I have an ex-coworker who is a really attractive girl, and she used to tell me lots of stories like this about places she had worked at previously. Vice presidents calling her to their room and offering her promotions if only she would give them weekly blowjobs, prospective customers turning away from million-dollar deals at the last minute after she refused to sleep with them, etc.
The really sad thing about is that the vast majority of guys I talk to about this topic are simply not aware that women, especially attractive women, go through stuff like this all the time. So when they hear women complaining about discrimination, harassment, glass ceilings, and so on, they think those women are simply "being bitchy." Which simply perpetuates and intensifies the status quo.
Yeah. Street harassment is another thing like that. E.g., I naively assumed that my girlfriend's experience going out and running alone was exactly like my experience when I was with her. Until she started telling me about the frequent whistles, comments, and sexual propositions she would receive.
It just didn't happen when I'm around, because people who are jerks and abusers are, unsurprisingly, very crafty in doing it only in contexts when they are unlikely to get called on it. So male perception of this bullshit is almost totally unrelated to how much it happens.
As an aside, it made me really happy to come across a poster last week for the #stoptellingwomentosmile campaign: https://twitter.com/williampietri
I think it's even worse than being 'crafty', they're actually trying to show you respect under the idea that because you're with her you have a claim on her and they're deferring to that. Which is incredibly creepy and offensive.
Men are dramatically less likely to hit on me when I am with either or both of my adult sons. Many people realize they are relatives (though some think they are my brothers, not my sons) so, no, they don't think I am the sexual property of these two males. I have only been bothered by a guy when my sons are around when the guy was drinking alcohol. So I think the parent comment is more accurate than your assumption, though, yes, your observation is a social reality in some situations and it is a problem for women -- that "respect" is sometimes given for a man's property rights over a woman, not really given to her per se.
I'm not so sure the men doing this are thinking consciously about property rights. They're probably going around motivated at the primate level. This doesn't excuse what they're doing, but it makes me suspect that they will continue to emulate the behavior of the other men they observe in their environment and will only change when they see others around them change their behavior.
This is what people are like: only a minority of people will go through the motions of self examination, and only a minority of those will do that effectively. Where real change happens, or where outdated misbehaviors persist, it's basically a matter of primate see, primate do. Real change has to have a component of motivation at this level.
I didn't say they were thinking consciously of property rights. I have been in discussions with women who were trying to find a way to signal to their boss or someone else who was potential trouble that "No, I am not up for a romantic relationship with you" and trying to figure out how to do so without offending. They often try to do so by emphasizing to the man "I have a boyfriend." I always tell them that is the wrong approach because it signals to potentially predatory men that she is perfectly willing to go along with being some man's property and all he has to do is find some way to claim her as his own. That's the wrong signal for a woman to send if she really wants a career. She needs to find a polite way to deflect his attentions without saying "It's cuz I belong to someone else right now." Some men take that as a challenge, as "come get me, big boy." So it is not a good way to avoid trouble.
If women want to compete with men and not just be their toys, they need to exercise agency and own their decisions that "No, I am not up for a relationship with you. Because I say so, not because of some other man's property rights over me." If a woman says "I would get with you if I weren't with someone else" she needs to really and truly mean that. It shouldn't be a polite fiction. Such polite fictions tend to lead to worse trouble than the one they thought they were trying to cleverly sidestep.
Would you argue that ideas like "family" would not engage at a subconcious level for extremely social animals like humans? If you wouldn't argue against "family" being instinctual, then you can't argue against "mine-ness", since family is by definition something that is "mine" vs "yours".
Would you argue that ideas like "family" would not engage at a subconscious level for extremely social animals like humans?
I would argue that there is a concept of "relatedness" encoded into Homo sapiens on the instinctive level. The notion of "family" is at least in part a cultural construct on top of that. Also, who said I was arguing against "mine-ness?" I certainly didn't. I'm just highlighting possible unacknowledged/unsupported assumptions in this thread. (Like your apparent assumption of a particular stance on my part.)
