On one hand that sounds like pretty typically shitty behavior from someone who never imagines that there might be lasting consequences for anyone as a result. On the other hand that's a pretty low bar for a year of PTSD.
Seriously, please don't go tell random people you don't know "pretty sure you've never X", especially if X is related to experiencing distress and/or a traumatic experience.
You have no idea whether they have. At best it doesn't add to the conversation, and at worse you're wrong and making everyone feel awful, yourself included.
What that would prove, even if it was true? It's like saying to someone who is arguing against the death penalty "you didn't have your family killed by a robber".
Even if that's true, that might make them more impartial and clear-headed on the issue, rather than less. The same reason that defense lawyers usually reject jurors that had personal experiences about the offence on trial.
I remember seeing some show about Microsoft and some other company. The other company felt threatened by the encounter, that Microsoft was implying or stating that they would ruin the company. Representatives from Microsoft remembered the meeting very differently. The show dramatized the different perceptions of the meeting based on the different descriptions given.
Even though Microsoft swore they were not being threatening, they did, in fact, put the other company out of business.
If you are dealing with an 800 pound gorilla, the feelings associated with being so much as looked at wrong can be quite strong. With someone in a powerful position treating someone in a vulnerable position so aggressively, her description is not unreasonable.
What is "PTSD-like" if not PTSD? Flashbacks? Panic attacks? Vivid and repeated dreams? Depression? Loss of function?
At what point is it not so much "like" PTSD, which is not infrequently ruinous or even fatal to the sufferer, and more like all of the other forms of misery or trauma that don't have a diagnosis?
I object in the same way to people who feel sad claiming that they're "Depressed" and that's not harmless either. Look at Japan's relationship with mental illness (especially clinical depression) and the weird arc its following, and you'll see what I mean.
For the record, this is the exact statement in the article:
For a year after Pollock groped me, I experienced what I now realize were PTSD-like symptoms. I had not anticipated them and was completely unprepared to have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks in situations or around people that, for one reason or another, triggered memories of the incident, which took place on October 7, 2015.
You are being incredibly dismissive of the piece and part of your justification is the term PTSD. You feel it is over the top. When the inaccuracy of your own statement is corrected, you double down.
This does not look like a good faith argument. It looks like an excuse to be dismissive.
Unless you're well-versed with the concept of PTSD, either through research you've done, or because you suffer from it yourself, or because you have a close friend who does, you should be careful talking about it dismissively like this. The popular conception of PTSD is a caricature. In reality, we've only recently begun seriously diagnosing and investigating it, and getting a sense of its prevalence.
In particular, the notion that a person reporting PTSD who hasn't been "observably" (in this case, through the details of a TechCrunch post) crippled by it isn't really suffering from it is both false and pretty offensive.
There really needs to be a guideline on HN about comments diagnosing (or dismissing the diagnosis of) mental illness in other commenters and the subjects of stories. These comments happen with some regularity, and they are never productive.
Indeed, a lot more people have ptsd than is generally guessed because there is a great variety of life-altering trauma than people imagine. The caricature of ptsd is that it's something that veterans and rape victims have. It's too serious for anyone else to even think about having. It takes over your life and makes you into a crazy person, or nearly so.
The reality is that these are just the most extreme cases of ptsd. Many people who have suffered through comparatively more minor traumas nevertheless exhibit ptsd symptoms that can affect their quality of life in a daily basis. For example, emotional trauma in childhood can easily lead to the core ptsd symptoms such as irritability, isolation, hypervigilance, anxiety, flashbacks, etc. But because these are due to events considered less serious than combat or violent physical assault they can often go untreated and ignored.
Mental illness is ultimately a personal issue that affects everyone very differently. You get a picture of this with how the same SSRI or other medication can have wildly different responses in people.
I wouldn't be so flippant and dismissive of terms like PTSD and Depression. For the person suffering them they are going to be very real and different than everyday sadness or misery. Even if for us outsiders they don't meet some documented guidelines of what they are.
Yeah, people don't seem to know the difference between being upset about something and PTSD. That kind of exaggeration hurt what was otherwise a good article.
