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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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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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
The connection is that people were sexually assaulted.
You're saying were as if it's a proven fact when it's more an accusation. An accusation is meaningless and could very well be a smear unless you have sufficient evidence. In my opinion we shouldn't blame hacker culture. Hacker culture has to be protected at all costs. We shouldn't blame dumb blokes for being dumb blokes, and we shouldn't blame the accusers for being victims.
We have to make it difficult for blokes to be dumb and we have to bring enough transparency to these sorts of events so that all behavior can be traced back if necessary. It's like a Casino, if you're at a Casino you can't easily cheat because your every move is being watched. This doesn't stop everyone but it stops most.
If women are being assaulted it could be because there are drugs, alcohol etc at these events with inadequate security. These are hackers, they have enough brains to figure out a solution to this problem which could empower the hacker community.
... 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.
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!
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 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.
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.
Oh bullshit! Assange was accused of sexual misbehavior because he treated women like dirt, apparently. OWS got accused of rape because rapes occur when you have a large number of people gathered for a long time in defiance of police and therefore without police protection. Such sitiuations draw rapists along with their intended participants.
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.
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.
As Burroughs put it: Any soul is worth saving, at least to a priest, but not every soul is worth buying.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds suspiciously like a sociopath
a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
Those are bad. They tend to end up in jail or a mental institution... for good reason.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
You're not a hacker, you're a dick.
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.
Calling yourself a hacker takes away all your credibility. Just saying.
No, your low ID doesn't help either.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
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.
MOD UP!
A simple, yet clear explanation of the probable root of this issue. Well put.
Or positions of power and authority, if they aren't idiots about it...
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.
Or running the world.
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?
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.
Do you really not see a distinction between hacking and sexual assault?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You are a part of this society. You damn well better care what we think, because if we judge you to be a threat to the rights of others, we can and will lock you away in some dark little concrete room where you can never hurt anyone again.
You are not a god. You are not an island. You are a sack of mostly water. No one cares about your little Slashdot manifesto. Learn to function in this society, or be removed from it.
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).
Historically, in what periods do increasing 'sexual aggressiveness' and 'toleration of lawlessness' typically occur?
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.
Yeah, the idea that you should treat people with respect and dignity is just "political correctness". I love that term, it let's you be an asshole, and if anybody tries to call you on it, they're just being PC.
Guys like you should be dressed in a pair of speedos and forced to parade for an hour in a gay bar.Then we'd hear no more nonsense about "political correctness".
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.
This isn't about hurt feelings. Read the article. This is about women -- human beings with all the same thoughts and feelings as men -- getting groped and molested by men who are so broken in the head that they think such behavior is merely "politically incorrect". Such people are a danger, because they either do not or cannot recognize the humanity of other people.
Some of them retreat from society, never hurt anyone, and live in their caves as hermits until they die. It's sad, and it would be good if we could help them, but in those cases we have no justification in forcing help on them.
But for those that actually assault women, yes, we have not only the right but the responsibility to remove them from society.
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.
Somebody must be selling lowid accounts.
Worse, apparently they are being bought by children.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
What's changed in the last decade? There's actually women around (that aren't just there as as girlfriends/arm candy).
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
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.
I apologize. No one should be allowed to grope or physically molest anyone. I'm a little tired and misunderstood what had occurred. Again I do apologize for the language and tone of my response.
Exactly. The stupid sociopaths wind up in prison usually, because they'll do illegal things but they're too dumb to avoid getting caught. The really smart sociopaths become tycoons and run corporations like Apple and Microsoft, while the ones either not quite as intelligent (but still smart) or more motivated by power than money become President or go into other high-up political positions.
You are full of crap.
A hacker is telling you that :)
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Fuck you. This isn't about hurt feelings, it's about sexual assault; reaching up a woman's skirt and grabbing her crotch is a criminal offense, and deserves prison time.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
what the fuck is this political correctness? All the women are asking for is to be treated the same as you'd treat the men.
Do you walk up to men and ask for sex?
Do you touch other men all over and give them massages?
Or do you just shut up and code? If the latter, why do you give a flying fuck about this?
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 happen to be homosexual and find that offensive - I can assure you most gay men have no desire to see some geek parade around in speedos or anything else for that matter. The suggested punishment implies that homosexuals lust after any and all males regardless, reinforces a sexual stereotype, and shows your own prejudice. In short, it's a bit hypocritical.
Those with insight will recognise that this post is in itself "politically correct" and infer further meaning.
I'm actually trying to speak to a much larger and broader range of social problems and inconsistency from which such behavior stems.
Too bad it's a bait-and-switch. That is, bring up incidents of sexual assault, but use them to promote a policy which IS about politically correctness, or worse. An egregious example:
Note that by "sexualized images", they're not referring just to Hustler spreads. They're referring to the sort of imagery that you see every day in the Real World (including, notably, on the covers of "women's magazines").
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.
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.
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.
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Don't be stupid. Someone grabbing your crotch is not threatening your life, and that's the only time you're allowed to shoot them in the head over here.
Yes, we can have guns over here, and we can even carry them around with us (here in Arizona, you don't even need a permit any more). But if you actually use it, you better have $20k to spend on a lawyer to defend you in court, unless it's absolutely blatantly obvious to the cops that you had no choice (e.g., some thugs with their own guns bust into your house at night, and you shoot them). In fact, shooting someone anywhere outside your home is generally a good way to get in trouble, as there's always a big he-said-she-said factor to it (like with the Travon Martin shooting in FL, another gun-friendly state).
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.
As opposed to the systemic bigotry directed at men as a result of 'equality' and 'diversity 'training' pushed from every institutional orifice? Labeling all men who don't conform as deviants or molesters is par for the course for this kind of activism. It distorts the original intent of organizations, eating them out from the inside like a virus invading a healthy cell, until they become little more than mouth pieces for ideological politics, with their original goals distant seconds. I certainly don't advocate the abuse of anyone, individual to individual, or society to individual. That's why I'm anti 'political correctness.' Selling out to the government so that it acts like a battering ram for your interests while claiming perpetual victimhood is dishonorable to say the least.
Really? The current cultural climate is causing more and more men to walk away from societal trappings, at the expense of society's long term viability. I believe they call it 'going their own way.' They abstain from marriage, from women, in some cases, and most importantly, from any shouldering of traditional responsibilities that women's groups hypocritically hold men to while they rail about 'equality.' The fact is, women are just as likely to physically and psychologically abuse as men are, in the work place, in school, and at home.
The traditional 'hacker ethos' has been a strict meritocracy. You gain respect with accomplishment. Not with penises or vaginas. I'm sure there are women hackers. The only group one can 'blame' for any 'inequality' is women themselves.. Assuming this is unfair just assumes that men and women are interchangeable. We're not. We do not have the "same thoughts and feelings." The genders evolved to be complementary, each with proclivities and imperatives the other lacks or has less of. We did not evolve to be at war with each other.
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.
Really? Just because you don't know proper office behavior does not mean that the grownups are similarly defective. How does it feel knowing that you are the exact kind of loser that this entire chain of posts is all about?
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?
Aww, that's cute. Too bad it's also bullshit.
Men don't overhear an off-color joke being told to another man and subject the whole office to PC-training.
Hmm, last place I was at, some idiot boss told an off-color (i.e. racist) joke that another man took offense to. Lawsuit. Settled for around $2M.
The only bullshit is people thinking their own views of what is professional conduct should somehow be the standard of their workplace. You think rape jokes or commenting on peoples' tits are acceptable? Feel free to call up HR and ask that that be added to the employee code of conduct. If they tell you to seek professional help, maybe you should.
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."
Unfortunately, many of 'em young-uns have been so polluted by the political correctness that they have become so "bland"
And they still think with their "bland-ness" they still qualified to enter the hackerspace
Blehhhh .... !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
>>Guys like you should be dressed in a pair of speedos and forced to parade for an hour in a gay bar.
>>Then we'd hear no more nonsense about "political correctness".
FUck off. What makes you think us gays want to be punished with that asshole too?
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.
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.
Yes, it's a great idea to shoot at the person you think touched you (you can't be sure since you didn't see) in a crowded convention.
Nobody expects you to enjoy it. But it would be very helpful if you could stand around leering and whistling so the subject of our experiment could learn what it's like to treated like a piece of meat. The purpose of the exercise is not punishment, it's education.
I'm still having trouble making that leap from hacking to sexual assault. It stinks a little of the theory that GTA causes violence.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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!
To be clear, the behavior described is wrong and should not continue.