I'm sorry for derailing, but I read your HN bio and have to suggest this: Join Gittip. Also, you should come to Nicaragua. It's nice, and stupid-cheap if you have a way to be of service to others remotely :)
Thanks for your concern. I will look into Gittip. Nicaragua is not likely to make my agenda. I sometimes wish I could do something like that, but my health challenges are complicated enough as is in a country where I know the language and culture and so forth. For that and other reasons, I am stuck in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.
Not really, they just want to avoid a fight. Under sexist rules, a man accompanying a woman is her "protector". If someone makes rude sexual remarks to her, it's also insulting to him because it implies that he's too weak to do anything about it. That's a provocation to respond with violence to affirm his manhood.
It's the same logic behind insulting a man by calling his mother a whore. Why should he be insulted by an insult to his mother? Because a real man is supposed to defend the honor of the women in his family.
And/or they simply want to avoid a direct confrontation, which might happen when a man is present, but not when the woman is alone. This just happened to me today, biking and of course i heard some rude comments. Really wanted to tell them to fuck off but then I would engage, they might respond, etc, and my biking zen would be even more disturbed.
It's really not "that guy might stop me". It's "they're probably a couple, what's the point". The default assumption is that a mixed-gender pair of people around the same age is a couple. I've been out wandering with female platonic friends plenty of times, only to have people assume we're a romantic pair.
I'm sure that's an element. But there are other people in front of whom street harassers will quiet down, too, so I don't think that's the only explanation.
Don't understand why we don't start naming and shaming. It's a lot easier to not see as a real problem when it's always stories of nameless men in unspecified locations and situations. And the kinds people who are prone to this behavior are being given a free pass, only to do it again later.
The point is it's a systemic problem. Internet mob justice is generally terrible to begin with (for a lot of reasons) and it doesn't solve the problem.
Also, at the risk of stating the obvious: there are potentially very serious ramifications for the person doing the naming and shaming too. Most people don't like being called sexist assholes even if they are, in fact, sexist assholes.
Shaming usually makes people either dig their heels in more and justify their behavior, or it drives the behavior underground where they won't get caught for it. Neither is a desirable result.
I think that what Heidi did is basically perfect - she's educating people that this does go on, it does have an effect on the women who are subjected to it, and they shouldn't have to put up with it. But she's doing it in a neutral, non-defensive tone, without calling out specific people. That's usually much more effective at changing behavior.
Naming and shaming is hard for anyone who has to have a continue relationship of even a distant sort with a guy and it is hard to prove a lot of accusations. So I wouldn't pressure anyone to be the namer-and-shamer.
But if you could get over those hurdles, it should happen, regardless of those shamed "digging in". Seriously, this kind of behavior seems much more authentically shameful than a lot of illegal activities carrying multi-year sentences. Sorry but knowing that inappropriate behavior has hard consequences works as a deterrent, maybe not for the first guy confronted but for the tenth guy, who at that point knows they just better not do that.
Win or lose, lawsuits are an enormous time and money sink. That's for any lawsuit. Sexually harassment ones are worse. Asking somebody who has been harassed to go public or file a lawsuit is putting an enormous burden on them, one that they don't deserve.
In my view, the problem is the behavior of some guys, enabled by a much larger number of guys who are ignorant or indifferent. I think the solution mainly lies with waking up that latter group.
Lawsuits suck, I'm sure sexual ones are the worst.
But if some sleazy fucker knows that the worst consequence of harassment is social disapproval it drastically lowers the stakes for him. You have to count on the harassed person to want to make the harassment very, very public so that the people outside his close also-sleazy social group find out, remember, and hold him accountable.
Beyond losing friends and contacts, any retribution would have to happen in the business world; how do you hold someone accountable inside a system were sociopathical ignorance of the social consequences of your actions (and the actions of other) is rewarded. My entire life has been a series of events crushing the pleasing ideals I was taught as a child regarding morals, they just don't matter in business. Some businesses have them, and it costs them money to exercise them.
