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Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture?
owenferguson writes "Valerie Aurora, Linux kernel file systems expert, takes DEFCON to task for poor sexual harassment policing. A nice followup piece to the recent Readercon fiasco."
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Fuck that guy.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
I'm an average geek. I have to say that when I find myself surrounded by really hardcore geeks, I feel put off. It's like they are in a feeding frenzy, looking for a chance to be king of the hill. I am not surprised at all that they'd act in totally horrible ways towards women. Clearly, part of the game there was to do so (to get the hole punched).
I think in the general area of business software, the stereotype of the hardcore geek is mostly gone. People who write business applications are generally pretty mainstream by geek standards. Perhaps such a concentration of extremely tech-focused geeks like at the conference in question is the last place we see this kind of stereotype, and possibly, for that reason they are all the more poorly behaved.
(Aside from needing to look up that link about all articles that end with question mark)
.. its a part of immature people who associate with hacker culture .. hmm .. so maybe that should be a yes?
Sexual harassment is just plain old immature behavior. It isn't a part of Hack Culture
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This commentary on this article will undoubtedly be similar to that of a troll festival.
Ooops, *looks above post*, too late.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Not trying to be conspiratorial, but why is it Occupy Wallstreet, Julian Assange, and now "hacker culture" all get accused of sexual assaults? What is the connection? Or are certain people in certain social networks more likely to commit or be accused of sexual assault?
There are politics involved with hacking, hackers upset a lot of people with a lot of power. Hacktivists in particular. Human rights defenders in particular. What could be worse for a hacker or anybody than to be labeled a sex offender? While it is possible that sexual assaults are going on, we also have a correlation with the majority of hackers being young males (there are females but we don't hear much about them), and what we see happening is the landscape for hackers becoming much more militarized, much more political, and much more dangerous.
My advice is that anyone in the hacker community both men and women should take some time to discuss how to protect both women from being sexually assaulted and protect men from being falsely accused as there will a probability of both occurring with increasingly greater frequency.
Sources:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18519380
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ngF4V-TOUI
Pretty sure that if this was an all women thing, a few men would be harassed at some point too.
Or the experience of one of my friends, who prefers to remain anonymous. At a recent DEFCON, while leaning over to get her drink at the bar, someone slid his hand up all the way between her legs and grabbed her crotch.
I cannot believe someone could even remotely think that doing something like this would be a good idea. Someone else's body is not just an object. Jesus Christ people, get a fucking clue - this sort of attitude makes for a very poor environment all around.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Is this real sexual harassment or just one of the insanely vocal parish that categorise "rape" as "some guy glancing askance at my bubs", who in the process harm actual rape victims by trivialising it?
Grabbing a woman by the crotch in a crowded room and running away definitely counts as "sexual harassment". Except, oh wait. It's ASSAULT. Much better.
Maybe a better question is WHY is this harassment occurring? Is this specific to certain types of conferences?
Adopting a clear policy on the matter is completely sensible. But how does one come to believe that such creepy behavior would be tolerable in the first place?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Real hackers might objectify the female geeks and even lust upon them from afar putting them on a pedestal, but actual human contact just doesn't fit.
One man was apparently out of order, it wasn't a group effort by an entire community. The creep didn't do anything bad enough to get himself arrested and was banned for life for his actions, can't that be an end to it?
Or are we still running with the assumption that all white males are fundamentally evil and everything they do is sexist and/or racist.
The fact that we never hear about anyone getting charged, fined or sent to jail for said behavior, perhaps.
FTFA:
Or the experience of one of my friends, who prefers to remain anonymous. At a recent DEFCON, while leaning over to get her drink at the bar, someone slid his hand up all the way between her legs and grabbed her crotch.
I cannot believe someone could even remotely think that doing something like this would be a good idea. Someone else's body is not just an object. Jesus Christ people, get a fucking clue - this sort of attitude makes for a very poor environment all around.
There are many stupid blokes in the world. I'm sure this actually happened. We also have to consider that any time you put a large amount of politically radical individuals in one place, a portion of them will be falsely accused because it's just politically convenient. The next Julian Assange very well could be at Defcon, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if this situation gets exploited by both sides.
We need to educate both men and women about safety. We need technology in place which is gender neutral, which protects both the accused and the accuser. The last thing we want is for something horrible like a sexual assault to happen but being falsely accused of a sexual assault is as horrible as being sexually assaulted. So we have to consider all potential risks and scenarios in security policy.
Sexual harassment is not a part of hacker culture. What is a part of hacker culture, unfortunately, is an unwillingness to set and enforce minimal standards of decent/considerate/polite behavior. This failure to censure this kind of behavior is what gives rise to these incidents.
Yes it is assault. It would only be harassment if said female was told "let me grab your crotch, otherwise I won't promote you/keep you hired/give you a raise like all your co-workers", etc. Of course I've mentioned this before, and immediately was modded to oblivion because in kindergar^H^H^H USA sexual harassment means staring too long/at all at a female coworker or speaking to her.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Seriously, someone who cannot differentiate between sexual harassment and sexual assault should not be writing articles.
Some think this harassing behavior is simply inappropriate; however, some of what has been described in the connected articles implies potential illegal, tortious behavior. In some cases, unwanted touching was involved.
Knowledge and appreciation of a risk, short of substantial certainty, is not necessary for requisite intent to cause harm. Further, intent to cause harm or offense is not vitiated by good faith mistake. Insane individuals and children as young as infants are capable of forming intent and are thus liable for damages. Intent also is transferable... one can act towards one individual and another can suffer the consequences.
While there are exceptions to circumstance (mingling crowds, emergency egress, etc), unreasonable and offensive behavior can be and often is put to a "reasonable person" test concerning rudeness, insolence, or anger. One does not need to act directly against the person of another, one's behavior can connect through objects closely associate with the person of another. IANAL.
Readercon is to hackers as donut is to washtub?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Coming from a woman's perspective: agreed, to an extent.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality. Now mix that up with copious amounts of alcohol, the poor social adjustment that many geeks have, and the "anything goes" attitude of Sin City, and yeah you'll have problems.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault". I've been seeing considerably more of people being inappropriately aggressive, and not just in hacker cons. It's happening in sci fi cons too, and tech business cons, and plenty of other places. Sales conferences have always been bad, but it's new to see so much of this in geek culture.
I'm pretty sexually liberated (OK, I'm a fucking slut), but that doesn't mean free for all. No matter how much you think they want it, never assume they're interested unless they respond positively to some gentle verbal flirting... And if they don't, they're not interested, so please fuck off.
I know this sounds obvious to many, but I keep seeing rather horrifying examples of geeks completely failing to follow that basic protocol.
It's true they harassment is IN PART defined by the attention being unwelcome. But if you take a case to court it is defined by a "reasonable person" standard. The jury must find that a reasonable person would have understood the behavior to be harrassing or contributed to a hostile working environment.
Being an asshole is not part of any culture, and endemic sexism (which clearly exists) is not the same as inherent sexism.
Working to end sexual harassment is not an attack on hacker culture. (And nor is it necessary or helpful to attack hacker culture in order to end sexual harassment.)
Easily. Yes.
Next question?
Considering the misogynistic tone of many of the posts appearing in this discussion, sadly I must agree with you.
I have been going to defcon for many years. In recent years my non tech wife has been coming along. My wife is extremely hot and attracts unwanted attention everywhere we go. Its quite the task to keep creepers at bay most of the time. She has repeatedly made it clear that the attendees at defcon and the parties there have been completely respectful and gentlemanly to her. On the other hand, she has been propositioned for "shopping sprees and condo parties" from creepy Vegas men and attempted to be recruited to be a stripper and prostitute on different occasions at the Rio and Riviera pool by Vegas scum. At one point several random hackers came to her defense as she was trying to get away from Vegas scum at the pool. By the time I got out of my track and to the pool random defconers had "solved" the issue in a ways an angry older brother would. These type of problems are what makes my wife wary of defcon and Vegas in general, Vegas scum, not the defcon attendees.
If this is all about some drunk kid asking someone to show your tits, well those kids are everywhere there is alcohol. If someone assaults you, sexually or otherwise, charges should be pressed.
By playing World of Warcraft.
The problem is that while harassing someone might be unethical in certain circumstances it's not something that should ultimately result in a ban. And the "sex" part doesn't make it any more justified. The problem here is this isn't just sexual harassment. It's assault. It would seem that the person assaulted should have called the police or requested someone to do so and requested any eyewitnesses to stick around or at least provide contact info. At a minimum they should have called security I think as we don't want to let this sort of touching get out of hand. Then escorted the assaulter to the door. Doing a lifetime ban isn't justified. At most a two year ban might be. You don't have the right not to have your feelings hurt and being touched in the crotch is not necessarily painful- and it shouldn't be that big of a deal. The people making it into one have bigger psychological issues than those doing the assaulting.
Just because you are expert at something, or even think you are the best, does not excuse you form being part of the Human race and it's norms
Treat ALL people with respect, and it will come back 10-fold, and visa-vera (Karma is a Bitch!)
Being part of an elite group does not give you the right to think you are better than anyone else, you ain't!
And if you think you above all this because of what you think you know, look to the History of the gun-slinger in this Country, he was only as good as his next gun-fight, not many real friends and the life-expectancy of a moth
So, while you are out there hacking and puffing out your chest because you are a legend in your own mind
watch out for the flame...yeah, the light''s pretty...but you will get burned
As you can see on the following page, this is not an isolated indecent:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
Sadly, this type of behavior is often considered "normal" in geek communities. Other than just talking about the problem, what can people do about it? For starters, make sure that your event has an anti-harassment policy (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy) and make sure you actually enforce it. I've seen several female friends and colleagues harassed at conferences and events only to be told, "Oh that's normal, just ignore him" or otherwise dismissed. And then we wonder why there are few women attending these events!
that some attendees, hardcore geeks, what not, may have one or numerous personality disorders. ADHD and Asbergers being a few ive encountered frequently at defcon and scale. Is it possible many of these individuals simply dont understand the ramifications of what theyre doing? that this has less become eschewed into the culture and more an uncomfortable affect of its nature?
As a male im disgusted at Genevieves treatment, but as a community how do we not only police this type of deviant behavior but work to educate those who may not understand the full range of human interactions what it is they are doing and why it is wrong?
Good people go to bed earlier.
The article described would fall under at most sexual abuse the undesired touching of a sexual nature. Some of the rest might be rude but not illegal a guy asking a woman to show him her tits. A man the grabbed a woman's hips in a crowded party seems very situation dependent. I drunkard attempting to lick a shoulder is in base taste but when have drunkards been in good taste. The only thing listed that fell outside of bounds would be the inappropriate touching. Is it all juvenile behavioral sure, but none of it was sexual harassment that's specifically for workplaces and education that takes federal money. Seems like your putting a lot of socially inept people together people are going to fail miserably at expressing themselves. But requiring a con the standard of the workplace you saying that at neither at work or in social settings may somebody make an unwelcome sexual advance. Do we need special sexual advance zones with trained technical staff and therapists standing by so that one personal can express a desire commit an act that predates our species? Lets face it go to a crowded pickup bar either gender expects some might even hope to have sexual advances made. The unwanted groping is over the line go talk to the cops not the con same as you would do at a bar, mall, or grocery store. Want a horror story's talk to the booth babes at your average trade show, and that is sexual harassment at the workplace.
No sir I dont like it.
Crotch grab, tit grab, unwanted sexual contact both are considered. At best its a battery charge in most of the US, and most likely its a sexual battery charge in most of the US. Assault (for some weird legal reason) is all the yelling and screaming, threatening gestures etc that go on before or after unwanted physical contact.
This was a felony. The guy who did it, even if he was drunk, in a place he expected such behavior was accepted, etc (and it IS Las Vegas, they adopted a don't ask, don't tell policy as their tourist motto) should be facing prison time for this under US law as well as permanent (oh yeah its forever and ever here in the US) listing on the sexual offenders list.
part of companys that have a good old boys culture.
It's pretty clear that something has changed in geek culture over the last decade. But WHAT? Why is sexual assault a growing problem, to the point where the perpetrators are tolerated instead of ostracized the way they used to be?
One of the reported assaults happened at an EFF party - maybe their idea of "freedom" is a little too broad.
It's a multi-part problem.
First, a subculture that has very few women, and many of those few that seem to be there* are total attention whores.
Second, with that general lack of women, combined with the disproportionate amount of attention whores, objectification and grandstanding becomes much more common, and fairly violent and derogatory terminology gets bandied about as normal.
Third, many who participate perceive themselves as flaunting the law/rules, and that can lead to a mindset for flaunting the rules outside of the technical realm.
Combine those, and you get a bunch of undersexed, maladjusted men, expecting the few women present to behave in a sexual way, who are used breaking the rules. It's really not much of a surprise to me that this happens.
* I imagine that a lot of the "women" are just men who get their jollies off of role-playing loose women, essentially manipulating the women-characters in to doing what they'd want a woman to do.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Simply because most geeks and nerd are afraid of women.
Your stereotypical geek may be awkward with women and he may even be a misogynist but he's also probably not terribly social and keeps to himself and his group. I don't see anyone who I'd class a proper geek being the sort to grab someone's ass.
However some ruby on rails rockstar douche bag is almost required to be grabbing ass and treating women like shit in between going to the gym and downing red bull. But brogrammers aren't just a pita to women, real programmers hate them too. They're a cancer on our culture.
I can say quite clearly, had there been any behavior of this kind at the H.O.P.E. conference, we would have been all over the perpetrator in a flash. Now then, if something happened, and the staff at the conference was not brought into the loop, there is not much that we could do. Contrary to popular belief, the staff does not see everything. Hell, we were more than busy enough with the stuff we could see.
If you are a victim of this type of behavior, talk to the conference staff. They want to make sure this type of behavior does not occur, maybe even more than you do.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Coming from a woman's perspective: agreed, to an extent.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality. Now mix that up with copious amounts of alcohol, the poor social adjustment that many geeks have, and the "anything goes" attitude of Sin City, and yeah you'll have problems.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
No, they don't.
They follow what a wimpy, pasty-white basement dweller THINKS is an "alpha male mentality".
Real alpha males stop acting that way about 11 or 12.
Now get back to the kitchen, woman!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Maybe a better question is WHY is this harassment occurring? Is this specific to certain types of conferences?
Adopting a clear policy on the matter is completely sensible. But how does one come to believe that such creepy behavior would be tolerable in the first place?
Drug use, immaturity, and people who try to apply internet culture to the real flesh world.
only if it's forbidden :)
As Burroughs put it: Any soul is worth saving, at least to a priest, but not every soul is worth buying.
hackers are the biggest bunch of betas and nergins you'll ever find. That's why they do the sexual harassment thing -- they don't know how to interact with anybody (especially women). I mean, honestly, if they knew how to get laid, they'd spend their time getting some pussy instead of eating cheetos and playing WoW in their mom's basement.
Given a community who advocates the hacker mentality, one would expect a small number of individuals within that community may take it to the extreme and thus it is going to be applied to everything in their lives including hacking social mores. Of course the motivations for this will differ and one can imagine various characteristics of said individuals' lifestyle, personality, and base instincts to influence it one way or the other.
It's part of fraternity culture. Dump the brogrammers and that attitude goes away. Maybe there are more of those types at conferences where people talk about their hat color. That's only one type of hacking.
I've been to many, many conferences over the years, and the worst experiences I've ever had have been at those gatherings with many Web 2.0 and Ruby advocates.
Anyone who has been to a conference where Web 2.0 programming and/or Ruby are among the main topics will know what I mean. There's a certain prominent subculture within these communities that is truly obnoxious and irritating. They bring together vanity, ego and ignorance in a way that I really haven't seen happen in other technically-oriented communities.
They can often be identified by the fedora hats that many of them wear, along with the various Apple devices they all seem to possess. Many of them also like to wear t-shirts with smart-ass remarks on them, even at more formal events where some small amount of tact and business-casual attire is the norm. Everything about their manner of dress is unprofessional.
The ego and ignorance build upon one another, as far as I can tell. Many of these people claim to be experts, and in some cases even "rockstars" and "coding ninjas". On further inspection, however, we find that they usually have no formal software development or computer science education of any sort. Even their professional experience is often limited to pretty minor web development. Yet given their lack of education and experience, they still feel the need to very loudly express their opinions in public, perhaps because they don't know how much they truly don't know. Rather than being at a conference to learn or to share knowledge, they're usually there just to stroke their own egos by vocally expressing their "expertise" anywhere and everywhere.
I've also found their attitude towards women to be unusual, at best. At worst, it's outright offensive. Basically all of the other people I've ever worked with in various technical fields over the years have put ability and experience far, far above gender in terms of importance. In many cases, gender is treated as completely irrelevant, and is often ignored. Yet time and time again I've heard comments, even by the speakers during public presentations with hundreds of people in the audience, from these Rubyists and Web 2.0ers that are crude and insulting to women. While everyone else in the industry is focused on working together to achieve great things, these people have some strange fixation with insulting females whenever possible.
To be honest, I really don't understand them at all. They're so unlike the rest of the technical community in so many ways, I often wonder why they're tolerated by the greater community. I've had to deal with individuals here and there who are socially awkward, but in most other fields they're few and far between. But within the web development community, however, the Rubyist subculture has embraced almost every negative trait possible, and in some strange way sees these awful traits as acceptable, if not something to celebrate. They really are a strange crowd.
Isn't part of the hacker ethos that the code rules? Who cares the age, sex, color, national origin, or creed of the writer? Do any of these factors make for better or worse code? If not, then differentiators based on those factors have no place in the hacker culture.
Any type of harassment needs to be dealt with rapidly, firmly, and appropriately. At the hacker cons I've attended, I've been fortunate to attend sessions with female presenters. I've also had the opportunity to interact with female attendees and found them to be logical, intelligent, and well spoken. I go to such cons to learn, network, and have some fun. Playing grabass just isn't on the menu. Such things are the province of small minds with no social skills. I'm all for harassers getting a swift kick - or several. I have a feeling though that the goons wouldn't be enamored with that idea.
I'm old enough to have been in the military before, during, and after the 1991 Tailhook incident. Hopefully the pendulum won't swing so far in the other direction that personnel are tossed and/or banned based on unsubstantiated allegations. There are very real incidents that need to be dealt with firmly. There are also invented incidents that should result in sanctions against the person making the false allegations.
-ZPO
I don't think you have to be a "femicommie" to object to being grabbed by the crotch.
Sexual assault (or battery, as I believe it is legally termed) is a sub-species of sexual harassment in general, the latter including both verbal and physical harassment while the latter only includes the physical part. Being one thing does not preclude it from also being another.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Yeah right. I haven't heard aaaanything about people getting in trouble for sexual harassment in the last twenty years. Is that a thing now?
ah, you mean the strawmen that do not actually exist in any significant number? Always an easy way to trivialize a problem....
First of all, sexual assault is a species of sexual harassment (so all sexual assault is sexual harassment, though the converse is not true). Secondly, TFA is talking about sexual harassment in general and only used the crotch-grabbing as an extreme example meant to get the point across.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
For reasons that should be obvious, lots of social misfits wind up in computer security. Among the social misfits who wind up in computer security are people who fail to understand social boundaries. Those people harm others by their actions. Those harmful people have a disproportionately high representation in computer security populations.
It does not follow that most hackers fail to understand appropriate social boundaries or that the average hacker has a below-average understanding of social boundaries. In fact, all of the hackers I know (and I know a lot) are quite sensitive about violating the boundaries of others. In fact, being oversensitive is also disproportionately represented in computer security circles.
Beware of those who present a number of extreme individuals in a culture as a measure of the average mental makeup of the culture. It is bad math, and it is prejudice.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Individual cases of assault, when tolerated within a culture, add up to a culture of sexual harassment. There are a few somewhat extreme examples like the one sited, but the background noise is the issue at hand, and that is something geek culture in general is still pretty bad about, with the more 'hard core' or 'edgy' the subculture being, the worse they tend to be about it.
What kind of BS is this? Is this payed advertising from the FBI? Hackers = molester? Is sexual harassment part of government culture too? Next time select a better victim for libelous delusions, like astronauts or something. Certainly neither jock or tavern-slithering tough-guy has ever set a foul eye upon an innocent tart? Nope, only a putrid, pasty, libidinous hacker would do that. Yep, they MUST gain unauthorized access to your women. That's what it's all about. So hurry and unplug them before they've all been dragged down into the damp proverbial basement and irreparably ravaged by someone as terrible as Gary McKinnon! I can see it now:
"Put on the alien mask now!"
"....wince"
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Maybe I missed the /. thread on the ReaderCon fiasco, but here's the original complaint
http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The major problem with Valerie's article is that she creates a strawman argument ("all you men say that if women don't feel comfortable, they shouldn't go") which she then leaps off of to claim that women are not made welcome and thus are being denied employment opportunities available at said conference. In prior discussions here on Slashdot, I have not seen a single commenter say anything similar to that. It is at best an extremist viewpoint. Most of the voices in this and prior discussions have been one of collective disapproval and support for women feeling comfortable at conferences.
The other problem is that Valerie and her cohorts think female-on-male violence is funny:
"The cards are a hilarious way to raise awareness of the problem of brutal sexual harassment at DEFCON and similar conferences."
http://singlevoice.net/redyellow-card-project/
Text from the red card: "You should be happy you got this card and not a punch in the face."