'dang, this has been the top comment on the post for the last 20 minutes. You and others at YC who want to make the enviroment on HN less hostile to women (and people with PTSD and other invisible disabilities, and to people of all varieties who have been sexually harassed) need to understand the impact things like this have.
[edited to clarify that this doesn't just make it a hostile environment to women]
That comment was flagged by the time we saw it. 20 minutes is not nearly long enough for the community process to complete, and instantaneous moderation is impossible. Nor would it be a good thing if it were possible.
Something that seems plain to me: if overtly malicious troll comments can survive at the tops of threads for 20+ minutes, and troll-ridden threads get (reasonably!) flagged off the site, then trolls have a hecklers veto on HN.
You don't know if that comment was malicious (I don't think so), it survived long because apparently not that many people share your opinion that it should be gone (really, it only takes a few downvotes and flags to kill) and the thread got flagged off the site because for the last half year or so all controversial threads are hammered as soon as they reach the front page.
So while your logic is sound, there is no reason to panic because the assumptions don't hold.
You don't get to set the bar for her. That's something she was reserving for the most special people in her life, he took it from her, despite clear protestations, and it felt like he faced no real consequences for it. I can see how that could leave one with a pervasive feeling of disempowerment and victimization.
Words have meanings, just because someone interprets them in their own way, doesn't mean they can claim X when it's not considered warranted.
So regardless of this particular case, we can, and do, society collectively does set the bar for what can be considered X or Y -- and someone can argue based on that.
(That said, grabbing her hand and not letting go despite attempts to free it, and groping her body, clearly fits the bill for sexual harassment and a stressful situation).
If I'm allowed to be pedantic, and going beyond the story under discussion, people can (and should be allowed to) disagree even for medical issues. It's not just blind trust to whatever diagnoses doctors do. Talking of course here for "soft" diagnoses -- few would disagree with an actual physiological diagnosis of a medical problem.
Until a few decades ago, homosexuality was a disease that was OK to be cured with things like electroshock treatment. Heck, people had lobotomies inflicted upon them, in the 20th century, for all kinds of BS reasons. Here on HN too, many will attack the prevalent over-prescription of drugs and diagnoses of ADHD to children.
Have you ever looked at the definition of assault and sexual assault? Because those words have meanings, and typically definitions of sexual assault include groping as an example. Not just "sexual harassment and a stressful situation".
Not the legal one, besides it's not the same in each jurisdiction/country.
According to Wikipedia: "Harassment can include "sexual harassment" or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature." and "It includes a range of actions from mild transgressions to sexual abuse or sexual assault."
I referred to a "stressful situation" in justifying the PT(S)D claim, i.e. to say that this was indeed stressful (as I explicitly say), whereas you seem to be in the impression that I said it to downplay the incident.
You are being pedantic. Clearly the bar getting set in this case is what degree of sexual assault is traumatizing. That is a personal issue, even within our collective society, and you don't get to set that for the victim.
Pedantry over trivial side issues serves to distract from the primary issue at hand, which, as another commented, doesn't make your priorities look so hot.
She's a reporter and the guy is a VC. There is no business relationship between them.
They were walking down the street with friends after having drinks, he grabbed her hand and she refused his advances.
Everybody went home.
This is what the story is about? Is this some sort of parallel universe where people claim sexual assault over anything these days?
Ie I can see how he could have let go of her hand sooner but calling this sexual assault sort of does disservice to the people who actually experience sexual assault.
FYI: The photo in the article is not clearly labeled, but it seems to be a photo of the incident taken at the time it happened. She is a little Asian woman. He towers over her.
My assumption is this noticeable size difference contributed to how strongly this incident impacted her.
Any man who doesn't realize that if he has a substantial size advantage, it will be inherently intimidating, is a troglodyte. And he probably wasn't oblivious. He probably happily used that to his advantage as an intimidation tactic.
Men tend to be physically stronger than women, even when their size is pretty comparable. Add a height advantage and things rapidly get ugly.
I can't tell if you are trying to be helpful or trying to be critical of me. I don't see a clear label. The photo fits the description given in the article, but if the article clearly states that THIS, right here, is the photo in question, I am failing to see it.
Which, you know, could just be because I have pathetic eyesight. But I honestly do not see a clear and unequivocal indicator to that effect.