Legal recourse is how society turns externalities into internalites.
If the recourse is the lawsuit, then you have to count on the harassed person to a) want to make the harassment very, very public, b) figure out a way to pay for a very expensive lawyer, and c) be willing to spend years in a very stressful proceeding. For criminal law, substitute for b) a willingness to deal with an often-hostile legal system.
And I can't quickly find the links that were the stories I found most compelling, the ones with the enormous social consequences. The questioning of what "really" happened. Getting smeared as crazy, a bitch, manipulative, etc, etc.
It's great when people who are already traumatized willingly go through that. But it's a great deal to ask of someone in that state.
I also liked how Heidi Roizen tried not to extrapolate on her own experience now that she is a VC. When you get older, more assertive and less of a 'target', it's too easy to forget what younger women might encounter.
[edit: grammar]
I'm not sure how you know that the vast majority of men think that women complaining about being solicited for blowjobs are "being bitchy." That seems like a really jaundiced generalization of men.
Or maybe you are prejudiced. There are also people who think black men are all criminals; they'd also say "maybe this is far, far more common than many people would like to think."
It is far more common than I'd like to think. Facts aren't racist. It's the particular spin placed on those facts which is or isn't racist.
Some difficulties with discussing this sort of misbehavior are the different contextual meanings of "often." Even if a bad behavior is rare, it can still cast a constant shadow, especially when it can happen without warning, and especially when it comes disguised as something else. Even more so when it's attached to highly personal subjects, and even more so when the circumstance is something one has been born into and experienced ones whole life. I'm not sure there is any effective way to understand such an experience without living it.
but you do realise that these women would be complaining about something else as a placeholder for the BJ... and that can be seen as bitchy. rarely does a women complain of BJ's without undertaking harrasment complaints.
It bothers me too. The article is otherwise great.
google, define: girl
"1. a female child.
2. a young or relatively young woman."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl: "A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman."
There's nothing about that in the post, and I don't think it's relevant. There are many song titles which have a negative connotation towards women (especially in rap). I couldn't name a blog post the same as one of them, then later say, "I understand how you could see this as a bad thing, but I was just thinking of some song title you've never heard of." It doesn't work that way.
And, she does call herself a girl once more, not just in the title. Perhaps someone said that sentence in a movie, so it will somehow not mean what it says either.
And even if it is an unspoken reference, that doesn't explain how the title should be interpreted differently. It's a pop song, and according to wikipedia the lyrics aren't especially relevant to the contents of her post.
I think the usage of girls here is likely intentional and is a very important and much better word choice than "women" IMO - it shows the power differential common in many of these situations.
I've had a 15-year experiment going in relation to this. Some adult females hate being called 'girls', because of the reasons you state. Some adult females hate being called 'women' in a general context, because they feel it brings a whole lot of feminist baggage they don't want to deal with. It didn't matter what word I chose, I'd find someone who was put off by it, and had had clear complaints verbalised about both words (ie: I'm not wrongly picking up on nonverbal cues).
So I started using 'lass' instead (I am not in an area where this is in common use). I haven't yet found anyone who bridles at this, when before I certainly did with 'girl' and 'woman'. No-one seems to particularly care for or against 'lass', with the exception of some elderly women, who seemed to like the suggestion of youth in the word. The experiment part was that I'd stop using 'lass' when someone complained about it, like they did with 'girl' or 'woman', and to see how long that would take.
I'm not particularly suggesting this as a course of action for the general public, it's just a story to relate.
There's a counter-point to this that is likely to be unpopular, but it's deeply rooted in human biology and isn't going to go away any time soon. Attractive young women may have difficulty getting people to take them seriously, and have to deal with things like frequent unwanted sexual advances, but they have no trouble getting laid. Attractive young women have easy, practically unlimited access to sex (if they so desire). Unsurprisingly, this comes at a cost.