This is a perfect example of how culturally it has become completely acceptable for women to beat men in public or media; people stare, freak out, and intervene when a guy gets aggressive with a woman....but she can use his hair to thrash his head around, punch him repeatedly, etc - and nobody says a word or gives it a second glance. In movies, a woman getting hit is the ultimate bad-guy act...but a man getting hit? That's comedy! Funny! Let's not forget that the man is always portrayed in media as being a lecherous slimebag, and thus "deserves" this treatment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks
Please help metamoderate.
Let's see....
Con is catering to those who feel they are hip, cool, edgy, and underground, many of whom feel they are outside the law. Check.
Con held in Las Vegas, also known as Sin City, "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", America's ultimate party town. Check.
Con-goers who have poor social skills, feel elite, hyper-competitive, and desperately want to appear manly and impressive. Check.
Its a recipe for disaster as bad as if they held it in the middle of a frat party. There is no mystery to any of it. They already have big corporations, the NSA and other agencies and such attending the con looking for talent among a group of people who exist for a large part outside normal society. This is condoning their behavior. ALL of it. And likely this conference will become another dead-boring con and die out in a couple of years if they change it. Its a very select and special breeding ground for just the types of persons that Security organizations are looking for. That doesn't hold up to these other standards. These women decided to play in a different culture. And that is biting them in the ass now. Cause its a group of naturally anti-authoritarian males that make up said culture and trying to tell them no, tell them they have to do things exactly thus and so when they already know they get around all that with either money or power, just isn't gonna fly.
They're the new jocks. They feel they can get away with anything. Go to jail for grabbing some titty at a con? Okay but the NSA wants me so I'll just chill until they get me out.
Realistic outlook? No. But its as likely an explanation as any, and better than most I would bet.
/signed white Alpha male, rapist and proud.
Hackers are hackers
We do not care about political correctness, or the opposite of it
We do not care if you like us or hate us
We do what we do, we hack what we hack, because we like it, because we can do it, and because we do not give a flying fuck of what you think of us
And to those political correctness asshat - go fuck yourself, and leave us alone !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
While I do not know her personally, her writing points to fuzzy thinking (For example her take on compare by hash is a complete fail and indicates some fundamental lack of understanding the subject matter, while she asserts that she does understand it. I can only speculate that there is some fundamental insecurity at work here and some mental blocks.) and a rather large chip on her shoulder.
I might be wrong on the second count (but I doubt it), but not the first one.
That said, while I only know the more academic side of hacker culture, I have yet to find any instance sexual harassment. Of course some amount of banter is normal in a relaxed environment. It only becomes harassment if somebody told to back of does not. Anybody can reasonably be expected to have that much self-defense capabilities.
I know that there is a school of though that says nothing sexual may even be said in the presence of a woman for risking to harass her. That is a fail as well, as it depicts women as frail creatures unable to fend for themselves or even make their views heard. If I were a woman, this view would insult me greatly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This would be battery, assault does not involve making physical contact.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
Amen to that. I went for the first time this year, and while I didn't see much in the way of bad behavior, I thoroughly detest Vegas especially in the summer.
Didn't they just violate the law of head lines?
First, I must preface I am not saying these things do not happen and I will not take away from anyone's experience as these situations are inexcusable and horrific, but I do want to chime in and say they do not happen to ALL women.
I have been attending tech conferences for going on 6 years now. This year was my 2nd BlackHat, 3rd Defcon, I also speak at average 4-5 conferences in an associated industry each year. While I won't say I have never experienced an idiot or two (but wouldn't you in any situation) OVERALL the men have been supportive, giving, generous and career boosting. They are also very protective over me and if anyone treated me this way I know the person would find himself in a very bad way very quickly. That being said.
I worry when I see posts like this because though I am 1000% positive there are a few bad apples in a conference the size of Defcon (18k) I don't believe wholesale that there are a plethora of bad aggressive idiot men attending.
Most of the men I meet are respectful and helpful and by othering the men you separate women further and create and atmosphere where men are afraid to speak or befriend as they might offend.
So again, I do not wish to in any way detract or minimize the horrendous behavior that was mentioned here. I just caution that generalization can cause issues that do not exist, create a negative atmosphere where women are further separated from the goals they seek to achieve. We work in a predominantly male industry.
Men are not the enemy and I would not be where I am without the ones I know help and guidance. So just remember in a barrel of apples there are always some worm infested ones among the many bright and shiny.
Using illegality as a standard is stupid if your goal is to protect women from harassment. (If your goal is to allow creepers to get away with this kind of crap, it might serve as a good standard.)
Some of the rest might be rude but not illegal a guy asking a woman to show him her tits.
Sexual harassment,
A man the grabbed a woman's hips in a crowded party seems very situation dependent.
Definitely sexual harassment, possibly sexual assault.
I drunkard attempting to lick a shoulder is in base taste but when have drunkards been in good taste.
Sexual assault.
The only thing listed that fell outside of bounds would be the inappropriate touching.
Sexual assault.
Is it all juvenile behavioral sure, but none of it was sexual harassment that's specifically for workplaces and education that takes federal money.
It may not be legally actionable, but it's sure as shit sexual harassment.
Seems like your putting a lot of socially inept people together people are going to fail miserably at expressing themselves. But requiring a con the standard of the workplace you saying that at neither at work or in social settings may somebody make an unwelcome sexual advance. Do we need special sexual advance zones with trained technical staff and therapists standing by so that one personal can express a desire commit an act that predates our species? Lets face it go to a crowded pickup bar either gender expects some might even hope to have sexual advances made. The unwanted groping is over the line go talk to the cops not the con same as you would do at a bar, mall, or grocery store. Want a horror story's talk to the booth babes at your average trade show, and that is sexual harassment at the workplace.
Why should a woman who wants to go to a hacker convention expect to be subjected to sexual advances? Or, more to the point, why would a man at a hacker convention feel entitled to make sexual advances? After the fact, why do you feel the need to defend men who make sexual advances at a computer hacker convention?
the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing
Part of the reason many events are in Vegas is purely because of the numbers. Flights to Vegas are cheap, hotel rooms range from the Motel 6 to, well, the sky's the limit, and there's lots of conference space. Other convention cities like Orlando might have two of the three, but vegas is the only place with three of the three.
Only the creepiest people used to go to conventions, you guys should have thought of that before it became the "cool" thing to do.
You don't have the right not to have your feelings hurt and being touched in the crotch is not necessarily painful- and it shouldn't be that big of a deal.
You sir (/ma'am) have no idea what being assaulted means. Next time you fly, opt out to get a TSA patdown, and try to irritate the guy giving your the patdown. You will realize what being assaulted and being humiliated means.
DEFCON is a conference specifically about violating other people's privacy and space for fun and pleaseure. This is not a conference about protecting people, it's a conference about violating them. One may as well complain about them using password snifers on the wireless network, violating people is what the conference is *for*.
No it isn't.
Sexual Harassment is part of Troll culture. 4chan, something awful, encyclopedia dramatica. Largest targets are people who get the most reaction to being trolled, that being women, gay people, transgendered and furries.
The trolls that target women are mostly "gamer-bros", or in otherwords, kids who grow up on the xbox, and their equivalent bros, the ones that play football, endorse the rape culture. I've played MMO's where making lewd "rape gestures" is common, and nobody sees anything wrong with it. Imagine what happens when they do it to a real person.
"hacker" culture isn't really sexist, so much as it's "lonely nerd in moms basement", take the above behavior with the kid on the xbox and extrapolate it to when they're in their 20's, or even 30's. Their social peers being other people of the same age group. So they take their frustrations out on people who do have girlfriends, wives, etc.
If we can get rid of antisocial behavior, and I'm not talking about "emo", I'm talking about the trolling culture that's thinks it's OK to cause people to kill each other or themselves.
They follow what a wimpy, pasty-white basement dweller THINKS is an "alpha male mentality".
Real alpha males stop acting that way about 11 or 12
+10 or so. Posting AC so I don't have to listen to them whine about "white knights".
Short Answer: No.
Long Answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I think hazing in general has been confused with sexual harrassment because the concept of sexual harrassment itself has been diluted to the point of being meaningless.
Some work environments might be harsh and likely to offend delicate sensibilities. Gender really has nothing to do with it but it gets injected regardless. Society still tends to treat women in a paternalistic fashion. This even applies to crusading feminists that often treat women in the same way an uptight religious busybody might.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Easily: No. There is nothing inherent in 'hacker culture' to cause this.
To explain:
Large groups of men together tend towards asshole behavior. And do stupid shit they wouldn't in typical circumstances.
Especially if alcohol is involved.
I've been saying this for the last 20 years and being shouted down ... so let's go for it again...
Why so much emphasis on sexual harassment, and so little on racial and physical discrimination?
I am really disappointed with the response I'm seeing here.
While some would probably call me an uber-hacker, and yes, I'm awkward around women, I wouldn't dare to disrespect a woman like I'm seeing here. I know a number of smart (and attractive) women that work in my field, and they deserve the same respect that my bros get. Personally, I like having smart, attractive, and entertaining women around. I don't know why so many of you men insist on acting like little boys.
In other words, it's only harrassment if the girl does not like the guy.
I believe there was a Saturday Night Live skit on the subject.
The socially awkward are getting criminalized and further ostracized.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
MOD UP!
A simple, yet clear explanation of the probable root of this issue. Well put.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
That's a terrible idea. What about all the women that have to live in Las Vegas?
Sexual harassment, assault, and battery must not be tolerated anywhere in society. Las Vegas does not deserve a special exemption as being a spot where men can go, and stop comporting themselves like gentlemen. That does not mean you can't get a little crazy either. I've been completely fucking plastered and flirting with women and I can tell you I still behaved like a gentleman. In Las Vegas too. I didn't grope them and make lewd comments about how I wanted them to service me sexually.
I don't know if a lifetime ban is appropriate in this specific case because there is no article on what actually happened. It seems that the women writing the article talks about having her crotch groped. That is sexual battery and a felony.
We have laws for this stuff. While I don't support multi-year sentences for just groping a woman, I would absolutely throw the bastard in jail for 6-12 months. People don't have a real grasp on just how long that is in a prison environment. Think about something like your two week vacation, that just seems a lot longer, and then multiply it.
Where the laws don't cover it, that's where organizations can step in and remove the person for whatever time period they deem appropriate. If it was for something as serious as sexual battery then, yes, it may well be appropriate to remove that person for life.
Simply removing a conference from an environment that may enable bad behavior is a half-assed response (respectfully), and does not really address the problem in the way it deserves.
It does not matter where it is. Nobody should be able to get away with behavior like this regardless of gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Reminds me of special capitalism zones in China where it is okay to temporarily not act Communist.
The biggest problem I have - not solely isolated to geek culture - is the refusal to believe that a problem even exists. When faced with some situation, such as "do I keep going when this girl who was making out with me before says, 'this is going too fast for me, I want to stop'?", a large percent of men will say "of course I stop" while a large minority will say "of course I keep going", but both groups by and large refuse to admit that there are so many people who take the opposite view.
Think of all the women you know. One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime. We're not even talking about sexual harrassment, things like unwanted grabbing of breasts and crotches, etc. One in four is just, simply, "rape". There is not some tiny, miniscule percentage of guys doing this; there's actually a rather large minority who seems to think that it's okay to do to women things that they don't want done to them. But just as much of a problem as these guys are, it's nearly as big of a problem that a large portion of the majority of guys who aren't like that seem to have trouble believing that so many men *are* like that. That they probably have several friends who wouldn't stop if the girl they're with said "no".
I think the Daniel Tosh / rape joke thing is a great example. Some comedians get all "freedom of speech" offended if anyone gets mad at them for telling rape jokes. "They're just harmless jokes!" The difference between a "harmless joke" and "offensive" when you say something over the top is whether you and/or your audience actually believe it. And whether you want to accept the fact or not, a sizeable percentage of your audience actually *does* believe what you're joking about. And a sizeable percentage of your audience are victims of what you're making fun of. So you can talk all you want about how you can stand up and tell genocide jokes without people getting offended, but unless you're prepared to go to the Kigali Chuckle Hut and do the same sketch to a bunch of Tutsis who had their families hacked down, you have no ground to stand on.
We're practicing our labials.
If you read Genevieve Valentine's blog post about her harasser
http://genevievevalentine.com/2012/07/readercon-the-bad-and-the-ugly
he simply sounds like a persistent man. Have we come so far that persistence is considered evil?
Valerie Aurora needs to stop writing boring blogs and make me a sandwich.
There were a lot of great hackers coming up with stuff 20 or 30 years ago, but it seems like it's fallen to shit. And it's not just because of Hollywood, it just didn't survive the transition from an exclusive club to the huge amorphous "community" it is now.
Every time I hear about hackers, I find it's a journalist talking about felons, or some smart kid who learned how to program his microwave, or some guys who are marginally skilled in computers and seriously in need of therapy. Or just yet another fucking poser.
And they're worse in numbers, like these security conferences. These conferences are basically all about security theater, so you're starting off with a bunch of losers to begin with. Add in all the hacker wannabes, and the fact that freaks go there to grope women doesn't seem particularly surprising.
The real communities are professional organizations that are full of people who actually make things, and, frankly, it's pretty stupid to constantly worship hackers who don't make anything.
Well if they can't treat women right no wonder those geeks are all virgins.
LOL!
Maybe you have never seen much of the world.
The guys who DON'T treat women right are the guys who have lots of women around them. It's the gentlemen who are lonely.
These Defcon guys are well on their way to drowning in poon.
My question is - what is she promoting? Does she have a new book? A podcast? A show? A business? Just trying to make a big name for herself? Those things are all usually conveniently associated when someone cries "durp durp mean boys". It's 2012. This shit doesn't happen as much as people like to accuse it of happening.
This commentary on this article will undoubtedly be similar to that of a troll festival. Ooops, *looks above post*, too late.
Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture?
Is racism part of Southern US Culture?
Luckily, I wrote all this all below your post, so I'm clearly not trolling.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Nobody thinks anything of frat-boys acting like frat-boys, jocks acting like jobs, MBAs acting like MBAs, VCs acting like VCs, dudes acting like dudes, but suddenly you say "they're gamers/hackers/technology guys" and all of a sudden "OH NOES IT'S EVIL SEXIST MISOGYNISTIC ASSAULT AND EVERY MALE IS TWELVE YEARS OLD AND WANTS TO RAPE EVERY WOMAN THEY ENCOUNTER!".
So, frankly, fuck you and fuck your double standards, you self-promoting cunt-weasels (of all genders).
Did you RTFA - fairly big chasm between socially awkward and grabbing someone's crotch. Also when it comes to licking a girl's tatoo, I wait till I'm invited.
So DEFCON needs to fix society at its next meeting? Well, get on it then!
Hacker culture is no more misogynistic and rife with sexual harassment than any other industry. The difference is the social skills of many in the hacker culture create a higher profile for the community. Some guy with say, an MBA in finance, is more likely to target an attack to a coworker who isn't going to say anything or might even be flattered by the immaturity, due to their greater breadth of social experience. The hacker is going to spam their childish desires and opinions to anyone in earshot and end up offending someone.
It's similar to the anecdotal, yet frequently true, difference between sexual harassment and flirting: Does the girl find you attractive?
Also, hacker culture is more heavily in favor of libertarian standards of free speech. This means many expect the right to say what they want without consequence.
If anything the largest part of the problem stems from women stereotyping technologically proficient males. Techies are lumped together with construction workers, plumbers, and Don Draper.
WHAT?
Just when I thought you actually were making sense, you go and throw Daniel Tosh under the bus. Give me a fucking break.
What this whole discussion(158 comments strong as of the time of this post) really is are a bunch of bed-wetting 25 year-old virgins who actually believe that women want doormats and suck-ups who go out of their way to be yes-men, as if you all would do anything but piss yourselves if a real woman showed up at your doorsteps. It's basically over two-million horny, pathetic geeks competing for the attention of 5 homely women.
Guess what, sissies? While you are here telling everybody what kind of jokes they are not allowed to find funny, I'm out surfing and happily dating many women. Believe it or not, there are plenty of women(the most intelligent, in my experience) who enjoy a fucked-up sense of humor and will gladly appreciate you for having the balls to openly enjoy such things and be honest about it. If those geek women want to bitch and moan, then let them start their own hacker conference and exclude men. Hell, most "hacker" women I know are really entitled daddy's girls or mean bitches with overbearing fathers. Both types are in constant need of serious reality-checks.
As for you and your ilk, you are all disgraces to men, casualties of having been breast-fed until you were eleven years old. Please castrate yourselves and find a new life as women, since you are so empathetic to the sissy cause. Finally, a joke - What's the difference between Jello and an uptight geek bitch? Jello moves when you eat it.
-- Ethanol-fueled
I think the slashdot tagline includes "stuff that matters" hence the reason it wasn't posted.
No.
Defcon just needs to enforce sensible policies that provide a deterrent against sexual harassment. Anything behavior that goes beyond sexual harassment and ventures into assault and/or battery is dealt with by the authorities with cooperation by people attending Defcon.
Moving Defcon does nothing and only provides a flimsy excuse for inexcusable behavior. That excuse being, "Las Vegas made us do it".
What will that question get for you? How about asking, "Will you take a stand with me against sexual harassment in the hacker sub-culture?"
We live in a broader culture where that kind of harassment and assault is illegal. The way the sub-culture is doesn't matter. Want to make a difference? Don't act that way or tolerate those who do.
It's true they harassment is IN PART defined by the attention being unwelcome. But if you take a case to court it is defined by a "reasonable person" standard. The jury must find that a reasonable person would have understood the behavior to be harrassing or contributed to a hostile working environment.
Wouldn't a "reasonable person" raise a finger and say "hey, now, doesn't harassment imply that the action was continuous or repeated after objections were raised?"
Contribute to a hostile work environment, sure. But harassment? Only if it actually is harassment. Hopefully it will be stopped before it becomes harassment.
Call things what they are. Don't choose a harsher term to get a stronger reaction, because you only end up watering down the term you use. Like "rape", which now has become almost meaningless, because so many things are called rape, including actions that involves neither sex, violence nor touch.
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues. Currently they are a protected class, both socially and legally, thus making them "more equal." At the same time, the PC crowd wants women treated "equally," and that there is some kind of magical gulf in treatment society has yet to cross.
We can either treat everyone with blind equality or we can accept that people are different for a variety of reasons, and as such, deserving of differing treatment. As long as we continue the masquerade that both propositions are fair and should be observed, we're going to be stuck in this middle ground where people are scared to make up their own minds or exercise their own opinions.
Consider the social stigma regarding infidelity. Here are the two common stereotypes: A married man who commits adultery is a scumbag, his wife should divorce him and take the kids. A woman who commits adultery had a moment of weakness or was driven to it by her husband and should be forgiven. If the man demands a divorce in the latter situation, the woman will in most cases still get custody of children.
If it's illegal go to the cops file a report. Sexual harassment is a specific crime that none of this would seem to fall under (yes corner cases of people working there etc). My point is if you extend sexual harassment to be illegal everywhere you can effectively never attempt to have sexual congress. Holding public places up to the standard of the workplace is unworkable. Requiring that you somehow get approval to make sexual advances without making a sexual advance is unworkable as the question itself is a sexual advance. Why would a person go to a social gathering and expect to be subjected to sexual advances? It's an entitlement to make sexual advances? People have sex it happens rather often they meet at these social gatherings.
I'm not attempting to excuse the groping that's a pretty clear case of somebody going over the line. I am saying that as mammals you do have to expect that in social situations people will make advances of a sexual nature, the instinct to breed is pretty well ingrained. Sexual harassment is an attempt to move these natural behaviors out of the workplace and away from teachers and students, in an attempt to not let a person in power use it to there advantage or have a person use sex to gain it. It is not some code of conduct that should be required everywhere. I'm not offended when at a party or bar when somebody comes up to me and flirts the tackle hug from a woman I barely know. If your that thin skinned that any form of sexual advance is scary to you I would suggest seeking help and staying out of polite society until you have overcome this phobia but in any event do not attempt to bend the world to your phobia. As long as people are staying within the law it should not be a cons or any other social gatherings responsibility to enforce a higher standard of decorum.
I make no attempt to defend the groper, male female or whatever gender they choose to align themselves with. I do defend the right of people to make sexual advances in social situations. If we were to remove it, we remove a major avenue of people to connect with each other. Lest we all be forced to sterile internet dating sites where your matched like lab rats, or forced to revert to primary school tactics of asking jim to ask sue if tina likes you.
No sir I dont like it.
Not all rape jokes are harmful though: George Carlin made some great rape jokes. The reason they worked, and weren't offensive, is that the butt of his jokes were the rapist, rather than the victim. He even explains his point in the middle of the routine:
They [men] think it's the woman's fault. They like to blame the rape on the woman. Say, "she had it coming, she was wearing a short skirt." These guys think women ought to go to prison for being cock teasers. Don't seem fair to me. Don't seem right, but you can joke about it.
I am officially gone from
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues..
Women need to be treated with respect for their boundaries. The same as men. There's not gender discrimination here; men can and have been sexually harassed, but in a place that is 90% male it's less likely. You seem to be confusing what's prevalent with what's possible.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
ah yes, the tranny factor *rubs chin*
What's that all over your post? *looks closely* It's Cheeto dust!
Find me a reasonable person, I dare you!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"No True Alpha Male". Gotcha, you awesome person you.
Expression of one's sexual desires (which is not the same as the desire to "breed") is not ingrained biologically but socially. People make passes in situations where they think it's okay, and in situations where they think other people think it's okay. On the face of it, there's no reason why a computer hacker convention would be one of those places, and the women in question clearly didn't think they would be subjected to that kind of crap. (Referring to the reasonable desire to not constantly be made to feel like a sexual object as a "phobia" is a big red flag, by the way.)
