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Tesla Factory Reportedly Described As a 'Predator Zone' By Female Employees (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Tesla's Fremont factory was described by a female employee as a "predator zone" of harassment in a meeting attended by dozens of employees, according to a bombshell report in The Guardian. Other women recalled being catcalled by male employees, feeling unsafe around male managers, and being subjected to sexist comments by their superiors, the report states. For months, The Guardian has been tracking the case of AJ Vandermeyden, a former Tesla engineer who sued the electric automaker for "unwanted and pervasive harassment." In her suit, Vandermeyden alleges that she and other female employees were denied promotions, paid less than their male peers, and retaliated against after making their concerns known to human resources. Several months after making her claims publicly, Vandermeyden was fired by Tesla.
Since recorded history, whenever an attractive lady walked past a construction zone or equivalent, the male workers hooted and hollered like a bunch of monkeys (which humans pretty much are for good or bad).
Multiple times I've rode to lunch with "white collar" workers, and they do the same when an attractive lady crosses the street, usually with the windows closed, which differs from the factory situation in that the lady usually doesn't hear it (or pretends not to).
Males are biologically horny and it would take a lot of effort and resources to outright stop them from showing it. I'm not condoning flirtatious behavior, only saying it's very economically expensive to curtail most of it and there's probably a point of diminishing returns. Society needs to decide how much enforcement and regulation should be applied to curtail it because the cost ain't free: court costs, firing, training, and policing it is a de facto tax on products and services.
I will agree that (uninvited) touching and outright rude remarks should be punished by probation or termination. But there's a lot of "soft" harassment, much of it subjective in terms of offensiveness. For example, there's a lot of middle ground between "You look very nice today", and "You look veeeery nice today."
Another thing is that if a lady doesn't want such attention, dress ugly, or at least non-sexual. It's quite possible to look professional without adding a sexual nature. Wear dark pantsuits or long loose-fitting skirts, mild or no lipstick, light makeup, hair up or a simple ponytail, and simple practical shoes. Of course there are a few exceptional ladies who look hot in anything, but that's rare outside of modelling agencies.
I've asked some attractively-dressed ladies why they dress provocatively and yet complain about harassment. Their answer is often hypocritical: "I'm okay when nice men flirt with me but not creeps". They want the upsides of attention but not the downsides. I have to call them on that: you can't have it both ways. For one, "creep" is subjective (as the election showed).
Society will probably have to compromise: men can tone it down and learn to be more subtle, and women can manage their attire better.
Table-ized A.I.
I already see a million comments from the crowd who dismisses all these complaints as "SJW BS." However, there is a pattern of startups ignoring bad behavior of some "rockstars." If proven to be true, that incident with Uber was pretty blatant -- having a female employee receive a request for...companionship...on her first day from her boss. I'm sure Tesla isn't far from its roots as a startup in terms of HR maturity either. They may be pretty far away from some one-trick phone app startup, but this is a culture thing that doesn't change unless there's external pressure to do so.
It doesn't even have to be a startup; I've worked at established companies where top salespeople get automatic passes on all the sexual harassment rules -- their management is willing to deal with the fallout to keep this salesperson producing. Watching some of these latent lawsuits in action is interesting, and the anti-SJW crowd can't just pretend it doesn't exist or that female employees receiving this treatment are all too sensitive. Whether it's the "neckbeard creeper" sort of stalking harassment, or the "ex-fratboy" overt kind -- if I were a woman I wouldn't be too happy with having to put up with either.
And you aren't doing shit, Jackson. Google it ! More bullshit than not ... got that right.
When I spent some quality time at Tesla doing installation work, I was surprised by various workers at different pitches along the line loudly blasting hard core hip hop music that profanely objectified women (you know the type of lyrics I"m talking about). On one hand, I appreciated that Tesla let their very hard working employees listen to the music (and I really appreciated being able to eat free cereal while I worked on electronics out on the line). On the other hand, I found the lyrics of the music to be really offensive to women and not at all professional. Also, I was surprised there there seemed to be little concern for the safety implications of blasting loud music.
The other problem is that offense is in the eye of the beholder. A man can genuinely not mean to be offensive - legitimately just asking a pretty girl out on a date, and it can be (mis)interpreted as offensive behavior. Now you end up putting management in the position of trying to armchair quarterback male/female interactions - was this really harmful, demeaning, threatening behavior or is she just overreacting? Since there's usually very little disincentive to err on the side of believing the accuser, you end up with men who tread VERY carefully around female coworkers - which is itself considered a different form of sexism, since the women end up finding themselves excluded.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
The important part is that Tesla has confirmed to the Guardian that other women have made complaints and harassment. If it was just one person trying to make a false claim there would not be others saying similar things.
Also, have you ever read a newspaper before? That's how they are written. It sucks but they aren't trying to make a watertight legal argument to convince the jury of skeptics.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Males are biologically horny
So are women. The idea that it's men is a construct of this society. Others, such as ancient Greece considered women to be the uncontrollably horny ones.
Society needs to decide how much enforcement and regulation should be applied to curtail it because the cost ain't free: court costs, firing, training, and policing it is a de facto tax on products and services.
Unless it has the opposite effect of more women in productive jobs (i.e. larger overall pool of workers) in which case the tax will be negative.
Another thing is that if a lady doesn't want such attention, dress ugly, or at least non-sexual. It's quite possible to look professional without adding a sexual nature. Wear dark pantsuits or long loose-fitting skirts, mild or no lipstick, light makeup, hair up or a simple ponytail, and simple practical shoes.
Guys: wear a sharp suit. Feemales uglify yourself because it's YOUR fault if horndogs can't control their actions like civilised people. Oh and tough on you if dressing well tends to help with career advancement. Double tough if the dress code requires high heels.
I've asked some attractively-dressed ladies why they dress provocatively and yet complain about harassment. Their answer is often hypocritical: "I'm okay when nice men flirt with me but not creeps".
I'd say that kind of puts you into the creep end of things: what's really creepy is those people who can see other people's boundaries but willfully violate them. These ladies it seems would rather people like that didn't (for example) keep pushing the flirting after being shut down. You are basically saying it's not OK, and just fine for those creepy guys to keep pushing.
Society will probably have to compromise: men can tone it down and learn to be more subtle, and women can manage their attire better.
Maybe you should just beat off on the regular so you don't get a boner whenever you atch a glimpse of ankle.
SJW n. One who posts facts.