Meanwhile, while it's easier for men to be taken seriously, and they much less often have to deal with sexual harassment, they often have trouble getting laid—especially with the aforementioned attractive young women. It may be true that "the vast majority of guys...are simply not aware that women...go through this stuff all the time". But it's also true that the vast majority of women are simply not aware of how hard it is for young men, especially nerdy young men, to get appealing women to have sex with them. They would be utterly flabbergasted if they learned just how many computer geeks, science grad students, etc., have never even kissed a girl, much less had sex with one.
We see that there are plusses and minuses to each respective situation, but arguably men have it worse off, because women can complain freely of the terrible things they have to put up with, and they're generally met with sympathy by the mainstream (and backed by the full force of Federal law). Meanwhile, men who complain that attractive young women won't sleep with them are shamed and belittled, and told that no one owes them sex. Which is true—but is hardly helpful to the proverbial 40-year-old virgin.
Seriously, no. Don't do this. Don't do "being attractive to men unsurprising comes at the cost of sexual assault." Don't do "not having sex when you want to is as bad as being forced to have sex when you don't want to." Don't do "attractive young women are the only women worth having sex with." Don't go for the mathematical impossibility that women get to have more sex than men. Don't go for "reporting sexual assault is a sympathetic experience with no negative consequences," when women are still basically put on trial for it.
In all sincerity, if you don't get why you are shamed and belittled when you complain about unfairness with respect to women, here's the key to make sense of it: you live in a caste system, and you are the higher caste. Women were literally second-class citizens under the law until very recently (assuming they no longer are in your country), and a society doesn't shake that off overnight. Men have real problems, but you can't talk sensibly about them until you get how stacked the deck is to start with. (And, honestly, a thread about a woman who was trying to cut a quarter-million dollar deal when the man on the other side put her hand in his pants? That's a thread that doesn't need to be about men's problems.)
Dude, peeing when my bladder is full is deeply rooted in my biology. But rather than just whizzing willy nilly in the corner of rooms, I know to go to an actual bathroom to do it. Why? Because I'm more than 4 years old.
Biology is no excuse for behavior. It can explain a tendency, but it does not justify yielding to that tendency.
You really need to re-evaluate your perspective on sex. You say you understand it's true that no one owes men sex, but you clearly don't understand that.
Both men and women are owed the respect of not being offered frequent unwanted sexual requests. Of getting people to take them seriously, based purely on the merits of their work.
Both men and women aren't owed sex. And it's not a "downside" to not have something you're not entitled to not be given to you. It would be a downside to have to pay for clean drinkable water. Or not be allowed to get public transport to work.
If someone approaches you in public and asks you to have a coffee with them, you don't owe it to them to have it, and your refusal is completely ok. They have no right to get upset if you refuse. Just because everyone else has refused them before doesn't make them suddenly entitled to have coffee with you now.
If no one wants to have coffee with you, you need to make it appealing for them to have coffee with you. This isn't just looks, and you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and blaming things you can't change.
A frivolous statement like "We all want what we can't have" can be used to justify anything: You may as well answer ""We all want what we can't have" when slaves demand their freedom.
It's also deeply offensive to compare as pressing a need as the healthy male's sex drive (typically stronger than the need to eat, as you can easily see when you offer a healthy man the choice between sex with an attractive young woman and food), with something completely frivolous like locking in a husband?
> The really sad thing about is that the vast majority of guys I talk to about this topic are simply not aware that women, especially attractive women, go through stuff like this all the time. So when they hear women complaining about discrimination, harassment, glass ceilings, and so on, they think those women are simply "being bitchy." Which simply perpetuates and intensifies the status quo.
Assuming not all (attractive) women will publicly or privately complain about such behaviors by men, will the others submit to such behaviors by the men in those positions? Will some women complain (public/privately) and still submit to such behaviors, and what circumstances is that more likely to happen? And is that act submission more socially accepted than say, if the sexes were reversed?
