commit crimes are wielding a different power than individuals who commit crimes. It doesn't discount the crime, but it is a different problem.
It's not though, I've been on the receiving end of similar bullshit from a gay individual that made lewd suggestions around funding. It's a problem of people not respecting boundaries. My comment isn't belittling the women at all, it's in fact supportive of them and against any type of harassment. However, the notion that I am a male recipient of the same circumstance appears to be valued less based on comments. That's a problem too.
I think what one of the other commenters wrote applies here:
> Speaking of one group is not ignoring the other. Nobody said that sexual harassment against men is okay. It's okay to recognize that social norms affect the genders asymmetrically and structure language around that.
If I knew you, I would just as soon support you in outing the guy who made lewd suggestions to you as I would support any woman I know in the same situation. But at the moment it does disproportionately affect women.
Harassment is a problem that affects people in common, and men specifically and women specifically. Harassment against men versus women shares many things in common, but is not exactly the same. For example, a man who is harassed might have to contend with other men saying "why are you upset some woman is interested in you?" Conversely, a woman will often have to deal with harassment while already dealing with the challenges of being a distinct minority in her workplace. When you frame the problem as a "people problem," you excise discussion of the dynamics of its specific incarnations.
It's like how sickle cell anemia can affect anyone, but particularly affects African Americans. Obviously it's important to look at the problem at the general level. But no prudent biologist would ignore looking at the disease in the context of African Americans specifically, out of a misguided notion of race blindness.
Dunno. Who would be interested to work alongside or for someone who abuses his power to harass women? You'd think that many men would prefer politeness and professionalism over a fratboy outfit. You have to establish boundaries with the alpha oaf, at times you feel ashamed for someone else's behaviour or need to apologize and so on. If you frame the issue as a "women's problem" you ignore these aspects, and they shouldn't be ignored.
It has not at all been my experience, at any point in my career, no matter which group of men that I've worked with, that passively observing a man exhibiting or talking about aggressive sexual behavior has been a dealbreaker.
That's not to say harassment and abuse aren't dealbreakers for the men I've worked with; for most of them, it is. But it has to be spelled out for them. A victim has to speak up about it. It has not been my experience that men surveil each other to ensure that their sexual behavior is appropriate or benign.
I had a similar response to the controversy over the Trump Access Hollywood tapes. Jake Tapper was talking to a Trump surrogate who claimed that the tapes were just "locker room talk". Tapper, aghast, said something to the effect of "not in any locker room I've ever been in". My response (to myself, quietly): Jake Tapper, you are full of shit.
Obviously none of this is good stuff! It's just important that we try to be more self-aware about it.
At a previous company, I worked with someone in a recent highly-public sexism scandal (if I said who or where, I would no longer be a genericpseudo).
I knew that the person was extremely brash and was told that they indulged in "locker-room talk", though I didn't personally observe any harassing behavior. I didn't speak up about what I heard. I wish I had. I wonder, and worry, if anything as bad as what happened at their next company happened at the company I worked at. I'm really uncomfortable with the odds that it did.
I was a robot club nerd so the concept of locker room talk is foreign to me. But now as a grown up, I can't say that I've ever felt unable to connect with another man because I can't make a sexually aggressive comment about a coworker or mutual acquaintance.
Note that the "sexually aggressive comment" can just refer to a plain "sexual comment" (which changes the whole sentence's meaning).
And it's labelled "aggressive" because of several centuries of hardcore religious puritanism leaving their mark on all aspects of US culture. Sex is naughty. Sex talk is aggressive.
Only we didn't speak specifically about such talk here.
The parent said "There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about".
And this was immediately taken to mean "aggressive sexual comment".
Your comment could also be interpreted as most male founders do sexually harass others. I'm not sure that's what you meant.
The reality is that a small percentage of people constitute the majority of bad behavior. Be it harassment, or criminal activity in general. The counter-part is that the majority of people don't really cause trouble....
so saying "men harass" would be wrong. Saying "the bulk of harassers are men" is more correct.
In this lovely thread I'm sure we'll get to see the wonderful, even keeled, thoughtful folks that respect due process and are emotionally and cognitively capable of requiring evidence and proof before taking allegations as direct intentional criminality. That's definitely going to happen.
I think I know what the author was trying to say, but that's a really weird way to say it. Susan is most definitely still alive and well. Susan wasn't an event, like 9/11. she is a woman with a lot of courage who wrote about a series of terrible things that happened to her.
Personally I don't really see the problem. If you want to argue for a different state of things after some event, "post" seem like the correct word. Just like you would say "post war period". You might of course think that the statement itself is pretentious. But at least they argue their case, i.e the importance of her actions, in the article.
right. I don't think it's pretentious per-se, I just think it's really odd, like from a literary, use-of-the-english-language perspective.
anyway, I just saw on the news that the serial-assaulter resigned, or has decided to take a travis (a leave of absence followed by a resignation), so that's a good thing.
Lets just not talk to women at all. Keep it a pay-for-sex relations. If you say anything these days it's "unwanted advancements".
You're cute! Harassment
Want an open relationship? Harassment
Touch a girl you like? Harassment
Just think how ridiculous this is. Did you not first touch the girl you like thinking she will be ok with it? And in most cases she is. If she isn't, she just say .. i'm not ok, or move on and give you a cold shoulder. That's how we human actually interact with one another.
I'm sick of these women and more so, of these reporters, that try to destroy one person after another. For the most part, for clicks to their sites.
So there you have it, please downvote this post. Let's all be PC and just hang this guy already. His side doesn't matter. Facts don't either.
What follows is a statement that Caldbeck provided to Axios this afternoon.
"The past 24 hours have been the darkest of my life. I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week. To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement. Still, I need to say it: I am so, so sorry.
I direct my apology first to those women who I've made feel uncomfortable in any way, at any time - but also to the greater tech ecosystem, a community that I have utterly failed.
The power dynamic that exists in venture capital is despicably unfair. The gap of influence between male venture capitalists and female entrepreneurs is frightening and I hate that my behavior played a role in perpetrating a gender-hostile environment. It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done.
I am deeply ashamed of my lack of self-awareness. I am grateful to Niniane, Susan, Leiti, and the other women who spoke up for providing me with a sobering look into my own character and behavior that I can no longer ignore. The dynamic of this industry makes it hard to speak up, but this is the type of action that leads to progress and change, starting with me.
I will be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Binary Capital, the firm I co-founded in 2014. I will be seeking professional counseling as I take steps to reflect on my behavior with and attitude towards women. I will find ways to learn from this difficult experience - and to help drive necessary changes in the broader venture community.
The Binary team will also be taking measures to ensure that the firm is a safe place for founders of all backgrounds to find the support and resources they need to change the world, without abuse of power or mistreatment of any person.
I owe a heartfelt apology to my family, my investors, my portfolio, and the team at Binary, who have been completely blindsided and in no way deserve the pain I've caused. But most of all I apologize again to those who I've hurt during the course of my career - and for the damage I've done to the industry I care so deeply about."
Binary issued a statement that said the notion Mr. Caldbeck had “engaged in improper behavior with female entrepreneurs” was “false.” Binary said that while The Information had “found a few examples which show that Justin has in the past occasionally dated or flirted with women he met in a professional capacity, let’s be clear: there is no evidence that Justin did anything illegal and there is no evidence that any of his investing decisions were affected by his social interest.
This statement is much more in line with Caldbeck's initial statement:
> Obviously, I am deeply disturbed by these allegations. While significant context is missing from the incidents reported by The Information, I deeply regret ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable. The fact is that I have been privileged to have worked with female entrepreneurs throughout my career and I sincerely apologize to anyone who I made uncomfortable by my actions. There’s no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it.
I wouldn't be surprised if Binary released an updated statement in light of this new apology and indefinite leave.
Their statement says that any claims or reports that Caldbeck did anything "inappropriate" with women were "false". That ship sailed with Caldbeck's most recent statement.
> I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week.
> It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done.
Those read to me like admissions of guilt. I'd expect lawyers to strongly advise against writing such things.
IANL but insofar as sexual harassment exists within the context of a company with employees, my understanding is that his behaviour, while deeply immoral, is not illegal — he has admitted to being wrong, not to having done something illegal.
BUt isnt that kind of direct action a problem unless there is any actual proof? Imagine that you are innocent and someone is out to get you with false claims, you can lose your job in no time and your reputation can be in shambles before you can do anything about it.
Honest question: can you tell me what phrases in particular you read this way? I read almost everything exactly the opposite way - and I'm genuinely curious which sentences can be interpreted so differently by different people.
"The past 24 hours have been the darkest of my life."
- This is all about me, not the women. I've had a rough time and I want your sympathy.
"I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week."
- I'm probably a pathological predator but prefer to view my illness and/or poor character as a set of "mistakes" because that's easier on me than admitting I'm a piece of shit.
"To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement."
- I would acknowledge who I probably really am but I can't, if I even know.
"Still, I need to say it: I am so, so sorry."
- So I'll just say "I'm sorry" instead.
"I direct my apology first to those women who I've made feel uncomfortable in any way, at any time - but also to the greater tech ecosystem, a community that I have utterly failed."
- I did some really repulsive shit, but I don't want to say how repulsive, so let's just call it "making people feel uncomfortable." Also, I'm really bummed that so many people are getting mad at me.
"The power dynamic that exists in venture capital is despicably unfair."
- This isn't about me at all, guys. It's about The System. If I just start acknowledging and condemning structural violence, maybe I can get the focus of this off of me personally.
"The gap of influence between male venture capitalists and female entrepreneurs is frightening and I hate that my behavior played a role in perpetrating a gender-hostile environment."
- So let's talk about structural violence instead and how I'm just a cog in The System.
"It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done."
- We all sin, OK?
"I am deeply ashamed of my lack of self-awareness."
- If I had known everyone would get so fucking upset at me, I wouldn't have done those things. I hate it when people get mad at me.
"I am grateful to Niniane, Susan, Leiti, and the other women who spoke up for providing me with a sobering look into my own character and behavior that I can no longer ignore."
- I wish those women hadn't done that. I'm totally fucked now.
"The dynamic of this industry makes it hard to speak up, but this is the type of action that leads to progress and change, starting with me."
- But enough about me, let's talk about The System instead. That's the real problem. In fact, me being a piece of shit and it being brought to light is good for these women. I did them a favor! Don't you see?
"I will be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Binary Capital, the firm I co-founded in 2014."
- Like I said, I'm totally fucked now and my partners booted me out.
"I will be seeking professional counseling as I take steps to reflect on my behavior with and attitude towards women."
- My wife is so fucking pissed, you don't even know. We're probably getting divorced now, so thanks for that.
"I will find ways to learn from this difficult experience - and to help drive necessary changes in the broader venture community."
- I still don't really get what I did wrong, but since everyone is so mad at me, I guess I'd better try to figure out how to not make people mad at me again like that.
"The Binary team will also be taking measures to ensure that the firm is a safe place for founders of all backgrounds to find the support and resources they need to change the world, without abuse of power or mistreatment of any person."
- My partners are super pissed that I fucked their brand, and accordingly, their deal flow. Please don't take it out on them. They're not cool with what I did even though they probably knew about it.
"I owe a heartfelt apology to my family, my investors, my por...
I'm curious: if you were somehow in his position -- and were now actually genuinely apologetic, were actually blind to your own actions, were actually sorry for the harm you've done --
How would you word your apology such that it couldn't be interpreted in this (self-serving, not actually sorry) way?
"I am deeply sorry for using my position as an investor to take advantage of the female founders who came to me and my firm seeking only our help and support. What I did was cruel and wrong. The harm I've done to myself, my firm, my reputation, and my family does not compare to the harm I did these women. As a man, I will never truly understand what it feels like to be the victim of these transgressions. I can only say how sorry I am, commit to getting the help I need to change, and hope that some day I may be able to make amends."
If there were a job like, "Professional apology writer," you would be great at it. On the other hand, I doubt you would work for anyone who needed such services, and good on you for that.
It seems to me that being sexual harassed by a person in a position of authority over you is unlikely to be that different based on sex but could differ a lot based on some of the characteristics that are often skewed to one sex or the other.
So men in general might feel greater humiliation, perhaps; women might feel more vulnerable: both because of the physical strength of men vs. women in general.
I am of the opinion that you can never "truly understand" another person's suffering unless you share their subjective experience. Women's suffering, in general and in this regard, is compounded by experiences and insidious forces far broader than the acts at issue in any given incident. It is both incorrect and intellectually disingenous to ignore this context, and to approach the matter as a simple and narrow question of whether men can be sexually harassed, and if so, how it makes them feel.
