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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.
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.
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.
Coming from a woman's perspective: agreed, to an extent.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality. Now mix that up with copious amounts of alcohol, the poor social adjustment that many geeks have, and the "anything goes" attitude of Sin City, and yeah you'll have problems.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault". I've been seeing considerably more of people being inappropriately aggressive, and not just in hacker cons. It's happening in sci fi cons too, and tech business cons, and plenty of other places. Sales conferences have always been bad, but it's new to see so much of this in geek culture.
I'm pretty sexually liberated (OK, I'm a fucking slut), but that doesn't mean free for all. No matter how much you think they want it, never assume they're interested unless they respond positively to some gentle verbal flirting... And if they don't, they're not interested, so please fuck off.
I know this sounds obvious to many, but I keep seeing rather horrifying examples of geeks completely failing to follow that basic protocol.
It's true they harassment is IN PART defined by the attention being unwelcome. But if you take a case to court it is defined by a "reasonable person" standard. The jury must find that a reasonable person would have understood the behavior to be harrassing or contributed to a hostile working environment.
Being an asshole is not part of any culture, and endemic sexism (which clearly exists) is not the same as inherent sexism.
Working to end sexual harassment is not an attack on hacker culture. (And nor is it necessary or helpful to attack hacker culture in order to end sexual harassment.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Reading that list... I'm seeing a lot of "twitter"/"tweet," a lot of things that are much more along the lines of people taking offense at something... and not really a whole lot of actual harassment.
Really, if this list is the worst that feminists can come up with, taking the whole of the vaguely defined "geek culture" into account, we're fucking saints.
Great Intellect...
I don't think you have to be a "femicommie" to object to being grabbed by the crotch.
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.
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.
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.
Calling yourself a hacker takes away all your credibility. Just saying.
No, your low ID doesn't help either.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you want to show a pattern, you have to make the so-called "incidents" have something in common. The Ecole Polytechnique massacre, really? Taking a computer science course (and dropping out) does not make one a geek.
A lot of the rest aren't much more convincing. A sexually suggestive ad ("support") which would not raise an eyebrow in the mainstream? The "OMG ponies" Slashdot April Fools joke?
The only pattern I'm really seeing is repeated attempts to smear geeks and geek culture with the label of misogynistic. I might think there was something to it except
1) I know a lot of geeks -- of them, only one might have an issue, and he's moved over to the sales side since. Also not a software guy.
2) I've seen "brogramming" used as an example. Not the existence of the joke, but the existence of the actual thing.
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.
Many of these people claim to be experts, and in some cases even "rockstars" and "coding ninjas".
I have yet to meet anyone who actually writes code for a living who refers to themselves in these terms. Usually, I hear it from body shop recruiters or dotcom promoters (e.g "we're looking for a rockstar"). The strange thing is that they generally want a "rockstar" to do trivial work on a half-assed development platform to implement something that nobody needs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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.
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.
I'm not entirely sure making all sorts of generalisations is really helping the situation.
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.
Probably. So why is so hard to believe that women are being harassed at mostly male events?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
The story right behind this one is this: Color Printing Reaches Its Ultimate Resolution.
How did they test it? By printing the "Lena" image.
As a proof of principle, researchers printed a 50×50-micrometre version of the 'Lena' test image, a richly coloured portrait of a woman that is commonly used as a printing standard
So who's Lena? She's a playboy pinup girl. (NSFW).
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
total attention whores
violent and derogatory terminology
Um...
Yes, a fake GE training video on sexual harassment; the rules for men were "Be handsome, be attractive, don't be unattractive." The last scene was the "unattractive" guy walking down a hallway and saying hello to a woman at her desk, and her calling security. Which, unfortunately, isn't far from the truth; "Hi" with the response "Eww, get away from me you creep" isn't unknown in real life.
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?
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.
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.
>>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."
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.
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.
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?:
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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
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/
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.
"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
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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".)
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."