Tangent: I wonder if such things could be analytically studied? Some one could mine sites like HN, twitter, etc for a signal. Check the various states of the author of such. But then it would be hard to match that with the outcomes of submitting to such behavior or not without some kind of surveillance.
Meta: My tangent makes me really wonder what the world could be like where the current information asymmetry when it comes to present and technically possible surveillance systems, did not exist, where nearly everyone could leverage such scale of information in the same way that nearly everyone can leverage the atmosphere to breathe…
Edit: So I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted since I'm not trying to lead any bias towards any group that could be placed on either side of the interactions, It could be Martian's propositioning some being from Alpha Centauri system. Is pondering a way to study such things (and how one could even approach to) so controversial such that no one will respond yet shame at the same time? It's like we're not even allowed to try to explore what is going on. We all must trout out more anecdota, spout out more faux outrage about what has been going on (we're all apart of the status quo, and even with the internet outrage we haven't progressed very far in understanding it seems, who could have guessed…), and damn everything else. Anyone going to propose another reason to refute that's not what's going on here? Maybe someone can point me to a place where I could attempt to frame such ideas/questions/ways to approach studying such things and doesn't cost $xx,000 per year, since apparently, HN isn't for such. Amusing HN…
> […]what they're looking for is a human response.
Well, considering that most people aren't willing to admit that words emanating from this account is the work of some amazing AI platform straight from DARPA, or a being not of this world that is traditionally accepted by the masses, what you really mean is that I didn't illicit a k̶n̶e̶e̶ ̶j̶e̶r̶k̶ reaction (human response: I was tempted) or provide more anecdota to illicit more k̶n̶e̶e̶ ̶j̶e̶r̶k̶ traditional socially accepted reactions?
Meta: But doesn't socially accepted reactions change over time? I wonder how that happened? Did no one try to study human behaviors and some how try to influence such, and we just magically change to the present?
If I took to the forums for all the ways people treated me for the color tint of my skin or other groups I may be subscribed to (black, male, college dropout [some of the things some people would describe me as], etc…), will I learn that all these people behind the their internet connections really give a fuck about me (and vise versa) and that will some how magically change the world now that my ego would have been pandered too? Sure, maybe more people would know that such things happen, but then what? We just keep on keeping on after we log off? Shame on me to even suggest that is/will take the form of actively maintaining the status quo?
Was that human response enough? Now what did we learn that could forward our understanding of such dynamics that take place in a society and change the way people interact for the "better"?
Not just a human response, but one that matches theirs. Attempting rational analysis in the presence of an angry mob is not a good idea - your only real options are to actively join in the fun, or stay at home with the lights off.
> Attempting rational analysis in the presence of an angry mob is not a good idea - your only real options are to actively join in the fun, or stay at home with the lights off.
Probably great advice for the meatspace, but I question if such needs to be the lowest common denominator for online interactions. But I guess some people must be thinking: "How could this person not derive any pleasure/fun from deriding another human being (or in this case, anonymous men who abuse their position in power or in society for a variety of reasons not made apparent but must be inferred by the audience, but human being nonetheless), especially when its socially accepted to do so?!?! How dare he (go figure, but he's admitted to being black [gasp!] so now I'm confused!?!?!) not partake in a sadomasochistic expression of the human condition!?!?!"
Well the online consequences are a lot less serious. The possibility of some downvotes is not dissuading either one of us from carrying on saying what we think. I said what I did mainly to point out that this whole thread is indeed mob behavior, because the phenomenon seems have gotten really bad in this community lately. But even if I do get greyed out, it doesn't really matter because a few people will still read nuance and see that there are indeed people who don't agree but aren't just part of a rival mob. In meatspace, my voice would have been drowned out by the jeers of the day ("faggot" (1995), "traitor" (2005), "privileged" (2015), etc), so that's some incremental improvement to be thankful for.
I don't really think it's a thought of "why don't you take pleasure joining in", but a very base judgment of whether someone is with-us or against-us. Since you're not outraged at this very important subject, you must not share my values. And since you have different values, you must be a contributor to the problem.