Why is your desire to make a pass at someone at a computer hacker convention more important than someone else's desire not to be subjected to sexual advances at a computer hacker convention? And given that this is a conflict, why shouldn't the convention organizer be able to say, "In the interest of all people attending this computer hacker convention being able to feel comfortable, please don't ask anyone to show their tits?"
I'm not entirely sure making all sorts of generalisations is really helping the situation.
jedidiah confirms the problem.
Yes, that's right, dipshit. It's either consenting or it's harassment.
If pasty little geek shits don't receive consent, then the fault doesn't lie with the women.
(However, I find that the problem of hacker culture women including a high proportion of man-haters who dress themselves up as feminists is much more significant than the amount of sexual harassment which occurs.)
You are completely right. "Nerds" have become public enemy #1 in the feminist blog-o-sphere, when you'd think the bigger issues would be misogynistic rap music or binge drinking fratboys. However, nerds are gross and sexually undesirable, so deal with it.
Coming from a woman's perspective: agreed, to an extent.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality......
Sounds more like aeta males behaving badly.
Not likely. There's two kinds of men who treat women like shit; there's the extroverts who are really skilled at reading body language and figuring out which women actually like their treatment, and which don't. These men do indeed get lots of pussy; it's pretty sad really, for the women, but IMO the fault lies with their parents for not clueing them into this and warning them about these men.
The other kind is men who think they're like group 1 above, but they're not, they're introverted losers (note: I'm not saying all introverts are losers, just these men), and they can't read womens' body language at all, don't know what they can get away with and what's over the line (group 1 above knows the difference), so they make pathetic attempts at emulating group #1, but fail miserably. These men are pathetic, lonely, and despicable creatures. These are the men that apparently are very numerous at hacker conventions.
Seriously, what kind of moron thinks he's going to get into a woman's pants by grabbing her crotch at a bar, then disappearing into the crowd before she can do anything about it? It shows a seriously juvenile mentality.
If she says no, give her 5 minutes of gentle, friendly listening. If she doesn't put out by then, she wasn't worth the wait, and you should just leave anyway.
Then get back at her by doing her mom and her sister, not necessarily in that order, and watch her head explode. (I've actually done this.)
should have typed Sounds more like beta males behaving badly.
If the dates weren't different this could be a description of certain previous incidents of 'harrasment' from other conventions. You attend a convention of sexually immature males and get hit on - well DOH. A quick perusal of the Readercon incident indicates that the fella involved one Rene Walling only wanted to apologize. Of course this was taken as a sign of further harrasment. From reading about previous incidents such as this you get the impression that some people prime function attending conventions is to seek out such 'harrasment'. It isn't the function of DEFCON to police peoples behavour. I would imagine that DEFCON would be better off without support from some people, either grow a thicker skin or grow up.
AccountKiller
Certainly. Porn is the leading driver of technology.
Heck, even Dane Cook can tell a funny, non-offensive rape joke. I mean, if Dane Cook can do it...
We're practicing our labials.
Well the biggest problem seems to be that you obviously have a chip on your shoulder you might want to have it looked at. 1 in 4 women will get raped. Give me a break. You're probably using a all-encompassing definition of rape that includes probably not climaxing as expected, not being cuddled afterwards and who knows what else.
The irony... It hurts.
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues..
Women need to be treated with respect for their boundaries. The same as men. There's not gender discrimination here; men can and have been sexually harassed, but in a place that is 90% male it's less likely. You seem to be confusing what's prevalent with what's possible.
People need to be treated with respect, in general.
The problem is the majority of women today are complete cowards, in that they want to maintain plausible deniability throughout their interaction with men, even for men they're very interested in. They never make unambiguous moves, they expect men to come out and make the advances, and the woman might just casually accept while maintaining the veil of plausible deniability (no I didn't really like him but I was thirsty for a drink and I really was trying to get that other guy to come etc etc). This sort of behavior causes men to evolve the sort of attitude that copes with this situation, where ambiguous and evasive answers need to be interpreted in a different way that they might in a normal discussion. I.e. become the assholes who get the nookie. When you hear someone talking about "knowing how to get laid", that is what they're talking about. Not considering the woman your equal, but essentially a target with known behavior quirks that must be exploited in a certain way.
Not that this excuses the guy in TFA. That's assault pure and simple.
sexual desperation is part of hacker culture... :-)
Which leads inevitably to sexual harassment...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Vegas is also close to California; it's extremely close to LA, and a short flight from the Bay Area, and not far from the other west-coast tech cities too (cities where you'd expect a lot of "hackers" to be located). Orlando isn't close to anything; it's not even that close to the northeast corridor cities. Plus, there's lots to do in Vegas: shows, gambling, etc. In other cities, you'll just have to go back to your hotel room in the evening. For all these reasons, Vegas has become the ultimate convention locale.
Well if they can't treat women right no wonder those geeks are all virgins.
LOL!
Maybe you have never seen much of the world.
The guys who DON'T treat women right are the guys who have lots of women around them. It's the gentlemen who are lonely.
These Defcon guys are well on their way to drowning in poon.
Bullshit, and a common fallacy. A man can be strong, confident, even alpha yet still treat women with respect and get lots of lovin' in return. It's the sad little twats who think that being a 'bad boy' will get them something who wind up all too often alone, or have to settle for broken girls who have no self respect and seek abusive treatment.
Trust me, quality women don't respond to dickheads with the attitude you seem to think is a winning one. The girls who are truly worth it respond to strong, intelligent, confident gentlemen, not asshat children.
I'm actually trying to speak to a much larger and broader range of social problems and inconsistency from which such behavior stems.
That's not the case in the US. "Rape" has not become a meaningless term here.
It means rape. We're not talking about Swedish Rape.
No means no and stop means stop. If you confuse the two, it's on you, asshole.
The opposite of Sweden is Italy, where it's hard to get a rape conviction unless the woman is hurt enough to be hospitalized for a week. I love Italy, but women are treated like shit there. The rape laws in the US appear to be pretty reasonable by comparison to those two extremes.
The fact that we're seeing the kind of comments we're seeing to this story saying that "women cry sexual harassment just if you look at them", is pretty much proof that sexual harassment is a problem in "hacker culture". Those stupid comments come from the kind of problematic culture that creates a situation where women are abused. The cases where sexual harassment is found by a court are almost always real sexual harassment. When you hear some guy say, "Yeah, I just looked at her and the next thing you know I'm being charged with sexual harassment", you can pretty much bet that it wasn't about "being looked at" at all.
And no, "She dresses like a slut" is not a valid defense. Nor is, "We were just playing. We always play like that here." People who are exploiting others almost never think they're doing anything wrong. The desire to rationalize - to excuse ourselves - is very strong. It's strong enough a group of slaveowners to get together and write some formal document about the "inalienable rights of man" and how "all men being created equal" and such bullshit, and then pat themselves on the back, when they own people who were brought here in chains. Like I said, people who exploit never think they're doing anything wrong.. We want to think we're good people so badly that we'll tell ourselves any kind of lie in order to excuse our behavior. It's how terms like "Right to Work" and "Free Market" come about. I mean, how can it be exploitation if it's the work of the "Free Market"? You're not against "freedom", are you?
You are welcome on my lawn.
many who participate perceive themselves as flaunting the law/rules
They're "flouting" the laws. Just saying.
Haven't checked the references for myself, but I've seen the following cites: Greenberg, Bruess and Haffner, 573; Horowitz, 413; Lips, 233. Plus, from my personal experience between myself and those I know, the numbers have to be at *least* that high.
I'll mark you down in the "refusing to admit there are so many who take the other view" category, and thanks for furthering my point.
We're practicing our labials.
The answer is no. Only child-like intellects act like the morons that make sexual harassment what it is today.
If you do it... You're wrong, and deserve anything and everything you get.
If you accuse someone of doing it and they didn't then you deserve the same exact treatment they would have gotten if they did it.
Sexual harassment swings both ways. And not everything that some may think is harassment, actually is. Adults tend to use adult humor, if two consenting adults (of opposite or same sex) share an inside joke, that is not harassment, regardless of who overhears it. If it was directed at someone, and they take offense, that's another story. If they listen attentively to overhear an otherwise private conversation, then they have no leg to stand on in a complaint.
Some work environments might be harsh and likely to offend delicate sensibilities.
Famously, surgical suites. We can't actually grab nurses' asses, but as long as it has been established that no prudes are in the room, we can totally discuss how they like their asses to be grabbed.
Poorly socialized people who spent their youth ostracized and learned how to interact with people on the internet.
Honestly I do think that's a part of it. In high school and college you experiment with how to socialize. If you play sports you quickly get corrected by coaches if you have bad sportsmanship, but nerds head to online games and become complete douches because they've never learned better. Misogynists eventually learn that they are ignored by women and change their behavior, but the misogynist nerd never goes on dates and doesn't learn this. Even in the workplace they may get shunted into a tiny isolated area of the building, and then honestly never interact with women outside of the initial HR orientation.
The article is a slander attempt to co-op the conference. Simple as that.
Tell me again how Hillary Clinton isn't a quality woman.
Someone else is worse? That's your defense?
How much of the feminist blog-o-sphere do you read? The top ten, or just the articles about nerds and geeks you see posted on slashdot?
I've read very little of the feminist blog-o-sphere, but I highly doubt (a) nerds are enemy number 1 throughout, or (b) mysogynistic rap music and fratboys aren't regularly derided, called out, and campaigned against.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I never said she was, in fact just the basic fact that she chose to marry and stay married for what appear to be political purposes tells me she isn't in my opinion.
They follow what a wimpy, pasty-white basement dweller THINKS is an "alpha male mentality".
Why don't we just call it a gamma-male subculture and be done with it? Or, alternatively, we could call them jerk(off)s.
Even better, we could stop calling them anything or even speaking with them. But for the worst it would only concentrate the isolation, and for the 'best' it would preclude the intervention they so sorely need.
It's the old 'which came first' problem. If you're into evolution, it's the egg. If you're into God, it's the hacker.
RTFA, I'd consider a guy (stranger) reaching between a woman's legs from behind and grabbing her crotch to count as genuine harassment. I find it hard to imagine the mentality that could lead a person to think they should do that.
The story right behind this one is this: Color Printing Reaches Its Ultimate Resolution.
How did they test it? By printing the "Lena" image.
As a proof of principle, researchers printed a 50×50-micrometre version of the 'Lena' test image, a richly coloured portrait of a woman that is commonly used as a printing standard
So who's Lena? She's a playboy pinup girl. (NSFW).
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
total attention whores
violent and derogatory terminology
Um...
Yes, a fake GE training video on sexual harassment; the rules for men were "Be handsome, be attractive, don't be unattractive." The last scene was the "unattractive" guy walking down a hallway and saying hello to a woman at her desk, and her calling security. Which, unfortunately, isn't far from the truth; "Hi" with the response "Eww, get away from me you creep" isn't unknown in real life.
"Valerie Aurora"...
Really? What the fuck is wrong with your real name? Attention whore anyone? "Genevieve Valentine" Really? Anyone who changes their name to one similar to a porn star, then claims sexual harassment is... to put it bluntly, a whore. Bought and paid for. It may be lawyers paying the bill but they are still whores.
How do we know what she said??
What?? If your complete sentence meant, how do we know what she said actually happens - you'd find out pretty quick with some undercover female officers just dressed like other conference goers.
Do you really think a convention of hackers are going to trust/feel safe in a scenario with undercover cops to handle this?
Everyone knows that all the hacker conferences have some rather high percentage of people who are NSA, CIA, FBI, KGB, etc. etc. Just why is throwing one simple cop into the mix going to bother anyone?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's a terrible idea. What about all the women that have to live in Las Vegas?
That's the city's/state's problem, not the conventions'. It's up to the local voters to decide how things happen in their own home.
hink of all the women you know. One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime
That stat is not 1/4 of all women, it's 1/4 of women who attend college will survive a rape or attempted rape. In addition, it only takes a quick google search to see that this 1 in 4 number isn't without considerable controversy of its own.
Totally agree with the move-out-of-Las-Vegas sentiment. The United States has no shortage of wonderful, interesting cities: San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle... probably many more, but I've been to those four so I know about them.
So why the heck do so many organizations hold conferences in Las Vegas, a hick town in the middle of the desert with an unbearable climate, filled with pasty-faced overweight losers listlessly playing slot machines to pass the time, containing totally cheesy over-the-top-stupid theme hotels where you can buy overpriced food that all tastes like cardboard?
I mean seriously? What's the attraction?
are just men who get their jollies off of role-playing loose women,
There are actually women who do this too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's a terrible idea. What about all the women that have to live in Las Vegas?
Yes, that in unfortunate.
But the thing is, you cannot change the nature of Vegas. Vegas is pushing sexual messages all the time, 24/7 into every nook and cranny.
Vegas even tried to change itself a while back, going with a family friendly vibe - but it just could not stick, Vegas is too much about sex.
So the unfortunate result is that it probably does increase inappropriate behavior in men that go there, especially when alcohol is added.
The only thing that can probably be done is a catch-22 - add more women. When there are enough women around, they are helping each other out and you can't have guys really bothering women nearly as easily.
That, or a LOT more muscle at vegas hacker parties told specifically to look for people bothering the women. There are lots of bouncers in Vegas very used to keeping drunk men at arms length from women.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Real alpha males stop acting that way about 11 or 12.
That's an interesting point, it means that all those pickup-artist types are really just Beta males looking for a leader. That may be an accurate description.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
we expect the social rejects that think assaulting women is acceptable to not show up. I really doubt they'd be missed.
"Those are bad. They tend to end up in jail or a mental institution... for good reason."
Us clever sociopaths manage to avoid prison. You generally only find out about the sloppy ones.
Some of us sociopaths end up becoming CEOs.
If people like you become too paranoid to attend, then fewer woman would be attacked. Sounds like a win/ win for people who actually matter.
This article is talking about a face-to-face conference, I seriously doubt a lot of the women there are men dresses as women.
And nice move calling many of the women at the conference whores. "Attention whores" is a really lame way to condition your insult. You are basically saying a lot of it is the victim's fault. Unless the person specifically says "HEY, TOUCH MY CROCH!" fondling someone you don't know in public is in NO way the victim's fault. Jeez.
One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime.
I've heard this before, and it's complete nonsense perpetuated by feminists. The "one in four" myth began with a famous survey given to college students, in which the girls were told that if they had a sexual situation where they weren't completely comfortable, regretted it afterwards, or the guy didn't *specifically* ask for consent (even if consent was strongly implied by her actions), they should count that as rape.
In most American cities, typical rates for violent crimes (including rape) are a couple dozen per 100,000 people per year. In more hellhole-ish countries, it's maybe an order of magnitude higher. If we believe your "one in four" claim, then American college campuses would be more dangerous than the most dangerous hellholes in the world! See wikipedia's page on rape statistics for more.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
Wait, I'm sorry - could you please elaborate on this? Which "hackers" in the subculture do you feel are total attention whores?
Most of the true "hacker" girls I've ever met have been the types of people I'd describe as nearly the antithesis of "attention whores" - I'm curious what hacker culture you're familiar with where "many" attention whores are present.
one article down... the textbook standard for image processing is a Playboy centerfold. You can't make this shit up... time to clean up our act guys.
RTFA, I'd consider a guy (stranger) reaching between a woman's legs from behind and grabbing her crotch to count as genuine harassment.
Nah.
It was simple hunger.
He was just looking for the sammich dispenser.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
That you could say this unironically blows my mind.
"It's only RAPE if the girl doesn't like the guy."
Well yeah, that's how consent works, you amazing douchenozzle. If you don't have it, you're assaulting someone.
If you're so "socially awkward" you can't determine where the line is between "being socially awkward" and "sexually assaulting a woman," then with all due respect, your problem is not "social awkwardness," it's "sociopathy." Want to meet women that are receptive? Several options exist:
1) Be a person who one or more women are interested in; This means, learn how to socialize. It's a skill much like any other, and it can be practiced.
2) Adjust your standards - usually the fat hairy cheetos-coated nerds believe the world somehow "owes them" supermodels. Chances are, if you're an overweight, maladjusted weirdo, the only women you will find who are interested in you are ALSO overweight, maladjusted weirdos.
3) Hire a prostitute.
Don't care to do any of those? Tough shit, enjoy being a virgin forever.
Those boundaries depend on their mood at the time, though. Even breathe the same air as they do if you're a 5 or 6 of 10 and you're basically raping her. If you're a 9 or 10, she'll be flattered by your attention and bang you on the spot. Then it's not sexist or harassment. It's only bad when she says it is and why she says it is and that is entirely dependent on her mood at the time and varies from woman to woman. Also, you still better open the door for them and pay for dinner! Demand equality, except when you don't want to be treated equal!
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." - Walden. Sex starved monkeys, without a competent leader on the scene, giving in to primal urges is what this is, just on a microscopic scale compared to what happens in the military. Is there one non-sedated heterosexual man that has never felt the urge to goose that sexy jiggling booty thats in your face? Not advocating this behavior btw, but I do understand it. Put 350 lbs. mma bouncers in there along with a zero-tolerance policy of sexual harrassment posters plastered in plain view. We're all capable of being far worse than animals when you get down to it.
I don't know if a lifetime ban is appropriate in this specific case because there is no article on what actually happened.
Article on what happened: http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html
The con's policy: "Readercon has always had a zero-tolerance harassment policy. Harassment of any kind — including physical assault, battery, deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwelcome physical attentions — will not be tolerated at Readercon and will result in permanent suspension of membership."
You're joking, right?
I intentionally tried treating a couple women like crap and they were the most devoted and hungry for my attention and affection of anyone I've ever been with. Keeping appointments/dates, remembering to call? Keeping in touch? Yeah, stop doing all of that. They were suddenly eating out of my hand. Hell, even when I just treated them as sex objects and said all I wanted as for them to be around to please me when I wanted it, they were more than happy to oblige and even seemed excited about it.
The next girls? Went back to being the "nice attentive guy". Called when I was supposed to. Said nice things. Kept dates and appointments. Didn't move too quick. Didn't try to score too quick (at all). And they suddenly couldn't find five minutes of their day to bother with me.
Women, indeed, like to be treated like shit. However, only when they want you to treat them like shit. Which makes the whole "sexist" and "harassment" thing kind of bullshit. If it can't be consistent, then it's bullshit. Instead, it's harassment one moment and desired the next.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be respectful and professional in professional settings. of course they should. But that doesnt' change the double-standards and double-talk. Which is, largely, why people should stop trying to eat where they shit. Any female you work with, professionally, should be regarded as just another male.
As someone with possibly negative social skills, I'd have to say I don't condone at all the actions described, in fact I find them horrible, but I can't say as how I don't understand why people do that. I inadvertedly tongue-lashed a girl who'd done quite a good volunteer job at one of like conferences because, at the time I wasn't sober and I was in retrospect quite distraught about some social situation with another girl, one I'd again horribly failed, though without crossing the harrassment line. But I can imagine other nerds and geeks crossing that line, sure. Poor social skills, the perennial hacker trait.
And yeah, you don't get through to such people with subtlety. You have to be quite blunt and explicit, though you usually needn't be public about it (at first), and if you can do it while sticking to a clear distinction between being and behaving you might get a better response to boot. I'm leaving as an exercise why that would be especially so with really intelligent but socially inept males.
Just like it's a part of the culture of virtually every other almost-entirely-male social group. It's not because of "poor social skills", it's just because their subculture evolved as a boys-club.
Why should a woman who wants to go to a hacker convention expect to be subjected to sexual advances? Or, more to the point, why would a man at a hacker convention feel entitled to make sexual advances? After the fact, why do you feel the need to defend men who make sexual advances at a computer hacker convention?
Seriously? Because in our society it is traditional for men to make the advances. If men didn't make the advances, our species wouldn't continue. Essentially anywhere a woman or a man goes, there will be the possibility of sexual advances, even if such an advance is simple verbal flirtation. Why would it not be expected that a women who willingly goes somewhere there is a high concentration of men in a non-formal (social) environment will be hit on?
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
Absolutely, and the article seems to be placing Sexual Assault, Harassment, loutish behaviour, and offensive speech (not directed at an individual) on equal ground. They are all very different things and should have very different responses from event organizers.
Calling an assault harassment trivializes it and does not indicate the response it should have. Calling offensive non-directed speech harassment trivializes harassment, even if the offensive speech is contrary to event policy.
Wouldn't a "reasonable person" raise a finger and say "hey, now, doesn't harassment imply that the action was continuous or repeated after objections were raised?"
That pretty much is the law already, at least as it was related to me in the last workplace training course I took. A single action would only be sexual harassment if it was quid pro quo (e.g. "Put out or you're fired") or if the action was extremely crude and beyond the boundaries of normal behavior (the crotch-grabbing described in this article would qualify for that). With regards to more minor incidents that might be considered offensive, it is the responsibility of the person who is offended to speak up (either directly to the people involved or to HR). Only if it continues after that would it be considered a hostile environment. So people can't sue for harassment over one dirty joke, for instance. Only if the behavior is "severe" or "pervasive" would there be a cause of action.
Disclaimer: IANAL, and I may be misremembering – ask your own HR representative rather than taking my word on anything. Company policy may be stricter than the law requires (IMO, this is a major cause of the backlash against harassment policies we see on this thread and elsewhere – when risk-averse corporate lawyers make rules like "No dating a fellow employee" and claim falsely that harassment law requires this, it makes the policies come off as a war on sex rather than an attempt to ensure that men and women are treated equitably.)