To be honest, as a woman, you don't have to go to a hackerspace to get this kind of abuse, it's widely available.
As a director of my company, if you were dragged into my office over unbecoming behavior of a coworker of the opposite sex and threw the load of bullshit you just typed as your justification, you would be out on your ass in about ten seconds.
Do your fucking job and behave like a fucking adult.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The only bullshit is people thinking their own views of what is professional conduct should somehow be the standard of their workplace. You think rape jokes or commenting on peoples' tits are acceptable?
For the record, "off-color" does not imply "racist."
And see, this is why there will never be an equitable resolution to the whole political correctness problem. Because no one said anything about "rape jokes" or "commenting on people's tits," but that was immediately where you ran.
The only bullshit is people thinking their own views of what is professional conduct should somehow be the standard of their workplace.
Unless, of course, that person is a woman and the standard of workplace behavior is already "mellow and laid back" to that sort of joke, of course. THEN, naturally, it's not bullshit.
Anyway, I never said that I think any/all workplaces should have my standard of behavior. What I said was that it was demonstrably false that this "Sexual Harassment" political correctness bullshit is "women just wanting to be treated the same way that men are treated."
And your response actually supports that point.
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."
For the record, "off-color" does not imply "racist."
And see, this is why there will never be an equitable resolution to the whole political correctness problem.
There is an equitable resolution to this problem. We already have it. Douchebags who think this is acceptable either STFU or take it to their private country clubs or deer blinds. Keep your off-color (and we don't care what kind of off-color they are) remarks out of workplaces, courts, etc. If you really feel the need to express your douchebaggery on a public street, then go ahead, just try to avoid feeling butt-hurt when normal people point out that you are a douchebag.
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?:
Because hacking = 'the great unknown', so far as the unwashed masses are concerned. It's a small culture, with a lot of 'hidden knowledge,' that a lot of people who want to change how things work are naturally drawn to (because it gives them a lever to work with). The amount of disinformation surrounding it compares favorably with Judaism during the Middle Ages.
Not once is it pointed out to the common folk that while programmers could, like most scientists, engineers, or, I don't know, bankers wreck the world if even 1% of them said "Let's fuck 'em all" and started pushing in the same direction; the world itself has continued to survive for millenia, despite all of that potential. No one knows why. But since DHS & friends didn't even exist for much of those time periods, we know it's not do to their efforts. However, I have no doubt that if these types are harassed, more and more, while their art is cramped, it will almost certainly convince them that there is a mounting problem that needs to be dealt with; now, various parties have strange ideas how that might happen, and have positioned themselves to profit should they react as predicted; once again, this is unlikely -> if something does happen, it will have the effect of a monkey wrench thrown into an online generator. Maybe nothing, maybe something YouTube worthy, maybe a news report, or maybe a continent goes missing.
I am John Hurt.
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.
For the record, "off-color" does not imply "racist."
From how you describe it, it's the least offensive joke someone can think of that someone else might take offense to. That's a useless definition, and racist jokes are off color, they just aren't the only type. Go read a truly tasteless joke book sometime and let us know which are not off color.
What I said was that it was demonstrably false that this "Sexual Harassment" political correctness bullshit is "women just wanting to be treated the same way that men are treated."
Then demonstrate it. You haven't. I've been at a place where they were sued for sexual harassment for a male employee acting inappropriately with another. And I was the subject of sexual harassment as well (and the woman I was talking to at the time). I quit over that, but I could have won a lawsuit, had I been so inclined at the time. So yes, I am a man who has been sexually harassed in a workplace where sexual harassment was previously prosecuted. Just because the other guys around didn't think it harassment doesn't mean it wasn't. It was a rude an inappropriate comment made with the sole purpose of causing harm toward the subject of the comment. They are common, and they are some of what is intended to be stopped, and the only difference between women and men in this is men are more likely to not be offended by penis jokes.
Learn to love Alaska
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 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.
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.
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.
It's hard to tell tone from something written, but it sounds like you might think that this is a bad thing. It is not. Sociopathy is little more than a failure to feel empathy, and is not a bad thing unless it causes someone to harm others. Sociopathy does have a correlation with criminal activity, and yes it may have a correlation with power, but it is also strongly correlated with antisocial behavior such as avoiding social situations, which I bet half the regular readers here have to some degree. It is what you do that makes you a bad person who should be locked up for others protection.
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.
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
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.
Lack of empathy is a big problem when you have control over the lives of many people in the way that high ranking politicians do.
"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
Who said it was a justification for any sort of behavior? If you did this simply for stating this in a conversation, the next place you or your company would find yourselves is a wrongful termination lawsuit.
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
And that's what this is about?
No, no, you're just strawmanning. Read about what this is actually about. Guy flirts, gets shot down, doesn't get the point, grabs girl from behind later and is subsequently constantly hovering just out of reach, waiting around for her.
Calling someone out on that kind of bullshit is not being PC. calling someone out on that is just simply informing some maladjusted shut-in that acting that way is not acceptable, that it's fucking creepy and not tolerated.
But I bet you don't know anything about members of the opposite sex showing you unwanted attention despite your protestations. Because you're not just dumb, you're ugly too.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
"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
Don't be stupid. Someone grabbing your crotch is not threatening your life, and that's the only time you're allowed to shoot them in the head over here.
Yes, we can have guns over here, and we can even carry them around with us (here in Arizona
Is "here" the US or AZ? Because in TX (which is in the US) you can shoot someone in the head for letting the air out of your car tires, provided it is night, or shoot them in the back as they are running away after having stolen something from you and you are in no danger at that time.
And Martin was shot by a vigilante who has harassed a number of other Black people and had a habit of approaching them menacingly in order to provoke a response. Based on his previous behavior, he was a murder waiting to happen, and Martin was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Based on the events that night, it went down as all the others did, and Zimmerman got his kill.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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.
For me, "here" is in AZ where I currently live. AZ certainly has its own reputation, but no, you won't escape prison if you shoot someone in the back as they're running away from you, or other such things. You really do have to be in danger here.
As for Zimmerman, it's not looking good for him so far; I'd be surprised to see him walk free.
Texas does appear to be rather extreme.
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.
reaching up a woman's skirt and grabbing her crotch is a criminal offense, and deserves prison time.
Test of consistency: would you hold the same line if a woman grabbed a man's crotch against his will?
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.
As for Zimmerman, it's not looking good for him so far; I'd be surprised to see him walk free.
I'm surprised the government is pursuing it as they have. Obama should have given an wink and a nudge to the DA and publicly condemned the lack of investigation while sending the DA a flower arrangement from the white house flower garden. Getting the blacks or the hispanics pissed off at him in an election year is a generally bad idea.
Learn to love Alaska
Hacking isn't illegal. The current term for that is "black hat cracking". Hacking could be nothing more than plugging a laptop into an OBDII data plug, explicitly legal.
Learn to love Alaska
"reaching up a woman's skirt and grabbing her crotch is a criminal offense, and deserves prison time."
Whoah whoah whoah there buddy. You are correct that the action in question is wrong. You are correct that it is (or should be if it is not in your culture) a criminal offense. But...
You are absolutely incorrect that prison time is the proper answer. There are two reasons:
While punishment is usually a valuable part of solving a problem, it does not solve a problem all by itself. There needs to be reeducation and prison does not provide that.
The second, and possibly most important reason: Do you honestly believe that touching someone on their body, unasked, is worthy of prison time? Perhaps a weekend in jail with a fine and counseling for the first offense if the offense was fully intended and egregious in nature?
If I had to hazard a guess, I would assume your extreme over-reaction means that you have been trained well or you are ashamed of your sexual nature. Just relax and stop yelling, "off with their heads", like the Red Queen.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
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
+6 insightful and succinct.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Hacker is one of those terms which is not credible if self-applied. You become a hacker when other hackers call you one. Even then, it is recognized that Master is a subclass of Student.
Two computer programmers are lost in the desert. The first man, being a fool, sees the mirage and devises plans to bring it to himself. He breaks the complex problem into steps and devises a plan. The second man has deep knowledge, and has learned how to avoid sweating.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
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/
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.
Agreed, thats wrong. Its just correcting some idiotic little shit.
However while this case is legitimate I think a lot of guys are responding negatively because we don't LIKE being politically correct all the time. There are a small minority of guys (Maybe 20% max) in my experience that think being politically correct is actually correct and the rest of us want to be able to make jokes about screwing the boss' secretary, the chicken mascot, that one effeminate guy in the mail room, and about GETTING screwed by the gigantic security guard that looks like he'd be "Bubba" if he ever went to jail.