>I said what I did mainly to point out that this whole thread is indeed mob behavior, because the phenomenon seems have gotten really bad in this community lately.
Agreed. I figured maybe if I could try to frame the issue in a technical means that might interest people of this community in the context of controversial present uses of technology (trying to expand beyond the mob behaviors in the community towards present asymmetric usage of such) that could benefit us in many spheres if used to study our behaviors if the means were more available/accessible to all.
It's just funny because now people in my position have been pushed towards pursing startups in order to try to address social behaviors using technology because no such freedoms are granted in academia until one is grey haired, and even then you must pander the present status quo in academia which I have friends whine to me about all the time.
At least on HN, I can have a way to even find people trying to do similar things, and I wouldn't know if I didn't state what I was thinking which I think outweighs the fear of being grey out (it still is pretty unpleasant since that affects whether some people who may help pursue such ways of trying to address things may over look, but maybe it attracts those people even more, so maybe not!).
All in all, I'm still pretty hopeful that such interactions here and in derivative spaces like github/twitter can draw me towards people who want to think of/build something to address something like this one day. It's worked form getting me interested in decompiling firmware, network bruteforcing, learning different programming languages, writing code to mine twitter for social information corresponding to crowd sourcing campaigns and their influencers, etc…
> […]but a very base judgment of whether someone is with-us or against-us. Since you're not outraged, you must not share my exact values. Since you don't share my values, you must be part of the problem.
Yeah, I can understand that, but I just stated how such judgements can be construed as (with an intentional mocking touch placed in that train of thought). And this is coming from someone who had an official position at an Ivy League university before I dropped out, as a "Minority Peer Counselor". Funny enough, even there, people who normally initially associate with others (and me) on the basis of their skin (for a multitude of reasons, most predominantly surrounding some internalized fear of rejection/and derivatives from prior experiences or teachings) didn't like when I brought up such phenomena.
Are you in all seriousness saying that attractive women have it hard? You are suffering form a massive case of what modern social though terms "privilege blindness". (And, as an aside, probably have the hots for that girl als well.) Nobody on this plane is more privileged than attractive girls. They don't even have to work if they don't want to.
In your delusion, you also conveniently ignore that (within certain limits) being attractive is very much a lifestyle choice that brings with it all manner of intense advantages. Your ex-coworker made the choice of being attractive precisely because of all these advantages.
The reason women complain about being 'discriminated' is because it works so well for them: there's always, in the lingo of modern social thought, a "white knight" who's willing to believe them because he's so desparate.
Without commenting on the first two paragraphs, your last paragraph makes it sounds more malicious than reality probably is. It's entirely possible that attractive women got BOTH privilege and harassment.
"It's entirely possible that attractive women got BOTH privilege and harassment."
Women tend not to report on minor sexual harassment incidents, since it is socially disadvantageous to do so. They only speak about it in aggregate terms, which will have zero effect, except in the very long term, on the number of sexual harassment incidents they will experience. Speaking about in aggregate terms, also draws in attention from people sympathetic to the woman's situation, at the expense of other people who may be in even more need of attention, (e.g. say starving children in africa, elder women unable to pay bills, foster children being abused), and enables the attractive women to earn additional privileges.
I agree it probably isn't their deliberate intention to have that effect on society, but I do think that effect exists.
You have a point - a woman can always choose to be relatively unattractive by cutting her hair short, not wearing makeup, wear unattractive clothes, etc... They choose to present themselves as attractive because there are more social advantages of doing so.
Well, today, Paul, I'd like some of this "terrible reading comprehension" you have so prominently on the menu (I mean, reading both an article and a testimony about actual discrimination, and then saying it's a "lifestyle choice", it's either that or something so much beyond bad faith, it's positively Luciferan). Additionally, I'd like a healthy serving of victim blaming, because I too subscribe to the idea that any abuse suffered by attractive females is completely their fault, why should they be attractive in the first place?