Okaayyyy.....
Having read it now there is nothing even remotely close between groping a women's crotch, which is what the article writer spoke of happening to her, and this guy being creepy.
The worst thing he did was to put an arm across the shoulders. Not what I would call sexual battery, but certainly unwanted physical contact and violating boundaries.
I think the 2 year ban was appropriate after reading what actually happened. A lifetime ban just seems excessive and effectively terminates whatever career the guy had in the industry. There is no pretense at rehabilitation there, just a death sentence.
Maybe you had to be there to fully understand the level of creepiness, but from what she describes, this man has been made a harsh example. Perhaps a bit unfairly.
The groping incident is a much better example and a reason to be having the dialogues in this thread.
is a strip club for geeks. Or maybe organizers can do something about getting some haxxxor action?
Is it the form of the advance or the fact of it that you're upset with? Because I think "In the interest of all people attending this computer hacker convention being able to feel comfortable, please don't ask anyone if they'd like to hook up." wouldn't go over so well for either sex.
Trust me, quality women don't respond to dickheads with the attitude you seem to think is a winning one.
No, I don't think it's "a winning one" at all. What I think is how sad it is that so many women seem magnetically attracted to shallow, insecure guys who are losers. Or guys who verbally, or emotionally, or even physically abuse them.
The biggest single weakness women have is ego. They are used to always being sought after and persued and it corrupts all but the best of them. Just like most men most women don't consider it important to develop their character. A woman's ego can get so bad that it's like "God made Man in His Image, so I will re-make this loser in My Image". I call them fixer-uppers, like how youd' describe a house in need of repair that you can buy cheaply. Except a man never, ever changes when someone will give him everything he wants just the way he unhealthily is. So it never works. Nothing other than being really terribly lonely would change these losers. They don't know they are losers because they can get a girlfriend, even hot ones, anytime they want.
Basically I am in my mid 20s. I am physically attractive and take good care of myself. Women over 40 think I'm a great guy and really like who I am, universally. Unfortunately I want a woman more my age. Can't say I want to be with a retiree when I turn 40 ya know? Women my age want a guy who's "got game" which is a weird way of saying a guy who's good at bullshitting and lying to them and using them for his own ends. They seem to like shallow, flashy guys who just want to fuck them, like it's a challenge to them to "domesticate" such a guy. A guy who already wants a real lady means nothing for them to do.
I think it would be better for me to migrate out of America. American culture is all about being loud, superficial, and not very intelligent. It's some kind of ideal around here.
The Readercon link just emits a statement of punishment. We don't know what happened, so we'll behave the same as we have been.
To clarify: What I linked above is the Readercon incident (mentioned second in TFS). I do agree that the lifetime ban is harsh, but it IS a zero-tolerance policy, and it's born of trying to create a very comfortable con. Playing favorites on a zero tolerance policy certainly isn't just.
The DEFCON crotch grabbing thing is completely separate. From the first link in TFS:
But I didn't, because of my own bad experiences at DEFCON, and those of people like KC, a journalist and student in San Francisco who wrote about attending DEFCON 19:
Nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught of bad behavior I experienced. Like the man who drunkenly tried to lick my shoulder tattoo. Like the man who grabbed my hips while I was waiting for a drink at the EFF party. Like the man who tried to get me to show him my tits so he could punch a hole in a card that, when filled, would net him a favor from one of the official security staff.
Or the experience of one of my friends, who prefers to remain anonymous. At a recent DEFCON, while leaning over to get her drink at the bar, someone slid his hand up all the way between her legs and grabbed her crotch.
is a part of hacker culture.
But don't expect that to change her mind or make her stop posting about it.
I mean, at that rate, rape is not only socially acceptable, it's also more popular among men that fishing or going out, and a close tie with smoking.
Moving Defcon does nothing and only provides a flimsy excuse for inexcusable behavior.
That depends who's inexcusably behaving. If it's the locals, then moving the venue can fix the problem. Some posts indicated a big part of the problem was the locals.
I'm actually trying to speak to a much larger and broader range of social problems and inconsistency from which such behavior stems.
Whatever the topic, that's a great way to be misunderstood by people who assume they know where you're coming from.
We're a symptom-driven society. We don't care so much about underlying causes. We tend to overlook those because they're uncomfortable. They tend to suggest that we should change, and change is always for other people. Really appreciating principle is "too hard" or "too much work" if you're unaccustomed to it. We can even convince ourselves that it's too abstract and unrelated to the immediate matter. There's always an excuse for taking the easy route of being shallow, for not having the courage of a deeper appreciation of life.
The price for this is that we always have some issues to address or problems to fix or little fires to put out. We stay so busy, fretting about this and that. We can even pat ourselves on the back for how busy we are. The problem is that it eventually becomes unsustainable, on both personal and national levels.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
First off, that's not the stat I'm referring to (see my post above); that's a totally different one. And secondly, that should be even more concerning, as college is just a few years of one's life; to amass such a high odds of rape or attempted rape in just a couple years is even more disturbing.
And yes, anything having to do with rape is controversial, and there's no shortage of people trying to downplay it. But want to know the little bit of selection bias that makes it hard for you guys to understand how common rape is? Because the women you know in your life aren't just going to come up to you and tell you that they've been victims of rape or attempted rape. Maybe if you got really close to one and the timing is right. But your casual acquaintances aren't just going to say it to you. It's something that even women don't often talk about with each other unless the right topic comes up and people feel comfortable enough talking about it. After I got the courage to tell my little sister what happened to me, for example, only then did I learn that she's apparently the only woman in my immediate family who hasn't been raped. I've hosted four women in my house over the years as low-rent / rent-free guests. One had been the victim of a violent rape and has flashbacks, one had significant sexual abuse at various points in her life and it's really messed her up in relationships, and I never raised the topic with the other two. Let's pick another selection criteria - I've dated approximately equal numbers of men and women over the years. Of the women, two I don't know their pasts (it was a long time ago, we were young), another one was a victim of an attempted rape, another one had been raped twice (once at knifepoint, once with drugs), and one had never been raped but had for a long time been in a situation where she felt compelled to have sex with an old boyfriend whether she wanted to or not because he was stronger than her and demanding, and she didn't want a fight out of it.
I could start adding friends to the list if you want.
It's this sort of personal experience that makes it obvious that the numbers for rape are *at least* as high as cited. But most of the guys reading this will never learn about most of the rapes or other forms of sexual abuse in the lives of most of the women that they know.
We're practicing our labials.
Pics or it didn't happen.
and make me a sandwich. Ham and provolone on wheat.
NOW, woman!
Find me a reasonable person, I dare you!
Just be glad that the law reads "reasonable person" and not "average person".
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
No, harassment is. Sexual or otherwise. Why is it that feminists always turn something that's applied equally to both sides into a gender issue?
Wait, are you really citing police conviction statistics here? I mean, really? You do realize that most rapes go unreported, right? And that most reported rapes lack sufficient evidence to prosecute?
Secondly, I'm not citing college statistics (see above). Although Wikipedia has a pretty impressive list of studies. Care to discount them all? Actually the college numbers are the most disturbing aspect, with most studies showing a 3-5% rate of rape *per academic year*, 95% of which go unreported.
We're practicing our labials.
"You're not against "freedom", are you?"
Their definition of freedom is one way.
Exploitation for them is OK. Fighting back against their exploitation is "against freedom".
I suggest you look into a Chinese hacker circle rather than a white man one like DEFCON. The orientals gives women much more respect due to their traditional buddhist/taoist values.
New Economic Perspectives
but is posting intentionally provocative article titles a part of Slashdot culture?
you have a different definition of violence if giving someone a red piece of paper with writing on it qualifies
"Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture?"
Nope.
Are all Slashdot pop quizzes this easy?
Don't take it so hard.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Those studies, mainly the famous CDC 1995 college survey that is often cited, are pretty interesting. What's most interesting is how many liberal blogs quote the results "20% of college students were raped!" without saying exactly which questions were asked or what counted as rape. I haven't actually been able to find the list of questions, but I'd be curious to see what it is. As I said in my last post, they typically include things like "did not get explicit verbal consent" (the sloppy makeout and grabbing at each others clothes is apparently not enough), and the biggest gotcha of all: alcohol.
If she had anything to drink, the way most of those surveys are worded, it's automatically rape. If the man was drunk too, then a logical person would conclude that they raped each other, but the feminist worldview doesn't operate that way. Men can only be aggressors and women only victims, right?
It's true that many rapes are not reported, but we also know that many reports turn out to be false (that wikipedia page cites some studies to that effect). Also, nearly all district prosecutors have an explicit policy of not prosecuting women whose rape reports are later proven to be lies. I'm not talking about the guy being acquitted, I'm talking about *provable* lies, where she says "Joe raped me at 7:55pm on Tuesday" and later they find security camera footage of Joe sitting in a restaurant at that time. This creates a huge incentive to lie without repercussions, destroying the lives of men as you go.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
I know the crotch grabbing thing was separate, which seems to have stirred the pot here quite a bit.
It's a pretty harsh far reaching zero-tolerance policy too. It goes beyond just banning him from Readercon, and seems to have blackballed him from an entire industry. Unless I am reading that wrong. He may have been a little creepy, and the shoulder thing violated her personal space, but was a "death" sentence warranted?
To put in perspective here, Sandusky was fucking little boys and Penn State did not even get a lifetime ban......
That's their decision, and while harsh, I hope it does lead to a more civilized environment at the conventions.
I've always suspected that the numbers were low, but only from anecdotal evidence: several women I know have talked about being sexually assaulted. But I've been in too many situations in which some woman was being harassed, or some cluster of patriarchs started talking shit when women left the staff room, and so on, to not assume that there's at least as much, if not more, going on when I'm not there to see it, not to mention the stuff that I'm unfortunately almost oblivious to.
that the author of this article is a feminazi:
From her web page http://valerieaurora.org/ ...
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
A white male privilege checklist. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if she baits men to create evidence to back her feminist bullshit.
The very idea of "sexual harassment policing" is offensive. Quick, someone call Sexual Harrassment Panda.
12 months jail for sexual harassment? Excuse me?
No, rape has a fairly broad meaning in the US as well. Laws are changing slowly, but you can still be convicted for rape if you have consensual sex with someone under a certain cutoff. Different states also have some pretty broad rules - in Louisiana for example, oral sex is a "crime against nature." I'm not sure whether or not it's categorized as rape, but it will get you registered as a sex offender.
No.
12 months in jail for grabbing a woman's vagina in public when she does not even know you.
Could you provide a reference for the 1/4 number then? I've heard that flung around, but I've never seen where it's derived from. I've also heard that the great majority of women in that number have been statutory raped, not forcibly raped, something that people tend to gloss over. Though since I can't find where the number comes from, I can't confirm that.
Poorly socialized people who spent their youth ostracized and learned how to interact with people on the internet.
Honestly I do think that's a part of it. In high school and college you experiment with how to socialize.
You have nailed it. At work, I somehow ended up doing computer support for the suits, and went to their meetings and kept them in line computer wise. And I didn't do it because I was highly educated in the matter. I was competent enough to solve their problems, but more importantly, I had the social graces that the "real" computer nerds didn't have. They were deadly afraid of the hoi-polloi, and ended to either turn into a quivering mass of jelly, nearly peeing their pants, or in a few cases, turned into the Computer support guy on Saturday Night Live. Either way, it didn't work out well, so I got the call.
I'm a big believer that IT people should be required to take a few courses in interacting with other people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Harassment implies a long term pattern of behaviour. Sexual assault can be part of a history of sexual harassment, but can also occur as a one-off event, so is a separate criminal charge.
Bullshit. My personal experience is that of the women that I think that would tell me if they had been raped, I count the incidence of rate at about 16% (1 in 6). That's a guaranteed lower limit, because there are quite a few that might not tell me that they were raped. And that's actual rape, not just unwanted touching.
The reason that rape convictions are so low is because the vast majority of women do not report rapes, or they decide not to prosecute, or the charges get dropped for lack of evidence.
Seriously, talk to your female friends (you have some, do you? your feminist dig isn't encouraging). It's eye opening.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
In other words, it's only harrassment if the girl does not like the guy.
I believe there was a Saturday Night Live skit on the subject.
The socially awkward are getting criminalized and further ostracized.
Dude, there are some simple rules here.
1. Do Not Touch!
2. Neither of you are there to get laid.
And as for what consists harassment, I once asked a female co-worker who was a good friend the question. She answered "It depends on my mood."
Crikey's, this was the same woman who'd goose me at times. I mostly thought it was cute. But yes, it does depend on what her mood is, and what she is thinking at the time. So you don't know, and it is notoriously hard to define once you get beyond the obvious stuff.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I attended this year with two female friends. One of them had some young kid try to pick her up in the hardware hacking area - he was smooth and polite about it. The other had no such proposals. Both of them would have smacked anyone trying some of the shit in that article without hesitation.
Neither of them were groped, neither of them had anything lewd said to them. I've gone to every DEFCON for about 8+ years often with female friends along and none have ever told me about things like this. Yeah, there have been strippers at some of the parties, yes folks have gotten drunk and made proposals, but nothing like what that article claims - sorry.
From the sounds of it much of this is happening at parties and not during the con itself. If that's so then it's conduct at parties full of drunken guys that's an issue not DEFCON. Priest and other Goons would toss someone out caught grabbing a woman like that, probably after beating them, and I'd applaud....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Harassment is asking someone out after they have told you in no uncertain terms that they don't want to date you.
The things described here are sexual assault and rape.
Most geeks are complete filth. They're loaded with personaity disorders, their minds are in ruins from what ever ideological echo chamber they hang out in, they think using a command line make them worthy of worship, and that getting ObscureLinuxDistro to print in two out of the seven colors on their printer makes them a global class expert on all fields of human knowledge...
They a absolute filth, and some of the most vile scumbags in the world today. I don't know a person who can stand to be around the blithering little trolls unless they have to.
+6 insightful and succinct.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Here's her webpage:
http://valerieaurora.org/
with links to the white male privilege checklist:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
And here is here in her scantily clad attire at DEFCON designed to bait desperate sexless men into acts to further her feminist bullshit:
https://www.defcon.org/images/graphics/PICTURES/DAN-2.JPG
She's an ideological provocateur whose only relevance comes from her nutty feminist nonsense . You can read more her BS at her blog:
http://blog.valerieaurora.org/
I replied to this blog post, and personally interviewed KC, and discussed that in my first blog post on the subject. Here they are: Aug 3- http://datadevastation.com/blog/sexual-harassment-defcon-cards-and-friends/ - includes pics of the actual cards. Aug 13 - http://datadevastation.com/blog/sexual-harassment-redux-con-harassment-policies/
How about making a clear statement on your website and in a pamphlet handed to all attendees stating your position on this, and throw out anyone who is harassing women. Since the only hope of procreation of most attendees is that the number of women attendees increase.
I just wanted to remind you that Tosh makes his entire career out of being offensive to as many people as possible. Carlin might be a better target.
Why are there so few women in IT? Not because we can't handle the job, but because we can't handle the social retards.
I'm sorry if I'm the only titted person that you speak to besides your mom but that's YOUR problem, not mine, okay? Get the fuck away from my desk.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt since you seem to mean well but that post was seriously fucked up on many levels. I kind of want to tear you a new one but I'm going to try and refrain since you seem to at least have your heart in sort of the right place.
First, social engineering skills != social skills. Not even close.
We disagree on the premise. In order for it to be a skill it has to be something which can be learned and it has to be objectively measurable. Conformity can be learned but are you really saying that fitting in with the pack is the most valuable social skill to you? That is really the only social skill missing in the hacker community, they don't want to conform but why should they have to?
Actual social skills that actual healthy adults
Healthy adults is just code word for "normal" adults. Once again why is it important to be normal?
have are a combination of understanding the motivations of others and having respect for them as individuals.
Not every hacker has a complete disrespect for individuals. But all individuals manipulate each other. Watch apes or monkeys interact and see what I mean. If you cannot see that on the fundamental level humans manipulate each other then perhaps you have a lot to learn. Normal people manipulate guilt all the time, that is not seen as disrespectful but I'm sure you've heard the phrase "guilt tripping". Hackers manipulate more than just guilt and have the same goal that everyone else has, hackers want to find ways to get you to do what they want you to do just like everyone in society is trying to do. That is social skills, it's just the methods people use to get you to do what you're supposed to do.
If hackers use these social skills properly hackers can actually make the world safer.
People are not a set of walking stimulus/response sets for someone to manipulate.
Then what are people? Autonomous objects free to do anything they please? Apparently that can't be true if there are laws and governments, advertisements and corporations, churches and cults.
Instead of blaming the hacker for having a deep understanding of certain aspects of reality why don't you work with the hacker to change what you don't like about reality? Because blaming or attacking the hackers is only going to make things worse.
A failure to distinguish between the two is very common among intelligent, socially awkward types. Hacker types *are* socially awkward on average.
It's easy to distinguish between the two if you ask hackers. But if you ask government officials, professors, doctors and the people who actually run society they'd view you more as an object to be controlled. If you have a problem with that then maybe you should rethink capitalism, rethink organized religion and rethink government itself because that is where the culture is coming from and that is what produces the "social awkwardness" that you have a problem with. Hackers adapt to the environment they were in best, develop skills which you do not understand, and probably will never understand unless you actually become objective and study the hacker community without bias or labels or stereotypes of social awkwardness.
The thing is that most people in hacker circles manage to learn actual social skills at some point. Sadly a portion of them never grow out of the mindset that crude, non-consensual manipulation of others for entertainment or gain is somehow indicative that they have learned to interact with other people on a meaningful level.
Why are you blaming it on hacker circles? Your circle doesn't have these immature people? I've never been in any circle which didn't have assholes, jerks and immature people. These people are in every level of society from top to bottom. They are in every class, race and gender, yes there are immature females.
There is an extreme element out there that I've talked to that doesn't seem to want to deal with this basic rule of nature. Skimpy outfits have been devised over a long period of time to have maximal sexual effect on men. They accentuate breasts, hips and buttocks. Very hind-brain stuff. The basic rule of the jungle applies everywhere and always will, we live in a convenient delusion that it doesn't because the biggest and baddest group is those that support the law. Nevertheless, if you walk down the wrong alley dressed in a sexually arousing way you are more likely to get raped than if you walk down that same alley dressed like a sack of potatoes. Any expectation otherwise is insanity.
Would you walk around downtown Compton with $100 bills flopping out of your pockets at the middle of the night? What about with a KKK outfit on? Maybe that would be asking for trouble? I would assume that the results of the actions of the person doing these things was their own fault.
That said, it's only tangentially related to the thread topic and not particularly relevant since a rapist is still a rapist. The fault ultimately is on the criminal; a jewel thief that snatches a jewel from an unprotected display case is just as liable for the crime as one that steals from a vault.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Yup, this one: http://youtu.be/gBVuAGFcGKY
The real rule is: Don't make women (or men) uncomfortable. You can do just about anything if you can do it without making them uncomfortable.
What you're usually told is no sex, sexuality, sexual jokes/references, or touching of any kind ever. Good in that it's clear and unambiguous, and you can't get in trouble for it even if you don't really understand what makes women uncomfortable and how to tell when you're crossing that line. The only downside is that you won't be hooking up at the office/conference/whatever. Fine enough for most, but for those who know how to read these situations and are willing to take some risks, some really crazy things are possible.
If bad behavior does in fact happen much more often in Las Vegas, it makes perfect sense to move the event away from Las Vegas, assuming there's no compelling reason it's held there. Saying that we must not give in and have to fix Vegas instead is like demanding an event be held in Kabul because to move it somewhere safer would be giving the terrorists validation. One sometimes has to be realistic and control what can be controlled instead of overreaching..
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The cases where sexual harassment is found by a court are almost always real sexual harassment.
I'm more concerned with cases where someone isn't convicted by a court, but is punished regardless. Look at the Duke University case, for example.
How absolutely, deliciously, diabolical!
The harder one laughs, the worse one feels, which only makes one laugh even harder!!
Not likely. There's two kinds of men who treat women like shit; there's the extroverts who are really skilled at reading body language and figuring out which women actually like their treatment, and which don't. These men do indeed get lots of pussy; it's pretty sad really, for the women, but IMO the fault lies with their parents for not clueing them into this and warning them about these men.
The other kind is men who think they're like group 1 above, but they're not, they're introverted losers (note: I'm not saying all introverts are losers, just these men), and they can't read womens' body language at all, don't know what they can get away with and what's over the line (group 1 above knows the difference), so they make pathetic attempts at emulating group #1, but fail miserably. These men are pathetic, lonely, and despicable creatures. These are the men that apparently are very numerous at hacker conventions.
Seriously, what kind of moron thinks he's going to get into a woman's pants by grabbing her crotch at a bar, then disappearing into the crowd before she can do anything about it? It shows a seriously juvenile mentality.
It's not just about reading body language. A woman can put out fake body language or change her mind. It's ultimately about respect.
"A lot of these women are out of their element"
the whole problem being discussed in this thread is men unable to think of women as fellow equal human beings and can only think of them as a pair of tits and ass. that would be you, douchebag, if you are serious. if you are trolling us: congratulations, you have the appearance of the words of a sexist asshole well faked
"I would say that we need to promote Defcon and the community absolutely and never blame the community for the behavior of members of the community."
congratulations, consider yourself hired at the department of illogical nonsense doublespeak
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is there any evidence to suggest that these women were putting their "sexy jiggling booty" in the faces of these men? It sounds like they were assaulted mostly because "hey, she's got tits. I'm going to grab them."