Yes there can be too much, but usually this is easily corrected by approaching the person and asking them nicely to stop. This lawsuit business has everyone walking on egg shells and has HR departments making policies that actually place liability on the company, and I think a lot of us have had enough of it.
Construction sites, IT dungeons and Mechanic shops make up the majority of what a lot of guys see as the last bastions of sanity, where we can make an off-color joke and not immediately be condemned for it. Its a fucking JOKE.
Again, what this guy did is wrong, but whats being done in reaction to the minority that are like him, and the majority that are just joking because of the minority like him is ALSO wrong.
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
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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That was an outrageous incident, agreed. But no, I'm not going to retreat from the room just because a woman *feels* uncomfortable near me, does not do eye contact, blah-blah (that's the signs listed in blog of the female attendee allegedly "harassed" at readercon). If you do not like to be near me just go away yourself.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Who said it was a justification for any sort of behavior? If you did this simply for stating this in a conversation, the next place you or your company would find yourselves is a wrongful termination lawsuit.
Do you see what that article does? It's divide and conquer. Yes women are victims, and so are men. We should be trying to defend the community and make it safe for everyone instead of promoting a gender war which could divide the community forever.
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
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
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
Really? A single entendre is the best you could do?
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.
treating others with basic respect is communism
got it
you're probably the type of douchebag who thinks the definition of freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want without regard to consequences
good luck growing up kid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's not what MightyMartian said. he said "if you were dragged into my office over unbecoming behavior of a coworker of the opposite sex and threw the load of bullshit you just typed as your justification". in that context, you should have your ass fired, and go ahead with your wrongful termination lawsuit, as you will lose
the problem is douchebags groping women who actually believe that telling them to stop groping women is some form of political correctness. what you wrote is the kind of thing groping douchebags will use in their defense
the problem is you think your little whiny attitude about political correctness is valid in the context of this discussion. this discussion is about real women being sexually assaulted and verbally harassed. that's REAL. do you understand that? if you do, take yourself and the chip on your shoulder and fuck off. wrong discussion, genius
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
You mean the well-known left-wing activist that wrote about how to take revenge on a guy through false rape allegations?
You are not a god. You are not an island. You are a sack of mostly water. No one cares about your little Slashdot manifesto. Learn to function in this society, or be removed from it.
This is backwards, controlling thinking, and is the opposite of the freedom that America pretends to support (assuming you're American because most Slashdotter's are). He can do whatever he wants, and he can be as unconcerned about society in general as much as he wants, so long as he doesn't impinge on others' freedoms. This includes hurting other people's feelings, or being a dick.
Frankly, 'learn to function in this society' sounds dangerously close to 'learn how to game the system we call society', and I personally am not impressed with those who do that, no matter how 'successful' they are.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
It could be argued that it's also required. After all it comes down to the old psychological quiz... a train is out of control. You're standing right next to a lever that will change it's path. Down the path it is currently going ten men are working on the tracks, and will be killed if you don't throw the switch. However if you do throw the switch, the train will barrel down the next tracks, where a child is playing.
A high ranking politician has to be able to weigh those things dispassionately, calculate the loss to society as a whole from ten men (how old are they, how much do they benefit/cost the society?) versus one child (what can that child achieve, does it have a good or bad start in life, how much bad publicity will be caused by its death? - and yes, the last one matters, because bad publicity will affect the politicians possibilities to save ten more men the next day.)
Psychologists have found that when given a choice like that, many of us rather do nothing. We don't want blood on our hands by our own action, we feel less bad if it's by inaction. That's because these are people with empathy who will think of the first as a murder committed by us and the second as a tragic accident. The fact that we could have cut suffering from ten families to one by the throw of a switch... well, that doesn't carry into it for us.
Empathy is not always a good thing. High military command and high political command are two places where, for better or worse, it's a drawback. Those places need cold objectivity and goal oriented thinking... Of course then we come down to what goals someone is actually pursuing, but that's a whole other argument...
Note that I personally am against centralized government, partially because of this reason. Positions of power attracts, feeds, and needs exactly the kind of people in them that we wouldn't want there. Doesn't matter if it's a democracy or a dictatorship, when you're looking for someone to lead millions of people, then normal people won't step up to the plate. And if they try, they get run over by those that are better at it... the sociopaths, amongst others.
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) --
This is for you AC:
http://captainawkward.com/2012/08/07/322-323-my-friend-group-has-a-case-of-the-creepy-dude-how-do-we-clear-that-up/
His context deliberately misrepresented mine. It was a strawman. The problem is that most of these cases are now defended by self righteous drones attempting white knightery at the expense of some poor sob's career. I never said I supported unwanted groping or real assault. I made that clear in my post.
"Whiny" is demanding 'equality', then when achieving it, demanding special treatment under the guise of perpetual, systemic victimhood. Using your premise, if he has no right to complain, then she definitely doesn't. Women are the most protected, privileged, and celebrated group in western society today. A mere utterance from her can ruin a man's career.. Without burden of proof or justification, society is socio-politically bound to kneejerk to her defense.
The only case were termination is justified is physical assault (which should be the case regardless of gender or type of assault). Verbal statements, directed towards anyone, or simply overheard is not abuse. As adults, others are not responsible for our feelings. We are responsible for our own and how we react to them...at least this is how it should be. As someone who was verbally teased in school, I learned this lesson the hard way. The only thing that worked was standing up for myself tenaciously. Nothing authority figures did made any difference. The same holds true here. In the case of 'hacker ethos', if women aren't respected, then that's because "their mom bought them a 'puter' for christmas" and they haven't "done 'nothin' yet." This would also be true for any men who demanded respect just for existing. This is as it should be. If this feminist is right, and women want more respect in 'hacker culture' (whatever that means, really), then they gotta prove themselves. It is not the job of the culture to cater to them.
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?
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.
That's not what you said. You talked about threats to others' rights and taking responsibility, then equated the meritocratic 'hacker ethos' the parent mentioned as such. That doesn't make sense at all. If people were a bit more preemptive in their computer administration, 'hackers' like him wouldn't have the ability to do what they do, at least not very often. Take responsibility for your own computer systems and you'll be fine. You don't need big daddy government to come in and rescue your PETA website from trollolols.
you're probably the type of douchebag who thinks the definition of freedom means you can do whatever the hell you want without regard to consequences
Hardly. While those defining the limits of 'freedom' get to set them however they want, right? Oh the irony. Tell that to the whiny feminist who wrote that blog entry. Apparently she wants to be considered one of them without earning her stripes. That, or she made gender 'the issue' at one or more of the conferences and got metatrolled for trolling, so she trots out her 'anonymous' (yeah right) claim of someone groping her friend to make her feel better about herself.
Seriously, the fact this comes from a feminist blogsite should at least bring into question the validity of the story. This is like reading a worldnetdaily post about obama's 'relation' with bin laden or saddam hussein because of their names.
A weekend in jail? I don't think that's sufficient for this kind of offense. Go ask your mother or wife what she thinks an appropriate punishment for this crime is. I didn't say years in prison was the answer, but you yourself advocate jail time, the question seems to be just how much; how about a month?
For comparison, what's the punishment when a doctor is found to be molesting female patients? How about a priest?
As for counseling, I don't see how that's going to help; these people are sick, and the only thing that'll stop them is either keeping them away from people altogether, or making it very clear they'll be harshly punished if they do it again, so they restrain themselves to avoid punishment. This works just fine with most other premeditated crimes (it's only crimes of passion or other situations where people don't have time to think through the consequences of their actions, and crimes where the perpetrators are the dregs of society that are too stupid to think through the consequences of their actions, where prison time isn't an effective deterrent. I would assume that anyone at a hacker's conference isn't quite that stupid.)
You act like what your colleague said is somehow different and alien. Go back in time to colonial America, in the 16-1700s; they thought exactly the same way back then. They didn't usually cut off hands though; but they had some pretty nasty punishments like brandings, and of course execution for murder. For the lesser offenses, they just settled for public humiliation. Jails (gaols) were only used to keep people until their trials.
BTW, I'm not advocating a long prison term for this. A week might be a good first start.
So why should PC douchbaggery be acceptable as 'professional' behavior in business and law while his should be relegated to private interaction? You know, the kind of douchbaggery that includes passive aggressive behavior defending mass misrepresentations of character and truth of certain groups based on fallacies and tropes? PC douchbaggery isn't much different, it just has political backing.