> I realized she was taking a photo. Later, when I asked her why she had done that, she said she didn’t get what was going on. Being photographed in that situation by someone I kept hoping would help me felt terrible.
> I saved the photo my friend took, even though I hated knowing it was in my storage.
Yes, I saw those remarks, which is how I inferred this was the photo in question. But I still see no statement nor caption clearly saying "THIS photo RIGHT HERE is the photo we are talking about."
That may seem pedantic to you, but I have had a couple of law classes and I worked in insurance for over 5 years. Those are environments in which such distinctions matter.
I am inferring that it is the photo and you apparently agree that it is, but I still don't believe there is a clear and unequivocal statement in the article to that effect.
"He put his arm around my shoulders and whispered “Can’t you pretend you’re single?” in my ear. I shrugged him off. "
At that point an approach was made and met with a clear response. That was when things should have stopped. That is how potential relationship escalation should work: an offer is made in some way and based on the response the proposer gets an idea on how to proceed (in this case - bugger off).
It is absolutely unacceptable that anyone should be assaulted.
It's one of the biggest problems we have. Typical response from a man is that I'm a great catch; she just doesn't know that she wants me. Once she's had sex with me she'll marry me.
This is actually someone threatening rape (imo). Unfortunately it's something our President has said.
We need to stop this behavior where people think they are entitled to someone else. We also need to have our Law enforcement act more appropriately to handle this; ensure Rape Kits are tested promptly.
Educating our children and adults reminding them what is and what isn't acceptable. It isn't acceptable to touch someone on the shoulder if they asked you to remove it.
Lastly we need to call sexual harassment what it is. It's harassment; it's something as a society we have ignored for far too long.
Typical response from a man is that I'm a great catch; she just doesn't know that she wants me. Once she's had sex with me she'll marry me.
It's worse than that. For various reasons, some men are actively more interested if you reject them. It is a little bit like the principle that running from a bear will incite its chase instinct.
I don't know if it's the same for everyone else but growing up I was told you're supposed to chase girls and that if you don't actively pursue them you'll end up alone. I think that's where this kind of thing comes from.
It is a societal problem and not the fault of any individual, but it can only be solved by many individuals taking a good hard look at themselves and choosing to handle it differently.
Also, as a man, you are respected to break the girl's apparent resistance. If you are in early stages of relationship and want to wait for the girl to be comfortable to kiss you, you'll never get here. Asking a girl if you can kiss her will be awkward too and will probably be a no. Leaning in and kissing her will do the trick.
Obviously if she says no and leans away, you stop and don't try it.
That's actually not my experience, they always ask or at least give some fairly obvious sign that they want to, if they don't ask I always ask first. I've never just leaned in and kissed them and everyone that I've talked to say they hate that.
But I still hear LOTS of people say this and it's exactly what I'm talking about. Everyone keeps saying men need to be aggressive and I really do think that's what causes a lot of the sexual harassment.
I really liked the scene in some movie where Will Smith's character is coaching some guy to lean in like 80% of the way and then let her decide whether or not to seal the deal with a kiss.
I'm pretty picky about consent. There are men who know how to delicately signal their interest and invite me to signal back whether or not I am amenable. I have the general impression that such tactics get men a lot more action than tactics that intentionally step on a woman's boundaries as a matter of course.
This. Precisely this. I would just like to add that the lean in does work, but only when its pretty clear that you're having a great time and are very comfortable with each other. e.g. holding hands in a booth in a bar, dancing together and having fun etc.
But there are also many women, in my experience, that for whatever reason, don't or can't signal their interest or intentions. In that case I ASK them. It sounds very awkward to say it, but if done in private (i.e. you don't shout it out) I've actually noticed it creates a lot of comfort in the women. e.g. once I asked a girl I was on a date with, and she said she wasn't comfortable with PDA (we were inside a bar). I didn't push it, but after we left the bar and nobody was in sight outside, we did make out. I like to think if I had just "gone for it" in the bar, she would have been uncomfortable, I would feel rejected, and generally bad things all around...
Knowing how extremely adversely even minor harassment can affect someone in the workplace, I can't fathom how ANY company doesn't have an absolute-zero-tolerance policy for harassment, especially of a sexual nature. There's literally zero reasonable excuse for having to tolerate this kind of crap in a work situation, including "outside-of-work" events.