Your post doesn't contain an argument regarding my claim that beauty is to a substantial degree a life-style choice.
The style of your post is typical for white-knights who, in my considerable experience, reflexively hit-out against any man who doesn't defer to the feminist/misandric party-line that woman must not be held responsible, that women have only rights, no responsibilities. The great Africa-American philosopher and gender-researcher Christopher Julius has pithily summarised the underlying motivation for this disposition.
> Your post doesn't contain an argument regarding my claim that beauty is to a substantial degree a life-style choice.
I'm not debating this point because it is completely irrelevant. Your argument boils down to "if a woman is attractive, it's perfectly legitimate for her to suffer from discrimination, because she is privileged". There is a word for that, it's "misogyny" (as if your "white knight" dig wasn't sufficient). Women have the right to makeup and skirts, and they have the right to not have strangers grab their hand and put it on their dick. Of course, you're free to disagree with this statement, and you'll find a number of countries, particularly in the Middle-East, agreeing with your views, but that's not what I consider a part of modern western values.
Imagine being an attractive skinny guy in a prison? Or a token burned-out hacker at a business school where everyone needs a "coder" to be the next Steve Jobs? How will you make friends? How much privilege will you be granted to compensate for the perpetual annoyance/fear of being taken advantage of?
"and she used to tell me lots of stories like this about places she had worked at previously. Vice presidents calling her to their room and offering her promotions if only she would give them weekly blowjobs, prospective customers turning away from million-dollar deals at the last minute after she refused to sleep with them,"
When you can use your mobile as a universal recording device and you carry it everywhere I find stories like this incredibly hard to believe.
Is it that hard to download a recording app, like the aclu police recording app, and have the most water tight sexual harassment suit ever? I mean you don't need to know that's happening before hand, when things start to get weird just say you got a text message and start recording.
At the end of the day remember that stories are just that, and people, both men and women, lie. Without evidence believing anyone because they are a woman is just as sexist as the people who supposedly made those passes on her.
Historically, recording/taping conversations was a "spec-ops" act against someone, which could be only used by those in power to abuse/blackmail people, and it made sense to restrict it.
Nowadays, recording devices are ubiquitous, and easily available even to, say, poor disadvantaged teenagers, and the majority of their use actually seems to be for the "little guy" to protect against abuse by obtaining evidence of it. IMHO we should consider a way (details, conditions, restrictions, etc) to make it generally legal to make recordings of things that are said to you or done to you.
Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's OK to ignore due process. The NSA records lots of things on a daily basis but that doesn't mean it's all valid in a court of law.
I think if a person made a complaint to law enforcement, they could get a waiver - or maybe even a court order - to record a specific person for a specific time for a specific reason. Maybe that should be easier, but I don't think the process should be any less regulated.
Due process is for government and law enforcement; However, gathering evidence in advance to protect yourself should be [made] legal. An abused teenager should be able to record evidence and have it be valid in a court of law, to prevent it being dismissed as he-said/she-said without evidence. If you feel threatened by someone, you should be allowed to record your interactions without their permission (and likely knowledge), so that if violence occurs, the perpetrator gets punished - again, unlike a majority of such cases where nothing happens due to lack of evidence. In places where local police is corrupt or prejudiced, recording your interactions (again, without giving them ability to prevent it) is the best way to fix the problem. The same goes for sexual harassment and discrimination cases.
The whole point is that you should be able to record now, and handle any permission/admissability later; and you shouldn't require cooperation of government beforehand - it's likely for police or court to say that your case is not important enough for them; but it's not a valid reason to restrict your ability to protect yourself.
What you intentionally say to me isn't your private secret anymore - if I had the right to hear it, then I have the right to remember it and to repeat that to any court; and I should have the right to remember it perfectly&permanently on a durable medium, and hand at to any court as valid evidence. In short, it makes sense to require permission of a participant in recorded conversation, but not all participants.
