By using heterosexual, non-paedophilic women as one end of the spectrum, and paedophiles at the other, we can see that indeed, such statements by the former would raise no eyebrows. Such statements by the latter would raise eyebrows. That's because of context/prior behaviour.
Roth has a lot of tweets that would provide context that invites raised eyebrows, especially given his PhD dissertation, and his behaviour as head of Trust and Safety, where he suppressed the #groomer hashtag, and given an overall context where people of Roth's political persuasion are hyping up drag queens dancing for children and he's actively suppressing criticism of it. That's so easy to explain.
I also might add that women have a biological urge to give birth and take into account the male's skills as a father. To say that (some or all) gay guys have this may be true but it seems a stretch, and why express it out loud when you're supposed to look like you give a damn about CSAM? At the very least, his tweets are utterly stupid and reckless. If a headteacher tweets "wow, women are hot but women holding babies, extra hot!" wouldn't you pause? How about if he tweets out from his main account "I have a secret dirty twitter account", you wouldn't raise an eyebrow? Please.
As to "that could easily lead to this person being targeted by crazy vigilante types", firstly, that could be said of anything, though we do have another spectrum, running from (to a reasonable person) non-threatening through marking out undesirables to directly threatening. The marking can lead to actual threatening situations, like before a genocide, but they also overlap with valid criticism, and since we're not in a genocide situation I struggle to see how the tweets in question reach that bar. Find something that says "we should kill paedos" from LoTT and you'll have a much stronger case, otherwise you've taken up a position where you're arguing against someone who's against paedophilia, simply because they're a political opponent. That's how this endless cycle continues.
I don't know if the tweet qualifies as harassment, but it's certainly making entirely baseless allegations that could easily lead to this person being targeted by crazy vigilante types.
I think this kind of hysteria is pretty common in politics (actually, my incidental use of the word "hysteria" is fitting if anyone remembers that whole controversy). I guess the author's argument is that this phenomenon is more pronounced on the left. Perhaps.
It reminds me of a time when a friend of mine got fired from his job at a private school in the eastern US for simply patting a female student on the back during class. You might wonder what the nature of this "patting" was, but I don't. He's just not the kind of person who would have done that in a creepy way. He was devastated, of course, having just been labeled in a somewhat official capacity as a sexual predator. It's too bad that this kind of thing happens.
It should be clear from the reaction here on HN that your comments were widely regarded as heteronormative at best.
I think in fact that people understood you were trying to "invoke a feeling of sexual threat" and that you did this by making blatantly homophobic remarks.
I also think you should realize that even if it was not your intent to analogize, there is still an inherent comparison being made between the two situations. If they are not at all comparable, then Adria Richards must be examined according to the circumstances outlined in this thread. It appears to be the consensus among both male and female posters (including yourself) that it is unlikely that the situation could have made her feel sexually threatened. That being the case, you are simply defending the fact that she could have. This is irrelevant. Is it fair for me to feel threatened by you because you made a homophobic remark which, unlike the comments made in the presence of Ms. Richards, was actually perceived by the community to be reprehensible? Frankly, no - and I think it is a failure on your part to evaluate her situation critically rather than defending people's ability to be offended by anything they deem offensive.
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'm not sure we can be all that certain about the author's failings (apart from some failures as a writer). Certainly in her other story about inappropriate behaviour, she acts very reasonably. However, we can't really tell from how she writes the story whether the guy she complained about was just joking around with his friend, or directing sexual comments towards her in a harassing manner.
The problem with sexual harassment isn't that it attacks expectations of chastity, and to be honest, that's quite a condescending attitude to take. Sexual harassment is unpleasant because it makes people feel uncomfortable and frightened. If you think jokes can't be frightening then that is a failure on your part.
Sexual harassment isn't uncomfortable and scary because unwanted sexual attention offends one's virtue. Overt sexual advances are unprofessional, they put people in awkward social positions, and embarrass them in front of their peers. Unwanted sexual attention in a professional environment can be very disrespectful - it's an unwelcome diversion away from the desired professional interactions, and sends a clear message that you're not being taken seriously at all. It's potentially career damaging stuff, so it makes sense that it makes people uncomfortable.
Sexual harassment becomes deeply uncomfortable when it persists. When someone receives a sexual comment and responds coldly or uncomfortably, with obvious embarrassment or disinterest, they expect the sexual content to stop. If the sexual comments persist, that is creepy. It's not necessarily that the comments themselves are deeply offensive, it's the fact that someone is persisting in an action that is intrusive and unpleasant to you. In a professional environment, it is expected that everyone behave politely and with consideration. If someone presses the point and tries to engage with you in a sexual manner beyond the bounds of normal politeness, then you begin to think they are motivated by some strong feelings, and that is scary. Worse still, once you become scared, if they persist further, that means they don't even care about frightening you.
It is genuinely quite scary when someone has some strong feelings towards you that drive them to ignore social convention and your discomfort and fear. Worse still, complaints about sexual harassment often get dismissed as simple misunderstandings and not taken seriously. The fact is, misunderstandings are scary if someone is misunderstanding your fear and discomfort as an invitation to bed.
None of these harassment allegations involve men who simply failed to play the "politics de jour." That is a complete straw man. This is not about trust or intentions, but rather about boundaries. There is the sphere of work, and there is the sphere of socializing/romance, and as long as you respect that boundary there is no problem. Not trying to date people puts zero demands on your brain capacity (and, in fact, greatly frees your brain capacity, as I learned after getting married).
It's entirely dependent on context and who's doing the delivery. If someone makes an unwanted comment towards you, gay or straight, you can laugh it off and make a joke back that it isn't going to happen. If they continue even after you've made it clear you aren't receptive, that's harassment. And finally, if there's a systematic coverup of the unwanted advance that would be sexism.