Maybe we should all grow up and realize that, as adults, we are responsible for our reactions to our own feelings and grow thicker skins. Then off color jokes won't cost employers millions, and women (and any other supposed 'oppressed victims'), would truly have the chance to prove themselves equals to engrained cultures on the basis of reality instead of lets-play-pretend and you-can-only-use-one-leg politics.
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.
// to do - Mac joke goes here
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Right.
So someone who doesn't want women to be harrassed and physically intimidated, and makes a public stand against it, actually secretly wants it to be less obvious.
While the people who bring out strawman after strawman, and keep talking about jokes and political correctness, instead of the actual stuff at hand, are the ones who want to deal with it.
And your reasoning is "that it reminds you of this one guy", someone who checks out the territory first, then uses force to take what he likes. You know, that's exactly how politically correct people roll! Everybody knows that. They also poisoned the wells.
Holy fuck guys, TFA is not even about you and how you personally suck -- it's about that other guy, who you seem to be confusing yourself with -- yet you turn the whole discussion into a giant flare calling yourselves out? All the energy put into strawmen.. you know where it ends up pointing, right? I mean, there's misunderstandings, and there's repeated missing of the point and talking about a conveniently prepared narrative, over and over again.
I don't mean just you personally, a bunch of guys in this discussion. Maybe you really have such issues with political correctness that you just use this topic as a vehicle for your.. stuff.. even then, pay some fucking attention to what some women have gone through, and how there isn't even an equivalent for that, no likely way for women to do it to men. Also, don't spam, and don't just mindlessly repeat, ignoring counter-arguments and preaching to the choir.
OR MAYBE this story actually rubs you genuinely the wrong way, with what it is actually about -- in that case I'd say, keep talking fuckers, let the world know. We're cominagetcha, rawr! You had your fun, you left your scars - but I for one am praying there will a day where the only technically correct (TC) way to talk about this is the past tense. Cuz you're all dead and nobody learned your trade. Amen.
A high ranking politician has to be able to weigh those things dispassionately, calculate the loss to society as a whole
Here's your weak link - a sociopath is only interested in calculating the loss to the sociopath. Nobody's arguing that good leadership doesn't mean hard decisions, instead they are arguing that a group of people who are very able to get into leadership positions make for piss poor leaders.
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.
Well yes, as you see in the last paragraph of the post you're quoting I don't believe in centralized government, for that exact reason. However those tendencies would indeed be beneficial in a high ranking politician, if we assume we could magically believe they were actually there to do good and not for their own benefit.
I suppose there is a longshot - if we could model a government that actually rewarded people for benefitting the society and punished - i.e. rejected, threw out, those that acted primarily in their own interest - then a sociopath would be the best one for the position. He would act in the best interest of society because that would at that point be in his or her own best interest. People are funny like that, some people do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
Of course I don't believe such a system exists.
True, such a system would work, if it could be enforced.
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.
The answer to that is clearly yes. It's a sexual assault.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
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
Your response is pretty much a straw man. epyT-R was lamenting the fate of the socially awkward (irrespective of the harassment context) and waxing nostalgic about some ideological hacker code, and suddenly you drug him into your office on some trumped up charges that exist nowhere in his sad commentary. You might look a little deeper into the situation before you start summarily browbeating and dismissing your employees.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
"While those defining the limits of 'freedom' get to set them however they want, right?"
here's a good definition:
"Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."
or, in the context of this subject, touch a woman without her permission, and she's going to complain, and the rest of society is going to nab your ass for you not respecting HER freedom
sorry if this is too much of a communist fascist feminazi agenda for you. most of us think it as simple respect you learn in kindergarten. but "kindergarten" sounds like a foreign word doesn't it? form europe maybe, where they have socialism? hmmm...
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.
you're being whiny again
"Verbal statements, directed towards anyone, or simply overheard is not abuse."
"touch my junk or your fired"
"let me give you a bank rub or i don't think we'll be hiring you"
"if you want to meet potential employers at DEFCON, you'll have to have your ass grabbed and listen to neanderthals make ugly remarks at you"
if i were a woman faced with these scenarios, the way i would deal with it, on my own (that seems important to you somehow, as if society can't or should not protect her?), is to complain, sue, make noise and otherwise force the ABUSIVE asshole into contrition or punishment
you have a problem with that? yeah, you do. then go whine about it. you're good at it. but you're going to have to buck up and deal with: all women have stories about workplace or social scenario power being twisted into requests for sexual favors by douchebags. you say about that: "Verbal statements, directed towards anyone, or simply overheard is not abuse." that makes your understanding about what women face pretty fucking stupid. you are basically utterly clueless about what actually goes on in the real world. try to grow up and understand
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well, it could be that it might take a sociopath like m'self to help the situation.
You see when I was a youngster, it was pointed out that my attitude, coupled with my physical attributes didn't have to be such a boat anchor and could be used for profit. I became a debt collector for a philanthropist who made high interest, short term loans. I've been a bouncer and a body guard, as well.
For air fare and admission to the event, Miss Aurora could've watched her amorous intruder get beat to a grease spot right in front of God, hackers and security. The security thing would've been traced down and a security leader would've got his card punched. I'm that big and experienced. At a casino, you say, I'd have dropped the security guy at the bosses desk and inquired about employment m'self. I've heard Vegas might be the place for me.
Valerie, you either gotta get someone to represent your interests or learn to inflict inhumane pain at a moments notice and make an example of the first clown, flashy enough that the WHOLE place knows about it inside an hour. The focus of the convention will then return to hacking,lying about hacks and the tragedy of modern technology.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Oh, yeah and after all these years, I've never even seen the inside of a court room.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
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 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.
To help enlighten you on the subject: it's not about plausible deniability. It's because courage and self-confidence are attractive in guys. Nobody wants a guy who's just going to skulk in the shadows, too afraid to talk to you.
Plus, a lot of womens' behavior is genuine shyness. Not all women are shy, far from it, but plenty honestly are. I'm among them. My natural instinct when I catch the eye of a cute guy is to smile but look away. It takes willpower to try to reestablish eye contact. What usually happens? I honestly just simply hope that he'll come up and talk with me. And if he doesn't have the courage to do that, well, that's not a very attractive trait, IMHO, and I'd be more interested in the guy who does have the courage to do that, even if he's not the one that first caught my eye.
Being confident != being an asshole.
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.
Could you elaborate on why, in your post, women are taking the blame for (predominantly male) late-night comedians making fun of Bobbitt?
We're practicing our labials.
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.
As a director of my company, if you were dragged into my office over unbecoming behavior of a coworker of the opposite sex and threw the load of bullshit you just typed as your justification, you would be out on your ass in about ten seconds.
Do your fucking job and behave like a fucking adult.
Look, one of the sociopaths in charge speaks! Go raid some retirement accounts or something.
Nobody expects you to enjoy it. But it would be very helpful if you could stand around leering and whistling so the subject of our experiment could learn what it's like to treated like a piece of meat. The purpose of the exercise is not punishment, it's education.
Could we also get a bunch of guys to purchase the punished drinks, and pretend to care about what he has to say or listen to his stories about what cute things his cats do? You know to provide a full education.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
You can either be "Equal" or you can be a delicate flower that needs special protection. You can't be both.
Exactly, my boss once sent me a message that was intended for his wife it went something like this I'll be home in a few days Love you honey. In today's culture if I had been a women that could have been a serious mistake instead I interpreted for what it truly was, a mistake and I made sure to reply back I love you too Honey. Nothing sexual or demeaning but could easily be misinterpreted by a person that looks for issues. The problem is that the pendulum has swung too far and now we over react to everything, this may have been due to the workplace 30 years ago when most sales teams had a girl that would show the customers a good time. These attitudes are not a part of the workplace yet the witch hunt still goes on.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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.
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.
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.
Indeed. If being a hacker means you don't believe in behaving respectfully toward others, then I sure as hell don't want to be one.
It's not "politically correct" to respect people's personal space and to treat women like human beings instead of walking sex toys. It's just basic human decency.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
"Verbal statements, directed towards anyone, or simply overheard is not abuse."
Let me get this straight if I say something and someone else finds it offensive it's abuse and we should sound the alarms. Calling someone a dumbass because they just did something incredibility stupid should not be a problem, but in your PC world it is. This has a direct effect on reporting of actual issues because the BS ones minimise actual problems and may even be used to intimidate the victim into not reporting.