Consider Kafka. Any one incident in one of his stories could be fairly viewed as merely a confusing annoyance, but that would miss the point.
But even the structural nature of violence against women is insufficient context alone. The feelings women experience when they are victimized in this way are products of history. And I submit that you cannot share in that experience without that history, which is to say without having been born a woman.
I can no sooner "truly understand" how women experience these things than I can truly understand how it feels to be a black man called "boy." I understand it intellectually, and I empathize as much as I can, but I'll never "get it" as someone who isn't a member of the out-group.
This isn't a contest of suffering. I can suffer just as much as a woman, if not more, but not in the same way. It is the character of the suffering that makes us different.
I don't think anyone contends that you can completely understand anothers experience. Nor that any two instances of suffering (nor any experience) are identical.
What you need to demonstrate is that women are a special class who have entirely different experiences, to any member of other classes, when being sexually harassed.
This stands in stark contrast to some feminist rhetoric as it relies on men and women being fundamentally and innately unequal.
I don't think women are shrinking little flowers, as a class, that experience harassment in a way that no members of the out-class do. This, appears to be the supposition of your post.
How do you suppose you know enough of the experience of members of your own class (eg male) to say they are all markedly different to those of another class (female).
>The feelings women experience when they are victimized in this way are products of history. //
In the general case that sounds like bullshit. Convince me otherwise?
Respectfully, I have neither the time nor interest to educate about the world history of women's oppression and its psychological manifestations. I'm sure you can find plenty of reading material elsewhere.
Also, I'm a Beauvoir feminist, so I'm sure we'd have our differences about gender equality.
That's a very cynical (though not necessarily inaccurate) paraphrasal of his text. I am wondering: what kind of statement could he make, according to you, that is not amenable to such doubts?
So the rite of apology as enshrined in our society's mores is entirely irrelevant and inconsequential? (I wouldn't disagree either way, as I don't put much stock into words after events) but if you don't believe in apologies would you feel it appropriate for the alleged perpetrator just to remain silent?
Good statement. I appreciate that it is sincere rather than the refined legalese that first came out and that the firm published. PR professionals - take note.
Caldbeck might benefit by spending time volunteering for an appropriate organization as a way to help accelerate his awareness - and to help.
It's really sad to see this story emerge, and I hope we can all take lessons from it and nudge the industry in a better direction.
I really wish other founders would name and shame more, even if anonymously, but with examples. For most of the female founders who face these, there is no resource to turn to, to know who to avoid.
Such systems are either signed, and thus barely used, or anonymous and thus easily exploited.
Journalists that could speak with people at length and confirm the story by further research still weren't willing to publish based on anonymous sources. This is in part because anonymous accusations can be a great tool in a defamation campaign.
Furthermore, publishing anonymous claims without due-diligence discredits future anonymous claims. It might even back arguments like "Those sexual harassment claims always turn out to be smear campaigns".
I don't believe this is an un-solvable problem. I do think that having closed lists/groups where this can be made public is also an option - like say, Female Founders group. People can also be encouraged to share the experience and the judgement can be made by those reading it.
It is useful data that, unfortunately, too few of us are aware of, and are thus condemned to the same fate.
I am fundraising, and wish I knew which sleazy firms/investors to not waste my time with.
Some VCs are sleazy, but their money's still green. I know with certainty of at least two firms with predatory/creepy partners, but that wouldn't stop me from including them in a round.
This behaviour is inappropriate, but it's not nearly as bad as what we learn to fend off at the average final club/frat party.
It would atleast give those founders an option - some agency. Atleast they would go in knowing what to expect and make that choice if it works for their situation.
I hope you'd consider naming those firms/partners, for the benefit of others.
Is that like some sort of corporate police? That's actually not a bad idea. Like every sort of harassment claim goes to an independent agency to be evaluated and investigated. Any business who wants credibility with their employees pays some dues to that agency and agrees to abide their decisions.
The law should be handling sexual harassment. The reasons why we have these issues with companies is because there's a conflict of interest. The police are a third party and have no interest in the success/failure of the company, ideally.
I think people on both sides of this issue would love it if the law showed itself capable of handling sexual harassment cases. Unfortunately we have way too much evidence that that just isn't the case. The obvious example that comes to mind is Brock Turner getting three months, and that's in the best case where someone is actually convicted. Far too often it never gets to that point, not because the harassment/assault didn't occur, but because the legal system is so utterly shit at handling it. The 'outragism' that so many people decry only exists in the first place because every system that is supposed to prevent or punish these acts has failed so completely.
And we have even MORE evidence that companies ALWAYS mishandle these cases with BLATANT conflicts of interest.
You're basically arguing that companies should become their own units of law enforcement with their own punishments as they see fit, with no oversight. That is clearly not going to work. It clearly hasn't.
If the law is unfair, we have the power to change that law. Exceptions always exist but we can not make laws on exceptions. Meanwhile companies continue to allow harassment on a daily basis, Look at Fox News. Multiple cases. Imagine in other corporations?
I'm arguing nothing of the sort. While it probably feels good to strawman everyone who disagrees with you, it certainly isn't helping you persuade anyone, nor is it allowing you to learn from other perspectives.
While we may theoretically have the power to change the way law enforcement works on these issues, doing so would be dramatically more difficult than making marginal improvements within the industry itself. We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Please do without the smug BS first paragraph next time. Try forming a real argument instead. Thanks.
Industry has never gotten this right. How long until we finally see that the company trying to avoid bad PR and make money doesn't have conflicts of interest with these victims?
I've seen too many companies turn blind eyes to terrible workplace environments because the perpetrator "makes too many sales." or is "too important." It's always going to be a conflict of interest.
My advice to anyone is: collect evidence, quit, and file a lawsuit. Any other internal method will lead to even more abuse and fear.
The problem is corporate HR/PR departments acting against public interest to protect their employers. Besides, you can't call the cops to complain you were passed over for promotion because you refused sexual advances.
Uh, isn't it called laws? We already codify victimhood pretty thoroughly. This would be a voluntary extension of legal protection to a credible third-party. Not government, not corporate. Corporations purchase their credibility and are also relieved of forming their own harassment policies which tend to be reactionary after the first public incident. Imagine if GitHub had this from day one.
Silicon Valley is toxic until sexism, agism, racism, and homophobia are largely eliminated. Only then will it be a model for the world tech hubs to follow.
No. Honestly Silicon Valley is heavily a "social club" where people of the same type group together just like high school, because many of them never grew out of highschool.
Diversity is a joke to be honest.
Go to any company, any single company, especially the ones that tout "diversity" it's all the same individual with the same "thought processes" with no actual diversity.
Many hire people who think the same exact way re-skinned or same-gendered.
One company that is about a block away that touts diversity is all liberal ideologues that spout the most racist and deflating things about everything. It's a very toxic environment for anyone who doesn't align with their ideology or beliefs. All of the individuals in the group have the same style. Can never tell them apart. All the same race. Yet on their twitter, jobs, facebook and even here they tout "Diversity! Friendly Co-Workers!"
I've seen more diversity in companies that don't care about diversity or tout diversity.
Sexual harassment and harassment happens more often at these companies, people who are being harassed and bullied about different things don't speak up. Most of the time it isn't women.
I've been bullied by women before because a candidate wasn't female. I've been bullied by men before because a candidate was female or looked weak (physically). I've heard people bully for stutters, skin color, age, race, gender, everything.
I don't care about that. I care about two things: Do you lift others up despite differences while resolving conflicts, and can you get the job done? Following these two, I've gutted these toxic behaviors (bullying, antagonistic, sexual harassment) from multiple companies and it's refreshing.
It's completely out of control to be honest, it's becoming very toxic and demeaning toward specific races and genders (not just men).
I don't think this particular article is suspect at all, but it's kind of important to note note that observer.com is the New York Observer, a media outlet owned by Jared Kushner.
At the risk of sounding like I'm defending the guy (which I'm not), do we have a comprehensive definition of "Sexual Assault and Harassement" ? Because in some places (northern europe for example) these terms have very volatile definitions which allows pretty much anything to fall under the "rape" category.
I totally understand that repeatedly violating somebody's physical safe space is a form a sexual assault (grabbing someone's butt etc) but I'm not sure if bad jokes and misplaced remarks (however annoying) qualify as such.
(Not trying to start a war here, I'm geniunly asking).
In the USA, "sexual harassment" is generally defined as behavior or words of a sexual nature that make a person feel uncomfortable. Examples could range from an extreme of physical assault or offering a quid-pro-quo to keep ones job or get a promotion, all the way to telling lewd jokes or stories within earshot of a third party, or making comments or compliments about someone's dress or appearance (even telling a co-worker "you look lovely today" every morning).
As a straight male, my manager comments on my clothes if I wear something nicer than usual, say a button up. It made very uncomfortable. I don't like when people comment on my appearance at work.
That's too broad / vague. I understand that if my actions/words are making/will make other person uncomfortable, I should stop. But if a coworker changed her hair style and I complemented it, can I be legally complained against?
The parent comment is not correct. No, you will not be "legally complained against" (I think you mean "am I breaking the law") if you compliment your coworker's hairstyle. See this: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm
In Italy we comment and compliment (or criticise) each other's attire regularly. It's widely known (for example) that I abhor exposed feet and will therefore call out and/or criticize sandals, flip-flops, or peep-toe shoes. Female workers do this to make workers, male workers do this to female workers. We successfully share same-sex toilets if the need arises. The regimented gender-divided situation the US seems to subtend is utterly alien to me and seems to be far more awkward than you realize.
Don't let these silicon valley stories fool you. Blame extremists and people who exploit gender relations for money.
Most americans are decent people who do the exact type of behavior you mention, and its not a problem.
Big money leads to terrible behavior due to power differences. Men AND Women willing to take advantage of less powerful people.
I have a female friend who was sexually harrassed by a female VC, and again the same dynamics played out. Its not about gender but primal human desires and power.
I'm amused by the the apparent controversy of my original post (as measured by the fairly broad swings in net upvotes/downvotes). Apparently the apparent common sense I voiced therein doesn't gel with the silent majority quite as much as I'd be comfortable with.
"Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."
From the EEOC, the which is the U.S. federal agency that is responsible for civil rights in the workplace:
"It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general.
Both victim and the harasser can be either a woman or a man, and the victim and harasser can be the same sex.
Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).
The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer."
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 347 ms ] threadEDIT: Ah, it seems going on record is necessary to actually bring charges to someone.
EDIT: Thanks for the clarification, all. As many have pointed out, there's also the harassment portion. I guess my question is now: how do you prove intent? I know nothing about due process, so I'm curious. I suppose in this case it really matters what it says in the texts.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/assault
edit: For reference the actual physical acts are battery in the legal sense.
They help move the needle from simply "He said; she said."
Some types of sexual assault can be proven by medical examination, if the exam happens soon after, although many actions that qualify as sexual assault will either not show up on an exam, or can be proven to be "sexual" but not "assault." However, in cases like this where there is an ongoing relationship before and after the incident, the text messages will often refer to physical events. These can be evidence that a physical event happened, and what the attitudes and beliefs of the involved people were towards the incident at the time. Although even that is still a large amount of he-said-she-said and drawing large inferences from circumstantial data.
Sexual harassment law only applies to the workplace.
An action need not be legally actionable to be newsworthy, or to be important for people who might want to know of their risk of being subjected to similar action.
He is accused of sexual assault and harassment. The particular harassment is, in principle, more readily demonstrable (though perhaps not legally actionable, “sexual harassment” short of assault isn't always illegal, though it may well be newsworthy, without an employment relationship.)
OTOH, in the case of a VC against people seeking funding, some forms of what would analogous to quid pro quo sexual harassment in employment could shade into the crime of soliciting prostitution.
In a legal case (which is not now pending from any information published, but that could change), any facts from which an observer could infer that the intent at issue was more likely than it would be in the absence of those facts are evidence (providing that they aren't inadmissible for other reasons.)
Legal proof isn't mathematical proof; in general, the ways you'd forms belief about something in your daily life are how it is “proved” in a court of law.
The degree of certainty a juror is expected to have for a conviction in a criminal cases is very high, but that's not a matter of how it is proved, but how conclusively it must be proved.
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but due process exists for a reason. We should reserve judgement until the investigation progresses further.
They have fucking text messages to back their story up. Are those easy to fabricate too, when it comes to rich and powerful people?