Because
1. It cost money to replace people
2. If the CEO doesn't see it as a problem, he's not going to put resources on it.
3. Zero-tolerance policies are usually bad in every context. You were too flirty with a girl at work and put your arm around her? Bam, you're fired.
4. To understand a situation, you have to see it from both sides.
Why is anyone acting surprised that the man is still in place at his company, when Mr. Grab-em-by-the-pussy is also Mr. Most-powerful-man-on-the-planet?
Especially considering he was elected by the United States of America AFTER those comments were made public?
Control your expectations about the world people. It's only a nice place as depicted in media. Many, many, terms and conditions sadly apply :-(
The "Lead by example" behaviour mode is going to get more visible in the US, I imagine. Let's hope that most of the population has a good sense of what is right and what is wrong and only do the right things.
We like to think that is the case, but just the presidential election itself has shown this not to be true. I'm tired of people apologizing for Trump voters by saying that they were choosing the lesser of two evils or whatever other crap they say. The election showed that almost half of Americans simply don't give a shit what their party does as long as its THEIR party, they will continue to vote for it. Such partisanship not only gave us President Trump, but is actively hindering efforts to reign in the descent into dictatorship. e.g. Republican congressmen and Senators seem unwilling to address some rather serious concerns with the Trump family because they know now that it doesn't matter. As long as they're not "liberal snowflakes", anything, anything goes.
The optimist in me looks at the other half of Americans who still have their good sense intact, and even those who chose not to vote. But as Robert Reich and Dan Rather have said repeatedly: these are dangerous times for our democracy.
This is really outrageous. These two people had zero business relationship, and no one is alleging that any laws were violated, or even that there are any torts. As far as anyone can tell from the article, he has had no opportunity to refute any of this.
The worst accusation is that he put his hand on the ass of a married woman. Now, should have done that? No. That wasn't a nice thing to do. He had a few drinks and got a bit too bold. If true, does he deserve to be trash talked at brunch with the girls? Sure. It's certainly something that he should reflect on and be more cautious next time. Should we take seriously the claims of "PTSD-like" symptoms based on having a man touch her ass and then do nothing when she got in a cab and drove away? Well, are women adults? One hundred fifty years ago, the thinking was that women were too emotional to make adult decisions, and so they shouldn't be entrusted to do things like own property or vote. Over the years, we've come to agree that women and men are equal. I personally think that this is a good thing, but the power of adulthood and citizenship comes with responsibility. Catherine Shu is asking for sympathy and vengeance as if she were a child. Obviously, if some random venture capitalist woman were to grab a journalist man's ass after a couple of drinks, there would definitely not be a TechCrunch article about it.
If women are children, we certainly should not entrust them with positions of responsibility in corporations, and I would not hire a child at an equivalent level of pay to an adult for an engineering role.
So, it's really women's choice. Do you want the power and benefits of being an adult, or do you want the protection and coddling of a child? Personally, I'm OK with either, but we need to get this straight before we hire a bunch of children to do important work.
It's a fair point on the long-term cost of sexual harassment combined with an uncivilized, one-sided public accusation. Do I miss something here?
Which part of the argument could not have been made without ruining a reputation through TC reach? How far are those accusations confirmed?
I've no stake in any of those people and I am not particularly opinionated about the current cultural matters surrounding harassment, but this is not a very civil approach and I am not sure it does a favor for the cause of greater awareness on the issue.
Sexual harassment is not a very civil approach either.
She states that she was inspired to share her experience (with photographic evidence) base on accounts of other women coming forward in a similiar manner.
My criticism was meant to be valid irrespective of the actual accusations quality. The concern would still stand for the accusation of more serious crimes like rape, murder, genocide, etc.
Being inspired to skip the trial and personally decide to put somebody in the pillory is an understandable, but deeply flawed motivation.
The author can, of course, make every accusation. The publication however should not make the crime appear to be a secured fact. Breaching the journalistic objectivity might be a current trend but is intellectually dishonest and no service to the cause.
This looks more like vigilantism than a serious conversation.