"touch my junk or your fired"
"let me give you a bank rub or i don't think we'll be hiring you"
"if you want to meet potential employers at DEFCON, you'll have to have your ass grabbed and listen to neanderthals make ugly remarks at you"
All these are real issues that get minimized because of the over the top PC crap that gets shoved down every one's throat.
if i were a woman faced with these scenarios, the way i would deal with it, on my own (that seems important to you somehow, as if society can't or should not protect her?), is to complain, sue, make noise and otherwise force the ABUSIVE asshole into contrition or punishment
you have a problem with that? yeah, you do. then go whine about it. you're good at it. but you're going to have to buck up and deal with: all women have stories about workplace or social scenario power being twisted into requests for sexual favors by douchebags. you say about that: "Verbal statements, directed towards anyone, or simply overheard is not abuse." that makes your understanding about what women face pretty fucking stupid. you are basically utterly clueless about what actually goes on in the real world. try to grow up and understand
I work in a male dominated field and have not witnessed any of these problems, I'm not saying they don't exist but saying all women have faced these issues is absolutely absurd.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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.
A female teacher received No JAIL TIME/ for Molesting a 13year old male student. So no jail time looks like the answer.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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?
Aww, that's cute. Too bad it's also bullshit.
Men don't overhear an off-color joke being told to another man and subject the whole office to PC-training.
Hmm, last place I was at, some idiot boss told an off-color (i.e. racist) joke that another man took offense to. Lawsuit. Settled for around $2M.
Ah... and there's the real motivation. He probably didn't care, but realized he could milk it for a big payday.
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.
The courts look at something called "reaonable person standard". Would a reasonable person go ballistic on this? No.
OTOH, if said boss was sending porn to his wife and it got to you, there might be issues.
In other words, you don't like being called out on your poor behavior in public, since it makes if harder for you to feel like a respectable human being. While lesser humans like to be able to do whatever they want, without consequences, it is up to the rest of us to point out that this behavior is not appropriate, less some of the more clueless people out there get the wrong impression on how to act in a civilized society.
And I've never met a man who hasn't been thoroughly fucked over by people of both genders. Things are tough all over...
Then you are a seriously fucked up person. You see one case of something, and therefore the rest of the women are all fuckers out to get you?
I'd consider therapy.
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.
You should call the cops if someone is assaulted. "Defend the community" is the bullshit excuse for trying to protect your own skin at the potential cost of others.
No organization is so important or so big that it shouldn't be brought to task for hiding sexual misconduct. Just ask the Catholic Church. Imagine, fifty years ago, if the Vatican had just decided that every time a priest interfered with a minor, they would call the police rather than trying to bury it "for the good of the community". Sure, there would have been short term repercussions, but in the long run there would have been no bankrupt diocese, no monumental world-wide scandal.
It's short term thinking that leads to the kind of decisions you want DefCon to make. The whole "we are special so we should get a free pass" mentality is part of the problem, and not part of the solution. So is coming with faux sociological crapola like "gender war". Try that one on the judge when you're defending yourself against allegations you buried sexual assaults.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Of course I don't believe such a system exists.
Interesting analysis. The way I see it, the US system was initially built to function that way, and it certainly can function that way (whether it ever actually has, I leave as an exercise for historians.
What it would take is a fully engaged and educated electorate. Activists approach the system with the assumption that politicians do not have souls, and react strictly based on negative and positive reinforcement. And for a politician, the stimulus is very predictable, and is based on publicity and money. With enough people educated and engaged, they politician's environment can be closely controlled, ensuring that their behavior is correct. And note that with democratically elected representatives, an engaged electorate will always be more effective than moneyed interests. Politicians do respond to lobbyists with money, of course, but in when constituents are paying attention, that money gets trumped every time.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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?
Blaming sexual assault on ADHD or Asperger's is ridiculous.
ADHD mostly presents itself as the inability to focus on what the person wants to focus on. Someone who suffers from untreated ADHD just won't be able to resist it. An example would be a person trying to sit for an exam, but there is a fly in the exam room that is grabbing his attention. That person just won't be able to ignore the fly and concentrate on the exam. There is no reason that ADHD would cause someone to go around grabbing strangers' crotches.
Asperger's mostly presents as no natural ability to recognize social cues. Facial expressions, verbal nuance, body language--an Aspie will generally have no instinct for these, but they can learn to recognize them as an academic exercise. The best way to relate to an Aspie on his terms is to be verbally literal and explain everything. Say exactly what you mean, and verbalize everything that you're trying to communicate. Realize that they will probably do the same thing, because they won't necessarily emote like the non-ASD population. It goes without saying that an Aspie can learn not to grab strangers' crotches. Most would have too much social anxiety to be that forward, anyway.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Look, when you're on the job, you're not paid to make dirty jokes or throw sexual innuendo around. You're there to do a job. Why do you go to so much effort to try to protect attitudes that have no place in the workplace. Are you a child, that you cannot hold your impulses until after work?
Do you fart in chart, do you piss in your neighbor's swimming pool? Does anyone who takes you to task for it get labeled with make-believe titles like "cultural marxist"?
Again, do your fucking job and behave like a fucking adult. Being an IT geek doesn't give you a free pass on being a decent human being.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Absolute bullshit, and also very very very wrong. You can be terminated with cause for making general or directed sexual comments. You are not immune, and why would you be doing those things at work anyways?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You get accused of sexual assault and you come into my office with a whole "PC/cultural marxist" set of excuses for your behavior, and you call me the sociopath?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
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.
Well, first off I'm not american so any analysis I make of your system is coming from an outside view. However I have been politically active and interested in the sociology of politics. As such I can emphatically say that I don't believe such a system exists, and furthermore I don't believe a such system CAN exist, because it goes against several basic facts about human nature.
So I would disagree that the US system could function that way - just as much that I would disagree that any other system could. Not in a real world situation. Many political systems seem really good on paper, but in reality we don't exist in a vacuum. There are outside influences, there are nutjobs, there is hunger, mental disorders, other societies to compete with, financial interests, personal problems, all the way down to being really tired one morning and pressing the wrong button when you vote. These things happen, and the sum of all this, the sum of the fact that we are human and not perfect, means that no perfect system can ever exist. The best we can hope for is pretty much what we've got. We can change it around a bit, but add some here and lose some there...
As for my best argument against you, it's right there in the first sentence of your last paragraph. "What it would take is a fully engaged and educated electorate."
Sorry, it's not in the human nature for every individual to be engaged in politics, nor for every person to be educated. There will always be some people who want to change the world yet know nothing about it, and some people who might know a lot yet choose to ignore it completely and sit at home. And some people who vote for the other guy because he has a nicer wife. Or whatever. Even around here where a lot more people vote than in the US, it really doesn't matter. The fraction of stupidity remains about the same. (Write ins for the donald duck party is always popular.)
The point is very simple... if we want a system that actually works, it has to be one that deals with the fact that most people don't care, most people couldn't agree even if they did care, and a whole lot of them will argue about things just because they feel like it, and if their neighbour has something they want it's about fifty fifty whether they'll argue that they should get it as well, or that the neighbour should lose it. Humans are humans. Rationality, education, political engagement... as a species these things are not high up on our list. It's for a small clique of us, really.
no you should be punished for calling someone a dumbass. yes you should get punished for asking your penis to be sucked or the employee loses her job
get it einstein?
power, and sex. it is a real combination, and it used by men to extract what they want from women in bad positions. this is reality. do you understand?
" I'm not saying they don't exist but saying all women have faced these issues is absolutely absurd."
every single woman has a story to tell, or multiple stories, of a man who has attempted to extort sexual favors from them. wake up!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
blargh, the first link should be to to this address
You have several things wrong, here.
it goes against several basic facts about human nature.
You're going to have to justify this claim - what aspects of "human nature" does it go against? As I explained, it's fully compatible with human nature: You control a politician's environment and you control his behavior, which is based soundly on the punishment/reward system.
These things happen, and the sum of all this, the sum of the fact that we are human and not perfect, means that no perfect system can ever exist.
I never claimed that it would be "perfect". Expecting perfection of anything run by flawed humans is unrealistic. This is really something of a straw man. And claiming that "the best we can hope for is pretty much what we've got" is not true, unless I buy into your flawed premise and allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Sorry, it's not in the human nature for every individual to be engaged in politics, nor for every person to be educated.
It doesn't require "every individual", nor even most. Currently in the US, less than half the eligible voters actually show up to vote in presidential elections. Off-year and local elections are even worse, somewhere between 25% and 33%. But you need some people involved, local level requires less than national, but notionally about 6% - 10% of the actual voters being fully engaged is all it would take. That should be doable.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
no you should be punished for calling someone a dumbass. yes you should get punished for asking your penis to be sucked or the employee loses her job
get it einstein?