My comment was a bit too female-focused. It wasn't about she-said's or a female conspiracy, but rather the ease of getting people to smear someone that has enemies.
It's hard not to notice that the claim of sexual harassment is as equally damaging now as being called a communist was in the 50's. It's obviously quite different, but the damage is identical. And when it comes to something so powerful, we should at least respect due process.
It's not, and it's not.
Communist witch-hunts were conducted by secret, back-channel, anonymous snitches, and were all about guilt by association. Accusations of sexual harassment put the accuser incredibly out in the open.
They were also largely used as a weapon against the weak and unconnected - people without the resources, or even awareness necessary to fight back against secret blacklists.
Not to mention that there is a colossal distinction between blackballing people for being communists, and blackballing them for being sexual harassers.
And besides, if history's any indication, the latter don't have problem making a living. There's always someone willing to take a chance.
Communist witch-hunts were conducted by secret, back-channel, anonymous snitches, and were all about guilt by association. Accusations of sexual harassment put the accuser incredibly out in the open.
It was both. A lot of accusations were made in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, on public record, and those accusers were very visible. For example you can read through http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6458/ and see that Emil Lustig, Robert Burman, Herbert K. Sorrell and a number of others had no doubt about who they were accused by - they were accused by Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney.
There was also accusation by rumor mill, which might or might not ever lead to a public accusation.
I've seen both modes with sexual harassment claims. Indeed it is not infrequent that, as with this case, the public claims only emerge after someone has been tarred and feathered by anonymous accusations in the rumor mill.
They were also largely used as a weapon against the weak and unconnected - people without the resources, or even awareness necessary to fight back against secret blacklists.
Most of the people caught up had little actual power. The same is true today by virtue of the simple fact that most of us have very little actual power. But there were very prominent people affected of accusations of being communists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Aaron Copeland. Which is again no different than today.
Furthermore the THREAT of being called a communist was used against very prominent people. That was the heart of Joseph McCarthy's power - powerful people were sincerely afraid of him.
Not to mention that there is a colossal distinction between blackballing people for being communists, and blackballing them for being sexual harassers.
There is a distinction, but I suspect that it goes the other way from what you think.
Communists stood accused of being covert agents of a hostile foreign power that we were at undeclared war with. Their purported aim was to undermine and destroy our country to ensure the victory of said foreign power. And there really were such covert agents. For example Harold Ware, Julius Rosenberg, and Aldrich Ames - all real people and all actually agents of the USSR who worked to undermine the security of the USA.
Sexual harassers stand accused of a personal crime whose legal status is not dissimilar to burglary or arson. They are clearly bad people but not an existential threat to our country.
Which accusation sounds worse?
And besides, if history's any indication, the latter don't have problem making a living. There's always someone willing to take a chance.
Can you provide stories of accused communists starving to death due to the blacklist?
They were more likely to commit suicide for lack of work. See: Philip Loeb and Bartley Crum, for two.
The analogy remains accurate.
Should you doubt the analogy, I strongly recommend reading http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/14/when-kids-are-a... to see how the modern "sexual assault equivalent of the communist blacklist catches children in its net, and what the impact is. Do you think that this is rare? Read https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227763.pdf for evidence that 1/4 of registered sex offenders were themselves juveniles at the time of the offense.
No, and if you see anyone hauling an actual, physical tree around to nail him to, you can tell them I said that.
But commenting based on one's perception of the facts based on the published allegations and responses is not, even remotely, analogous to crucifixion.
I'm genuinely curious, and the question is in good faith.
I think people should be conscious of the uncertainty in the facts when commenting based on limited information, but that he is entitled to no more deference from private actors than, essentially, avoiding libelous statements (those known to be false or made with with reckless disregard for truth.)
General private commentary is not, morally or ethically, dependent on an investigation.
And, in any case, an investigation has occurred, preceding publication of the story.
It's especially relevant given how all of this played out. (See the other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621765 and subsequent admission https://www.axios.com/justin-caldbeck-takes-indefinite-leave...)
Any ideas for recognizing situations where a bit of skepticism is warranted vs situations like this? In this case, I'm a little saddened that my comments caused some more stress for the founders. One of them personally came to correct me upthread.
I think it's still important in general to reserve judgement and to wait for due process, but is there much reason to hold so fast to those views anymore? The speed at which accusations can be confirmed or denied seems to have increased to the point where it might not be so bad to just assume that the truth will usually come out. I don't know.
Skepticism is always warranted, this situation was no exception (even though the admission that has since emerged seems to implicitly confirm the reports.)
But skepticism doesn't mean don't form and express a view on the facts based on what information you do have, it means be aware that you don't have the whole picture and refrain from action that is too extreme for the information you have, and remain willing to revise your opinion as more information becomes available.
The last bit takes active effort to counter confirmation bias and the desire to avoid having to admit error.
> I think it's still important in general to reserve judgement and to wait for due process,
Even in government, “due process” isn't a binary thing; what process is due varies based on the action being taken and other elements of context. Even if we extend the concept to include private action, things like posting a comment expressing concern would have much less process due than any substantive government action.
Even a government agent acting in their official capacity doesn't have to wait for a conviction to say that they believe someone is guilty.
But @sillysaurus3 basically said that there is no amount of evidence that could satisfy "reasonable doubt" with this statement:
> When it involves rich or powerful people, the ability to get many she-said's becomes easier.
This statement basically says that gathering multiple claims and multiple accounts/allegations cannot be proof against a rich or powerful person because of some inherent propensity of women to come out of the woodwork to lodge harassment/assault claims against rich/powerful/famous people. So once you are rich and powerful you immediately win all he-said/she-said situations because people have to give you the "benefit of the doubt." (not that I agree with this statement)
It's not a controversial observation that rich and powerful people can acquire enemies, and some of them have been slandered by the press.
It was difficult to separate that situation from this one. I assure you, I'm a reasonable and thoughtful person and it's not fair to say that I basically said there's no amount of evidence that can satisfy a claim against a powerful person.
The original comment was "Maybe we should wait to see how this plays out before making any judgements." Nothing more.
This whole conversation was a request for more information, so if you're going to throw me under the bus for it, you'll just push those who want to ask harmless questions further into the camp of "I shouldn't say a word." And when people have beliefs that seem reasonable to them, this can be a harmful situation when those beliefs are false.
For example, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that a journalist shouldn't wield the power to destroy someone's reputation without any independent oversight. It's a simple proposition with simple, obvious consequences. But pointing out that no investigation is going to occur helped me realize that it's an absurd standard.
EDIT: Also, most of my comments received around 8 upvotes. They've been bouncing up and down, but the point is, clearly a lot of people felt similarly. So by voicing these concerns, it probably changed a lot more minds than my own. Talking this out and being open with it seems like a good thing.
> When it involves rich or powerful people, the ability to get many she-said's becomes easier.
when taken at face value is implying (indirectly) that it takes more "she-saids" to make a claim against a rich/powerful person believable than it would for a "normal" person.
It doesn't even have to have anything to do with women. It just implies that even multiple claims by separate parties might not be enough when the target is someone rich or powerful (or famous) if it's a "my word against yours" type situation. From my point of view, that's just giving more power to the rich or powerful.
Most of the men replying in this thread have an incorrect "prior" (in the statistical sense) of the odds that a woman will experience serious sexual harassment in the workplace. This prior emerges, one presumes, because we look at ourselves as the model for estimating that behavior, think "there's no way in hell I'd behave that way, so this must be really rare", and assign a relatively low probability to the occurrence.
That prior is incorrect. There are enough harassers out there, each of whom harms multiple people, that, in fact, the average experience is of having been inappropriately approached, harassed, or outright assaulted, to the point where [1] a woman has a lifetime 1 in 6 chance of being the victim of rape or attempted rape, and in one survey, 1 in 3 women reported having experienced workplace sexual harassment. [2] Those numbers may be wrong a bit in either direction, but the decimal point is probably in the right place.
When we hear a claim like "X was sexually harassed by Y", we evaluate the likelihood of that statement in light of our own experience and prior - and assign to it a much lower likelihood of it being true than the true probability. In other words, you mentally calculate: P(harassed | X says harassed). By bayes rule, that's equal to P(X says harassed | harassed) * P(harassed) / P(X says harassed). So when our mental model of P(harassed) is too low, our estimate of P(harassed | X says harassed) is too low. And thus arises excessive disbelief in claims that are more likely to be true.
So, my very geeky suggestion for this is: Be very precise about the question you're asking about and the assumptions that go into it. You can often find a way to validate those assumptions to check what you're asking about.
[1] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/19/1-in-3-women-sexual...
https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/task_force/harassment/upload/repor...
pdf page 15 (document internal page 8): "Based on testimony to the Select Task Force and various academic articles, we learned that anywhere from 25% to 85% of women report having experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. ... We found that when employees were asked, in surveys using a randomly representative sample (called a “probability sample”), if they had experienced “sexual harassment,” without that term being defined in the survey, approximately one in four women (25%) reported experiencing “sexual harassment” in the workplace. This percentage was remarkably consistent across probability surveys. When employees were asked the same question in surveys using convenience samples (in lay terms, a convenience sample is not randomly representative because it uses respondents that are convenient to the researcher (e.g., student volunteers or respondents from one organization)), with sexual harassment not being defined, the rate rose to 50% of women reporting they had been sexually harassed."
The cited EEOC report has fairly extensive citations backing up its claims.
As I said - I have no specific numbers I believe are The One True Answer, but it's fairly clear from a variety of sources that the decimal points are in approximately the right place. For the purpose of what I was discussing, 25% and 85% are approximately the same ("Very much higher than one might guess if we use our own behavior as a model").
Do you apply this standard in other areas? If someone tells you they had chicken for lunch, do you say, "Hold on, let's wait for the investigation to determine what you actually had for lunch"? Or if six people told you they had chicken for lunch?
If this guy could say "I was never even alone in the same conference room with any of these women, let alone at a bar where any impropriety is a matter of their word against mine" I think this story wouldn't have run.
Seriously guys, when you're at work, just fucking work and all this bullshit magically goes away. No dating, no uncomfortable discussions of race or politics or sex, just do your job and go home. Talk about tabs versus spaces if you need to spice up a Friday afternoon lull.
For example see Mike Pence: “In 2002, Mike Pence told The Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/mike-pences-m...
I dispute this very much. For example, you have people like Chris Brown that can turn their girlfriend into a human punching bag... and nothing happens to them. They just say that they are sorry, and keep in making money hand over fist (and even get women on Twitter saying things like "he can punch me any day").
It is documented that he was beating the crap out her, and he has suffered no ill consequences, or lack of popularity. I'm pretty sure that this does not match up with being called a communist in 1950's America.
> No, I don't. But do you think it's reasonable to crucify him before any investigation happens?
He has come out with a statement basically admitting to it after completely denying it.
I believe you are wrong about this. Text messages are easier to fabricate than other forms of digital evidence, and less risky than something like paying people to pretend to be witnesses.
I have nothing to gain from this. I am not suing. I'm founder & CEO of a Greylock-funded startup. Thankfully Greylock has come out in full support, but I didn't know that beforehand and was very nervous when I decided to do the article. The only way that any reporter would agree to publish was if I used my real name. I knew Justin was continuing to harass women, and this was the only way to stop him.
sillysaurus3, you may be thinking of cases where women go to accuse a "rich or powerful" person and are trying to get something out of it. I had nothing to gain and a lot to lose.
"The unfortunate truth is that I simply could not write this until Albergotti published, as I didn't have anyone on the record, which is virtually essential from a journalistic perspective. "
https://www.projectcallisto.org/
Victims report incidents, an their info is not shared at the time of report. Victims can elect to have their reports unsealed if subsequent accusations are made against the same individual. This mirrors the current status quo, where it's less common for victims to speak out if there are no other cases to corroborate, but makes discovery of other cases more feasible.
It's being rolled out specifically in the context of college sexual assault, but I imagine the approach could work elsewhere too.
I can only imagine how stressful a situation like this can be, so I certainly didn't mean to increase it. Best of luck.
This is about calling out shitty but legal behavior. The VC didn't even deny he was lecherous, just that he didn't do anything illegal. That's tacit confirmation that it did happen.
https://www.axios.com/pro-rata-2446752020.html
One journalist got six sources, three on the record, and claims to have verified parts of the stories (such as reviewing message history on phones), which led him to have the confidence to go to press.
It just seems like an unnecessary risk/vulnerability. Of course, there's also the fact that by going on the record you also encourage others to do the same, which is an immeasurable benefit.
