[jonathankoren]

What are you saying? That being upset that women are being sexually harassed at the workplace shows that women aren't being sexually harassed at the workplace, or that it isn't a big deal?

Seriously dude. What are you trying to say?

Let's not pretend that these allegations came like a bolt from the blue. They've been floating around Uber for years now. The only thing different here is that someone publically put their name on it.

[ultrahate]

I've never once heard rumors like these until recently but I've noticed an uptick in people saying that there HAS been, when there hasn't been rumors to begin with.

[jonathankoren]

You don't have any close women engineer friends do you?

[ultrahate]

I lead a team of women doing computational pharmaceutical research. 12 women and 3 males, and 2 female undergrads and 2 male undergrads.

But hey, your narrative is that I'm out of touch with women because I'm not a woman so how could I possibly know, and I wouldn't want to ruin that little victory for you.

[jonathankoren]

I wouldn't call having a woman as a direct report a "close friend." The fact that you immediately reached for your employees as cover, makes me think that you don't have anyone else to use.

I find it doubly absurd to think that your reports would talk to you about these things. First you're in a position of power over them, and we're dealing with a topic that goes hand in glove with abuses of power. Second on a personal note, you appear to be completely dismissive that any such claims could possibly have merit to them. Finally, look at your choice of name. I commend you for not going with "pussypuncher".

[dang]

You've become uncivil and made personal attacks on HN many times. That's not allowed here, even if your cause is 100% right and all of your views are correct. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing this.

You've also been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's another abuse of this site, and we ban accounts that do that as well. HN can't both gratify intellectual curiosity and be a battlefield, so please use the site as intended.

[jonathankoren]

I would disagree with your characterization, of "uncivil" and "personal attacks", but I will admit that this has become a flame war.

I will say this, HN's very recent position of trying to remain apolitical when the topic of social and political issues regarding tech companies is completely untenable, and I think the recent discussions about Uber has shown that. You can't bring up the very relevant topics of either diversity or sexual harassment in Silicon Valley, without people coming out of the woodwork and quite loudly declaring that either the accusations are false, or they're not that bad. These positions can not go unchallenged, as they have been shown to be false many times before and with just as many actors, and perpetuate the very problem being highlighted.

So what are we going to do about it? Ignore it? I'm not because I too much about a liberal civil society. Ignoring the ideas doesn't just perpetuate them, but gives them strength and credibility, when they quite frankly they were discredited when I was young.

Since HN has made it a policy to stick its collective head in sand regarding these issues, I think the only option HN is willing to take is clear. Ban me, because I'm not going to stop, because I take these topics very seriously. I don't say that out of some sort of defiance, I say that because I know myself. It will happen again, and again, and again. Either you're going to have to remove all discussions from the front page as soon as these topics come up, or you're going to have to ban accounts including mine to ensure an off topic prosaic comments like "I like the old logo better."

[ultrahate]

Oh, I'm wrong because you don't like my username, copy that.

[tunap]

If we stepped back a couple posts and jk had cited the recent, public claims of employees tracking celebs & ex's, Uber self-driving cars exiting SF b/c they are above licensing laws and myriad other slights of rules/regs this discussion could have stayed on point.