And how do you think that individuals' behavior can lower the friction of "male-female" relationship in a societal scale so a man wouldn't abuse a powerful position to approach and seduce a woman and that a woman wouldn't abuse its position of dozens of men courting her?
You can't change fucking everything. I like Mz's suggestion because (s)he isn't advocating any specific action, just that people think hard and rationally about their actions.
There will always be disparity while this change takes place, if it does. There will be both men and women who abuse the system and get away with it with no repercussions. But you can't use that as justification for acting the way they do.
The same way you can't charge just half of the people for this mess, which is exactly what happens in the current trend of digital feminism. Look at my downvotes without replies, it has a lot of meaning. And it is sick. You just can't talk that women are equally guilty for what they are complaining.
I actually talk a lot about this topic in a very evenhanded manner and I blog about it that way. I recently did a series of 5 posts that were evenhanded. This is the last one and it has links to the earlier four: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aS6PrldE6ZTwWHgiSSgiBWNg...
The problem is that your remarks are not coming across like "men and women are both adults and both need to work at solving this." You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory."
If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things.
> You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory."
> If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things.
Yeah, this isn't what I mean (I'm not a native english speaker, but I don't think I wrote it entirely wrong, but your emphasis is not mine's). Your previous reply nailed it,
> When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards.
But is exactly this my point: It is up to the women to correct/validate this behavior, when men starting to change their way. Because if in the long term this strategy doesn't work better, most of the men will drop it and start to approach women in the way they see it working. And this is my point when I say that it is not my (or individuals) fault. In an anthropological analysis, this is the same reason women evolved to rely in men for security and better chances of survival: it worked. Now we have a much better social security structure in the world so naturally the usefulness of men for women reached a new low in most countries :P
You are guilty of what you are accusing "digital feminism" of: You only want half the people to be held responsible, just the other half. Some women want to blame men 100% and play the victim card themselves and that doesn't work. But men saying that it is 100% on women to defend themselves is equally broken.
And it sounds really, really ugly, like you just don't want to be bothered to behave better yourself.
I talk all the time about the fact that it is a societal problem and we need to address it at that level. But addressing it at that level involves figuring out what individual's can do differently. Because society is merely an aggregate of a lot of individuals. It does not exist separately on its own or something. It is the collective result of many individual choices. You change it in part by coming up with mental models for effective actions that individuals can take.
> You are guilty of what you are accusing "digital feminism" of: You only want half the people to be held responsible, just the other half. Some women want to blame men 100% and play the victim card themselves and that doesn't work. But men saying that it is 100% on women to defend themselves is equally broken.
No, I've been saying that it is our problem all the time. You keep saying that I'm trying to free men off their stupid behavior and what I'm saying is that men's stupid behavior are frequently awarded by women. Change this and you change that.
No, your point is "women need to change" while claiming it is a problem when women say "men need to change." I am saying BOTH need to change.
I get that in an atmosphere where most people are saying "men need to change" it is easy to fall into the bad habit of saying "women need to change" when maybe you really mean "women ALSO need to change." But you are not saying "women also need to change." You have made multiple posts here, and your position is very consistently that it is 100% the responsibility of women.
If you don't mean that, now would be a good time to just say "well, my English is not so good and I must not be explaining myself well" and drop it, rather than continuing to insist I am wrong, because it is only serving to dig your grave deeper.
When other powerful men choose to publicly signal that this is just not how things should be done, it serves as a role model for others. It sets the example.
But you don't have to be a person with a lot of power to make this choice. When enough people make this choice, then the predators are far less free to do whatever the fuck they so choose because more people will call them on it earlier, before it turns to assault.
Catherine Shu (author of this piece) was in a public setting and there were other people there who knew her. One took a photo of the incident without realizing the incident was basically assault. The same person had earlier sent mixed signals to Pollock, on the one hand saying Catherine was unavailable because she was married, on the other saying she liked white men because she was married to a white man.
So Pollock's predatory behavior was enabled by other people who not only failed to be supportive of Catherine, but even to some extent cooperated with his plans to get laid, and propriety be damned. I think it is completely gross and disgusting that her friend said she likes white men, she is marred to one.
When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards.