I know it must have been a hard decision to make because you were probably worried about how you & your company would be treated afterwards but this is going to help open so many people's eyes.
Not only does naming sources give more credibility, it also doesn't rely fully on the credibility of journalists. You can only say "it's true, just trust me" without being able to back it up so many times.
Testimony of anonymous sources are useful as corroboration, not as the main evidence. The sources here don't need to fear for their lives, nor are they able to produce documents to back up their claims.
I do not wish to diminish the courage that was needed to go on the record here. In fact, this is even more risky because hard evidence is so hard to come by in cases like this.
So it happened, it's just that he doesn't realize how wildly unacceptable it was.
This is an interesting comment and sheds some light on what is happening here.
There is no need to be publicly named in a news article to bring charges in a court of law; but in a court of law there is a clear and regular process for evaluating charges; and one does actually submit to the possibility of retaliation in a limited form: false accusations carry punishments of their own.
Justin has already quit. In some sense, charges were brought in the court of public opinion -- and for these to have any weight, there must be some element of credibility attached to them. Journalists are not cops and just quoting "unnamed sources" is not enough to substantiate the idea that someone should lose their job, in part because unnamed sources accept no scrutiny and no risk. Attaching one's name to something like this is the only way to lend any weight to it, in the absence of any judicial process.
different cultures have different standards for appropriateness and harrasement: you are trying to not be offensive and so used the world "girl", and someone else is offended because you didn't use the word "woman."
To be clear, I'm not talking about the harassment case here, I'm talking about the "call them women" comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
I wonder what kind of significant context was missing? They asked for it?
/sarcasm
"I think they're full of shit, but I apologize anyway"
This is his statement in full:
Obviously, I am deeply disturbed by these allegations. While significant context is missing from the incidents reported by The Information, I deeply regret ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable. The fact is that I have been privileged to have worked with female entrepreneurs throughout my career and I sincerely apologize to anyone who I made uncomfortable by my actions. There’s no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it.
How do you get "I think they're full of shit" out of that? This reads to me like a tacit admission that if anything else, his behavior is inappropriate and sketchy by any conventional sense. Appropriate and professional behavior does not need "significant context" to back it up.
"I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week. To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement. Still, I need to say it: I am so, so sorry." ... "I will be seeking professional counseling as I take steps to reflect on my behavior with and attitude towards women."
That's about as far as a person can go without making an admissible confession, and seems to clear up basically all doubt.
It also has a long-term chilling effect on women in technology and entrepreneurship.
I am surprised by the lack of outrage over this behavior.
Not that it will matter in the end. Recent events have shown that you can flat out admit to drugging women in order to have sex with them and still be acquitted if you have adequate stature and fame. (Ok, I should be more fair. A mistrial is not an acquittal.)
And as pointed out below, accusations are evidence in the court of public opinion.
Quaaludes was a party drug in its day, taken specifically for its effects. The fact that he acquired the drug to have sex with women doesn't imply he used it to rape them.
I've never known any guy ever to give a girl Benadryl. If she is sick, take care of her. Don't dose her and have sex with her.
- While at lightspeed, accusations from a female founder at a portfolio company was serious enough that the "situation rose to the broader board level, with the ultimate resolution resulting in non-disclosure agreements on all sides."
- While at Bain Ventures, a female founder accused Justin of inviting him over to his hotel room to "finish the conversation" even knowing she had a BF (not that being single would make it at all appropriate).
- Two other female founders with similar stories that don't want to go on the record
I also think it's worthy to note that all his (public) accusers are asian, as is his wife.
Occam's razer...
Caldbeck has apologized, taken leave, and did not contest any of the claims.
How about we wait for due process first before we start tearing into it? There's a reason why "innocent until proven guilty" is an important part of our society and comments like these undermine that.
Due process is for any government action affecting life, liberty, or property, including civil proceedings.
But still not relevant to private reactions, though certainly one could argue that some of the principles which motivate due process protections have moral relevance in a private context as well.
Edit: here is his statement
Obviously, I am deeply disturbed by these allegations. While significant context is missing from the incidents reported by The Information, I deeply regret ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable. The fact is that I have been privileged to have worked with female entrepreneurs throughout my career and I sincerely apologize to anyone who I made uncomfortable by my actions. There’s no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it.
Judge for yourself. Innocent, non-harassers, don't apologize when accused of such vile things (especially married, "family" men with kids - a daughter nonetheless).
Why the need to judge? Whether he's guilty or innocent, it's a tragic story for all involved, and it's not our job to make that decision: this is why we have a legal system on which our society is founded.
Now, if I had a direct relationship with Mr. Caldbeck I would certainly make my own estimations and act accordingly, but I don't understand why everyone feels this need to act as judge and jury of everything that happens. That tendency isn't one of the better aspects of our nature.
No, we do not. Our society is not founded on the legal system; the legal system is one feature of our society, intended to deal with the most serious failures of normal operations.
Or are you also interested in determining sentencing and throwing the switch?
You had me up until this point. There are plenty of married-with-children men and women in consenting open/poly/swinger/etc relationships; we don't know enough to judge their marriage.
This doesn't make sexual harassment ok, but maybe sharpen your pitchforks with a little less glee?
You are free to judge for yourself, but from the Information and Axios article, there does seem to be a preponderance of evidence to suggest Justin is either a serial sexual harasser/predator, at worst, or a totally inappropriate jerk-douchebag, at the very least. Both deserve condemnation. Bad actors need to be rooted out and ostracized, especially bad actor VCs.
That is correct in cases where harassment has occurred, yes.
In cases of false accusation, though, the accuser has nearly all of the advantages. And it's not as if it never happens, either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estim...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_allegation_of_child_sexu...
Which is why due process is important both legally, and culturally. While I understand how people directly impacted by the event (and their loved ones) have neither the inclination nor the capacity to withhold judgement, mob-like indignation on the part of the public about every story which is reported is a dynamic that hasn't served us well thus far, and the situation isn't showing any signs of improving.
Else we're little better than places that hold mock trials and summary executions.
Serious accusations need to be tried in a manner that involves evidence, sworn testimony, counsel, etc., precisely because of their seriousness.
In the meantime, online conjecture by parties with no standing should probably presume innocence until guilt is found, because a mob mentality should be beneath us.
I know someone who was falsely accused of something serious–decades in prison type stuff–and the news coverage alone destroyed his business and put his family through hell.
Anyone who's opposed to capital punishment because it prevents the accused from ever finding justice should also be concerned about the effects the court of public opinion can have on someone's life, and err on the side of withholding judgement when, again, there's no reason for us to judge this person unless we have direct dealings with the individual and need to make our own estimations out of self-interest.
What's happening in this thread isn't about self-interest, it's about self-satisfaction. That's neither useful nor wise.
You're making a reasonable, but I would argue, pedantic argument (as it applies to this situation). Caldbeck is not being tried in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion. The standards are looser, that's just a part of living in a community with others, there is a natural bit of self-policing. It's part of our instinctual nature as humans; we pattern-match, it can get us in trouble at times, but it's gotten us this far as a species.
If he is innocent he is free to defend himself and provide counter-evidence. He is being rightfully pilloried given the many claims, over a long period of time, against him. The abundance of evidence, must be considered.
Look at the Bill Cosby case. Legally, innocent, but would you leave your daughter, wife, mother alone with someone with this kind of reputation?
Waiting for the facts/verdict though, and not forming an internet mob based on whatever one person or another said, SHOULD apply anywhere.
Well, how about the law?
>We can't just let everything slide because we're perpetually waiting for more evidence.
But it's not 'sliding', it's going to court.
And it doesn't concern us anyway -- it's not like we witnessed it in real life and didn't speak out.
Stopping sexual assault should concern everyone!
Well, some downvotes should come your way for misattribution too then.
I didn't say that "Stopping sexual assault should not concern us" (or anything to that effect).
I said the case is of no concern to us. First, it's not our place to make judgements of guilt or innocence without knowing what transpired and not even knowing those people. Ee don't even know for sure whether it was actually sexual assault or not -- that's for the law to decide.
(Of course we might be suspicious of the law, or a specific court result, or the way a trial was conducted etc. But we are not even at that stage yet).
Plus, you're not stopping sexual assault by saying you are against it in an internet forum (and concerning an undecided case). Heck, even rapists would say they are "against sexual assault" in public.
Rich people use their position to attract girls all the time, it doesn't change if they are VC or not. You can always tell them that you're not interested or to get the fuck off if they insist. Besides their riches are part of who they are (it's not like they just won the lottery) -- a struggling artist or fair-trade hippie activist will also use his being as such to attract girls who are into that sort of thing.
I don't find "explicit texts" of concern either. What is this, victorian morality police? Some texts are bad because they are naughty? "I want to have sex with you" might even be more open and honest than "Let's have some coffee" (when the main reason is ending up in bed).
Threatening texts or actual sexual assault on the other hand, well, yeah, that's of concern.
And yes, I recognize that this hasn't been "proven", but really what's the chance than there's a shadowy cabal of women who start companies in order to target individual VCs. These women have little to gain from this and everything to lose. Occams razor is that he's at the very least doing something that's inappropriate.
I've heard stories from several female founders/VC's (not naming names or specific details to protect anonymity) who have experienced repeated unwelcome advances even after it was made clear they had a significant other. That's not as egregious as groping (one of the accusations in this article), but that's still sexual harassment by the letter of the law and slimy as hell every other way.
Another common theme I noticed is when the man in question stays in the gray area where individual incidents aren't clearly over the line and might not qualify legally as sexual harassment, but in context and in aggregate it's clear why a woman would feel very uncomfortable. How do you confront something like that when they can just question your perception of reality?
In all but one case, the women decided against confrontation because the man was in a much more powerful position (such as a general partner of a VC fund), and the women were afraid of retribution and risking killing their careers by taking a principled stand. They all wished they could do more, but decided they didn't want to be martyrs. That's a bad position to be in.
I think it's damning of the industry that these women have accepted silence on the matter as part of the burden of being a woman and pursuing this line of work. Granted I'm looking at this with N < 10, but everyone I've talked to shares the sentiment that it's a pattern, not a coincidence.
I'm hopeful that everything going on around Uber will move the needle enough that more people are willing to come forward.
Repeated unwelcome advances are not OK even if the person is single.
Yes, and even if the person being rejected poses no risk it's nice to spare their feelings with what amounts to a little white lie. It helps everybody save face and ideally allows the conversation to move on to other things.
Last weekend she received an unsolicited, nearly naked photo from the same male co-worker. Needless to say, he is no longer at the company.
This is sad on two counts. First, it's sad that my relative felt she couldn't report because she thought it would harm her career. It sickens me to say this, but maybe she was right. Maybe it would have harmed her career.
Second, and I've seen this before, she had to endure further harassment until he really escalated so she could report something significant enough that she felt it wouldn't harm her credibility.
Though we're discussing this through the lens of the tech industry, the most horrifying thing of all is that this isn't even a problem that's unique to tech.
It's pervasive. Still.
That's why the line is there.
I have to wonder if the woman in question made it clear she didn't appreciate the attention? It could've just been an idiot who took her silence as implicit approval, playing coy, etc, causing him to escalate to naked pictures.
And I'm not saying it's her fault, but communication goes both ways. And like I said, he may have just been an idiot.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/republicans-emergin...
That's not what they said at all.
> > That seems like a reasonable distinction to make, though both can have the same moral fault and/or commit the same crime; motivation is important when we look towards someone's character.
Stop rounding people to stereotypes.
"And I'm not saying X, but X." where "X" = "it's her fault".
Just because you deny what you're about to say in the same sentence just before you say it, doesn't mean you didn't say it.
So what is your motivation for defending someone who's trying to shift the blame to the victim of sexual harassment, and how does that speak to your character?
based upon your post I can understand why you find it difficult identifying such a thing, but there it is.
You're so blinded by your beliefs you've lost all sense of fairness and balance and mistake moderates as the being of the opposing faction.
Ignorance of the law is not a defence against it. That's right and proper.
If I believe you are happy with me taking money from your wallet, and so take some. Can you see that would be a different category morally to if I believed you would condemn such action and yet still took the money. Both situations might be theft, both might be judged morally wrong. But to me the moral character of the person in the two situations is different. And, that differences is worthy of note.
"her silence [...] causing him to escalate to naked pictures"
Don't blame the victim's silence for "causing" an "escalation" to sending naked pictures. He decided to do it of his own free will, she did not "cause" him to do that by being silent.
What prompts this kind of mentality?
Maladjusted chuds being maladjusted.