What if the female was blond and after doing something stupid the comment blond moment was said? If reported you would certainly get into hot water in your Utopian PC culture. I distinctly remember having to sit through a PC training course and an example of bad behavior was after a pregnant woman bumped into a male coworker he remarked that she needed a backup beeping system to warn other people, our HR rep was not amused when I chuckled. These are the things that PC enthusiast like your self push onto everyone else and take attention away from the true problem.
every single woman has a story to tell, or multiple stories, of a man who has attempted to extort sexual favors from them. wake up!
So females that have only worked in a family business have attempted to be extorted for sexual favors? What about women in female dominated careers where their supervisors are typically female as well. Once you start using every and all or none your argument losses weight because intelligent people see you through your hyperbole and rhetoric. You do a disservice to your cause by using absolutes, it makes people see how out of touch with reality you are.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
It doesn't seem you quite grasped my post, even though you indeed must have skimmed through most of it. To just summarize I can point out as I already has the flaw in your last paragraph here - in other countries with higher participation nothing changes either - while the numbers of people involved increase, the percentage of them that are engaged, competent, educated, halfway sane, stays about the same. Since politics is a game of percentages you'd have to change this fact rather than just the amount of people involved.
And as for facts of basic human nature, no I'm not going to bother justify that claim: rather than have me sit here for a few days talking about the more in depth studies of sociology, just assume I'm full of crap and take a look around you. Do you see any evidence, anywhere, that people when left to their own devices (i.e. for instance anonymously on the internet, in the comments of slashdot, in crowds milling down the street) that the majority of these people want to engage themselves in the actual improvement of their community/site/context?
Sure you'll hear a lot of people asking for improvements, but how many do you see backing those that do something? A lot of people? That's great. Now how many is that percentually if you include every visitor and lurker and passer-by? Not quite so impressive?
Now that's the observable behaviour of humans today. It could be argued whether or not this is an aspect of basic human behaviour or not, of basic human nature, but it's what we got. If you want to argue how we can change that, well then we're not talking about making a government work any more, then we're talking about how to change the world into a better place.
There are improvements that can be made sure, but then there is also a lot of things that end up in fairy-tale land. We could probably argue for a long time about what would go where.
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.
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.
A high ranking politician has to be able to weigh those things dispassionately, calculate the loss to society as a whole from ten men (how old are they, how much do they benefit/cost the society?) versus one child (what can that child achieve, does it have a good or bad start in life, how much bad publicity will be caused by its death? - and yes, the last one matters, because bad publicity will affect the politicians possibilities to save ten more men the next day.)
As someone else said, the sociopath only cares about how that'll impact him (or her). The dispassionate assessment means he'll probably let it kill the 10 men and 'save a child', because he can monopolize on the emotional appeal of having done so.
IE, sociopaths and politicians will both take the easiest course to more power through manipulation and abuse of others.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
I'm sorry, how is it educational to have someone parade around in front of a bunch of gay men if the idea is to try to teach him to respect women/treat women as he would like to be treated?
To play devil's advocate, last I checked, women are statistically more likely to be interested in men than women. He should be paraded around at eg. a Chip'n'Dales.
In all likelihood, these ass-grabbing assholes are probably just doing what they'd like women to do to them. In a sense, it's equal treatment, and possibly intended as an esteem. It's not respectful or right, but nobody said most geeks have a clue...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If (straight) men treated women the same way they treat other men, our species would be extinct pretty quickly.
You can be politically incorrect and offensive while defending human dignity at the same time. Also, I'm pretty sure the suggested punishment didn't involve rape -- only embarrassment and perceived vulnerability.
So why should PC douchbaggery be acceptable as 'professional' behavior in business and law while his should be relegated to private interaction?
Because, by definition, his "private interaction" is by choice. A lot of interaction in business and in law is not.
Or he realized that's the only way that a company is actually going to sit up and pay attention. Otherwise, if there's no actual cost to them, a business isn't going to care.
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
Labeling all men who don't conform as deviants or molesters is par for the course for this kind of activism.
And I'm sure it has nothing to do with many of the men in this situation actually DOING the molestation.
I certainly don't advocate the abuse of anyone, individual to individual, or society to individual.
Yet apparently you certainly advocate allowing people to abuse others, with no consequences whatsoever.
The traditional 'hacker ethos' has been a strict meritocracy
So fucking what? That has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand.
It's not just about safety.. It's also about freedom.
No it fucking isn't. You bitching about "freedom" to harass like this is just like Southern states bitching over "State's Rights", when what they really cared for was the "right" to enslave and own other people.
The definition of 'rape' has expanded from the original 'unwanted sexual act' definition so much that basically she can define it to apply to whatever behavior she chooses in court
No it hasn't, and your retarded little rants are part of why no one takes Men's Rights seriously.
People like 'mightymartian' are just the useful idiots who reenforce this stupidity because they've been so-trained by the culture.
Or probably because your actions would be a huge liability to his company, and odds are many others besides the harassment victim are creeped out and bothered with your actions too.
Perhaps they suffer 'man guilt' and want to 'prove' they're not 'like that' at every opportunity, even if it destroys another's career.
No. The harasser is the one that destroyed their career. Plain and simple.
Those are bad. They tend to end up in jail or a mental institution... for good reason.
Or elected office, or the corner office.
Someone with the username "fisted" is being put off by mild sexual crudity?
Such people are a danger, because they either do not or cannot recognize the humanity of other people.
Recognising the value of others is the most important aspect of treating other people well. If someone out of their own will treats another poorly, then they think they're better than someone else (i.e. that person is below them).
There are too many comments on this page that have mentioned that some people deserve obnoxious behaviour, or deserve punishment for the obnoxious behaviour. They have not mentioned the effects of such behaviour, or the effects of such punishment, just direct and semi-indirect name calling. It's expected that most of the comments on any given slashdot story make unsubstantiated claims, but this story just takes the cake. What kind of debate is this?
Some of them retreat from society, never hurt anyone, and live in their caves as hermits until they die. It's sad, and it would be good if we could help them, but in those cases we have no justification in forcing help on them.
Those words are nice and pretty, unfortunately those words just say to leave them to rot. The phrase "but in those cases we have no justification in forcing help on them" is just an invented construct. This construct does nothing except say we shouldn't help those people, it doesn't say why not, and why "those cases"? It seems like this argument treats those people as inferiors, despite them not hurting anyone, and just leads to a worse outcome than if they were helped. Why have a worse outcome just because of "no justification"?
I would just like to mention again what you said about recognising the humanity of other people, it hit a vibe with me.
Fuck you. There is absolutely no reason this behavior should be tolerated, or continue to exist. Assholes like you are constantly trying to keep it around, when there's absolutely no reason it should stay.
Sociopathy is bad, by definition. Sociopathy is a personality disorder where the affected individual is inclined towards behavior that is socially pathological (thus the name). If the person merely feels little for others but does not actively harm them, the individual is not a sociopath. Lack of empathy or emotion more generally is either a diagnostic sign or associated feature of several other psychiatric conditions, including narcissistic personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder (these people are basically just extremely introverted), and psychopathy. Psychopaths have an in-born lack of empathy and also a lack of fear and other inhibiting emotions.
The distinction between the psychopath and the sociopath is theoretical: The psychopath is thought to be born with a temperamental endowment towards callous-unemotional behavior and a generalized fearless and impulsive way of approaching things. The sociopath is thought to have grown up under poverty, trauma, etc. A person could be theoretically born with the temperamental traits thought to underlie psychopathy without partaking in criminal or antisocial behavior or only to a lessened degree.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Go ask your mother or wife what she thinks an appropriate punishment for this crime is.
Here's the question: Are we caring more about punishment, or rehabilitation?
As for counseling, I don't see how that's going to help; these people are sick, and the only thing that'll stop them is either keeping them away from people altogether, or making it very clear they'll be harshly punished if they do it again, so they restrain themselves to avoid punishment.
That's a pretty dystopian view of things. If things are really that bad, why not just kill them and get it over with?
I'm sorry, but you are so fucking off base that it's not even funny.
A "meritocratic" system is NO EXCUSE for any kind of harassment. Period.
Apparently she wants to be considered one of them without earning her stripes.
No, she want to be treated like a fucking person, not a piece of meat.
Seriously, your idiocy here is astounding. Treating others like people is NOT some bullshit.
No, it's not. You are not an island.
He can do whatever he wants, and he can be as unconcerned about society in general as much as he wants, so long as he doesn't impinge on others' freedoms. This includes hurting other people's feelings, or being a dick.