Trying to soften it as if the con was a fucking strip club where these women were just "shoving their booty in the faces of the men, who can blame them for feeling these lascivious urges?" is weaksauce.
Do I see attractive women every day? You bet.
Do I feel the urge to grope them? Nope.
Because I'm a homo? Nope.
Why, then? Because I'm capable of behaving like a fucking gentleman, and know that inappropriate touching is... wait for it... inappropriate.
A fucking IT conference shouldn't have to have "NO TOUCHING" posters posted everywhere like it's a goddamned strip club. If you can't keep your hands to yourself, you deserve to get your ass kicked out of the conference, and banned for life. Wheaton gave us a very simple law: don't be a dick. It's really not that hard.
then read about the MULTIPLE accounts of sexual assault again
thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
anyone actually in the rape fantasy subculture has a pretty clear understanding of the boundary between pretend play and real life. the idea that you think some douchebag threatening rape to a woman is part of an expression of subculture is either 1. hilarious at how stupid you are in the excuse making department, or 2. frightening about how deluded you are at the boundaries between dealing with real people in real life social contexts and consensual fantasy play. rape fantasy subculture participants clearly get it. you clearly do not
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
in America, women are a source of worship and must be held up high and wooed, men must do all the work. Be careful of what you say to these women, they are like jeckl and hyde, one moment they're loving, or they appear to be, the next they want to bear many children with you and other men so they can have a nice payout for their Vegas and other trips.
The problem is that a lot of jurors have this image of a reasonable person that is actually somewhere in between a REAL reasonable person and a feminist psycho-bitch.
do you understand the fucking concept?
"My point is if you extend sexual harassment to be illegal everywhere you can effectively never attempt to have sexual congress."
no, apparently you do not understand the idea of consent
"I am saying that as mammals you do have to expect that in social situations people will make advances of a sexual nature, the instinct to breed is pretty well ingrained."
'i gronk, have penis, i grope you, hurrr durr snort'
you're pretty much an ignorant douchebag. learn the concepts of respect and consent, which most of us learn in kindergarten. thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Poorly socialized people who spent their youth ostracized and learned how to interact with people on the internet.
This is pretty much it. What is going on here sounds like middle school socializing. WAY back in the day before you knew how to interact with girls you'd punch them in the shoulder and run away. Because hell, ANY interaction was interaction, right? Most people figured out by high school that may not be the best way of doing stuff.
Some of these people most likely missed that formidable socializing experience so 'sexual harassment' is their form of interaction because they don't know any better. Rei put together a great 'how to' guide but some people just don't know any better.
you could start with https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf - which concludes 17.6% of women will be raped, IN THEIR LIFETIME. It's not 1-in-4, but "approximately 1 in 5" is a sobering enough number.
You could then move on to https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/219181.pdf, which concludes 18% of women will experience rape in their lifetime. Again, sobering numbers.
If you'd like to read through those studies and point out flaws in their methodology, we could discuss whether or not those numbers are accurate, but I'm certainly going to lend more credibility to published statistical surveys from the CDC and Dept. of Justice than I am to some random slashdotter going "that number doesn't FEEL right to me, I think it's a lesbian-feminist conspiracy against men."
So you conclude that the number is nonsense, and then go on to concede that you have NO idea "what the list of questions is," and are basing your dismissal of the number on solid scientific thinking like, "they typically include things like 'did not get explicit verbal consent.'"
Since you know what they "typically" include, then I'm shocked to hear that you actually don't know what the list of questions they asked was, in the study you're dismissing because it's "sloppy science."
Please see: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3043545&cid=40970491
Feel free to debunk these "sloppy" studies which both concluded ~18% of women will experience rape in their lifetime. I look forward to reading your scholarly rebuttal, so that we can understand how sloppy science has perverted our views of the prevalence of rape.
It's this sort of personal experience that makes it obvious that the numbers for rape are *at least* as high as cited. But most of the guys reading this will never learn about most of the rapes or other forms of sexual abuse in the lives of most of the women that they know.
How come? Are only a minority of men involved in a disproportionate number of rapes or the definition men use is very different?
PS: I assumed the statistics are for men being responsible for most of the rapes. If that is not the case, I take back the above comment.
if you didn't figure it out already part of the motivation for some people to go into any *con is to get pussy.
backwards yeah I know but it's not like people didn't go to LARP to get pussy too.
if you're a gal you're going to get hit on, by awkward guys. in other words sexual harassment.
add to that some women go these things for the reason to get dick and the soup is ready.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
This commentary on this article will undoubtedly be similar to that of a troll festival. Ooops, *looks above post*, too late.
Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture?
Is racism part of Southern US Culture?
Is sexual bullying part of the Siberian culture?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Do's and don't's of encouraging women in Linux:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/x168.html
Ada initiative, supporting women in open technology and culture:
http://adainitiative.org/
Ada initiative (temporary) donation page:
http://adainitiative.org/donation-server-down/
Even though a simple grope might seem fairly innocent (to men), it isn't.
Not only can it be very traumatic for the victim, it is also the beginning of the slope leading to worse sexual offenses for the perpetrator; the lack of respect for women combined with a sexual urge that goes beyond the norm is a clear indicator of worse things to come.
These violators need to be caught as fast as possible and prosecuted so they can get their 'certification' - the brand as a sexual offender. Then we'll have them under control when they're out and give them 'the time of their life' when they're behind bars. The experience of being in jail as a sexual offender are usually so awful that they'll do anything to avoid going back and that will keep them in check as the fear of jail will overrule the sexual urge and keep them from re-offending.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
>One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime.
This is how I tell that the speaker has nonsense definition of the word. Go away; you are diminishing the ability of people to take this issue seriously.
Maybe I missed the /. thread on the ReaderCon fiasco, but here's the original complaint
http://glvalentine.livejournal.com/340623.html
Am i the only one who things she is exaggerating a little? What exactly happend according to her (note that i haven't read the version of the events according the guy)
- they talked to each other, he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow. (If you ever visited a con, thic could be perfectly normal if you talk to someone in a tight group of people, in the line for some event for example)
- later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.
- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.
I don't know how picking up a women in US works, do you have to get prior permission to try to touch them? Or dou you wait for them to touch you first? But wait, isn't it harrassment in oposite way then?
>Trust me, quality women don't respond to dickheads with the attitude you seem to think is a winning one.
"No true Scotsman..."
Well yeah, that's how consent works, you amazing douchenozzle. If you don't have it, you're assaulting someone.
Nonetheless, his point stands. I work with a guy that can go up to a girl he doesn't know, fondle her arse, say "Sorry gorgeous, I just couldn't resist", give her a cheeky smile and get a giggle and flirtatious smile back.
There's no prior consent involved. Most other men try that, they're getting arrested. The rules are not unambiguous, and it's hardly surprising that some people get it wrong at times.
I think Barbara Kruger has your answer: http://edu.warhol.org/app_kruger.html The kind of courage necessary to challenge received opinion in risky ways can shade into, or derive from, an arrogance that refuses to see others (or selected categories of others) as fully human. Fortunately for humanity, courage doesn't always work through the suppression of empathy. But it happens. Also, iconoclasm and outright narcissism can go together. After all, narcissists do tend to think rules don't apply to their own exceptional selves.
And, sadly, an accusation can happen to be both factually true and politically convenient.
It is false evenhandedness to call "on the one hand" for measures to prevent crimes against women and "on the other hand" for measures to prevent false accusations by women. Men are more likely to commit crimes against women when they can do so with impunity due to social and legal traditions that are slanted against female accusers. While the truth of any testimony should be tested fairly, the last thing any group or legal system needs are "protections" specifically meant to discourage women from stating inconvenient facts in public.
Valerie IS blaming everyone. The thread title IS blaming everyone.
Anywhere women are heavily underrepresented,'this wll APPEAR to exist even if merely statistics are thebcause.
Lets say one in ten men are bad people towomen.
In society, men nd women are equally represented,'so the bad men havebspread themsekves thinly over their available targets.
Where women sre one tenth of the group numbers, they can attach to each one, therefore every womsn meets one dickhead. Unlike in 'the real world,. Ergo, ther assume it must be that this group is much more sexist.
Add to that a geek culture that doesn't talk to women much, and thebratio of dick to bloke ir increased due to the under representation of the bloke.
The unintended consequence of this will bebfewer blokes talking to women, afraid of censure, but no change in thebdicks, who either don't see it or don't care.
But the short of it is that your comment is complete bollocks.
Meanwhile, back in reality...
I know lots of strong, intelligent, confident gentlemen who have about as much chance of being looked at twice by a woman as being struck by lightning.. because they're geeks. These are people with well paid jobs, houses and cars. Women don't look at geeks twice.. they don't even give them a chance - I haven't had one look at me twice in the last 15 years (I'm lucky that 15 years ago one did so I married her - she knows I'll never stray because I'll never get the opportunity).
All the dickheads I know have always have women around them. They have their pick. Seems the more asshat they are the more women they have.
For fuck sake, it is about hacking not about being a 12yr old online kiddie. When it comes to tech, I think and talk tech, not sex. Mind you, I am not PC because I always use the male form when talking about people "he" rather then "he/she" or if I want to be funny (he/she/it) Slashdot: "but that ain't funny" Shut up!
True geeks don't sexually harass or are racist or have issues with other sexual preferences, to be a true geek means to be open minded and realize that normal does not exist, after all, no geek is normal.
Mind you, the word geek has been so mis-used of late. If you are dutch and make the mistake of visiting tweakers you can see that it has come to include anyone who changes their wallpaper and has people in it that are extremely rigid in their thinking.
Nowadays a geek is no longer somebody who wants to take the world apart to see how it works (and maybe, someday put it back together again) but just anyone who knows how to turn on a computer and lacks social skills. True geeks don't have to lack social skills, they are just people that get pre-occupied and sometimes mistake other people for cats and cats for people. Some of the best geeks I met are the old confused proffessor type, perfectly charming and alright to be with, profided they aren't busy with a problem in their head and have temorarily put the world on hold.
A geek is NOT a hatred filled kid who screams obscenities in his xbox headset where the only tweak is that he used xXNICKXx instead of something readable.
It is sad, I do remember the old days when it wasn't at all unusual to see women at maker groups, both as girlfriends and as makers and the girlfriends often were at least interested to help not just sit their to polish their nails as trophies. But it has changed, as geekhood became bigger, it lost its meaning.
A true geek doesn't need to be PC, it would never enter his or her mind to even make sexual remarks like the ones mentioned in the article. At a true geek meetup, the only reason I would stare at a womans breasts is if she had a gadget between them, who has time to be on the prowl when their are gadgets around? Opening the latest up, better then SEX! And if you feel that is not true, you are NOT a geek. Go away! Aol is that way ->
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Not knowing how to pick up women is not the same as meaning you think it is okay to grab them in the crotch. I don't know to fly a 747 but I am fairly certain that it is not okay to play chicken on the runway.
As a geek I am getting fed up with people putting people with bad social behavior in my group, true geeks might be socially awkward an silent but that does NOT mean every asshole who doesn't give a fuck is a geek.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I find this discussion really weird. I don't know in the US, but in Germany "hackers" are usually known for being very shy, with poor social skills, especially with women, and most of them are single. Never ever heard of sexual harassment in the hackers' community, seriously. And they also drink far less beer than the average german.
And by the way, in germany an "hacker" would never like to be confused with average "geeks". Graduating in computer science is a little more difficult than reading comics.
Wow. Astonishing.
The suggested guidelines for conventions are a very bad puritan joke. They define use of sexual images as harassment. Seriously? Why slip that in under the disguise of actually doing something against harassment? If you don't like sexual images stay at home or go to (protestant) church.
but it certainly seems like these male baiting articles are now part of Slashdot culture.
Perhaps we should ask if a persecution complex is a part of western culture instead?
I had a woman I didn't like grab my crotch, it was weird and I walked away.
Now be careful, because those 40 y.o. "ladies" are those 20-somethings, 20 years later. You're probably projecting some insecurities of your own.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
rapey mcrapester. in your mind, is not actually trying to rape, which has been around since before we were homo sapiens, no, in your view rapey mcrapester got the idea from japanese cartoons
so, in your opinion, if a douchebag is trapped in an alley with a gun and decides to shoot his way out, it's because he saw this on cartoon network. and if a guy decides to vomit on the casino floor, it's not because he's sick, it's because he watched the hang over too much
hey, genius, here's a wacky idea: maybe someone expressing an interest in rape, is almost a RAPIST
sorry if that's too bold for you. occam's razor and all that: when you hear hoofbeats, think horse rapist, not horse rape cosplay character
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think the problem is uniquely fixable as far as geek culture goes. Geeks understand rules. We make and use them.
All that is needed is education. Mabye a little bit more adapted to Geeks in spelling out more precisely what the rules are and more importantly why they should obey them.
All it takes is for the leaders in geek culture, the popular CEOs, the uber geeks, the Linux Torvald's to publicly and strongly state they are for education, perhaps providing the education.
There is no reason to think that it is part of hacker culture, but women always face a lot of challenges when they try to enter to any male dominated group.
First of all, among a large enough group of men, there will be at least one asshole who acts very disrespectfully to women. Let's suppose that on average there is one such an asshole per 100 men, and you have 100 attendees on some conference. If there is only one woman among them then probability is very high that she is going to experience sexual harassment (roughly speaking 99%). On the other hand, if you have 50 men and 50 women then probability for any woman to experience sexual harassment is about 1%. (The above numbers are just for demonstration of the point and not based on any actual statistics). Not surprisingly, most women feel much more comfortable in more gender mixed groups.
Aside the issue of sexual harassment, some women are put aback by high stress on competitiveness instead of co-operation in hacker culture. This often makes them feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. However, this is not because men dislike women, but a typical male-bonding ritual includes a lot of arguing even in those cases when both men may be mostly agreed on the issue. I want to underscore that this men's behavior is not specific to hacker culture, in fact, it is even more profoundly expressed in pubs and other places where young men socialize among themselves. When women socialize among themselves (without men), they tend to focus more on co-operation around some shared interests, as well as sharing their emotions about related events. Usually gender mixed groups tend to take the middle ground, so both extremes are eliminated.
The bottom line is that any group that consists mostly of men (for whatever reason) acts quite differently than more gender mixed groups, and that presents a lot of challenges to women who want to be part of them. This has nothing to do with hacker culture.
That's not the case in the US. "Rape" has not become a meaningless term here.
It means rape. We're not talking about Swedish Rape.
No means no and stop means stop. If you confuse the two, it's on you, asshole.
As usual, you introduce straw men. You're good at that, I give you. But who in their right mind modded this drivel up so much? Your sock puppets?
Anyhow....
Travel across state lines, have a 14 year old come over to a hotel room to play chess or talk about novels, and you have committed statutory RAPE.
And that's pretty unique to the US, by the way.
If that's not diluting the meaning of the word rape, I don't know what is.
(Also, I wonder what the heck you mean by "Swedish rape", when you then go on to say that no means no and stop means stop? Isn't that the whole point of the Swedish case against Assange? But I digress, discussing one of your straw men.)
The rest of your straw men I won't touch with a ten foot pole. They are irrelevant to the post you replied to and in no way representative of my statements or opinions.
I don't know how picking up a women in US works, do you have to get prior permission to try to touch them? Or dou you wait for them to touch you first? But wait, isn't it harrassment in oposite way then?
The same way it works everywhere, by reading the non-verbal communication correctly. Which a lot of geeks can't do. Which is pretty much the argument of this story.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The reporting and conviction rates are low because an awful lot of rapes are date/acquaintance rape, where it is entirely plausible that consent could have been given, and where there is no actual evidence other than the word of the victim that consent was not given. Unless the accused confesses, or can't keep his story straight, there isn't any basis for a conviction or even prosecution, which makes reporting pretty worthless.
Also, the 1 in 4 study found how many women had been in situations which could have been, legally seeking, rape. Even assuming their reports were accurate, they didn't necessarily consider themselves victims - after all the line between regrettable drunken encounter and rape is rather contextual, at least morally speaking
The other kind is men who think they're like group 1 above, but they're not, they're introverted losers (note: I'm not saying all introverts are losers, just these men), and they can't read womens' body language at all, don't know what they can get away with and what's over the line (group 1 above knows the difference), so they make pathetic attempts at emulating group #1, but fail miserably. These men are pathetic, lonely, and despicable creatures.
Really good post. Christian Gray from "that book" is a type 1.
The trouble is that the people in group 2 don't actually realize that they are in group 2. They know they're lonely, but just think their bad luck with women is because they're not good looking enough or not rich enough. They really do think that if they like a girl but she seems to have been ignoring them so far, then the thing to do is to follow her around the party and try to engineer a situation where they end up close together and then maybe next time she will say hi. If she still doesn't say hi, then maybe she hasn't noticed, so touch her arm to make a warm fuzzy intimate situation and so on.
Walling was probably shocked that his behaviour was considered "sexual harrassment" and didn't realize he'd done anything wrong. The group 2 people didn't set out to be pathetic losers, they just grew up that way for whatever reason. If they realized what they were doing wrong, they'd have stopped doing it.
Calling them names and abusing them on internet forums just means they'll be confused at the negativity, feel even more lonely, and then try even harder to chase a nice girl around at the next party they go to.
Let's just be clear, I'm not defending what the group 2 people do in any way; it is completely wrong. But if our goal is to turn group 2 people into normal functioning members of society, then they need to see the error of their ways explained in terms they can understand.
Threads like this are actually really important; as lots of group 2 people will have followed this thread, and not only will they see the massive negative reaction to Walling's behaviour (therefore triggering them to re-evaluate their norms), they also get to read posts like the one I'm responding to that explain things from the girl's point of view.
What to one woman is sexual harrassment, is to another, very attractive male behavior. I've met women who felt sexually harassed when told by the opposite sex that they look good, and I've met other women who feel let down if there is not a feeding-frenzy of men hitting on them and constantly vying for their attention and making physical moves/gestures demonstrating such. My first female friend in high school told me she would never consider dating me, because at one point when we were out (as friends), I did not grab her and push her against the wall and make out with her. As I considered her a friend (whom I was certainly attracted to), I did not feel I could do such a thing, and it never crossed my mind to make a physical move on her without first verbally asking for permission.... because of this, she considered me to be a meek loser.
The women who tend to make a big stink about sexual harassment are those who generally don't get much male attention, or who are quite conservative. For the average geek, having to worry about accusations of sexual harassement, and on the other hand having to worry about not being 'aggressive' enough as a man, it can be very confusing.
In my opinion, if a women feels offended that I am interested in her and wanting to get to know her better, thats her problem, not mine. If she asks me to leave her alone, I certainly will. As a man, it is generally our job to approach the women first. If she's not interested, she can say so, and thats the end of that. If she takes the initial approach as sexual harassment, oh well...
"Hit on" != "Sexual harassment"
The sooner you realize that there is a difference between the two, the better.
We're practicing our labials.
Then he's been lucky. Heck, there's some girls out there with rape fantasies. Does that mean that you should go up to every girl you meet and rape her, hoping that you happened to pick someone like that?
We're practicing our labials.
As usual, when you attack me, you reveal more about yourself than you do about me, arth1.
The reason we have separate laws for children 14 and under is because they are so easy to exploit. There's no way for an adult man and a female child to have a relationship that is not exploitation. Now, it does become more troublesome when it's a 15 year old boy and a 14 year old girl, or an 19 year old and a 14 year old, but most cases of statutory rape are pretty clear. Developed societies protect children. That's what we do. Having a daughter myself has clarified the reasoning behind this for me.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Basically I am in my mid 20s. I am physically attractive and take good care of myself. Women over 40 think I'm a great guy and really like who I am, universally. Unfortunately I want a woman more my age. Can't say I want to be with a retiree when I turn 40 ya know? Women my age want a guy who's "got game" which is a weird way of saying a guy who's good at bullshitting and lying to them and using them for his own ends. They seem to like shallow, flashy guys who just want to fuck them, like it's a challenge to them to "domesticate" such a guy.
There's something you're not telling us (perhaps because you don't realize yourself). Maybe you're boring or ugly. (Women do lower their standards in those departments as they get older).
Maybe you're creepy around girls your own age, but you relax and act yourself around women you aren't interested in.
If the person in question cannot see that persistence after clearly being told to back off is wrong, then he needs to seek some counseling
But after being clearly told to back off he DID realize that he made a mistake and tried to apologize. The problem is that Genevieve Valentine claims that
if a woman has told you in any way, to any degree, that you are unwelcome, your apology is YOU, VANISHING.
You say we're all the same.
You don't even know my name.
Sometime somewhere someone once hurt you and I'm one of them
You think you know about me
You don't know a damn thing about me!
So I take all the blame
I'm not all men
I'm just one man
I'm not that man!
-Rollins Band - Wrong Man
Given a quick fondle is my example of extreme behaviour that wouldn't normally be tolerated, oddly enough no, I wouldn't recommend rape.
Lets make this explicit: Do not rape anybody.
thanks.
Simply not true. "Geek" gets bonus points in many people's books (mine included). Favorite thing a guy has ever said to me after arriving at my house: "You've never seen Dr. Who?!" (incredulous, beat) "Okay, we're downloading and watching the first ep of Dr. Who, *then* we're going to have sex!" I've mentally given bonus points to guys for things like having seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or getting excited over the Higgs-Boson announcement, things of that nature. And I'm far from alone in this regard.