Stalking seems to be some form of obsessive behavior, and I suspect that sending pictures is an early stage of such behavior. It also describe a cure for it, ie similar cures we have when obsessive behavior makes someone a criminal.
Definitely agree with you there. I added the extra "made clear they had a significant other" since it would help to push the line even further into unacceptable territory. I don't mean to imply that the relationship status is a necessary condition for unacceptability. The fact that women have learned to use the existence of an SO as an escape rather than outright saying no reflects poorly on the men that caused the learned behavior.
IANAL, but legally it's not sexual harassment because they don't work at the same company.
Something is only sexual harassment in two cases: 1) a supervisor offers something to a subordinate in exchange for sexual favors 2) a company is found to have created a hostile work environment. In both cases it's the company that's liable, not the person or people doing the harassment. There may be some extra rules that exist in individual states, but this is the general idea.
Certainly it's bad behavior, but because there isn't any real power imbalance between entrepreneurs and VCs the problem can mostly be dealt with socially (as has happened here) rather than being a situation that requires some specific legal intervention. (Or at least that's the general legal theory.)
For example, catcalling on the street isn't illegal. It's still sexual harassment, it's still unethical, but it's not illegal.
Apparently in some instances and places it is. Follow the link.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/29/catca...
Unfortunately this isn't true, from a legal point of view; in many jurisdictions, the legal definition of SH is specifically tailored (and constrained) to "the workplace".
Mind you I'm not talking about what's "slimy", "invasive", or what infringes on one's natural rights as a human being or anything about that. But rather, the legal definition. Which doesn't always jibe with what people would or like it to be.
What I meant is that the EEOC decided to draw a line, and aside from the "in the context of a company" requirement, the behavior in the stories I've heard definitely crosses that line rather than just being an uncomfortable and sketchy situation.
I would argue however, that because VC's are holding the money and entrepreneurs are trying to raise, it might not be as bad as a boss/employee power dynamic, but the power is certainly held by the VC in the situation.
- The vast majority of highly successful companies don't raise venture. VCs need equity, entrepreneurs don't need money.
- The vast majority of companies that raise VC don't succeed.
- The vast majority of VC funds have lower than market returns.
I think the real situation is more that a lot of inexperienced founders glom onto VCs because they think that not having money is what's keeping them from succeeding.
There is also a common belief that the fact that VCs are predominantly male is creating a power imbalance that's keeping women from being more successful, despite the fact that the empirical evidence from other industries seemingly shows that there isn't much correlation between the sex of the gatekeepers and who they choose to back. E.g. LP is pretty gender balanced and most VCs are male, most literary agents and publishers are female but most published authors are male, etc. If there were more female VCs then it's possible that more women would get funded, but I think right now that theory is more of a truthclaim than anything else.
The power imbalance is pretty obvious in that kind of scenario. It's less of an imbalance if the entrepreneur is also wealthy and just raising money to share risk or build alliances.
Point is, if you have multiple millions of dollars, "do nothing" is always on the table, which isn't so for many founders.
I don't see any power imbalance that exists within the relationship here. Compare this with the laws that prevent a therapist from dating a client, which are in place because one party can take advantage of the other or blackmail them or have them involuntarily committed. That's a power imbalance.
I also think this is a very orientalist view of the industry. How many founders actually raise institutional money off just a deck each year, who don't otherwise have the skills to earn a lot of money consulting or whatever?
I'm not trying to defend the behavior here in any way, I just think that the reason why it's wrong for a VC to aggressively proposition a founder or whatever is different than, for example, what makes it wrong for an employer to have a relationship with an employee.
?? Sorry?
There is a huge power imbalance between entrepreneurs and VCs.
While I don't know the details of what happened here, there's nothing wrong or illegal about approaching someone and I'm more than a little miffed that anyone would consider it necessary (or good) to make "unwelcome advances" illegal. Yes, even unwelcome advances to married women.
human sexuality isn't that cut and dried.
Infact, I would bet that they did not say "no". Because if they did... they would have used that to support their case.
Smart that these women didn't actually level legal charges on him. Therefore they can tarnish is reputation and not experience an investigation to see who is telling the truth and therefore risk their careers.
They even pointed out that it's so common place that they didn't think it was worthy of a police investigation.
Why don't they "come out" about the hundred men that cat-called them this week alone?
Oh right, because they wouldn't get fame or have the joy of taking down a powerful man.
However, it seems to me, as a non-American, that the US is pretty hysterical on this topic. Humans make each other uncomfortable sometimes, some situations are inherently awkward, emotional anguish is inflicted on good people (I've had to fire a few... that's horrible on both sides of the desk)... there's no reason society should be ascribed the duty to guarantee that nobody ever finds themselves in situations they are not comfortable in.
As I mentioned, my partner pushed my boundaries a bit, but I'm doubleplusgood happy she did. In hindsight, my initial reticence was an error, and by persisting she allowed me the opportunity to correct that. Now our lives are significantly enhanced as a result. I don't see why such behaviour should be subject to censure. Did it make me uneasy? In a transitory way, yes. But it's part and parcel of existing in a social fabric.
And you can't ask for balance and fairness in the discussion without being told you're pro-rape or part of the problem.
No one is pro-rape, but the things being labeled as rape right now are outlandish. Rape is a violent act, it's not some jackass standing on a corner cat-calling you.
Do you have any examples? (I'd prefer some with links, please).
There is no "low morality" in a woman accepting an invitation to go on a date even in the most hidebound parts of the United States. But that's not what you mean. You don't mean "interact". You mean "screw". That you're conflating the idea of "regular, not very confident or skilled people" interacting with women with its very small subset, screwing, is telling as to your worldview and how you regard the women under discussion.
You should stop digging.
How do you have brief experiences, btw?
Context is important.
yes, technically you could consider rape to be an 'unwanted advance', but no reasonable person would ever characterize it as so. The very fact that it's characterized as an unwanted advance tells you it's not sexual harassment, it's just someone chasing another person.
http://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/legal-resources/know-your-rig...
> Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Very generally, “sexual harassment” describes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.
Federal law appears to disagree with you.
Bosses, professors, doctors, interviewers and every other situation I can think of have a bright line where it's not okay to try and romantically or sexually engage someone when you're in a context that you have power over them, even if it is ephemeral. VCs are no different.
I'm not even going to try and address groping or other forms of harassment, which are wrong even when a power dynamic doesn't exist.
This seems like a slippery slope. I can imagine malicious but careful predators who constantly test boundaries in a conscious effort to achieve a sexual goal. But I can also imagine a poor socially awkward guy who just has a severe crush, but is doing his damnedest not to say or do anything to act on it- and a woman who would be particularly sensitive to his unwanted romantic desire.
Both would be "incidents that don't cross the line but in aggregate make the woman feel uncomfortable", but the latter deserves understanding and _perhaps_ a calm discussion, but definitely not punishment.
I'm just saying, even the gray area has a spectrum- but any policies people come up with to handle this, would need to establish a threshold higher than just "a woman felt uncomfortable around a specific man", or perhaps a gentle grade of responses.
The point here was incidents that don't cross "the line", which means the location of the line is suddenly up for debate, so you don't even know if you did something wrong.
If the line is up for debate, you would know if you did something wrong - unless you're not following the debate. If you're not following the debate, you really don't have anyone to blame but yourself.
Women are already reluctant to come forward when subjected to overt sexual harassment, let alone "gray area" harassment. I don't think anyone has to fear any kind of slippery slope here.
It is describing a continued change of standards over time, with no clearly defined end-goal other than "nobody ever feels uncomfortable".
> Towards what?
Towards a point where a woman can punish a man for being socially awkward because he has a crush.
> Will women eventually begin to feel uncomfortable about situations that are clearly not sexual?
"Clearly" is a useless word here. And sexual? What about romantic? What about platonic, but more than is welcome?
They already do feel uncomfortable as a result of unwanted attention. I've seen it happen. The person I was replying to was suggesting a world where that is actionable.
> Women are already reluctant to come forward when subjected to overt sexual harassment, let alone "gray area" harassment.
Some are reluctant, which is regrettable and we should support them. Some are not reluctant. And some are eager, in hope of a payday. All of those exist.
> I don't think anyone has to fear any kind of slippery slope here.
When a person is discussing a world where even the nebulously defined gray area is legally actionable, and the only standard is "a woman felt uncomfortable" - yes.
It seems like you're replying viscerally to the idea that sexual harassment is not real, or should not be punished? I never suggested such a thing. I just think that if we're going to try and un-blur the gray area, then we need objectively defined standards.
Why should that even be a factor? Unwanted is unwanted, whether they're in a committed relationship or not is not relevant at all.
Parent post included that because these threads are full of arseholes who say things like "he didn't know, why didn't she just tell him?"
This is where professionalism and propriety come in. One's behavior should simply be well outside the gray area and straying into it should, itself, be grounds for confrontation.
That doesn't actually fix anything, you're just defining the gray area to be further to one side. If people actually did that then expectations would change and more innocuous behavior would fall into the gray area, requiring you to move the line again.
The gray area exists because not everybody agrees where the line is.
In some cultures it is illegal for a man and a woman who are not married to even be alone in a room together. In some cultures physical contact between acquaintances is normal behavior. In a multicultural society, whose culture should have the force of law?
This gray area exists because the law needs to operate under the presumption of innocence, defining crimes unambiguously and prosecuting them with due regard for reasonable doubt -- it is deliberately narrow and permissive, because the state is very powerful and if not held to strict limits it becomes very dangerous. However, those of us who wish to have a good social and professional reputation shouldn't expect to maintain it while doing things that are "barely legal"; and those who witness us doing so should not feel that those kinds of things are not to be mentioned or corrected merely because they are not illegal.
That is the theory everyone refers to when they're trying to justify imposing harsh penalties.
Have you read the laws that Congress actually passes? It would be nice if they actually lived up to that standard.
And you can't get out of the problem by appealing to a reputational shadow enforcement system. If reputational harm wasn't real or powerful then no one would be interested in imposing it. Imposing real penalties with a weak standard of proof on marginal behavior is equally problematic regardless of whether the penalties are formally imposed by the state. And today's attitudes become tomorrow's laws.
Gray areas are gray because they contain both baby and bathwater.
If something is clearly wrong it's easy to make it illegal (and it almost always already is), and if it isn't clearly wrong then we don't have any special knowledge the state lacks that allows us to mete out penalties in borderline cases without punishing good people.
There is a grey area like that but that is not the grey area I am talking about.
To a consider an example you mentioned previously: it's fine to just not ever touch your coworkers. Another example is ethnic jokes: these are not illegal but do you need to do this at work? Staying out of the gray area is not a matter of harsh punishment but rather on insisting on professionalism and decorum.
It is only when people have strayed so far from that -- normalising deviance for themselves -- that you find yourself in a place where harsh punishment is even thinkable. One would not need or apply harsh punishments for matters of decorum.
You're assuming the benefit of staying away from the line is greater than the cost of losing every net-positive thing that isn't entirely white.
It's possible for a workplace to be a sterile environment where one turns one's wrench in silence without human connection, but that isn't how people should have to spend the majority of their waking hours.
And again, that policy is a ratchet. What people take offense to is calibrated by expectations and past experience. If you succeed in exerting social pressure to keep everyone away from the line, you move the Overton window and create a new gray area in what used to be accepted professional behavior. Continue to apply the same line-avoiding policy and you have a ratchet that leads to the imposition of radically Puritanical positions.
For example, tipping -- I honestly can not remember the last time I saw anyone not do it. That doesn't mean tips keep going up and up and up...
How do you explain that?
> Nonetheless, the standard percentage to tip waitstaff has risen over the decades. According to a PayScale study, the median tip is now 19.5%. In recent years, some waiters and restaurants have suggested that 25% or even 30% is the proper gratuity level, and that a 20% tip, once considered generous, is just average today. As recently as 2008, though, an Esquire tipping guide stated "15 percent for good service is still the norm" at American restaurants. An American Demographics study from 2001 found that three-quarters of Americans tipped an average of 17% on restaurant bills, while 22% tipped a flat amount no matter what the bill, and the gratuity left averaged $4.67. Meanwhile, in 1922, Emily Post wrote, "You will not get good service unless you tip generously," and "the rule is ten per cent."
Presumably as a result of most people not wanting to leave a below average tip, which clips the low side of average from the distribution and thereby raises the average over time.
It's very common.
This story was posted yesterday and it got flagged. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14613890) When I saw that, I thought the Hacker News community did not care.
I am glad to see supportive comments like yours in this new thread.