People get away with this shit because everyone either averts their eyes and refuses to see what is happening right in front of them or actively supports some powerful man's ugly agenda because he has power and they desire to curry favor. That is a choice. You can decide that you aren't willing to curry favor at that price.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadYou have no idea whether they have. At best it doesn't add to the conversation, and at worse you're wrong and making everyone feel awful, yourself included.
Even if that's true, that might make them more impartial and clear-headed on the issue, rather than less. The same reason that defense lawyers usually reject jurors that had personal experiences about the offence on trial.
Even though Microsoft swore they were not being threatening, they did, in fact, put the other company out of business.
If you are dealing with an 800 pound gorilla, the feelings associated with being so much as looked at wrong can be quite strong. With someone in a powerful position treating someone in a vulnerable position so aggressively, her description is not unreasonable.
Also, she said "PTSD-like."
At what point is it not so much "like" PTSD, which is not infrequently ruinous or even fatal to the sufferer, and more like all of the other forms of misery or trauma that don't have a diagnosis?
I object in the same way to people who feel sad claiming that they're "Depressed" and that's not harmless either. Look at Japan's relationship with mental illness (especially clinical depression) and the weird arc its following, and you'll see what I mean.
For a year after Pollock groped me, I experienced what I now realize were PTSD-like symptoms. I had not anticipated them and was completely unprepared to have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks in situations or around people that, for one reason or another, triggered memories of the incident, which took place on October 7, 2015.
You are being incredibly dismissive of the piece and part of your justification is the term PTSD. You feel it is over the top. When the inaccuracy of your own statement is corrected, you double down.
This does not look like a good faith argument. It looks like an excuse to be dismissive.
In particular, the notion that a person reporting PTSD who hasn't been "observably" (in this case, through the details of a TechCrunch post) crippled by it isn't really suffering from it is both false and pretty offensive.
There really needs to be a guideline on HN about comments diagnosing (or dismissing the diagnosis of) mental illness in other commenters and the subjects of stories. These comments happen with some regularity, and they are never productive.
The reality is that these are just the most extreme cases of ptsd. Many people who have suffered through comparatively more minor traumas nevertheless exhibit ptsd symptoms that can affect their quality of life in a daily basis. For example, emotional trauma in childhood can easily lead to the core ptsd symptoms such as irritability, isolation, hypervigilance, anxiety, flashbacks, etc. But because these are due to events considered less serious than combat or violent physical assault they can often go untreated and ignored.
I wouldn't be so flippant and dismissive of terms like PTSD and Depression. For the person suffering them they are going to be very real and different than everyday sadness or misery. Even if for us outsiders they don't meet some documented guidelines of what they are.
[edited to clarify that this doesn't just make it a hostile environment to women]
So while your logic is sound, there is no reason to panic because the assumptions don't hold.
Words have meanings, just because someone interprets them in their own way, doesn't mean they can claim X when it's not considered warranted.
So regardless of this particular case, we can, and do, society collectively does set the bar for what can be considered X or Y -- and someone can argue based on that.
(That said, grabbing her hand and not letting go despite attempts to free it, and groping her body, clearly fits the bill for sexual harassment and a stressful situation).
Until a few decades ago, homosexuality was a disease that was OK to be cured with things like electroshock treatment. Heck, people had lobotomies inflicted upon them, in the 20th century, for all kinds of BS reasons. Here on HN too, many will attack the prevalent over-prescription of drugs and diagnoses of ADHD to children.
According to Wikipedia: "Harassment can include "sexual harassment" or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature." and "It includes a range of actions from mild transgressions to sexual abuse or sexual assault."
I referred to a "stressful situation" in justifying the PT(S)D claim, i.e. to say that this was indeed stressful (as I explicitly say), whereas you seem to be in the impression that I said it to downplay the incident.
Pedantry over trivial side issues serves to distract from the primary issue at hand, which, as another commented, doesn't make your priorities look so hot.
She's a reporter and the guy is a VC. There is no business relationship between them. They were walking down the street with friends after having drinks, he grabbed her hand and she refused his advances. Everybody went home.
This is what the story is about? Is this some sort of parallel universe where people claim sexual assault over anything these days?
Ie I can see how he could have let go of her hand sooner but calling this sexual assault sort of does disservice to the people who actually experience sexual assault.
My assumption is this noticeable size difference contributed to how strongly this incident impacted her.