I'm not sure how often you think that women randomly come up to married guys in their (late 30s, 40s, later?) and start hitting on them. That's not how it works. So I don't know why you'd be surprised that this hasn't happened to you. As to the single geeks you know, find a straight girl whose opinion you can trust and have her be wingman with one of your geek friends when they go out and give an honest assessment of him to help him find out what he's doing wrong. Because I assure you, there's at least something (probably several things).
Also remember that "geek" isn't an excuse for "get out of doing the normal stuff free". You still should try to be at least moderately physically fit, keep good hygene (clear skin, nicely trimmed hair, consistent and managed facial hair (whether present or absent), no body odor, etc), weight at least in the ballpark of "normal", etc (just like geek girls aren't likewise given a pass if they're covered in acne, tattered hair, unshaved legs and armpits, smelly, heavy, etc). And your expected social role in the dating game remains the same as any other guy's - to make the approach, strike up the conversation, make the first move, etc. Some geeks have trouble with these sorts of things, but it should be noted, it's not that they're *geeks* that's the problem. The fact that they're geeks can actually be a bonus.
We're practicing our labials.
People who are exploiting others almost never think they're doing anything wrong.
This. Further downthread, I made a comment condemning certain sexual subcultures (for their exploitation, though I didn't make that explicit) and got jumped on by 4 or 5 people. Apparently I'm repressing sexual minorities when I dare to suggest that the allegedly consensual behavior of certain subcultures may not be consensual enough. I had no idea so many members of Slashdot were so invested in this stuff.
Either that or some of the posts about political correctness run amok have a grain of truth to them.
Or I should have stayed the hell out of this thread. Every time I get near hotbutton social issues, I get misinterpreted.
Gee, let's look at my actual experience on the dating scene since my divorce a little over half a year ago:
1) Did not try to rape me.
2) Did not try to rape me.
3) Did not try to rape me.
4) Tried and succeeded at raping me.
5) Did not try to rape me.
6) Did not try to rape me.
7) Did not try to rape me.
8) Tried but stopped after about 10 seconds of me struggling.
9) Did not try to rape me.
This is a freaking problem, guys!
We're practicing our labials.
I think not, and I am certain it shouldn't be. For some reason, every single community I dwell into is always haunted by this topic, and considering it's a behavior I don't respect, I consider those guys should get their man cards removed, because they fail at it.
So what you're saying is "it's not battery, it's a gender check"
No excuses, no reasons, no justifications.
We laugh at politics, corporate culture, media bias, movie and music associations, pointing at their failures and their contradictions. We see ourselves some kind of elite of Humanity ... And we can't do better than mimic some primitive civilizations in how we perceive 50% of the population just because of chromosomes and hormones? Are we the kind of morons that complain when we are victims, and then act as brutes and bullies as soon as we have the opportunity to make the life of others miserable just because we happen to have technological insight?
Fuck us.
We should be better than this.
Actually, you've pretty much summed up Asperger Syndrome, which is so commonplace among "geeks" that it practically defines every meme and stereotype associated with the group.
In blunt terms, Aspies aren't born knowing how to understand the emotions of others the way most people are. As kids, we can't fathom that others aren't just like us... agreeing with us 100%, and thinking exactly the same way. By middle school, it sinks in that others are quite different, and it becomes obvious that we're going to have to learn to "pass" for normal if we ever want to climb from the pit of social rejection. We do this by observing what others do, and playing it back like a shell script. Usually, with dismal success.
The problem is, it's hard enough for extroverted neurotypical guys to understand women. For straight Aspie guys, it's damn near hopeless. For gay Aspies, it's not quite as bad, because drunk horny guys are nowhere close to being as complicated as women. At least, in the short 2-hour (give or take) timeframe that a gay Aspie is going to be horny and care about having sex with the other guy. A "real" relationship is more complicated, but most Aspies lose interest and get bored *long* before that becomes an issue.
Speaking as a gay Aspie, I've had countless guys profess their love for me as I scratched my head and wondered "Why?" because we didn't really seem to have any special interests in common. Every now and then, I hook up with a guy who ends up being interesting. If he starts pressuring me for a 'relationship' or seems 'needy', that's the end of it. If he's happy to hang out at a bar, talk about something interesting, and has the same taste in guys as I do (so we can pick up a third guy to take home), we might have sex a few more times. More likely than not, somebody who falls into this category is an Aspie, too. Eventually, our interests diverge (aspie special interests can be short- or long-lived, but when they change, they change almsot instantly and without warning), and we just kind of drift apart. We might get back together again someday if our interests converge again, or we might not. Either way, we're both happy.
I've seen a few straight Aspies find similar Aspie girls (and if they're going to find them anyplace, Defcon is definitely the place to do it). The problem is, Aspie girls are pressured to conform in ways that gay guys aren't. If you're gay, all bets and rules are off & scrapped anyway, so we can get away with redefining 'relationship' to fit our own narrow, focused definition of happiness. Women, in contrast, are relentlessly pressured to conform to the social stereotype of simultaneously being a whore & wholesome mother. Aspie girls can't reconcile the two any better than Aspie guys can. However, once they get away from their family influence by escaping to somewhere like Silicon Valley or New York, they often find happiness the same way gay guys do.
A few posts up, there was a girl handing out "Creep Cards", which is brilliant, logical Aspie behavior. NT girls feel socially-compelled to respond politely to unwelcome advances, and if they can't, they have to act like histrionic victims to preserve their dignity and self-image. Aspie girls don't. If a guy touches an Aspie girl's breasts or butt, she'll instantly and unambiguously make her displeasure known (possibly by handing him an appropriate card, possibly by just kneeing him in the groin). Aspie guys don't have much of a problem dealing with Aspie girls. The one group that should NEVER be allowed to come into contact with each other while drunk are NT girls and Aspie guys. That's a disaster and lawsuit waiting to happen. The NT girls throw off mixed, socially-motivated signals, and the Aspie guys get confused as hell because they don't know what to make of them.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't DEFCON in Las Vegas every year? Could it be that that the geek women are not used to being in a scum ridden city and just don't get out enough to realize their are these shitty people everywhere? As one poster put it most of your typical geeks are introverted and socially awkward , not what a typical geek would do. Id be willing to bet it more of the locals or the staff that are causing these issues.
There's no way for an adult man and a female child to have a relationship that is not exploitation
That you can even think this to be the case tells me a lot about you. (And where did "man" and "female" enter the equation? Your own repressed fantasies?)
Adults having meaningful non-sexual contact with adolescents used to be the case, and still is in many parts of the world. I sure as hell don't have any problems having meaningful discussions with my cousins and my friends' children - as long as they are smart enough, and interested in talking, why not?
You, on the other hand, clearly must have some personal problems if you immediately sexualize contact with children in your mind. I would not let you near children, for sure, after displaying that trait! Sick, man!
The rest of us are perfectly capable of relating to children in a non-sexual way. Get help, please.
the difference you failed to mention there is the relative difference in attractiveness. the dudes in group 2 are much more likely to be ugly. so, yeah women are more interested in dudes who are better looking and have more social skills.
anyone who attended computer science at university will notice there are a lot more people who are socially clueless self selecting into those disciplines. the interesting thing about that is you can infer there is less of a cultural stigma for asians in science as the asians tend to have more normals, more women, etc. Not that asians are more free to choice without cultural constraints; for example if you went into any philosophy lecture the classes would be 80%+ white people even in a school that has a majority of identifiable minorities
I notice a lot more followers of the geek cult in IT than in software development or engineering. Kinda interesting how the people who live a much 'geekier' life tend to downplay it, while the people managing the Outlook server feel the need to profess their geek cred every chance they get..
I've noticed this phenomenon in most areas of life. Those who talk big (i.e. brag) tend to do small. It's the quiet ones who tend to accomplish the great things.
Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, but it's not a bad yardstick.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Be honest, "No" based on a single person's testimony cannot be any kind of legal standard. It might be a fine guideline to follow in the moment, but "rape" under a "consent" law is in fact whatever a woman wants it to be or feels it should be. And the same is true of sexual harassment. This is not to say that these crimes don't exist, it's just that it's often that they can't be proven unless basic legal rights to standards of proof and presumption of innocence are removed. From men, because women "can't rape". Hence, the cynical bitterness.
An an aside, "dressing like a slut" is actually more like objective sexual harassment. If a dude were walking around in a speedo wiggling his crotch, how fast would he be arrested?
Hey, at least they can actually call it rape. In my state, guys can't be raped by women.
I found this out after the sergeant stopped laughing. Best he could do was plain battery for the ligature marks and concussion, and he suggested that even that would just get turned back on me as being into kinky stuff.
I'd argue that sexual harassment is not so much an inherent problem with geek/hacker cultures per se, but one particularly egregious manifestation of a wider problem: namely, bullying. It's ironic that geeks and hackers, so frequently the target of bullying from outside groups, would have a bullying problem within its own ranks, but the evidence is too strong to ignore. The same people who harass women in online games also spend a great deal of time pwning the n00bs and seemingly engaging in contests of who can hurl the vilest slurs. We see this not only in gaming, but in online discussions as well, and while most of the slurs are somewhat toned down in the convention scene, the Readercon fiasco shows that harassment remains alive and well even when real-life interaction enters into the equation.
I wouldn't have expected this in a community composed so strongly of people who know what it means to be bullied, but there we have it. And as long as we continue to let that sort get away with this behavior, it's only going to get worse.
When faced with some situation, such as "do I keep going when this girl who was making out with me before says, 'this is going too fast for me, I want to stop'?", a large percent of men will say "of course I stop" while a large minority will say "of course I keep going", but both groups by and large refuse to admit that there are so many people who take the opposite view.
Maybe because persistence pays off? Coyness is a female seduction technique as much as persuasion is for men, and clarifying statements and actions are necessary for the communication process to reach a conclusion.
And I've never met a man who hasn't been thoroughly fucked over by people of both genders. Things are tough all over...
Have you seen the way 4chan props up a queen? This is part of hacker culture. The women are not "real" hackers, they just are hacker groupies, or at least that's how many of the hackers see them.
The parent poster obviously behaves this way since he just can't seem to fathom the idea that anyone else knows the proper way to act around others.
Yes, sexual expression can be channeled, by you are suggesting de facto elimination which is a crazy. You know how you express your desire not be sexually advanced upon? By saying "No thanks". Maybe you can even wear a chastity bracelet or something to shield yourself from any social interaction.
Some perverts are into groping. They don't even want to have sex. That this is supposed to represent a "typical" problem in male conferences is ridiculous. Boobs grabs are one thing, but going for the crotch indicates some serious aberrant behavior.
There is already a policy. Don't be a dickhead. I would venture to say that most if not all red shirt goons would intervene if they saw some creep groping a woman against her will, with the consequences probably being removal from at least that year, if not forever.
A good percentage of the red shirt goons are women as well. And most of them are women that you really wouldn't want to piss off.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The "penalty cards" might be a step toward resolving the issue. I don't know what's on the green cards, though. I would have to say that if I received a green card for professionally communicating with a female, I would find it highly condescending. Please hand me your business card instead.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Mod parent up. Also, I've always wondered if I'd have it easier if I was gay, now I know.
If anything like this has EVER happened, then it's the result of a whole lot of nonverbal communication. No surprise that a bunch of aspies watching it happen would assume the guy had some sort of magical free pass to assault women.
I have a friend who is absolutely the most CHARMING motherfucker I've ever met - he has a knack for immediately disarming and befriending anybody he starts talking to. I have witnessed him in action with several dozen girls over the years, and the ease and confidence he has when talking to people is truly awe-inspiring. But there's no secret sauce to it - he's adept at reading body language, and he's a decent-looking, funny-as-fuck, friendly guy - so yeah, he makes it look easy. But it's not because he can walk up to "any woman and grope them" - it's that he knows how to spot the women who are interested in being chatted up, and knows how to put those women at ease when he goes over to talk to them.
I've never been able to replicate his level of success, because the small talk doesn't come naturally to me - I have to work at it and it shows, and I'm about 40 pounds overweight. Is life unfair? Sure, I guess - but what ever gave you the notion that it was supposed to be fair? Some guys will do better with women than others. Improve your presentation and learn how to talk to them, or accept your lot.
This study conducted in the late 90's found that about 17.6% of American women had experienced attempted or completed rape, with 13% experience completed rape (more summary stats here), and this study from 2007 found that 18% of American women had experienced rape. I'm not sure Rei's number of 1 in 4 came from (a different country perhaps?), but a rate of 1 in 6 is shockingly high.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality. Now mix that up with copious amounts of alcohol, the poor social adjustment that many geeks have, and the "anything goes" attitude of Sin City, and yeah you'll have problems.
My experience was that most attendee's poor social adjustment manifested as incredibly timid behavior. You know, just like any nerd-out-of-water ever.
The guy I went to Vegas with made it his mission (and I eventually joined him to a small extent) to spend the weekend pulling people out of their shells.
Men like it when they have to change to accommodate some bitch at work we have to, at play fuck you.
i guess in the army, you may face similar issues, especially at time it was not that common to see females in the army.
Officer's first told soldiers, "whatever a woman would say, it would be taken as true !"
And second, a word i remember, supposedly from a woman known because she never had trouble with men, even tho she had plenty boyfriends in her life. She said, the way to handle man, is to use clear words : "No means NO, hence you'll never be in trouble with men". I guess she was in the army too, surrounded by plenty of men. Because i remember hearing those words when i was in the army.
Not sure spending hours, days, months, years in front of a computer, helps you improve your way of conduct.
Next, if you consider adds helps promote a product, and it should work, since companies pay a lot for more adds. How much will it help to promote good looking female, since, you are likely to see them aside of each product on every add.
just my 2 cents
Um... how has this non-sequiteur gotten +5?! It's just a cheap shot based on a reading comprehension fail.
He said that many women and the men who impersonate women are attention whores. Which is true, especially of the men. The women part is supposedly anecdotal, but I can confirm that... although some women I've met are very smart and capable hackers (and get lots of respect from me for that), most I know just want to hang out with the mysterious cool haxor nerds.
Next he claims that this culture (which I assume he is part of) uses derogatory terms lightly when among themselves. This confirms his own point. Why is that wrong?
/me waits for someone to come along and make the argument that if a woman gets divorced and then goes on 9 dates in 6 months, they're more or less asking for it.
As a man, I'm sincerely sorry to hear about your bad experiences. I had a girlfriend who was raped (prior to my meeting her), so I have some experience of how much pain the experience left her with. Your partner having a panic attack in the middle of sex because she starts having a 'flashback' of sorts to her rape is pretty awful, and I can only imagine how much more bruising the experience is for the person having the panic attack.
Logic has nothing to do with. It's a matter of empirical investigation. The sound of "quality women" or "gentleman" may resonate pleasantly through your mind, but that's irrelevant. Though I have no doubt you've encountered many mid-30s baby-crazy-menopausal ladies-of-a-certain-age that are attracted by your mature character.
Just for fun, I tried reading this article with gender-neutral pronouns. It really makes its point that way.
Only a minority of men are involved in a disproportionate number of rapes. David Lisak has done some very eye-opening research, finding that most rapes are committed by about 5% of men, who rape again and again and again.
It turns out that if you ask these men questions like "Did you force someone to have sex with you, even though they didn't want to?" they are happy to say yes, and they think other men will too, and they don't think that forcing somebody to have sex is rape. When people talk about "rape culture," this is what they mean. Rapists don't think that they are doing anything unusual, because they get repeated cues from the men around them that rape is OK. The vast majority of men who laugh at rape jokes, or otherwise sexist jokes, are not actually believing the ideology behind it, but the 5% of men in the group see that laugh and think "that person is just like me, my attitudes and actions are not exceptional." Rape culture is real and has real, devastating consequences.
More to the point of TFA, or at least one of its points, when men overstep women's boundaries without actually raping them or sexually assaulting them, that reinforces the belief in the rape-y and assault-y minority of men that disrespecting women's boundaries is OK.
he bumped into her few times with his shoulder and elbow.
The way I read it at first, I thought that he was touching HER elbow/shoulder with his hand. As a writer, she should know a difference between "touching" and "bumping into".
Either way, even at a con it is kinda hard to touch someone with your shoulder while you're facing them and talking to them - unless you're deliberately trying to nudge them in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink chummy sort of way.
Which she obviously didn't find chummy as she moved away each time.
And then he came on with a lame "you make me think bad thoughts" come-on, and was shot down and ignored.
At the con, someone introduced himself to me and started a conversation, accompanied by elbow-and-shoulder touches that I moved away from. At one point he said I had to stop saying things that "made [him] want to say "wrong" things"; I shut him down politely, turned my back on him, and talked to someone else until he eventually left.
later in some hallway bottleneck, he put his hands on her shoulders from behind and said "Well, you and I will have a good time!", to which she responded "fuck off" and the guy stopped.
Well actually...
From behind me, the man wrapped an arm around my shoulders and said, "Well, you and I will have a good time!" at which point I spun and said loudly and clearly "You do NOT touch me," and moved inside.
He stayed in the bottleneck for more than thirty minutes trying to catch my eye before he left; I recruited someone to walk me to the elevator.
- later he tried to apologise, she told him "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye,"
- later she published her rant on her blog, which resulted in two-year entry ban on the con for the man.
Well actually, there is another bit or two between those two points.
Sunday morning, I fell in with some friends and was chatting near the entrance to the book room, when I saw him, again hovering nearby. My friends, up to speed on the issue, eventually tried to walk me to the table, at which point he cut in with us and started apologizing. I said, "Don't want to talk about this, don't worry about it, goodbye," and kept walking.
Later, he stopped by the Clarkesworld table again and hovered for so long that a friend stepped in while I went elsewhere.
Apparently, all he picked up from the line above was the "don't worry about it" part, so he proceeded to stalk her.
At which point she contacted the con staff.
Then she wrote about it on her livejournal.
THEN, after the guy was originally suspended for two years (though apparently the con claims that "Harassment of any kind...will result in permanent suspension of membership"), she dug around and found out that her case was not the first complaint against the guy for being "too friendly" to women.
Including at least one marriage proposal to a person he only just met.
Sooo... umm... he may have actually gotten off easy with just a ban from that one con, although his reputation of a "ladies man" will surely spread due to this publicity.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
And yes, anything having to do with rape is controversial, and there's no shortage of people trying to downplay it
Of course there are people trying to downplay it. There are also people trying to overplay it.
My intention was not to downplay it, but only to call attention to the fact that there is very, very little unbiased research into this. Part of the problem is as you say: people who have been victimized are not always willing to discuss it. Another part of the problem is that people who have made lapses in judgement are willing to place the blame elsewhere when given opportunity to do so. (I do not know how much of a factor this is; similarly I do not know how much of a factor under-reporting is.) A third part of the problem is that any of the research I've seen (either in support of or in argument against rape stats) is gathered in such a way that makes the results unreliable -- because it was clear that a certain response was desired from the start. Again, this cuts both ways.
But want to know the little bit of selection bias that makes it hard for you guys to understand how common rape is? Because the women you know in your life aren't just going to come up to you and tell you that they've been victims of rape or attempted rape. Maybe if you got really close to one and the timing is right. But your casual acquaintances aren't just going to say it to you.
While it's clear this is a deeply personal issue for you, I have to say: anecdotes are not unbiased data. You and I both know that for every example you have, someone else has counterexamples.
I am not trying to say there is no problem; I am not trying to downplay the problem that does exist. I am saying that there's a lot of misinformation on both sides of this, and that it's extremely difficult to get a clear, fact-based picture.
"I want to stop" is not "coyness". "I dunno..." with a blushing smile is coyness. If a girl says "I want to stop" and you don't, that's rape. There is no fuzzy line here. Call rape "paying off" if you want to, but it doesn't change what it is.
We're practicing our labials.
We, the geeks and the nerds, are supposed to be the ones smart enough to fix problems.
There are probably no frat-boy websites full of frat-boys worrying about whether women are being pushed away from the frat-boy community because they don't see it as a problem to be fixed.
We do. We give a damn and see this as a problem and so we talk about it and try to find a solution.
Butthurt?
blargh, the first link should be to to this address
The US Constitution isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than what we have now
Any guy who has to use the word "pussy" when talking about women is a morally depraved piece of shit. You obviously think women are some kind of toy that you can play with and then dispose of. No wonder society is so messed up with cretins like you stinking up the place.
Lol, you Havant been to college then, any drunk party girl can call rape for frivolous reasons and many have. Is rape trivial? Not always.
Should a random woman have her crotch grabbed in public? Debatable. Should someone be charged with assault? I guess that depends, this story lacks the kind of detail that let's anyone know enough about the situation.
Wait, is mouth rape a thing, cause we were talking about kissing? There are more bases to go, and plenty of outs possible before home plate can be stolen. Now with someone sliding into home things are really starting to get away from defense, so the catcher better get out there and knock the runner down.
There is no such thing as sexual harassment. When people compete for something there is always tension and a desire to get ahead by any means. This is what it means to fight for what one wants. People are levered upon all day by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. To separate one form of political manipulation from another is ridiculous as all of these categories are about establishing dominion. Initiation into any culture is difficult and challenging-I regularly have experienced racism my entire life, but to pesonalize it and say it is wrong is foolish. People want to dominate on me and will push any button necessary to ensure that dominion. This is life in the Milky Way Galaxy on Planet Earth. Get over it.
Combat Monk
Likely provoked by sexual frustration and amplified by porn. They need to change their attitudes and learn how to socialize with women. Or, find another outlet for their frustration that doesn't punish women for their short commings.