Trying to accuse two guys of making an inappropriate joke of sexism is serious embellishment. She was merely trying to get hits on Twitter because sexism witch hunts are en vogue and it backfired. Witch hunts do nothing to cure the world of witches.
Yea, he casually added that term as if people wouldn't notice it. High earning, attractive, middle aged men are often targets for sexual harassment by women but it is not taken seriously at all.
In this specific context it's about someone sending a sexual message to a minor. There's nothing inhuman about not doing that, and excusing it as something all straight men do when around women is bizarre.
This comment is in every single one of these threads. I am not trying to be hyperbolic here, but it reminds me of people that act as if "laws" are the only thing keeping them from murdering their annoying neighbor. I don't know how to read it without thinking "wow, this confirms what women are saying about men".
I mean, I guess I should be glad there's some self-awareness?
Maybe I just can't empathize as a gay man though, but I've never, ever felt this way around a male coworker, gay or otherwise.
edit: To further explain my thinking... what's the alternative? The only way I can understand the comment is "Oh, well this is a witchhunt and I'm afraid of being swept up" ... or else, "I have done those behaviors that men are getting in trouble for and am worried about doing them to a coworker." Maybe there's another interpretation that I'm not able to understand? Trying to understand here. Thanks.
I can understand the "it's not just one comment" angle, this kind of makes sense. Although, I'm still not convinced everything taken as sexual harassment is actually such, at least to the extent external government intervention is need.
With intimidation the words are a non issue, it's just vocalized intention. With verbal harassment the words are all that matter, there is no intention. If there is intention, then it's a threat not verbal harassment.
My concern overall is that in the long term government and policy will be such that even so much as giving a simple compliment like, "I like your shirt", gets taken as punishable sexual harassment because someone find this sexually charged based on their own life experiences. My personal hope is that sexuality will become less of a taboo, and people will become less sensitive to it. This is jut my preference though.
> ...if they keep their hands to themselves and make no unwanted advances, what exactly do you find indecent about this?
It's likely that they are bothered by heterosexual males who might have any situation or opportunity (among adults of similar age and agency) that can be perceived as advantageous to them or contributes to their happiness.
Normal, healthy views on it aren't what's stigmatized. Creepy, unrequited, harassing behaviour sometimes is, in some contexts, and its practitioners love to fall back to the 'Just being nice/don't you like the attention/just boys being boys' defenses when called out on it.
The people responsible for it, of course, see themselves as victims, and cry to anyone who will listen about how unfair the world is to them.
> 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.
I don't think women feeling harassed by men's advances is remotely "outside the norm", or a "tiny minority". It's very common, which is exactly the problem.
>What about the discomfort faced by the many many women who like being chased?
If people like this kind of courtship, they should be willing to communicate that, rather than making it impossible for anyone to say "no" just so they can get their kicks. If there's no safeword for this "chasing" it shouldn't be considered consensual.
> As such, in every post you are condemning behaviour that around 50% of the population will have done at some point.
I agree with this exact sentiment. For example, hand holding is a thing commonly done among women friends in Japan. This sort of a thing in the US, however, would be viewed as 'creepy'.
However, most of the examples that the author points to, IMO, would not fall under creepy, but rather offensive. Offensive, however, has a 'higher burden of proof' so to speak whereas creepy is just a feeling. Therefore, creepy gets used much more and consequently it makes men feel more violated because there is no way to rebut it. E.g. "the way you said hi to me was really creepy." There is no response to that which an honest person can give: apologizing means that you were indeed creepy and arguing makes you look stupid.
I did read the whole article. You're right, I forgot about the guy who apparently professed love for her then removed her code from production. Although that one isn't particularly related to sex or gender either, other than the fact that the creep was an apparently heterosexual male. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with a pattern of sex or gender related discrimination, and any similar interaction would be inappropriate regardless of the parties involved.
Such behavior might fly in Italy, but this side of the pond it is very inappropriate.
Basically, a guy making a qualitative generalization of all women in a specific area is just scuzzball behavior.
It's not as egregious as rape or inappropriate touching, but it's absolutely a Title IX violation, and just a bad thing for someone in an authority position to say.
The full quote is inconclusive but consistent with my hypothesis that he’s not endorsing sudden crotch grabs but endorsing unwanted advances like kissing and fondling. It’s still really gross and harassment.
Roth has a lot of tweets that would provide context that invites raised eyebrows, especially given his PhD dissertation, and his behaviour as head of Trust and Safety, where he suppressed the #groomer hashtag, and given an overall context where people of Roth's political persuasion are hyping up drag queens dancing for children and he's actively suppressing criticism of it. That's so easy to explain.
I also might add that women have a biological urge to give birth and take into account the male's skills as a father. To say that (some or all) gay guys have this may be true but it seems a stretch, and why express it out loud when you're supposed to look like you give a damn about CSAM? At the very least, his tweets are utterly stupid and reckless. If a headteacher tweets "wow, women are hot but women holding babies, extra hot!" wouldn't you pause? How about if he tweets out from his main account "I have a secret dirty twitter account", you wouldn't raise an eyebrow? Please.
As to "that could easily lead to this person being targeted by crazy vigilante types", firstly, that could be said of anything, though we do have another spectrum, running from (to a reasonable person) non-threatening through marking out undesirables to directly threatening. The marking can lead to actual threatening situations, like before a genocide, but they also overlap with valid criticism, and since we're not in a genocide situation I struggle to see how the tweets in question reach that bar. Find something that says "we should kill paedos" from LoTT and you'll have a much stronger case, otherwise you've taken up a position where you're arguing against someone who's against paedophilia, simply because they're a political opponent. That's how this endless cycle continues.
reply