Any man who doesn't realize that if he has a substantial size advantage, it will be inherently intimidating, is a troglodyte. And he probably wasn't oblivious. He probably happily used that to his advantage as an intimidation tactic.
Men tend to be physically stronger than women, even when their size is pretty comparable. Add a height advantage and things rapidly get ugly.
Which, you know, could just be because I have pathetic eyesight. But I honestly do not see a clear and unequivocal indicator to that effect.
Here are the excerpts from the article.
> I realized she was taking a photo. Later, when I asked her why she had done that, she said she didn’t get what was going on. Being photographed in that situation by someone I kept hoping would help me felt terrible.
> I saved the photo my friend took, even though I hated knowing it was in my storage.
That may seem pedantic to you, but I have had a couple of law classes and I worked in insurance for over 5 years. Those are environments in which such distinctions matter.
I am inferring that it is the photo and you apparently agree that it is, but I still don't believe there is a clear and unequivocal statement in the article to that effect.
At that point an approach was made and met with a clear response. That was when things should have stopped. That is how potential relationship escalation should work: an offer is made in some way and based on the response the proposer gets an idea on how to proceed (in this case - bugger off).
It is absolutely unacceptable that anyone should be assaulted.
This is actually someone threatening rape (imo). Unfortunately it's something our President has said.
We need to stop this behavior where people think they are entitled to someone else. We also need to have our Law enforcement act more appropriately to handle this; ensure Rape Kits are tested promptly.
Educating our children and adults reminding them what is and what isn't acceptable. It isn't acceptable to touch someone on the shoulder if they asked you to remove it.
Lastly we need to call sexual harassment what it is. It's harassment; it's something as a society we have ignored for far too long.
It's worse than that. For various reasons, some men are actively more interested if you reject them. It is a little bit like the principle that running from a bear will incite its chase instinct.
Obviously if she says no and leans away, you stop and don't try it.
But I still hear LOTS of people say this and it's exactly what I'm talking about. Everyone keeps saying men need to be aggressive and I really do think that's what causes a lot of the sexual harassment.
I'm pretty picky about consent. There are men who know how to delicately signal their interest and invite me to signal back whether or not I am amenable. I have the general impression that such tactics get men a lot more action than tactics that intentionally step on a woman's boundaries as a matter of course.
But there are also many women, in my experience, that for whatever reason, don't or can't signal their interest or intentions. In that case I ASK them. It sounds very awkward to say it, but if done in private (i.e. you don't shout it out) I've actually noticed it creates a lot of comfort in the women. e.g. once I asked a girl I was on a date with, and she said she wasn't comfortable with PDA (we were inside a bar). I didn't push it, but after we left the bar and nobody was in sight outside, we did make out. I like to think if I had just "gone for it" in the bar, she would have been uncomfortable, I would feel rejected, and generally bad things all around...
From my experience this is the last thing men are thinking in these situations.
Especially considering he was elected by the United States of America AFTER those comments were made public?
Control your expectations about the world people. It's only a nice place as depicted in media. Many, many, terms and conditions sadly apply :-(
The optimist in me looks at the other half of Americans who still have their good sense intact, and even those who chose not to vote. But as Robert Reich and Dan Rather have said repeatedly: these are dangerous times for our democracy.
The worst accusation is that he put his hand on the ass of a married woman. Now, should have done that? No. That wasn't a nice thing to do. He had a few drinks and got a bit too bold. If true, does he deserve to be trash talked at brunch with the girls? Sure. It's certainly something that he should reflect on and be more cautious next time. Should we take seriously the claims of "PTSD-like" symptoms based on having a man touch her ass and then do nothing when she got in a cab and drove away? Well, are women adults? One hundred fifty years ago, the thinking was that women were too emotional to make adult decisions, and so they shouldn't be entrusted to do things like own property or vote. Over the years, we've come to agree that women and men are equal. I personally think that this is a good thing, but the power of adulthood and citizenship comes with responsibility. Catherine Shu is asking for sympathy and vengeance as if she were a child. Obviously, if some random venture capitalist woman were to grab a journalist man's ass after a couple of drinks, there would definitely not be a TechCrunch article about it.