Wrong and incorrect.
You can be arrested for 'rape' for any of the following:
* sleeping with a woman who, the following day, has regrets
* sleeping with a women who felt she was 'coerced' despite her willingness to participate at the time
* sleeping with a women who had a drink
* impregnating a woman who later finds out she wants to blackmail large child support out of her unexpected pregnancy
* sleeping with your girlfriend and being found out by her parents, if you're over 18 and she's under $number (varies by state)
It still has meaning, but the meaning has been drastically, drastically reduced through things such as the above, and things like frequent bullshit claims of a man raping a woman. Rape is the go-to cry of morally unscrupulous women who sleep around; it means "he hurt me". "Rape" has also been diminished in many people's minds due to the fact that the 19-year-old kid who got caught pissing behind a dumpster by a police officer gets thrown into the same legal status bucket of "sex offenders" as the serial rapist.
The result of being accused of rape is still very much real and significant. The social stigma of "he was accused of rape" is somewhat less significant than it used to be due to how common it is.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Someone with the username "fisted" is being put off by mild sexual crudity?
Reading non-verbal communication? We're talking about adults here, not kids. If its not verbal, its not there - its in your head.
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues
Not when that "particular way" is like an actual person, and not a piece of meat.
I've got two big problems with those studies. Not in their findings, but in their scope. Where's the data on the ruined lives of men that were provably innocent? Rape-related perjury or lying to authorities almost never gets punished. Where's the data on male victims of rape? Those crimes are almost certainly even less reported. In our culture, if a man gets raped by a woman, it's somehow his fault.
Travel across state lines, have a 14 year old come over to a hotel room to play chess or talk about novels, and you have committed statutory RAPE.
No, you haven't. Not unless you also had sex with them. And that's usually because they're fucking 14.
None of the studies you listed support your 1 in 4 meme. Also lol at 95% unreported yeah lets automatically assume they were all bon fide rapes. You seem to think women are slavishly submissive retards If 1 in 4 were remotely true there would be an outcry and revolt to end all revolts.
But want to know the little bit of selection bias that makes it hard for you guys to understand how common rape is?
Wanting accurate statistics about the problem is "selection bias" now? Exaggerating how bad a problem is doesn't help anyone at all. The more accurate numbers posted elsewhere puts the number at around 1 in 6, which I believe most people will still say is too often.
I could start adding friends to the list if you want.
Don't. Because your personal anecdotes are not data.
It's this sort of personal experience that makes it obvious that the numbers for rape are *at least* as high as cited.
No, it doesn't. It makes you want to believe that, when it's just as credible that you're an outlier who happens to know a lot of rape victims. Your personal experiences are not data.
Yes, it's a problem. But overplaying the commonality of the problem doesn't help anyone.
Really. Though I usually say this the other way round, if the punishment for rape is having your knackers cut off, then the punishment for getting drunk and wearing revealing clothes should be getting raped.
Because, you know, EITHER punishment IS NOT appropriate punishment for EITHER act.
And that most reported rapes lack sufficient evidence to prosecute?
If there's that little evidence, one has to wonder if there was an actual rape.
Innocent until proven guilty, and all.
FBI data suggests that 8% of rape reports are "unfounded." From here: "That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser's statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false."
False allegations of rape can CERTAINLY have an awful effect; they do not, however, make up even a LARGE minority of rape reports. The bad behavior of the small number of women who file false allegations of rape does not excuse the much larger number of men who actually are rapists - both groups are deserving of punishment and social opprobrium.
Feel free to cite actual statistics and figures that support your apparent belief that false accusations of rape are far more prevalent, but again, "I FEEL like this is a huge problem," is not sufficient.
So you took exception to the studies cited, but didn't even bother to peruse them? The first link has numerous stats to offer about men reporting rape - the number is roughly 3% of the male population reporting a rape or sexual assault, per their first chart.
So yes, the numbers DO include male rape. And the men or women raping the men in the study deserve to be punished equally as harshly as the men or women raping the women in the study.
There are still many more instances of rape than accusations of rape. That's an important thing to remember.
I think this statement is confirmation that sexual harassment is part of "hacker culture". Whether or not a woman "sleeps around" does not have any affect on rape. That you would think her "sleeping around" in any way ameliorates accusations of rape is an indication of how insidious the exploitation of women is in this sub-culture.
You're proving the article, unfortunately.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's the juxtaposition. Rennt was pointing out that TWX's use of the term "attention whore" makes him part of the problem. TWX is right, but doing nothing to improve the situation.
[thats_the_joke.jpg]
<\explaining_the_joke>
It comes from having insufficient emotional connections with women.
I'll bet that whether or not they are or have been involved in a serious relationship with a women is the single biggest property that divides Slashdot users on this issue.
It's a lot easier to objectify women, to have the "All women are whores" position, when you have never been close enough to a woman to have learned just how prevalent sexual harassment and exploitation really are.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I remember reading a few months ago that it's actually a small percentage of men who rape women, but that they do it over and over and over again. This may explain why most men doubt the rape statistics: they don't rape women, and don't really know any men who do so, either.
Now maybe I'm biased because I don't rape women, but I also think that the statistics may be a bit misleading. First of all, lumping attempted rape with rape seems stupid to me. Two reasons: First, "attempted rape" has got to be really hard to define. I bet a lot of non-rape gets lumped in there. Second, in college, there was a woman that I hooked up with a few times who wanted to have sex with me. The feeling was not mutual, which I told her. The next time we were hooking up, despite my already having told her no, she tried to have sex with me (without a condom, which I vehemently did not do back when I was single and HIV was a big concern). I again told her no sex. About 10 minutes later, she tried to mount me again. I asked her if she was nuts, got dressed, and left, never speaking to her again.
So was that attempted rape? I guess I'd have to say yes. But does that make me a rape victim? I don't feel like it does. The extent that this impacted my life was really just my walk of shame home, trying to figure out if I said or did something to send mixed signals.
Most rapes are not at knife/gun point. Rather, they tend to fall into a grey area like my anecdote. Sure, I told her no, but I also was hooking up with her, naked, in her bed. Most men don't make a habit of turning down sex. Was she totally nuts to think I didn't actually mean "no" when I said it? I think she was, but she might have seen that as a mixed signal. Can I totally blame her for having gotten the wrong idea?
In my opinion, rounding that experience up to "rape" is a complete insult to actual rape victims. So yeah, I think that the statistics might be a little misleading.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I should have added the word "sexual" to my statement.
It should read, "There's no way for an adult man and a female child to have a relationship that is not exploitation".
I assumed that the fact that the context of this discussion is entirely sexual relationships, meant I didn't have to specify it again. I also assumed that the discussion with you was in good faith, but I guess I should have known better.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In a world where we are trying to push more women to get into the engineering, programming, and scientific communities...why in the hell would anyone want to if they knew they would be treated in such a manner? The more stories I hear the more alienated I become from males in general. However, this is a convention that gives people a chance to learn new information and see new technology; not some frat party. It really does not matter who the woman is or what her line of work is, they all deserve respect. These ignorant cock-controlled boys need to grow up.
I had several friends in college that were the victims of rape. It affected me greatly as I was close with them and felt that I had somehow failed them as a freind in not being there to stop the attacks. As a result, I volunterred to work with campus security as a campus escort every other weekend. We would go in pairs to escort college students of either gender that felt that they were not safe to travel back to campus alone from wherever they found themselves. As part of my work with this group, we got some instruction time from the actual campus police. This included some rather useful information:
1) sexual predators prey on college campuses because there are a lot of targets there. From the mouths of the ones they caught and convicted, they chose to work the area because college students make poor decisions. They consume too much alcohol and walk back to their dorms alone. They tend to feel invincible during their college years and don't take any precautions. The girls are often attired in such a way as to make them unlikely to run away and to make the actual act quick.
2) The above mentioned facts tend to skew the number when surveying for criminal activity for the neighborhoods around college campuses and the campuses themselves. The rate of rape occurance on and around the campus was as much as 4 times higher for reported incidents then for compareable areas elsewhere in the cities.
3) While the reports of rape by campus females were high, the rate of reported rapes where the assailant was known to the victim was no higher than the general population of the area (in other words, date rape as a reportable statistic was shown not to be much worse on a college campus then elsewhere).
4) A nontrivial percentage of rapes reported to the campus police were later found out to be blatant falsehoods. The numbers were high enough that they had to consider the possibility on every investigation where the victim claimed to know the attacker. Because of this issue, investigations that could normally be handled quicker took extra time to sort out. The only thing that the police could do to combat this was to charge the reporter with filing a false police report, which was rarely done as the authorities often felt sympathy to the reporter as they were often an upset party in a failed relationship and they didn't want actual victims to be fearful of reporting actual rapes. In many cases, the falsely accused party was already expelled from the university under zero-tolerance policies when the truth was revealed, and had to apply for reinstatement and suffered negative consequences due to the report in the first place. This led to a change in policy whereby both the alleged victim and alleged attacker were kept anonymous in all reports of the incident until an investigation could be completed.
In all, I learned a lot about the not so pretty aspects of college life. Given the propensity to jump all over anyone that talks about personal responsibility as equaling victim shaming, I'm going to keep my comments on that brief. No one ever deserves to be assaulted in any way for just going about their own personal business. I leave that statement as fact. That being said, you HAVE to be cognizent of your surroundings. There are many places that are littered with people that have no respect for women or the word of the law. If you don't have a group of people around you to protect you, and you're going into those areas while not at the height of vigilance, you are taking a very real risk with your own personal safety. I wish the world wasn't like this. I wish it was all a bed of roses. It isn't. You can beat the drum for women's lib and victim's rights all you want. It's not going to change the minds of those that want to hurt you. They've already decided that they aren't going to obey the law or society's moors. This won't protect you from date rape. There are scum everywhere. They only make up a VERY small percentage of the population, but they get plenty of press when they
What I find odd is that while the women I know have been in "difficult" sexual situations before (none of them actual legal rape, but many of them at least at the point where, I, as a man, was not happy to hear about them) I have never heard of any man I know ever reporting having raped a woman.
The conclusion I'm led to is that whoever does this must do it often and never gets caught. The problem, of course, is that unlike serial killers, every man gets tarred with the same brush (in the case of serial killers, we'd all have to assume everyone we look at is going to kill us).
Most of the conferences are filled with boys, not men (speaking strictly in maturity not age).
the simple fact is that the "experts" at really doing things in Geek-world are usually well-centered, logical, and while they don't care much for social situations can handle themselves in the just fine.
While you might be able to explain many of the occurrences mentioned in the article with social ineptitude, bullying, or lashing out at the opposite sex, that doesn't work as a reasonable excuse for the behavior. As with any other culture, in the geek (not greek) culture it's us who have to set the norms.
Well, I can't vouch for how much of this happens with adults, but it certainly applies to teenagers. I remember having a discussion with my stepdaughter during her early teen years in which she would occasionally refer to creepy people, and what I managed to put together was that creepy meant "not cute/hot/etc." I'd like to think that to some degree she's grown past that - certainly I've done what I've can to try to educate her that the disarming ones are the ones you have to watch out for, but life has probably taught her that much more effectively than I could.
I wouldn't be surprised if a fair bit of the college date rape rate is made up of those who don't learn at an early age.
Sexual Harassment is part of the human condition. It can be reduced with societal pressure, but cannot be eliminated as long as we have sexual urges, attractions, and revulsions. And THAT is because sexual harassment is an OPINION. Sexual Harassment is an unwanted sexual advance, meaning that while one action is harassment in one circumstance, the same action under different conditions is NOT. Simply because of the attitude of the harassee.
THINK! It's patriotic
I respectfully disagree. I am a nice polite gentleman. I am respectful towards everyone. Yet, everyone walks all over me, and women ignore me. You, Sir, clearly have no idea of which you speak.
Prison rape is never funny!
Someone kept trying to apologise?
What a sick fuck, since he was male he was probably a rapist.
I've no problem forming emotional connections with women. This asshole's (and your own) suggestion that kinksters as a whole are exploitative/the cause of rapes is both absurd and asshole-ish. So people let this asshole know what an asshole s/he is. It had nothing to do with actual sexual assault and exploitation, which I think you'll find most of slashdot (and society in general) is against regardless of their relationship status.
I see you all playing with the numbers....oh, it's not 1/4 - it's less, really?
Even if only one woman/or man(that can happen too) is raped in this world, that's NOT ONLY statistics, it's about a human life. It doesn't matter if it was 1/4 or only 1/200, it's still a tragedy. Even if only one woman had her boobs grabed by DEFCON, who did that should be reported to the police, not only to staff.
You made some highly presumptuous asshole-ish statements and you were called on it. Not really sure what else you expected.
I wont deny guys can be pigs @ these sorts of events, but honestly.. that story doesn't sound all that bad. Is it not possible this guy had a legitimate crush on this girl? Made an awkward and ill fated, but well intentioned pass at her? And then apologized profusely for it?
I think she blended too much of the negative experiences she had together, and didn't separate acceptable human interaction from being belittled.
Funny when you mention the women who like to be treated bad in the first case it's the parents fauls, but for the socially dumb men it's because they are pathetic, lonely and despicable creatures. Remove your notion of sexes for a second but keep in mind the social expectations in mating process. The men can also be victims of upbrining, expectations and realities confusions etc
What about the not-quality women? Do you care? Do they care? It's a matter of numbers and chase. Not everyone wants to marry or settle.
Oh no, some nerd awkwardly hit on me, and then felt really bad for botching it so much and tried to apologize to me, but i wouldnt let him CAUSE EW....
this lady is insane. She was treated poorly by the panel, but beyond that, she's just paranoid of basic human interaction.
The problem is not just that such people exist - we know they do - but rather how they are dealt with and the overall message it sends.
Geeks tend to rage against the "bad guys" in other professional fields. How many times on slashdot have you heard arguments about the "bad cops" out there? Usually it's brought up that "if you know about bad things and allow them to happen, you're also doing a bad thing"
My understanding is that the organizers of the event essentially ignored/downplayed this issue until it became public. It's not any different than a "good cop" looking the other way when a "bad cop" does something wrong.
So, while many of those at the event are perfectly normal, good people, shame on those who stood by and/or those in charge who didn't deal with it appropriately.
Unless my google search for "Lena Test image" (also the image on wikipedia) is showing something other than what's used for printers, it's a pretty tame image.
Pretty girl, hat, showing a bit of shoulder. Nothing crude about it. It shows less skin than some of Leonardo's art, or the famous "David" pictures.
It doesn't appear to be a playboy pinup image used for the test (or if it is, it's rather tasteful and likely vintage).
Who cares what the woman does/did for a living.
I worked in the industry for years. About the only guys I ever met who fit the description listed were not the top dogs and even then it was only a few of the techs. Most of the programmers and IT people in general were no different than regular people. I met very few people who were satisfied to stay programmers either, which was good as the most of the companies wanted people with ambition to "move up the ladder", not find a niche to settle into where they could be comfortable until retirement.
As I said, except for a rare few, the IT folks acted like normal people and treated women like normal people. The so called "Defcon Guys" didn't keep their jobs long no matter how good they were.
As to the blogs, many of the "Feminist blogs" are not run by normal people either.
There's two kinds of men who treat women like shit; there's the extroverts who are really skilled at reading body language and figuring out which women actually like their treatment, and which don't.
No, there's only one type. The "success rate" of their "skills" depends almost entirely on happenstance, the chance of finding a woman who is interested in that kind of behavior at that particular time.
it's pretty sad really, for the women, but IMO the fault lies with their parents for not clueing them into this and warning them about these men.
And here's the flawed reasoning your erroneous conclusion came from: you assume that women do not have wills and desires of their own, let alone the capacity to act upon them.
Making shallow, whiny generalizations about women? Really unattractive. And I'm a woman who has historically mostly dated quiet, polite geek guys. (But not sad pandas, or whiny or creepy "nice guys".)
You misunderstood me, and possibly basic English linguistic precedence.
I think this statement is confirmation that sexual harassment is part of "hacker culture". Whether or not a woman "sleeps around" does not have any affect on rape. That you would think her "sleeping around" in any way ameliorates accusations of rape is an indication of how insidious the exploitation of women is in this sub-culture.
I don't know what this hacker culture is, because I'm not a part of it. This is what I've observed in society at large.
Sleeping around has no effect on rape. However, it can have an effect on claims of rape. It's roughly 8% according to the FBI but as high as 41% in some locales (according to studies). The FBI figure is still 4 times as high as other crimes but it is also a direct accusation against a specific person, unlike most other crimes, and only includes forcible rapes (so actual numbers are likely to be higher). The fact that most rapes go unreported is a separate (and similarly important) issue, but that is more a social issue.
Fraudulent rape accusations are a legal matter - a life-ending matter for the accused, in many cases. This is over 1,000 lives ruined with no recourse over a "victim's" false accusation: if you have a job of any social significance or a position in a community, your life is effectively over. Unlike for a rape victim, where it's possible to remain secretive, someone accused of rape has no cultural or legal protection. With something like rape, it's the victim's word against your own: you're likely to have no way to defend yourself from a number of different accusations.
Put another way: unreported rapes are the fault of the victims. False rape accusations is a crime in and of itself with implications just as broad and damaging (if not moreso) as rape - and one which does not get prosecuted.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The ones that don't go to defcon play online games.
I think the first time I realized there was a large number of men (not a majority but still..) who still thought sexual harassment and assault was acceptable behavior came while reading Slashdot and seeing the number of posts defending that behavior. But to be fair people tend to assume everyone else thinks the same way they do until they find someone who doesn't. Even after we've seen enough opinions to realize it isn't true, it's still hard to envision people being that different. And, quite frankly, the idea that people defend such behavior is a disheartening thing to accept, even as someone like myself who dislikes the human race as a whole.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020802081547/katesfeminist.info/rape/controversy/
I think Dark Tangent should sponsor a "Spot the Perp Contest!" Just like Spot the Fed but allow the community to self-police and weed out the perps. Give the winner a free t-shirt, shame the perp on the wall of shame, toss their ass and make it clear that one douchebag doesn't speak for the whole community. Our community should be equal opportunity in its treatment of others just as we are willing to accept ideas from anyone. Women shouldn't avoid conferences because their rights of personal and emotional security will be violated. Everyone should stand up for this. We don't leave a hacker out in the cold because of their ethnicity (Russian hacker Dmitry Skylarov), past indiscretions (Kevin Mitnick), academic status (Christopher Soghoian) so why should gender be any different?!?!
How the heck is "my life" and the lives of the women I know "overplaying the problem"? This isn't some trivial f'ing problem for me. This isn't abstract. This is "making it hard to date or even make friends with guys out of fear that they're not going to listen if I say no because a very much non-negligable fraction have shown that they in fact don't respect the word 'no'".
We're practicing our labials.
HAHAHAHAHA!! good one ! :-D
That stat is not 1/4 of all women, it's 1/4 of women who attend college will survive a rape or attempted rape. In addition, it only takes a quick google search to see that this 1 in 4 number isn't without considerable controversy of its own.
"1 in 4 will be raped" is bullshit. I read how they got the number. It really is "1 in 4 women will suffer 'unwanted sexual attention'". Rape is one form of such 'attention', but also lesser stuff like someone saying 'wanna fuck?' or staring at breasts. But they wanted sensationalism, so they labeled it all rape.
The result? When rape problems is on the news, I no longer believe the number. I believe they are grossly inflated by sensationalists, because I have seen it happen in this "one in four" shit.
Fortunately you don't actually need one. A jury may be composed of unreasonable people, but they're likely to all be unreasonable in different ways. Taken in aggregate, they can approximate a reasonable person pretty well.
It makes no sense at all to move it.
Saying that we must not give in and have to fix Vegas instead is like demanding an event be held in Kabul because to move it somewhere safer would be giving the terrorists validation.
That's hyperbole. Furthermore, right there, you are giving an excuse to all men visiting Las Vegas to perform acts of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and/or sexual battery just because it is Las Vegas.
Las Vegas is not Kabul. It is a city within the United States, and is governed by the laws of the State of Nevada and any applicable Federal Laws.
It's more than a little ridiculous to just give up and have the convention elsewhere because you think Las Vegas is the contributing cause to totally unacceptable behavior everywhere else in the US.
You are not being realistic by moving it, and are just ignoring the problem and hoping that a venue change will magically alter men's behavior.
The correct approach is to use laws that exist and prosecute for assault and battery, and enforce whatever sexual harassment policies that exist. As far as I am concerned the woman writing the article was a victim of sexual battery and it should be treated like a crime. You don't move venues when crimes occur, you call the police.
I think you've just made his point...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Absolutely correct. Quite a number of my close female friends (and closer) in my life have told me that they have been raped as well. It truly amazes me how many men I see (mainly online) angrily saying that women all lie about this and seeming to believe it doesn't exist or maybe actively denying that it does. Its a sad statement on our society that people have so little empathy for each other that people are unwilling or unable to put themselves in other peoples shoes and listen to what they have to say without attacking them in response.
The incident might be at a face-to-face conference, but the culture that spawned that face-to-face conference was online.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No, it's battery. I do not condone the action, I simply attempt to find the mechanism that led to the action being taken by the perpetrator.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The sample policy recommends "If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the conference [with no refund]."
What bothers me about this is the fact that if someone complains, and it may be just because someone doesn't like someone else, the recommendation is to throw the accused out "with no refund" as a very minimum. I'm all for making everyone feel welcome and comfortable and of course safe. But sexual harassment laws and this policy assume the accusation is accurate and true. There's no recommendation to ever verifythe accusation.