No, he can't. And if he does, he damn well better accept the consequences. Because if he apparently has the "freedom" (in quotes because it's not real freedom, it's some whiny bitch who wants to do something without facing the consequences of their actions) to do that, then we have the "freedom" to admonish his ass and ostracize him from society.
One would hope you'd be willing to fake it in the hopes that it would enlighten the asshole as to why people think he's an asshole.
Sorry, but I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun would not make a good commander-in-chief in a civilized, modern democracy. I want the high-ranking politicians and military commanders to be well aware of the human cost of their decisions and to really wrack their brain over it. I want them to feel some doubt and pain over loss over the decision, no matter what they come to. What I definitely don't want is a president gleefully galloping ahead as he drags the nation into war. Psychopaths, by the way, are heavily biased towards the rewards and thus are less likely to thoroughly review the negative consequences of their conduct, both for others and themselves.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
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.
Thanks for proving my point, you can't counter my argument so you decide to call names.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Equal treatment? Who do you know that likes being stared at and barraged with sexual suggestions by strangers?
The point of the exercise is to demonstrate what it's like to be the object of unwanted sexual attention Maybe straight women would make the point, but it's guys, gay or straight, who know how to be testosterone-driven assholes
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.
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.
cherry pick a scenario? Women make up over 75% of education employees and there are millions of education jobs, 3% of the female population are teachers this includes children and the retired that is no small amount.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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
Please stop calling it massage, getting an erotic massage is way more pleasant and also includes negotiations about acceptable intimacy and what to do and what not.
I do totally like it though when women tell me something along the lines of "Just do what seems right", so I have to pay attention to what she likes and don't have to worry about this or that limit when giving a massage. I feel more safe then and it seems she can sense that.
I'm not sure how far I would massage men, supposedly I should know better what they want. I'm certain they need more oil because they have more hair. While I do know how to massage guys dicks, I just find cum annoyingly sticky, so putting the moral standards of other people aside, I still find girls far more pleasant to massage (also these cushiony curves are great). Remarkably, not all erotic massages require guys to ejaculate to have a great experience.
But yes, once you have gotten to the lying naked on the mat stage you have already mastered the much harder initial diplomacy.
Je me souviens.
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.
Guys like you should be dressed in a pair of speedos and forced to parade for an hour in a gay bar.Then we'd hear no more nonsense about "political correctness".
Geez. Are all men just complete assholes in your world? What makes you think that gay men would mistreat someone?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
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.
I personally disagree, for the simple reason that the choice of doing nothing is still a choice. Fate, chance, his noodly appendage, whatever the reason you've been put in a situation where your actions decide if 10 people die or 1. It's not about deciding what's best for someone else because no matter what you choose, you've disappointed some people. The family of the child, or the ten families of the railworkers.
Like I said, it's a very common choice to do nothing, and people justify it in many different ways... but when it comes right down to it it's just based on the fallacy that doing nothing isn't an action. It is an action, it's the action of turning away, of keep walking, of ignoring the fact that ten people are going to die because you did nothing.
I actually had quite an interesting conversation about this with some behavioural scientists a few years back, which basically reached the conclusion that this is in fact one of the biggest factors holding us back in life. Choosing non-action due to this psychological fallacy applies even in cases where noone dies. It's what causes most people to not intervene when a crime is happening, it's what causes most people to not take a chance because they don't think they can make it so why bother trying, basically it's what is holding us all back.
If every human pulled the lever, killing the child, saving ten families the pain and suffering, then we as a race would be better off.
But then that's not in the human nature, so we'll have to live with what we've got.
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
Totally wrong. You are confusing PHOBIA (phobic) with PATH(ology). Plenty of very nice moral upstanding people don't socialize well. That is called being shy last time I checked. A sociopath is basically like a psychopath that hasn't done anything illegal yet. They are the ones that do leveraged buyouts, lay everyone off, pay themselves a fat bonus, and ride off into the sunset. Or on a smaller scale, they guy one cube over who blames all his failures on you and takes credit for all your work. Or a used car dealer selling flood title cars to little old ladies with 25% interest loans. They see other people as tools to be used or obstacles to be moved. Far from being anti-social, they are frequently quite charming. They tend to rise to the top in most organizations because they'll go the extra step that you couldn't do and still sleep at night.
Sort of. Machiavelli's work wasn't the ode to sociopaths many think it was. He was worried that the princes of his day, by either incompetence or misplaced compassion, were causing endless conflict and instability. His guide was intended to have ONE winner firmly in control to generate peace and prosperity instead of more war. Lincoln settled on Grant because he was willing to pay the butcher's bill to grind the South into dust however long it took. I am not saying we want psychopathic war leaders, but if you're going to win you're going to be making hard choices to do terrible things and the quicker you win the better for all involved in the end.
If things are really that bad, why not just kill them and get it over with?
Because it's a violation of human rights? Because we don't want to be like China or Saudi Arabia?
That's a bit like saying that if I choose not to shave I'm not growing a beard I'm simply not shaving. Deciding not to do something is a decision itself. There is no difference morally between failing to act and letting someone die and acting and causing their deaths. The only real difference is that maybe it's a little easier for you to rationalize away your guilt I suppose.
I, or he, may not be an island, but that doesn't mean he can't do what he likes with his life. Where I live, and probably where he lives, too, there currently aren't laws against 'anti-social behaviour', so being a dick is also allowed.
One of the better ways to think of freedom is the ability to do things that other people don't agree with. You can worship a god of your choice, or not. You can drink in excess, or not. You can exercise, or not. You can hang out with the people of your choosing. You can say, or write, what you like (note that where I live there are hate-crime laws - yes, I feel my freedom is being infringed while still thinking that denying the Holocaust is absurd). And you are certainly within your rights to vilify him for doing those things you don't agree with, because you have freedom, too. Note that you don't have a right to not be offended, which is why pornography is legal (it might not be a problem for you, but it certainly is for someone within 100 km of where you live).
There are limitations to speech in America, but those tend to be where your speech threatens another's freedoms, the classic example being shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
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.
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.
It's because courage and self-confidence are attractive in guys. Nobody wants a guy who's just going to skulk in the shadows, too afraid to talk to you. Plus, a lot of womens' behavior is genuine shyness.
I'm sort of jumping in in the middle of the discussion here, but I've got to ask: Why do you presume the opposite isn't true as well? Do you think courage and self-confidence aren't attractive traits in girls? And why are you talking about women's "genuine shyness" whereas men are "skulking in the shadows"?
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
Not really, some are in the autism spectrum. Hacker's motivations are almost all internally generated. Pretty big difference from a sociopath. Hackers prefer to live and let live with sociopaths become authoritarian figures. Hackers tend to have a very high level of impulse control, sociopaths tend to have low impulse control. http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
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.
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.
Shyness is a trait. Skulking in the shadows is a behavior. Yes, people exhibiting the latter behavior are probably shy. And while of course some guys have a problem with shy girls, many consider it attractive, a girl who giggles and blushes and gets embarrassed. You rarely see that in reverse. And that matches what you'd expect evolutionarily, btw.
We're practicing our labials.
> All the women are asking for is to be treated the same as you'd treat the men.
No they're not. Men in hacker culture are rude, insensitive, blunt, and do not spare other people's feelings. Truth trumps politeness every time.
What they are asking for is special treatment, while being accorded equal respect. The usual feminist double standard.
Similarly the right to wear hot outfits, act flirtatious but to get offended if someone they don't like (i.e. "a creep") responds.
We need to stop wasting time on this female love of drama.
There is a difference between asking someone for a coffee and putting your hand on their genitals without consent.
You should call the cops if someone is assaulted. "Defend the community" is the bullshit excuse for trying to protect your own skin at the potential cost of others.
No organization is so important or so big that it shouldn't be brought to task for hiding sexual misconduct. Just ask the Catholic Church. Imagine, fifty years ago, if the Vatican had just decided that every time a priest interfered with a minor, they would call the police rather than trying to bury it "for the good of the community". Sure, there would have been short term repercussions, but in the long run there would have been no bankrupt diocese, no monumental world-wide scandal.
It's short term thinking that leads to the kind of decisions you want DefCon to make. The whole "we are special so we should get a free pass" mentality is part of the problem, and not part of the solution. So is coming with faux sociological crapola like "gender war". Try that one on the judge when you're defending yourself against allegations you buried sexual assaults.
So the community can bring in uniformed cops. Why do we need uncover cops conducting sting operations to catch a few bad guys? That is just retarded in my opinion.
I'm not saying the convention shouldn't have cops and I never said that so stop implying it. I said the convention does not need to use undercover female cops to conduct sting operations because that would change the atmosphere for the worse and divide the community up as it is currently apparently doing successfully.