If women are children, we certainly should not entrust them with positions of responsibility in corporations, and I would not hire a child at an equivalent level of pay to an adult for an engineering role.
So, it's really women's choice. Do you want the power and benefits of being an adult, or do you want the protection and coddling of a child? Personally, I'm OK with either, but we need to get this straight before we hire a bunch of children to do important work.
Which part of the argument could not have been made without ruining a reputation through TC reach? How far are those accusations confirmed?
I've no stake in any of those people and I am not particularly opinionated about the current cultural matters surrounding harassment, but this is not a very civil approach and I am not sure it does a favor for the cause of greater awareness on the issue.
She states that she was inspired to share her experience (with photographic evidence) base on accounts of other women coming forward in a similiar manner.
Being inspired to skip the trial and personally decide to put somebody in the pillory is an understandable, but deeply flawed motivation.
The author can, of course, make every accusation. The publication however should not make the crime appear to be a secured fact. Breaching the journalistic objectivity might be a current trend but is intellectually dishonest and no service to the cause.
This looks more like vigilantism than a serious conversation.
There will always be disparity while this change takes place, if it does. There will be both men and women who abuse the system and get away with it with no repercussions. But you can't use that as justification for acting the way they do.
The problem is that your remarks are not coming across like "men and women are both adults and both need to work at solving this." You are coming across like "Well, individual men have zero responsibility at all for this problem, even when they are obviously being incredibly aggressive and predatory."
If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things.
Best.
> If you don't mean to come across that way, you will need to work on how you talk about such things.
Yeah, this isn't what I mean (I'm not a native english speaker, but I don't think I wrote it entirely wrong, but your emphasis is not mine's). Your previous reply nailed it,
> When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards.
But is exactly this my point: It is up to the women to correct/validate this behavior, when men starting to change their way. Because if in the long term this strategy doesn't work better, most of the men will drop it and start to approach women in the way they see it working. And this is my point when I say that it is not my (or individuals) fault. In an anthropological analysis, this is the same reason women evolved to rely in men for security and better chances of survival: it worked. Now we have a much better social security structure in the world so naturally the usefulness of men for women reached a new low in most countries :P
And it sounds really, really ugly, like you just don't want to be bothered to behave better yourself.
I talk all the time about the fact that it is a societal problem and we need to address it at that level. But addressing it at that level involves figuring out what individual's can do differently. Because society is merely an aggregate of a lot of individuals. It does not exist separately on its own or something. It is the collective result of many individual choices. You change it in part by coming up with mental models for effective actions that individuals can take.
No, I've been saying that it is our problem all the time. You keep saying that I'm trying to free men off their stupid behavior and what I'm saying is that men's stupid behavior are frequently awarded by women. Change this and you change that.
I get that in an atmosphere where most people are saying "men need to change" it is easy to fall into the bad habit of saying "women need to change" when maybe you really mean "women ALSO need to change." But you are not saying "women also need to change." You have made multiple posts here, and your position is very consistently that it is 100% the responsibility of women.
If you don't mean that, now would be a good time to just say "well, my English is not so good and I must not be explaining myself well" and drop it, rather than continuing to insist I am wrong, because it is only serving to dig your grave deeper.
Yeah, it became crystal clear that women also need to change.
But you don't have to be a person with a lot of power to make this choice. When enough people make this choice, then the predators are far less free to do whatever the fuck they so choose because more people will call them on it earlier, before it turns to assault.
Catherine Shu (author of this piece) was in a public setting and there were other people there who knew her. One took a photo of the incident without realizing the incident was basically assault. The same person had earlier sent mixed signals to Pollock, on the one hand saying Catherine was unavailable because she was married, on the other saying she liked white men because she was married to a white man.
So Pollock's predatory behavior was enabled by other people who not only failed to be supportive of Catherine, but even to some extent cooperated with his plans to get laid, and propriety be damned. I think it is completely gross and disgusting that her friend said she likes white men, she is marred to one.
When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards.
People get away with this shit because everyone either averts their eyes and refuses to see what is happening right in front of them or actively supports some powerful man's ugly agenda because he has power and they desire to curry favor. That is a choice. You can decide that you aren't willing to curry favor at that price.
> on: The long-term cost of sexual harassment