I see two major issues here; first and foremost is denial. Yes, there is a problem, and if you can't see it, it's probably because you are part of it (and almost certainly a male). It's like how whites in the South think that racism isn't a problem anymore. This *needs* to be addressed, and the first step is admitting there is a problem. As for dealing with the problem itself, I can say that part of it is the whole "brogrammer" phenomenon which has cropped up in recent years. I can say unreservedly, brogrammers need to fuck off; they are not welcome, and if they won't police themselves, we will. Hacker culture is one that should, above all else, respect intellect and creativity; gender, oneupmanship and "frat" antics don't come into it at any point.
The second issue I see is that the answer to the article question is no, sexual harassment is not a part of hacker culture. If sexual harassment is happening, it needs to have a bright light shone upon it, like a software bug, so that it can be fixed. We need to not allow these broken windows to exist in our house. The perpetrators should be shamed and banned from conferences, at a minimum. Some of the anecdotes I've heard would warrant criminal charges being pressed. The New Atheist movement is having similar issues, and they are starting to respond by banning people. If you think this is "censorship", fuck off; you can get your own fucking website and post all the misogyny you want, but you can't force others to host it for you.
I went to university with Valerie, and she's very smart, probably smarter than a lot of people here (definitely smarter than the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, misogynistic brogrammers who have infested the computer industry). She's been writing and talking about this problem for long time; it would be wise to listen to her.
One last point: I'm not "disgusted" or "offended" by these acts; I consider them the vulgar acts of those not fully human (for they lack empathy) and therefore beneath my contempt. These people should be treated like the animals they act like, and kept out of hacker culture so that we can get on with real work.
Nathan's blog
Most likely because most women aren't comfortable talking about their rape or assault in great detail with many people, if ANYBODY exists that they're comfortable talking about it with.
According to some of the studies cited elsewhere above, 15-20% of women will be raped or sexually assaulted during their lifetimes. Do you know more than 5 women? It's likely one of them has been raped or sexually assaulted - now, of the 5 women you just thought of, are all of them close enough to you that you think they'd tell you this sort of detail? Would you be comfortable sharing the details with them, if the same happened to you?
People have provided links to CDC studies above. Why don't you go read them, understand their methodologies, and then formulate a coherent argument about the specific shortcomings of one of those studies?
For everybody saying "the statistics are questionable," I don't see any specific elaboration of that point in regards to the articles that have been posted. And as far as I'm concerned, the CDC has more credibility when it comes to statistical surveys than J. Random Guy on Slashdot, who "feels" like the issue is being overplayed, but can offer no specific criticism, facts, or logical arguments to explain how or why.
Your anecdotal evidence is great, but it doesn't constitute a convincing argument that rape statistics are misleading. You could start by reading some of the CDC studies posted above, understand their methodologies, and then formulate a logical argument of how the study could be done "better" or "more accurately" by changing wording of the questions, categorization of assaults, or something else. Explain how the specific study is wrong, or could be done more accurately, and people might listen.
Otherwise, you're relying purely on speculation based on your own anecdotal evidence (which is not "data" in any useful sense of the word), and any conclusions based on that evidence are highly suspect.
Er, my point was if men were raping about 20% of the women. How come, most men are not aware of this? I was also speculating that it was because the men use a different definition of rape or may be a minority of men are involved in a highly disproportionate amount of rapes.
In PS, I also mentioned that I had assumed the statistics were for men raping women and not women raping women or others raping women.
If you lack the self-restraint to be professional where appropriate, or are too dense to know what's appropriate, then you merit crushing.
This is easy in a workplace. Set the policy, enforce the policy fairly, and treat defiance of policy as grounds for making an example of the problem human to deter others.
Some problems are simple matters of imposing discipline on those who lack it. The ideal procedures for managing humans were perfected in successful militaries over thousands of years. They work. End of story.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
You could start by reading some of the CDC studies posted above, understand their methodologies, and then formulate a logical argument of how the study could be done "better" or "more accurately" by changing wording of the questions, categorization of assaults, or something else. Explain how the specific study is wrong, or could be done more accurately, and people might listen.
You're right, I could do that, but I will not. I have many responsibilities, and convincing you, who anyway won't be convinced no matter how much effort I put into the pursuit, is not one of them. No sane person listens to wisecrackers on the Internet, and you strike me as sane.
Looking back at my rant, my thesis appears to be "lumping attempted rape with rape seems stupid to me". I believe that I have proven this point sufficiently, but you're welcome to try to prove that lumping attempted rape with rape in fact does not seem stupid to me, but you face an uphill battle there for obvious reasons.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Yes, I understand that, but your belief that "if 1 in 5 women are raped, then surely men would hear about it!" fails on multiple levels:
1) Look at the responses here - it's been asserted, and supported with statistical surveys, that approx. 1 in 5 women will be raped during their lifetime. In response, there are NUMEROUS men doing the virtual equivalent of "see no evil / hear no evil," and either loudly asserting that the statistics are lies, or that they're biased, and evidence of some feminist conspiracy. Nobody's offered a critique of the studies themselves, the methodology or findings - it's just blanket assertions that "those stats are wrong." So there is a at least a vocal minority of men who are *willfully ignorant* of the issue - when presented with the facts, they deny them, and can offer no counter-evidence to support their denial.
2) Even if every rape was performed by a male, and there was a 1-to-1 correlation between each rape and a unique individual male, 80% of men would NOT be rapists. Since it is possible for a woman to sexually assault another woman, and it's possible for one man to do the same to multiple women, it's likely that the number of "non-rapist" men is higher than 80%. Wild ass guessing, I'd say it's probably more like 85-90% of men are NOT rapists.
3) Rape is not something that is often talked about. Even if you speak frankly about your sexual conquests with your friends, it's tremendously unlikely that you (or any of them) are going to say, "SO yeah, I raped a bitch the other night. Shit was cash." By the same token, it's tremendously unlikely that a casual female acquaintance of yours is going to say, "So yeah, I got raped last night. Shit sucked." It's not a topic that is broached lightly on either side, and it's likely that there is a VERY small number of women in your life who you are close enough to that they would feel comfortable talking to you about their sexual assault at the hands of someone else.
Add these all up, and you have a small number of men behaving badly, a large number of men who behave all right, but refuse to believe the evidence they're presented with because it conflicts with their anecdotal evidence and "feelings" on the matter, and a bunch of men who are famous for their issues forming relationships with women. And then you seem surprised that "men aren't aware of it?"
I'm disappointed that a bunch of geeks can disregard facts and offer up "instinct" and "ancedote" as counter-claims, but I'm not surprised in the slightest that they're "not aware." They choose not to be, even when the evidence is shown to them.
And you were pointed to at least 1 study that breaks down the 17.6% lifetime figure as 14.8% "completed" and 2.8% "attempted" rape - the study defines a rape as "forced vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse," and it distinguishes between "attempted" and "completed."
So... what, exactly, is "misleading" about these statistics, in your opinion? What are we to conclude, except that 1 in 7 women are *actually* penetrated sexually against their will, at some point in their lives, and that 1 in ~6 women will either *be* raped, or experience an *attempted* rape in their lifetime?
16% of these assaults are "attempted" - that means 84% are "completed." If those numbers were reversed, then you'd be right - lumping them together is misleading - but in their actual form, including "attempted" rape accounts for - at worst - a slight exaggeration of the situation. Including them or excluding them, the picture painted is pretty fucking bleak.
I never said I did not believe the statistics. I was only wondering why men are not aware of it. And since I could not put in any better words, I had to phrase it as a question in my second post (I thought you did not understood my first post, and that was my attempt to simplify it for you).
And thanks for expanding on my points and adding to it.
This is a freaking problem, guys!
I'll make the unpopular suggestion that perhaps - just *perhaps* - the problem comes in your choice of men, and your ability to judge them.
When the same thing happens again and again to one person, there comes a point where one must question *why*. The majority of women are able to choose their partners without ever facing this problem. What aspects of personality are you seeking in potential mates that makes this so much more common for you?
There's no excuse for what they did or tried to do to you. In an ideal world, you would be safe no matter who your choice of partner - but we've never lived in an ideal world.
This is not a "oh you shouldn't have worn that dress" type of accusation - those are crap. This is a "look at yourself and what makes you choose the men prone to do this to you" type of recommendation, before it happens again - and before the outcome is fatal.
I hit "Parent" a bunch of times, but nobody in the "Parent" chain linked to any articles, including the one that you're talking about. Naturally, I can't comment on a paper that I can't see.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Those studies, mainly the famous CDC 1995 college survey that is often cited, are pretty interesting. What's most interesting is how many liberal blogs quote the results "20% of college students were raped!" without saying exactly which questions were asked or what counted as rape. I haven't actually been able to find the list of questions, but I'd be curious to see what it is. As I said in my last post, they typically include things like "did not get explicit verbal consent" (the sloppy makeout and grabbing at each others clothes is apparently not enough), and the biggest gotcha of all: alcohol.
If she had anything to drink, the way most of those surveys are worded, it's automatically rape. If the man was drunk too, then a logical person would conclude that they raped each other, but the feminist worldview doesn't operate that way. Men can only be aggressors and women only victims, right?
It's true that many rapes are not reported, but we also know that many reports turn out to be false (that wikipedia page cites some studies to that effect). Also, nearly all district prosecutors have an explicit policy of not prosecuting women whose rape reports are later proven to be lies. I'm not talking about the guy being acquitted, I'm talking about *provable* lies, where she says "Joe raped me at 7:55pm on Tuesday" and later they find security camera footage of Joe sitting in a restaurant at that time. This creates a huge incentive to lie without repercussions, destroying the lives of men as you go.
Men deserve what they get. Throughout history, they have controlled us women, now is our chance to get back at them.
1. As a young man, you're on your own. Society divides and conquers. Unlike women who have advocates looking out for them (NOW, Women's Study Departments, government, non-profit organizations, political advocacy groups) almost no one is looking out for you.
2. Don't believe the crap about the patriarchy. More women are accepted and attend college. More degrees are awarded to women than men. Women outlive men. More men commit suicide. Men are twice as likely to be victims of violence, including murder. If you consider sexual assaults in prisons, twice as many men are raped as women (society thinks prison rape is funny). The streets are littered with homeless men, sprinkled with a few homeless women. Statically, women are happier than men. The myth that girls are being cheated by are educational system is belied by the fact that schools are bastions of femininity, mostly run by and taught by women. Girls outperform boys in school. It is the boys in school getting ****ed over, and prescribed ritalin for being boys. Real wages for men are falling, while real wages for women are rising. Just because someone says something enough times, doesn't make it true. You have nothing to feel guilty about.
3. Society will try and make you feel guilty for wanting sex. From grade school forward, we are told that men think about sex 3000 times a day. There is a widespread believe that men cheat on their girlfriends/spouses more than women do. The fact is, women cheat just as much as men do, they are just better at not getting caught. Recent studies using college students prove that throughout the day, men think about food more than sex, and women think about sex almost as much as men do.
4. Divorce rates are above 50% in most states. No couple goes into a marriage thinking "hey, we are going to get divorced", yet over 50% of them end up getting divorced. As a man, you are at a distinct disadvantage in Family Courts across America. Judges for the most part award custody of children to the women, and by and large, alimony payments are being paid by men and are being received by women.
5. In divorce and separation the law has absolutely no tolerance for male anger, threats, or withholding of support. The law does very little to hinder typical female parental alienation, or withholding of access.
6. For women a comfortable lifestyle means money. For men it means sex, a well cared for home, and a good meal. After divorce women have the right to the financial support of their husbands so they don’t suffer a decrease in lifestyle. Men have no comparable guarantee.
7. After divorce women can use alimony to go back to school and pursue their dreams. After divorce men are prohibited from going back to school and pursuing their dreams unless going to school doesn’t reduce alimony payments.
8. After some years of marriage, a woman will have to be supported for the rest of her life if she bails on the marriage.
9. Marriage is the only modern day legal equivalent of a 'debtors prison'. As a man, if you fail to make alimony or child support payments (even if you do not have the financial means to do so), you can be thrown in jail. There is no other legal contract that could force a person into jail for the inability to pay his debts, other than marriage.
10. Marriage is the only legal contract where one party can unilaterally breach the contract and at the same time receive financial compensation (alimony) for not living up to their part of the contract. In any area of law (other than marriage/family law), the penalty would be assessed to the party breaking the contract.
10. Children: It is a myth that you have to be married to have children.
11. Marriage today (some call it Marriage 2.0) is not what it was throughout history and up until 50 (or even 25) years ago (Marriage 1.0). The legal definition of marriage has been altered and changed so significantly from just two decades ago, that it shouldn't even be called marriage anymore. Today's marriage is a one-sided contract
This is terrible, but utterly biased. You're trying to prove the statistics wrong by providing your anecdotal experience. Meaningful to you doesn't necessarily mean statistically significant. I can add all of my friends to the list of men who never harmed women. It won't make the numbers lower, will it?
Here's a link directly to the CDC / NIJ paper - apologies, it was posted in a separate branch of commentary to this article.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/172837.pdf
I'm probably too late to the party for anyone to see this comment, but since I've been on the receiving end of sexual harassment multiple times in my current job, I'd like to make an observation.
Sexual harassment happens when one gender is in the majority and is also in a place where that gender is expected to be in the majority. Like my day job for instance.
A medical client requests that we ask women who are setting an appointment for a mammogram if they have breast implants. Why? The radiologists need to take twice as many pictures apparently. However, because I'm the person who needs to program that question in and because I work as a man, I end up getting treated like I'm a pervert, and several older women there offer to show me their boobs if I'm that interested in older women's boobs.
Ladies, I care about as much about seeing your boobs as you do my dick. It's sexual harassment either way.
It goes on like that.
Sexual harassment isn't a geek problem or a male problem. It's a human problem, and pretending it's a male problem only is disingenuous.
At least men know that sometimes it pays off to act like a gentleman around ladies. I've yet to meet the woman who cares about acting like anything less than an obtuse, sexist pig around gentlemen.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
What about the not-quality women? Do you care? Do they care? It's a matter of numbers and chase. Not everyone wants to marry or settle.
Fair enough. I married but I didn't 'settle'. I have the most amazing woman you could imagine. She's smart, beautiful, sexy, passionate, talented, and self secure. Before I married her I had a string of hot flings too, and I didn't have to be the 'bad boy' or treat them poorly in order to 'score'.
Those 'Bad Boys' that so many posters in this thread seek to emulate are failures. They are 'bad' because they are totally insecure, as are the misanthropic geeks who think that treating women poorly will gain them anything. I pity those people.
Logic has nothing to do with. It's a matter of empirical investigation. The sound of "quality women" or "gentleman" may resonate pleasantly through your mind, but that's irrelevant. Though I have no doubt you've encountered many mid-30s baby-crazy-menopausal ladies-of-a-certain-age that are attracted by your mature character.
Rather irrelevant since I've been married for years, and not to some 'baby crazy' woman. Unlike many of the sad geeks who post here I've never had a shortage of girls, even prior to marriage, and I've always treated them well. The true failures are the wannabe alphas who don't know what an alpha truly is in the context of our species with its expansive gray matter ;)
And yes, I've bred, which to many 'logical' people would be the definition of 'success' in the context of evolution.
Fail. Move along. Next.
I respectfully disagree. I am a nice polite gentleman. I am respectful towards everyone. Yet, everyone walks all over me, and women ignore me. You, Sir, clearly have no idea of which you speak.
Sorry that you have had bad experiences, but my life experience tells me first hand that I certainly do know what I am speaking of . I am not postulating here. I am speaking from personal and observational experience.
privilege, n.
1. A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people.
2. The parent comment.
Instead of forcing every woman you see to tell you no, how about you don't assume they all want to talk to you? Why does your desire to chat someone up cancel out her wishes not to be hit on at a computer hacker convention?
Yeah, they might just have to talk to each other about computers.
I'm not saying there should be a prohibition on people talking to each other about offtopic subjects, I'm just saying maybe a woman goes to a computer hacker convention to hang out and talk to people about computer hacking or whatever, so you don't have to assume she's there to get some action.
Interesting.
First, regarding my original thesis of "lumping attempted rape with rape seems stupid to me", I have to say that it still does. In fact, if other studies confirm the findings in the linked report, it may be extra stupid because, in addition to my belief that "completed rape" is in another league from "attempted rape", apparently there are a very small number of attempted rapes anyway.
Regarding the study, it was a phone survey. I skimmed the report, but I didn't note where they accounted for Non-Response Bias. Are rape victims more likely or less likely to sit for a phone survey on rape? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe they're itching to tell their story and a confidential survey is a great outlet. Maybe it's just too hard to go there and victims would be less likely to participate. But it sounds like the paper's authors didn't bother to find out. Not surprising, as the original version of the study didn't even bother interviewing men, as though men can never be raped. Did the authors have their conclusion in mind before the study ever began?
Also, the paper does not support the conclusion that 14.8% of women will suffer a "completed" rape and 2.8% an "attempted" rape in their lifetimes. Only 0.3% of these women experienced an attempt or completion within the previous 12 months, vs. 18% in her lifetime. I'm not really sure what an expected percentage would be for the previous 12 months because we don't know the average age of participants, but as I play with the numbers, 0.3 is just sounding low. Are these attacks ones that happened decades ago? Not to write off their experiences, but you can't extrapolate what women experienced in the 1950s to today. A lot's changed in the last 20-30 years.
Also, I note that minority women were hugely disproportionately more likely to be raped, according to this study. Did these attacks even happen on US soil, or did many occur before the women even arrived here? Life's a little different in Rwanda than it is in, say, Wyoming. I don't think you can take data from Saudi Arabia where women are punished for being raped and decide that might happen to a woman in Tennessee.
Personally, I'm a little tired of the whole thing. There are breathless reports that 1 in 4 women will be raped in college. This one said 1 in 6 were over a lifetime. Obviously rape is a bad thing, but these studies sound just a wee bit useless to me.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
One of the best possible answers to this article was in a commentary by a female reader (schachin) in the same page:
So just remember in a barrel of apples there are always some worm infested ones among the many bright and shiny.
Worm-infested apples can't be avoided in an orchard, but they have no place in a dish. If a conference condones its participants considering civilized behavior optional, that's good reason to avoid it. To avoid getting harrassed, and to avoid condoning harrassment.
Asked and answered, several days ago. You even responded to it. If there are advances to be made, it is traditional in our society for the men to make them. He cannot know she is not receptive to them until she tells him so. You appear to be of the opinion that a "computer hacker convention" is not a place for sexual advances, which is rather odd; conventions are not just occasions where people go to see papers presented, they are also social occasions where like-minded people can gather together.
Some of these guys have spent their entire youth sitting in a basement coding, cracking, smoking weed and looking at porn. They never went to clubs, they never went to concerts, they never met any girls.
Not suprisingly, many of them still have the sexual maturety of a 15 yr old.
I am a retired army Sergeant. Which postion do you suppose is easier Combat Infantry platoon leader or Admin or Finance platoon leader? My experience has taught me this female use for the sex card that gives the extra edge for promotion, or job assignments. They will play, you put did/did not assign me that job a. because I am a girl and dont want me to show I can do it. b. you should not have put me on that job because I am a girl. I have had that played both ways by the same female for the same assignment.
The readercon reversal thing I think I way overblown. A lifetime ban? I think a two year ban will suffice with then a probation thereafter provided he confesses and acknowledges his actions and how inappropriate they were.
Chances are he wouldn't agree to the last.
You speak as though "alpha males" really exist in human populations. GP was more accurate in speaking of the "alpha male mentality."
You speak as though "alpha males" really exist in human populations.
We do.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
sudo make me a sandwich
Who works on security staff at a different convention - Hackers On Planet Earth, I kept hearing about how mistreated women felt at Defcon. I've never been to Defcon, so I can't really speak to that. But, what I can say is that at H.O.P.E. we don't really have that problem, or at least we don't get many complaints (and if you're there and you have something like this to complain about, do come right down to the security desk so we can do something about it). Maybe it's because the women on staff are just as likely to boot you for refusing to move if you're violating fire code. Maybe it's because the SINGLE time in the past eight years I was treated disrespectfully, the offending party was ejected from the con within 3 minutes. During a keynote. Maybe it's because the convention only happens every other year, and people don't want to waste the opportunity for learning by being a stupid prick. I don't know why. I do know that every woman I have spoken to at H.O.P.E. felt safe, comfortable, and welcome and had the opportunity to not only participate in, but also lead intelligent discourse. And women made up at least 35% of the badges I checked at this year's door.
As not a coder, I may not meet your definition of a "hacker", but my interests in ham radio, copyright, and locksporting give me plenty of right to be there. Also, moving 3 palates of club mate. So, do fuck right off on that subject.
RubyJourney
For a given person, their interests have several layers: operational, tactical, strategic. The Casanova is giving her what she wants in the first, but probably screwing her over in the second and third sense. Naturally we'd like him to make her a better woman in all senses...but if this is the only thing he knows to do, at least he should do it well.
It is the lady's job to manage this whole process, and avoid short-term tradeoffs like the Casanova, just as we would expect her to put down that pint of dark chocolate ice cream when she's on a diet.
It'd be like me satisfying my short-term interest by sleeping around, then inevitably catching an STD; I should've known better, and should've had the courage to push that shit aside. If a man or woman is 18, they have full agency with all the rights and obligations that entails. Otherwise, what does it really meant to be an adult?
What else do you want, a +1 modifier to saving throws for every extra 10 IQ points?