Divide and conquer is what goes on here and no one said the community cannot help the cops catch the bad guys or bring in uniformed officers to act as a deterrent. I'm all for that approach, I'm just against making Defcon a warzone environment where undercover cops are doing stings. If we allow undercover cops to start doing that it could spread to other offenses like drugs, so if people are smoking pot or using drugs and not harassing anyone now they should be made to worry that stings could be going on?
If you're anti drug too that is fine but in an environment which is supposed to promote a certain culture of openness and inclusion it doesn't help to over react. Think carefully and tell me that undercover cops is the ONLY or BEST way to solve the problem. If you feel that way then fine, we can disagree.
It's not just about safety.. It's also about freedom.
No it fucking isn't. You bitching about "freedom" to harass like this is just like Southern states bitching over "State's Rights", when what they really cared for was the "right" to enslave and own other people.
The definition of 'rape' has expanded from the original 'unwanted sexual act' definition so much that basically she can define it to apply to whatever behavior she chooses in court
No it hasn't, and your retarded little rants are part of why no one takes Men's Rights seriously.
People like 'mightymartian' are just the useful idiots who reenforce this stupidity because they've been so-trained by the culture.
Or probably because your actions would be a huge liability to his company, and odds are many others besides the harassment victim are creeped out and bothered with your actions too.
Perhaps they suffer 'man guilt' and want to 'prove' they're not 'like that' at every opportunity, even if it destroys another's career.
No. The harasser is the one that destroyed their career. Plain and simple.
His point is that the hacker community has certain values which are as important as security is for some. Some people value liberty over security and no I don't think he's talking about the liberty to sexually harass. He never said that in his post.
The same tactic is used over and over again by the fear motivated voters. They fear this or that so we gotta over react and rush to do any dumb solution the police officers tell us without trying to see what we can do ourselves to make our community safer. Police officers aren't the brightest people in a community and yes police officers are also a part of the hacker community.
So when I say defend the hacker community that includes the police officers who are members of the hacker community and when I say the hacker community should protect itself it does not exclude the use of police officers to do it. Send in uniformed police officers but don't over react and make it into an epic scandal because that is not necessary.
You are a fucking idiot. Your "men in hacker culture" is a farce. The first programmer is a woman. The first high level programming language is written by a woman.
Truth and politeness are orthogonal to each other, and only an idiot thinks having one means you cannot have the other.
What they are asking for is not special treatment, just for you not to be a fucking asshole, which I see is damned near impossible.
Here's a free hint: If you respond to someone wearing a hot outfit, and they said no, then get the fuck away. Touching them or saying "hey baby wanna fuck" is the wrong thing to do in almost any social context.
And if you feel that asking a woman for a coffee is the right thing to do in any context, why don't you go ask Marissa Mayer for coffee. Fucking idiot.
Well, personal preferences may vary, obviously, but my impression is actually very different from yours. While phrasing it as "having a problem with" is taking it too far, very few guys I know (myself included) would find too much shyness and blushing especially attractive. Not to say that the opposite end is necessarily better, but I certainly prefer someone who can respond to me like an equal and is not afraid to have and express her own will. Some people are initially shy, and that's alright, but if I detect too much insecurity underneath it's a definite turn-off, much like you described yourself. There may be cultural differences, of course -- I realise that in many countries the man is still expected to be the head of the household and the woman some kind of weak figure who needs protection and care. Where I live, however, I very much doubt that the typical guys you are describing are a majority.
I suppose in a way it must be convenient to be able to just sit back and let guys court you, without having to taking much initiative. But doing that I think you are missing out on a lot of decent guys as well. Not all of them are socially anxious shadow dwellers.
If you want to take it from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, the ideal scenario for a female is to get get knocked up by some promiscuous, broadly unfaithful and dominant type, who is good at spreading his genes around as effectively as possible (a property that when carried on to her offspring will help her own genes spread), and then finding a loyal and nice guy to help raise her kids. I am kind of hoping that we have progressed beyond being enslaved under simplistic biological mechanisms, however.
That would only work if there were some way to independently verify that the sociopathic leader is in fact acting in the best interest of society, and not his own, and that he isn't somehow getting away with screwing over society to benefit himself. But if you have some people in place that can accurately make that determination, why not just put them in charge? Worst of all, who's going to make sure the board of directors (for lack of better term) is staffed with the right people (and not people who are also sociopaths, and who will be buddy-buddy with the sociopathic leader working together to enrich themselves at the expense of society, much like what happens with many large corporations), and that they're properly evaluating the leader? For that, you need an electorate that is able to do that effectively, but just about every democratically-elected government has proven that the electorate just isn't capable of making that determination.
It seems the best you're going to get is a system like China's, where you have an unelected cabal who has taken power, and has chosen from their party a leader who will work for the good of the country. Sometimes this works out well, as people truly interested in doing the best for the country get in power now and then. The problem is that, just like benevolent monarchs, it falls apart sooner or later as the good people get old and retire or die off, and new people replace them who aren't so good. So you get little "golden eras", in between periods of despotism.
As far as I can tell, the best system would be one where humans simply aren't involved, or at least don't have the ultimate power, and some sort of beneficial non-human overlord has the ultimate authority, whether it's some kind of Vulcan-like alien race or some very intelligent AIs.
The way I see it, the US system was initially built to function that way, and it certainly can function that way (whether it ever actually has, I leave as an exercise for historians.
The US system worked extremely well under George Washington I think. After that, it started a slow downward slide.
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.
Rape is never funny. Unless you're raping a clown.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I think you've just made his point...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
>Do you walk up to men and ask for sex?
>Do you touch other men all over and give them massages?
Women have done these things to me and not at bars either. BTW I am a guy.
My responses were
a) (mostly) No I have a girlfriend. (sometimes) Yes!
b) Ignored it and stood away from her in future.
While sexual assault is bad, I think that one can be too carried away with making sure everyone speaks in such a way that no-one can possibly be offended. "Your patch is lame and I will never commit it" would offend some people but it needs to be said.
> You are a fucking idiot
You seem to be proving my point about the bluntness and rudeness of people in hacker culture. If you are a woman, I note that women in hacker culture can also be blunt.
Politeness, if taken to excess, is indeed an enemy of truth. The whole concept of "the elephant in the living room" (that which we all know about but cannot discuss) demonstrates this.
> The first programmer is a womyn.
Not a single one of Ada Lovelace's programs would have worked. A person who has not written one program that works is not a programmer.
> The first high level programming language is written by a womyn.
The first production compiler was probably Fortran. The spec was written before Grace Hopper's Flow-matic prototype was written. And the production compiler was done first.
I'm not sure what this or your previous point has to do with anything. Women have made some contribution to science technology. The most impressive example, to my mind, was Noether's theorem.
Most real contributors of either sex get respect from their contributions and do not need to create drama over trivia (such as being asked do they want a cup of coffee).
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.
You've moved from asking the woman to get you coffee to asking whether they want a cup of coffee.
"Your patch is lame and I will never commit it" is necessary.
"You are an idiot" is also necessary sometimes.
"You can't patch worth dickens because you are a girl" is stupid.
If you can see the difference and understand why the last one should not be used, then this message is not directed towards you.
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.
Catch-22s are cute but not really rhetorically valid.
IT'S A FAKE! The whole "brogrammer" thing is a fake, a fraud, a hoax, a put-on.
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.
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
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.
Agree.
Statements like "girls can't code / white men can't jump / men can't be empathetic / blacks are dumb / jews are greedy" are just pathetic.
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.
Give me a break, it was obviously short for asking them out for a cup of coffee.
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
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.
So you're going to separate them from society for the rest of their lives? That's not much better.
So what are you proposing? Allowing criminals to go back into society and commit more crimes?
Obviously, the length of a prison term should be proportional to the severity of the crime; I'm not proposing that someone be imprisoned for life for an assault, but some seem to be proposing either no punishment at all, or a slap on the wrist.
So what are you proposing? Allowing criminals to go back into society and commit more crimes?
How about looking at the actual reason WHY they are committing crimes in the first place? Trying to solve the actual PROBLEM, rather than getting this hard-on for punishing people? A focus on rehabilitation would go quite a ways toward improving society, decreasing the prison population, and saving money.
but some seem to be proposing either no punishment at all, or a slap on the wrist.
No, we're proposing more focus on rehabilitation so that when a prisoner is released, they won't just fall back on their old habits again.
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.
We do.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
sudo make me a sandwich
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?