Don't despair, I think we do care. :)
Don't despair, I think we do care. :)
Now the question is, what motivates you to seek out a relatively far-fetched justification for this man's possible innocence?
I realize this isn't a legal matter at this point but I'm speaking of the principle(s) on which those features are based.
It almost always seems to become a case of "you're either with us or you're against us," so let's try to steer clear of that.
He looks pretty attractive - maybe there were other cases were the women were also attracted to him.
Maybe women also unconsciously flirted to make him more likely to give him money, and he misinterpreted. (No, women would never do that - they would never take advantage of their attractiveness, whereas men will usually take advantage of their "position of power", right?).
Pressuring women for sex is not generally that much fun, much better if they are actually into you. I would expect only a low number of psychopaths would enjoy sex with a woman who isn't into it. Therefore it seems more likely he expected them to be into it.
It seems pretty normal to develop attraction after a while of intensive talking.
What makes you think my "justification" is more far-fetched than your interpretation? Your prejudice that in general, "men are pigs"?
In general, people want to feel good - so he may have convinced himself that the women were into him.
Edit: well I am not trolling, but HN doesn't want me to comment further (as in, it doesn't allow me to). I think as long as people are not willing to have a honest discussion about the issue, and rather cling to their prejudices, it will never change. But as you wish, I will go away. Enjoy your circle-jerking.
>and now dang is going to harass him in an attempt to get him off the site.
lol
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
Edit: I wrote some more downthread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14627388, if anyone wants more to read about how we approach this.
HN has been a superb place for discussion of issues relating to workplace harassment and it seems that having certain ideas forbidden is likely to harm the discussion.
There's a difference between expressing a view and setting this place on fire. There's no view that can't be expressed substantively and thoughtfully if one has a mind to, but it takes work. Throwing fuel on the fire or sand in the gears is different; that's vandalism, and it destroys the free exchange of views by ruining the container—the community and site—that supports it. The container is fragile and needs protecting.
People mostly do this without realizing how destructive it is. Dealing with it requires moderators whose role is to protect the commons. That's how HN still exists as a place for (hopefully) thoughtful discussion. We'll never all agree about where to draw the line every time, but that's secondary to the point that someone needs to.
A comment crosses into trolling when it does things that are known to ruin thoughtful discussion, whether intentionally or not. I chided the commenter upthread because they were going much further than merely (say) arguing against a rush to judgment about the OP—they were signalling bad faith with polemical swipes (e.g. 'Your prejudice that in general, "men are pigs"'). That is not thoughtful discussion, it's destructive of it.
When we ask commenters not to do this, reactions vary. Some react by taking responsibility and learning how not to produce such effects in online conversation. Many HN users have gone through that process. I had to go through it myself (it took years); I used to optimize for snark and venting as much as the next person. If HN has anything superb about it, to use your word, it's because of the community members who do this work.
Other commenters prefer the melodrama approach. They proclaim they're being 'censored' for their 'unpopular opinions' by mods who 'can't handle the truth', then storm out the front door with an 'enjoy your circlejerk' or two. (Typically they then walk around the building, come back in through the back door and start over with a new account.) This is the Pythonesque 'help help I'm being repressed' phase of the internet cycle of life. It's eternal and will never go way, but I'm confident that in most cases, most neutral readers observe the same signs of bad faith that mods were reacting to in the first place. How do I know that? Because otherwise our job would be impossible.
In the end the root distinction isn't about what view a commenter has on this or that topic, it's the difference between users who comment with care for the whole and those who don't. Sometimes that's because they're so agitated that they lack the self-control to do anything other than toss a hot potato into the thread. (It happens to everyone.) But often it's just that they haven't yet learned about this dynamic and why it matters. Once somebody gets that, they're motivated to participate in the community quite differently—but it isn't a question of changing their views, becoming more 'conformist' or 'groupthink' or any of that sort of thing people say. It's more akin to not littering in a city park, or to taking good care of a campsite.
To my mind, the price of admission into a serious conversation about this is some awareness of how prevalent these biases are, including in one's own case. They determine nearly everything. Mostly all we really think is "what I like is good, what I dislike is bad, and others are good or bad to the extent that they agree". That goes along with "I'm a noble freethinker nobly standing apart from this groupthink echo chamber" and the associated, "You should moderate this forum to defend those I agree with and smite those I disagree with." These feelings are so compelling that it's hard to wriggle into any freedom from them. One should make the effort anyhow. People who make that effort start to see the problem differently, even as we all retain our biases.
There are many counterintuitive aspects to this. One is that community cohesion remains an issue even when 'popular opinion' (assuming it exists and you know what it is) is wrong. There are ways of disputing popular opinion that cause harm even when they're right; it isn't a simple matter of just 'stating the unpopular truth' (assuming it exists and you know what it is) and then lording it over or angrily lashing out at those who 'can't handle it'. You actually have a greater responsibility by virtue of the fact that you know, or believe you know, more truth. Most people who fancy themselves to be expressing an unpopular truth don't take that responsibility—on the contrary, they use that truth as a weapon, to vent grievances, gain status, and so on. This harms discussion and community even if you are right about both popular opinion and the truth. Indeed, it does more harm the more right you are, because then you're discrediting the truth with your behavior and gifting the majority with an easy excuse to keep rejecting the minority view.
For the record, I don't agree with that commenter's opinion. And I also believe your actions on these moderation issues are well-intended (plus you're doing a great job, probably especially on the invisible parts, kudos).
But for all the talk about not throwing oil on the fire, maybe it's smart if you then also refrain from calling people "trolls" or "trolling" when they're not intentionally doing so. To use your words, it signals bad faith. Especially if you consider that such a person is probably in a bad or angry mood[0].
In fact, I don't think "trolling effect" is a very good term to use either. That's probably because I carry a sort of romantic idea about my dealings advanced and skilled trolls. Similar to how many people here feel about the term "hacker". Yes there exist criminal hackers, just like there exist mentally insane unstable bad evil trolls. But there are also performance artists[1], or you know, memetic/social hackers. Still not always good, and almost never welcome. They can use their eristic skills to make stuck up people lose face and/or their shit. They can bring to light collective hypocrisy by placing a very careful wedge in a community. Same reasons we need comedy, satire or jesters. Or just cause a scene for the art of it. If they wanted to, they could "set this place on fire" without snark, polemic or even knowing it was them that caused someone else to push a button and whoooommff.
Just like you don't call someone who steals your USB-stick a "hacker" but a "thief", someone who uses polemic swipes and snark because they angrily voice an unpopular opinion on HN, is not (necessarily) a troll. And to them it comes across as if you're just calling them names, which does not create listeners.
Just call it what it is. The "trolling effects" you talk about have a proper word actually, and are called "flame wars". Even better would be if you'd take some of the well-worded snippets from your post above (and possibly previous ones), for copy-pasting the relevant bits, because well it's not really more than about five typical situations on HN, is it?
Since you want to affect this person's behaviour, it helps to be specific, instead of using a catch-all term like "trolling". Pointing out "snark" and "polemic swipes" apply in this case, because that's undeniable and you can quote the words. Calling it "signalling bad faith" is a very bad idea for hopefully obvious reasons[2].
Finally, about your last paragraph. Of course you don't want conformist groupthink either. But just like the so-called "troll", your intentions may not line up with what effects you're causing. Depending on how carefully you tread, you may in fact be inciting groupthink, and ironically this attracts (proper) trolls because they love poking that kind of self-assuredness.
[0] often unrelated stress, but triggered on subjects they feel strongly about--I get this myself as well, but I usually manage to write such words in a textfile, that I keep in a very private very angry folder somewhere (throwing away the vitriol is less cathartic to me, and sometimes there's some useful eloquent bits that come in useful at a calmer moment).
[1] still not welcome here on HN, which I understand, but more for the same reasons why reddit-style pun-threads are not welcome here either.
[2] Because (especially in their eyes) they could say the same about you. Also snark and polemic swipes seem to be called out a lot more consistently when it involves "unpopular opinions on HN" (which exist), I notice this mys...
The two topics I enjoy which are continually controversial are the "Russian Hacking" story and stories about Wikileaks. Wikileaks has been an interest for many HN readers for years, and so it's interesting to see how recent events have created political polarization where none existed before.
I've noticed that some users will use the tactic of shaming to try to make a point in a discussion. It's hard to describe this, but it's much more like the sort of comments one finds in other discussion fora than what is typically found on HN. Politics brings these out, yet I would be very disappointed if political topics were discouraged on HN, since political ideas and participation are an important part of citizenship and community. And it may take the sort of retort one would get on HN to break someone out of a lazy "comfort zone" belief that they hold simply because it's popular.
Thanks for your efforts moderating, I know it is a thankless duty, but your comment makes me realize that there are likely threads that I don't participate in which get much worse.
Sometimes people who are keen to defend harassers might do so because they exhibit similar behaviours themselves or hold similar beliefs and want to defend themselves.
Here is an example from this very story: Caldbeck tweeted in support of Uber: "Also mob mentality w @Uber right now. Guilty before proven innocent on everything".
I genuinely think it's worth self-examining one's motivations if someone's first instinct is to defend the man in such a case. I say this without trying to accuse anyone, sexism is subtle and affects everyone, and it's through self examination that we can grow and improve.
Ad hominem being acceptable on a few pet issues is a value system I've noticed that many people, including you, have. I would ask why. I've had this turned on me, too, hence why I'm not surprised; I'm reminded of defense lawyers who receive death threats and actual violence, as well.
When everything becomes sexual harassment, how can you trust accusations of sexual harassment?
It's like when people use the word violence to describe words, or call it rape when a man says something they don't like.
How can you trust the allegations in that sort of an environment?
It makes those of us who are a bit more moderate start to distrust everything we hear in terms of these loaded words. I've said this many times, but when you start using these words for every little thing, you do a disservice to those who are ACTUALLY being sexually harassed, raped, etc.
I for one cannot wait for this hysteria to end. I obviously don't believe men should be sexually harassing women (or vice versa), but the current climate has gone off the deep end. Things that would be considered simply misunderstandings, ackwardness, and so forth are getting people (mostly men) completely lambasted.
The "misunderstandings" about which you wring your hands are weaponized against women in the spirit of "don't be hysterical". You're not being moderate when you express viewpoints like this. You're just rationalizing bad shit. And, judging from your sterling work throughout this thread, you know it, too.
- CS Lewis.
Why do you assume it was his (or her?) first instinct? This HN thread has already well-established that Caldbeck's behavior is repugnant. Do we need every single poster to +1, or can people propose questions for discussion without being accused of being part of the problem?
You're implying he supports sexual harassment.
He's bringing up a perfectly valid question for discussion: what if the person has an outsized opinion of his attractiveness, and also happens to be a VC -- is that still sexual harassment or just stupidity?
Well, the answer is that in this case it's still harassment.
And so now there's question, answer, discussion, etc. No need to accuse the poster of being complicit himself in harassment.
This type of behavior is about boundaries. Boundaries are about power.
His behavior crossed what our culture generally says are the boundaries of a professional situation. That's what makes it inappropriate; it doesn't matter what he believed.
It's totally acceptable to meet someone in a social situation and, after a bit of due diligence, it's totally acceptable to ask them out.
But that's not what this was.
I also reject the notion of "position of power" just because he is a VC. Nobody is forced to take his money. You could just as well say the applying women are in a position of power because the VC desperately needs somebody to invest in. I guess a startup should avoid seeking investments where the investor is "in a position of power", anyway.
I am also not justifying his behavior, obviously he made mistakes. But I reject the immediate interpretation of "man abusing his power to pressure women into sex".
The "boundaries" talk is also not really helpful - at some point, somebody has to make a move. If their estimate of the situation is correct, they are not "crossing boundaries". Otherwise they are crossing boundaries and need to withdraw.
Grabbing a knee under the table is of course not a good first move, but we might be missing context.
Nobody's forced to work for a boss that harasses them, yet making unwanted sexual advances against someone who reports to you is illegal as hell.
You have a poor legal understanding of sexual harassment. I strongly suggest that you educate yourself as to what kind of advances and relationships are, and are not appropriate in a professional setting.
* I hate to think that you might have trouble understanding this, but we're not talking about dating a co-worker. We're not talking about a pitch that didn't succeed followed by three months of radio silence followed by them meeting at a social event and realizing that they are attracted to each other.
* The mutual realization that you are attracted to a coworker is not the same as sexual harassment, it's not the same as being asked out by your manager, and it's not the same as receiving unwelcome sexual advances during a pitch meeting from a man who works at VC firm.