This is significant. I have actually thought through the ramifications of such a recording, and since in many states it would not be legal as evidence, I've concluded that it's not useful if one's desired avenue of recourse for harassment is legal. On the other hand, if one is willing to go for some sort of "nuclear option" (with high self-risk if in a two-party consent state) one could just post it somewhere online. We have seen examples of such postings and their effects recently...
And there are states, such as Liberia, where sexual harassment laws aren't applicable. Just because you live in a medieval jurisdiction doesn't mean the rest of us are.
If this is in California, would a tape recorded by one party without consent of both parties be admissible in court? I was under the impression that California was two party consent.
>Is it that hard to download a recording app, like the aclu police recording app, and have the most water tight sexual harassment suit ever?
So you're suggesting the solution to sexual harassment is for women to go deeper into an already uncomfortable situation and gather evidence for the 'nuclear option' that can potentially ruin the careers of both parties? That's complete nonsense. Nobody wants to hire somebody they think might sue them. Since women who file big sexual harassment suits face serious repercussions in the job market later, it's usually an option of last resort.
If someone, anyone, asked me to suck their dick or clit, yes, I would go for the nuclear option. You have to be a really well beaten down cubicle slave to think that someone trying to own your body outright like that isn't grounds for destroying their life.
Makes you wonder about how many women do accept such offers and get ahead that way. Which is "unfair" in a way to the men who don't have such an option.
I'm really curious about the numbers here - what percent of women have ever agreed to such offers for the purpose of getting ahead (at any point in their lifetime).
I'm hoping the number is in the single digits, because if it's higher this type of harassment will never stop.
>>Makes you wonder about how many women do accept such offers and get ahead that way. Which is "unfair" in a way to the men who don't have such an option.
Oh yeah, that's another thing that happens: when a good-looking woman is successful, others (men and not-so-good-looking women) will assume she must have done sexual favors for someone in power - as opposed to because she's smart and capable.
(You may have asked the question innocently, but... there be dragons.)
You can't argue that men generally aren't aware that a lot of sexual harassment takes place against women or attractive women, and also that they would assume that when they do come into power that they got ahead by accepting sexual harassment.
Seriously? What do you think is more likely to happen if the woman submits?-
1. She gets a promotion she doesn't totally doesn't deserve because she submitted to sexual harassment by her her boss at work. She's happy about this.
2. She submits to sexual harassment because she is afraid she'll lose her job if she doesn't. She feels dirty and exploited.
And this is unfair to men how? Because they don't have to put up with sexual harassment at work as much?
#3: She files suit, and wins, because the legal climate surrounding harassment cases is overwhelmingly in her favor and she knows it.
I can't take claims of the above seriously in the US, because women are 100% legally protected from professional retribution when declining said "deals". I can't speak to outside the US, but here, the protections are vast and absolute.
It's not 1913 anymore, any anybody who claims otherwise needs to wake up to the current legal reality.
And then she can never work again. Most settlements pay out less than $100,000, not nearly enough to live off. Not worth being blacklisted from future employment because the guys in charge think women need to "lighten up".
The way you are phrasing this is super offensive and border line disgusting. Do you really think its a privilege that women have this "option"? What if someone offered you a promotion if your wife gave him blowjobs? Would you consider that a sweet opportunity? You want to picture that?
I imagine, whatever that number is, that its far less than the number of white, socially-connected men who got their jobs/opportunities because they weren't black/female/gay/poor/ostrich...
Which doesn't justify when a woman gets a job by blowing someone, but as a man i'm not exactly concerned about the relative amounts of privilege I receive relative to the blowjob "opportunities"/discrimination women do...
I am of course doing my small part to fix this by offering to blow every Manager i meet if they'll promote me :( You gotta do what you gotta do for equality...
The really sad thing about is that the vast majority of guys I talk to about this topic are simply not aware that women, especially attractive women, go through stuff like this all the time. So when they hear women complaining about discrimination, harassment, glass ceilings, and so on, they think those women are simply "being bitchy." Which simply perpetuates and intensifies the status quo.