* Asking an available coworker out on a date, however unwise it may be depending on your place of employment and working relationships, is not the same as making remarks about her looks, clothes, or anatomy. It's not the same as denying her an investment or promotion because she rejected your advances.
I hope that clears things up for you.
>> But I reject the immediate interpretation of "man abusing his power to pressure women into sex".
Oh but that's exactly what this was. It was a man abusing his power to pressure women into sex.
>> Grabbing a knee under the table is of course not a good first move, but we might be missing context.
Grabbing the knee of someone you are not mutually involved with is not appropriate behavior in the workplace. Depending on the situation, it may be inappropriate even if you are mutually involved. But without mutual involvement, it's absolute inappropriate.
Occam's razor is a tool to winnow down proven scientific theories, not to bypass the need for evidence. I'd rather vest power in the courts than outrage media.
So for me this means that I wait for the judges to decide. Before he's found guilty it's nothing more than gossip to me, although this is a rather unpopular opinion I guess.
Since he at least didn't deny the accusations this fosters the believes in his guilt.
For this case it's fine then. However, I tried to make a more general statement in my post before, since the zeitgeist tends to prejudgements nowadays, which also was a thing in the middle ages and does more harm than good.
Seriously? I mean then why do we need courts, judges and juries if it's that simple. Details matter and both sides of the story. [1]
And what do you mean by 'at the very least doing something that's inappropriate'?. By what and by whose standards?
[1] What if you were charged with the crime of assault (non sexual in this example) and nobody had seen what had happened prior to you throwing (what they thought) was the first punch without any knowledge of the provocation prior to that point (as only one quick example).
Also, if you really think about it making something that makes someone uncomfortable illegal is weird. So by the same logic I should be able to sue my employer if he farts too much or is annoying in general?
It's true that there are a lot of things that a creep VC could say to a female founder that would be creepy, that would be harassment, that should probably get him fired, but wouldn't be criminal.
But if he makes a creepy statement while physically blocking the woman from exiting the room, or approaches her in a gropey manner but doesn't make contact, that's still assault. Probably not something he would get convicted for unless it was caught on video, but nevertheless...
I'd aruge that Berkely students psychologically assaulted Milo Yiannopoulos.
"Give me all your money right now or I'll stab you with this knife!
What? What? I'm just speaking my mind, officer! Just because this guy feels offended? Hey, I thought this was America! First amendment!"
Similarly, you can't run toward someone screaming, pull back like you're going to throw a punch, then claim innocence when charged with assault. There are numerous court cases that draw various lines. Courts have recognized people sometimes say "I'll kill you" but without any actual intent. They also recognize sometimes threats are veiled and spoken in coded language to give the superficial appearance of acceptability... but the threats are just as real as pulling back in a punching motion.
Much sexual harassment falls into the latter category. Rarely to abusers (male or female) come right out and say "sleep with me or you're fired / I'll tank your funding round / I'll call your loan", though that does happen. By far the most common case is subtle suggestions or inferences that things will be easier for you if you go along with it.
In general it is best to avoid anything that appears romantic whenever there is a power imbalance. As a VC, you shouldn't be hitting on founders. If you think there is mutual attraction there then send that person to a friend at a different VC or wait for the funding rounds to close and assign the company to a different partner. Even then it is risky - the target of your affection may feel like they need to play along or you'll start bad-mouthing them and it will crush their business. When the target of your affection says "Sorry, I have a partner / boyfriend / girlfriend" it is a very clear signal they are not interested.
Even better advice is: don't. There is a wide pool of potential partners. Why are you so desperate to find a pickup among your founders / subordinates? Hint: usually because you're taking advantage of them! In this case the most likely explanation is the guy wanted to have some affairs and thought hooking up with founders would be an easy score. What those women thought or felt was entirely beneath his notice.
That's the iconic example, but from what I've heard (IANAL) lawyers and judges mostly don't consider it an especially compelling rhetorical argument, let alone representative of an actual legal standard.
As you're talking about legal things I feel a degree more pedantry is needed. You can yell "fire!" but not without an expectation of subsequent deleterious consequences. You have the freedom to speak, you don't have the freedom from consequences of that speech.
>When the target of your affection says "Sorry, I have a partner / boyfriend / girlfriend" it is a very clear signal they are not interested. //
I'd say that is "somewhat clear"; it's still relying on implicit communication. Far better IMO would be "I'm not interested in a romantic/intimate/sexual relationship with you.". Just saying you have a partner is not as clear; maybe your'e the sort that hops around, or has an open relationship or is turned on by infidelity; if a person thinks you're flirting with them but they mention a current sexual partner you might imagine that you're just being warned to keep things clandestine or being told to compete.
>most likely explanation //
I imagine the most likely explanation was that he was attracted to them, they mirrored his attraction and it went on from there without any thought from him that they were doing it in order to win/not_lose business positioning.
If you hit on someone, and they respond "I have a boyfriend" full stop, then unless they're taking their clothes off as they say it, there is zero chance that they mean anything but "I am not interested in your advances."
And, frankly, there's no reason to tell yourself otherwise unless you're planning on sexually harassing that person.
Free speech does not extend to groping. It's quite likely that many acts of mere harassment (supposing they don't, e.g., explicitly or implicitly condition exchange of money for sex,where then it gets into soliciting prostitution) is legal in a VC-to-founder rather than employer-employee situation.
OTOH, even the acts that may be legal are still newsworthy; not every act of public concern violates a law.
Do you think that groping women, lurid texts late at night, and harassing them with unwanted sexual propositions is objectionable behavior? If so, why are you trying to downplay it to just "annoying behavior?"
BTW no lawsuits have been filed (yet) so "illegal" doesn't enter into it.
- xkcd
The valley is really small, and I've heard horrific stories of what this firm has done to their employees and founders. This includes Jonathon Teo as well.
This really is just the tip of the iceberg for Binary Capital. I wouldn't take any investments from them ever.
Isn't that what you just did with Jonathon Teo though?
Do you expect this is voluntary scape-goating as a distraction for worse things? If so, what are these worse things. To me, the statement read as sincere.
The company was at a low point and Binary was trying to squeeze them. Now the company is flying, and Binary missed out. The entire experience made me feel compelled to caution to every entrepreneur who has approached me about working with them since, including another who did, and now regrets it for other reasons.
> I’ve never met Justin but can attest that his questionable behavior extends past allegations of sexual harassment.
> In early 2016, I spoke with Jonathan Teo, Justin’s partner at Binary, about funding Hitlist, my company. In the course of due diligence, I sent bios of the key engineers on my team. Justin approached my star iOS engineer and attempted to poach him to join one of Binary’s portfolio companies.
> There’s something rotten about a firm that holds out the promise of funding while secretly trying to poach your employees. (aside: I’m not sure if Jonathan had anything to do with this and have had nothing but pleasant, professional interactions with him).
[1] (behind paywall) https://www.theinformation.com/silicon-valley-women-tell-of-...
I lost my job and got involved in a complex legal matter trying to defend girls from a predatory person. Most people simply do not care, and will avoid getting involved at all costs.
Also, even if relativly rare, we do not want to needlessly ignore male victims.
We need to work on coming up with ways to create a world in which power is less likely to lead to this type of abuse. I think that starts with generally having healthier attitudes surrounding sexuality.
If you flip the genders, then on average, abuse of power will cause outright conflict sooner rather than after it has built up to completely unacceptable levels.
A cousin of mine commented on being a Navy recruiter and calling his wife to come sit at the office because of teenaged girls showing up at the recruiting office and trying to hang on him. He was very worried about how this would be perceived and he did not know how to turn them away. He was over 6 feet tall and scared of what these "little girls" would do to his career. The only effective solution he could find was to call his wife and have her in the office when they showed up.
I really think it is far more complicated than most people want to believe. Seeing the world in black-and-white, simple terms is just easier to cope with. But it usually is not an accurate assessment of reality.
So do I, and thanks for bringing some balance to the discussion. I noticed Mr. Calbeck's apology makes it sound like the situation is simple and not complicated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6uvv1aS5_I
Men do tend to hide it when they are the victims. There is substantial evidence that male victims of sexual assault have an even harder time coping in the aftermath than women, in part because it is seen as emasculating and they face bigger challenges than women in getting some kind of meaningful support if they try to tell anyone.
Well, it's the latter to a huge degree. Which means that by framing it as a "people's problem" in general (without the qualification) it is misrepresented.
In fact some definitions of attention define it as the ability to ignore unwanted or unneeded things. In general, I do think it is correct to focus on a specific, salient example of harassment, that is, women's harassment than the abstract. Just as I think it's better to focus on sexism or racism rather than "discrimination"
Men have a more difficult time obtaining social, emotional and physical intimacy with other people (in both romantic and platonic contexts). For the purely romantic context, there is a huge disparity in the required effort to obtain intimacy in a romantic relationship.
Women can obtain intimacy and have a very successful romantic life without making any advances at all. A man will have a very unsuccessful romantic life if he never makes any advances.
Society fails men on the social/physical/emotional intimacy front.
These are natural, primal needs have huge consequences on happiness. This lack of intimacy naturally causes men to seek intimacy in sometimes inappropriate contexts and situations.
Since a large cause of the behavior is the failing of society, it may be prudent to give higher leniency to men for these situations. The intimacy gap should at least be acknowledged whenever identity politics are brought up in these situations.
#NotAllMen But seriously. I'd like to talk more about this in a different setting. This sentiment rang true for me before I got out of high school. After that, it mattered much less.
> Society fails men on the social/physical/emotional intimacy front.
We failed ourselves. This article rang all too true. https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/megasahd-the-lac...
It's similar to police and citizens. Police who commit crimes are wielding a different power than individuals who commit crimes. It doesn't discount the crime, but it is a different problem.
> Speaking of one group is not ignoring the other. Nobody said that sexual harassment against men is okay. It's okay to recognize that social norms affect the genders asymmetrically and structure language around that.
If I knew you, I would just as soon support you in outing the guy who made lewd suggestions to you as I would support any woman I know in the same situation. But at the moment it does disproportionately affect women.
It's like how sickle cell anemia can affect anyone, but particularly affects African Americans. Obviously it's important to look at the problem at the general level. But no prudent biologist would ignore looking at the disease in the context of African Americans specifically, out of a misguided notion of race blindness.
That's not to say harassment and abuse aren't dealbreakers for the men I've worked with; for most of them, it is. But it has to be spelled out for them. A victim has to speak up about it. It has not been my experience that men surveil each other to ensure that their sexual behavior is appropriate or benign.
I had a similar response to the controversy over the Trump Access Hollywood tapes. Jake Tapper was talking to a Trump surrogate who claimed that the tapes were just "locker room talk". Tapper, aghast, said something to the effect of "not in any locker room I've ever been in". My response (to myself, quietly): Jake Tapper, you are full of shit.
Obviously none of this is good stuff! It's just important that we try to be more self-aware about it.
I knew that the person was extremely brash and was told that they indulged in "locker-room talk", though I didn't personally observe any harassing behavior. I didn't speak up about what I heard. I wish I had. I wonder, and worry, if anything as bad as what happened at their next company happened at the company I worked at. I'm really uncomfortable with the odds that it did.
And it's labelled "aggressive" because of several centuries of hardcore religious puritanism leaving their mark on all aspects of US culture. Sex is naughty. Sex talk is aggressive.
The parent said "There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about".
And this was immediately taken to mean "aggressive sexual comment".
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201505/...
About 20% for men and 50% for women.
Your comment could also be interpreted as most male founders do sexually harass others. I'm not sure that's what you meant.
The reality is that a small percentage of people constitute the majority of bad behavior. Be it harassment, or criminal activity in general. The counter-part is that the majority of people don't really cause trouble....
so saying "men harass" would be wrong. Saying "the bulk of harassers are men" is more correct.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at.
> We are now in a post-Susan Fowler world,
I think I know what the author was trying to say, but that's a really weird way to say it. Susan is most definitely still alive and well. Susan wasn't an event, like 9/11. she is a woman with a lot of courage who wrote about a series of terrible things that happened to her.
Personally I don't really see the problem. If you want to argue for a different state of things after some event, "post" seem like the correct word. Just like you would say "post war period". You might of course think that the statement itself is pretentious. But at least they argue their case, i.e the importance of her actions, in the article.
anyway, I just saw on the news that the serial-assaulter resigned, or has decided to take a travis (a leave of absence followed by a resignation), so that's a good thing.
Sexual harassment is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of behaviors that need correcting. Especially in men.
You're cute! Harassment Want an open relationship? Harassment Touch a girl you like? Harassment
Just think how ridiculous this is. Did you not first touch the girl you like thinking she will be ok with it? And in most cases she is. If she isn't, she just say .. i'm not ok, or move on and give you a cold shoulder. That's how we human actually interact with one another.
I'm sick of these women and more so, of these reporters, that try to destroy one person after another. For the most part, for clicks to their sites.
So there you have it, please downvote this post. Let's all be PC and just hang this guy already. His side doesn't matter. Facts don't either.
"The past 24 hours have been the darkest of my life. I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week. To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement. Still, I need to say it: I am so, so sorry.
I direct my apology first to those women who I've made feel uncomfortable in any way, at any time - but also to the greater tech ecosystem, a community that I have utterly failed.
The power dynamic that exists in venture capital is despicably unfair. The gap of influence between male venture capitalists and female entrepreneurs is frightening and I hate that my behavior played a role in perpetrating a gender-hostile environment. It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done.
I am deeply ashamed of my lack of self-awareness. I am grateful to Niniane, Susan, Leiti, and the other women who spoke up for providing me with a sobering look into my own character and behavior that I can no longer ignore. The dynamic of this industry makes it hard to speak up, but this is the type of action that leads to progress and change, starting with me.
I will be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Binary Capital, the firm I co-founded in 2014. I will be seeking professional counseling as I take steps to reflect on my behavior with and attitude towards women. I will find ways to learn from this difficult experience - and to help drive necessary changes in the broader venture community.
The Binary team will also be taking measures to ensure that the firm is a safe place for founders of all backgrounds to find the support and resources they need to change the world, without abuse of power or mistreatment of any person.
I owe a heartfelt apology to my family, my investors, my portfolio, and the team at Binary, who have been completely blindsided and in no way deserve the pain I've caused. But most of all I apologize again to those who I've hurt during the course of my career - and for the damage I've done to the industry I care so deeply about."
https://www.axios.com/justin-caldbeck-takes-indefinite-leave...
Binary issued a statement that said the notion Mr. Caldbeck had “engaged in improper behavior with female entrepreneurs” was “false.” Binary said that while The Information had “found a few examples which show that Justin has in the past occasionally dated or flirted with women he met in a professional capacity, let’s be clear: there is no evidence that Justin did anything illegal and there is no evidence that any of his investing decisions were affected by his social interest.
> Obviously, I am deeply disturbed by these allegations. While significant context is missing from the incidents reported by The Information, I deeply regret ever causing anyone to feel uncomfortable. The fact is that I have been privileged to have worked with female entrepreneurs throughout my career and I sincerely apologize to anyone who I made uncomfortable by my actions. There’s no denying this is an issue in the venture community, and I hate that my behavior has contributed to it.
I wouldn't be surprised if Binary released an updated statement in light of this new apology and indefinite leave.
He hasn't copped up to the assaults, and since they were not employees, the texts may not necessarily have been illegal.
Not entirely contradictory.
> It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done.
Those read to me like admissions of guilt. I'd expect lawyers to strongly advise against writing such things.
I would have liked to see more respect given to the victims rather than telling us how difficult getting caught has been for him.
"I have made many mistakes over the course of my career, some of which were brought to light this week." - I'm probably a pathological predator but prefer to view my illness and/or poor character as a set of "mistakes" because that's easier on me than admitting I'm a piece of shit.
"To say I'm sorry about my behavior is a categorical understatement." - I would acknowledge who I probably really am but I can't, if I even know.
"Still, I need to say it: I am so, so sorry." - So I'll just say "I'm sorry" instead.
"I direct my apology first to those women who I've made feel uncomfortable in any way, at any time - but also to the greater tech ecosystem, a community that I have utterly failed." - I did some really repulsive shit, but I don't want to say how repulsive, so let's just call it "making people feel uncomfortable." Also, I'm really bummed that so many people are getting mad at me.
"The power dynamic that exists in venture capital is despicably unfair." - This isn't about me at all, guys. It's about The System. If I just start acknowledging and condemning structural violence, maybe I can get the focus of this off of me personally.
"The gap of influence between male venture capitalists and female entrepreneurs is frightening and I hate that my behavior played a role in perpetrating a gender-hostile environment." - So let's talk about structural violence instead and how I'm just a cog in The System.
"It is outrageous and unethical for any person to leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain, it is clear to me now that that is exactly what I've done." - We all sin, OK?
"I am deeply ashamed of my lack of self-awareness." - If I had known everyone would get so fucking upset at me, I wouldn't have done those things. I hate it when people get mad at me.
"I am grateful to Niniane, Susan, Leiti, and the other women who spoke up for providing me with a sobering look into my own character and behavior that I can no longer ignore." - I wish those women hadn't done that. I'm totally fucked now.
"The dynamic of this industry makes it hard to speak up, but this is the type of action that leads to progress and change, starting with me." - But enough about me, let's talk about The System instead. That's the real problem. In fact, me being a piece of shit and it being brought to light is good for these women. I did them a favor! Don't you see?
"I will be taking an indefinite leave of absence from Binary Capital, the firm I co-founded in 2014." - Like I said, I'm totally fucked now and my partners booted me out.
"I will be seeking professional counseling as I take steps to reflect on my behavior with and attitude towards women." - My wife is so fucking pissed, you don't even know. We're probably getting divorced now, so thanks for that.
"I will find ways to learn from this difficult experience - and to help drive necessary changes in the broader venture community." - I still don't really get what I did wrong, but since everyone is so mad at me, I guess I'd better try to figure out how to not make people mad at me again like that.
"The Binary team will also be taking measures to ensure that the firm is a safe place for founders of all backgrounds to find the support and resources they need to change the world, without abuse of power or mistreatment of any person." - My partners are super pissed that I fucked their brand, and accordingly, their deal flow. Please don't take it out on them. They're not cool with what I did even though they probably knew about it.
"I owe a heartfelt apology to my family, my investors, my por...
How would you word your apology such that it couldn't be interpreted in this (self-serving, not actually sorry) way?
Do you think that's true? Like women/men can't harras men sexually?
It seems to me that being sexual harassed by a person in a position of authority over you is unlikely to be that different based on sex but could differ a lot based on some of the characteristics that are often skewed to one sex or the other.
So men in general might feel greater humiliation, perhaps; women might feel more vulnerable: both because of the physical strength of men vs. women in general.
Consider Kafka. Any one incident in one of his stories could be fairly viewed as merely a confusing annoyance, but that would miss the point.
But even the structural nature of violence against women is insufficient context alone. The feelings women experience when they are victimized in this way are products of history. And I submit that you cannot share in that experience without that history, which is to say without having been born a woman.
I can no sooner "truly understand" how women experience these things than I can truly understand how it feels to be a black man called "boy." I understand it intellectually, and I empathize as much as I can, but I'll never "get it" as someone who isn't a member of the out-group.
This isn't a contest of suffering. I can suffer just as much as a woman, if not more, but not in the same way. It is the character of the suffering that makes us different.
What you need to demonstrate is that women are a special class who have entirely different experiences, to any member of other classes, when being sexually harassed.
This stands in stark contrast to some feminist rhetoric as it relies on men and women being fundamentally and innately unequal.
I don't think women are shrinking little flowers, as a class, that experience harassment in a way that no members of the out-class do. This, appears to be the supposition of your post.
How do you suppose you know enough of the experience of members of your own class (eg male) to say they are all markedly different to those of another class (female).
>The feelings women experience when they are victimized in this way are products of history. //
In the general case that sounds like bullshit. Convince me otherwise?
Also, I'm a Beauvoir feminist, so I'm sure we'd have our differences about gender equality.
Caldbeck might benefit by spending time volunteering for an appropriate organization as a way to help accelerate his awareness - and to help.
It's really sad to see this story emerge, and I hope we can all take lessons from it and nudge the industry in a better direction.
Journalists that could speak with people at length and confirm the story by further research still weren't willing to publish based on anonymous sources. This is in part because anonymous accusations can be a great tool in a defamation campaign.
Furthermore, publishing anonymous claims without due-diligence discredits future anonymous claims. It might even back arguments like "Those sexual harassment claims always turn out to be smear campaigns".
It is useful data that, unfortunately, too few of us are aware of, and are thus condemned to the same fate.
I am fundraising, and wish I knew which sleazy firms/investors to not waste my time with.
Some VCs are sleazy, but their money's still green. I know with certainty of at least two firms with predatory/creepy partners, but that wouldn't stop me from including them in a round.
This behaviour is inappropriate, but it's not nearly as bad as what we learn to fend off at the average final club/frat party.
I hope you'd consider naming those firms/partners, for the benefit of others.
VCs do not invest their own money. Instead they invest money of their limited partners.
If limited partners learn that their investments are used to fund VC's love life - they would be furious and likely to withdraw their money.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/human-rights-women-entreprene...
The law should be handling sexual harassment. The reasons why we have these issues with companies is because there's a conflict of interest. The police are a third party and have no interest in the success/failure of the company, ideally.
I think people on both sides of this issue would love it if the law showed itself capable of handling sexual harassment cases. Unfortunately we have way too much evidence that that just isn't the case. The obvious example that comes to mind is Brock Turner getting three months, and that's in the best case where someone is actually convicted. Far too often it never gets to that point, not because the harassment/assault didn't occur, but because the legal system is so utterly shit at handling it. The 'outragism' that so many people decry only exists in the first place because every system that is supposed to prevent or punish these acts has failed so completely.
You're basically arguing that companies should become their own units of law enforcement with their own punishments as they see fit, with no oversight. That is clearly not going to work. It clearly hasn't.
If the law is unfair, we have the power to change that law. Exceptions always exist but we can not make laws on exceptions. Meanwhile companies continue to allow harassment on a daily basis, Look at Fox News. Multiple cases. Imagine in other corporations?
While we may theoretically have the power to change the way law enforcement works on these issues, doing so would be dramatically more difficult than making marginal improvements within the industry itself. We shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Industry has never gotten this right. How long until we finally see that the company trying to avoid bad PR and make money doesn't have conflicts of interest with these victims?
I've seen too many companies turn blind eyes to terrible workplace environments because the perpetrator "makes too many sales." or is "too important." It's always going to be a conflict of interest.
My advice to anyone is: collect evidence, quit, and file a lawsuit. Any other internal method will lead to even more abuse and fear.
You can call them over racist discrimination. There's no difference here.
Diversity is a joke to be honest.
Go to any company, any single company, especially the ones that tout "diversity" it's all the same individual with the same "thought processes" with no actual diversity.
Many hire people who think the same exact way re-skinned or same-gendered.
One company that is about a block away that touts diversity is all liberal ideologues that spout the most racist and deflating things about everything. It's a very toxic environment for anyone who doesn't align with their ideology or beliefs. All of the individuals in the group have the same style. Can never tell them apart. All the same race. Yet on their twitter, jobs, facebook and even here they tout "Diversity! Friendly Co-Workers!"
I've seen more diversity in companies that don't care about diversity or tout diversity.
Sexual harassment and harassment happens more often at these companies, people who are being harassed and bullied about different things don't speak up. Most of the time it isn't women.
I've been bullied by women before because a candidate wasn't female. I've been bullied by men before because a candidate was female or looked weak (physically). I've heard people bully for stutters, skin color, age, race, gender, everything.
I don't care about that. I care about two things: Do you lift others up despite differences while resolving conflicts, and can you get the job done? Following these two, I've gutted these toxic behaviors (bullying, antagonistic, sexual harassment) from multiple companies and it's refreshing.
It's completely out of control to be honest, it's becoming very toxic and demeaning toward specific races and genders (not just men).
Yes it sucks to be me when I'm none of those things but that's what my people are known for.
Big money leads to terrible behavior due to power differences. Men AND Women willing to take advantage of less powerful people. I have a female friend who was sexually harrassed by a female VC, and again the same dynamics played out. Its not about gender but primal human desires and power.
Sexual assault:
From the DoJ:
"Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."
Source: https://www.justice.gov/ovw/sexual-assault
Sexual harassment:
From the EEOC, the which is the U.S. federal agency that is responsible for civil rights in the workplace:
"It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person’s sex. Harassment can include “sexual harassment” or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general.
Both victim and the harasser can be either a woman or a man, and the victim and harasser can be the same sex.
Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).
The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer."
Source: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm
(Edited to include sexual assault, which was included in the parent comment as one of the things apparently lacking a definition)
What are they seeking to happen to him?
This is a serious question... because I do not see a link to the indictment.