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by macspoofing
3269 days ago
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There are many facets to this backlash (if indeed there is one). At the most fundamental level nobody disputes that women have a right to the same kind of respect that men receive (including not being harassed), or that women have a right to the same opportunities as men do. But the devil is in the details. For example, there are a lot of insane ideas thrown around as to how to fix the problem. There are people who argue accusations of harassment should not only be taken seriously (which everyone agrees with) but also be automatically taken as true regardless of their veracity and verifiability, and with the the social, personal and professional cost suffered by those accused being an irrelevant detail. Second, is this is a Silicon Valley problem, or every-industry problem? How are women treated in the NY Times newsroom compared to Google compared to GM? This is always side-stepped or is treated in a sloppy manner. This sloppiness is evident in the original NY Times article which profiled personal experiences of a number of women in tech with no attempt to verify the claims or set it in a wider context. In the most memorable example, Dave McClure was outed by name in the article for asking one of the women out as she was applying for a position of at his company. Unprofessional? Yes. Creepy? Yes. But that crime relative to the public shaming in an international newspaper read by millions, isn't justified. The irony of that specific case is that there were more egregious examples of McClure's conduct that may actual warrant this public shaming, but that would require some actual journalism. |
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There are other unintended consequences that are also worrying. I'm a bisexual/pansexual man and software engineer and the climate has become so antagonistic between the sexes in the past few years that I personally feel a massive relief whenever a professional setting is devoid of attractive women. I feel no such concern with attractive men or unattractive people of any gender. Even the most innocent interactions these days are liable be construed as harassment, especially by those with a socialized victimhood-mentality.
The fact that accusations based on perceptions/interpretations of the accuser involving situations and circumstances that are often highly ambiguous are accepted as unassailable fact is highly troubling. There is no room for nuance and misunderstanding anymore. The fear of public reprisal through shaming over misunderstanding and ambiguity is very palpable and meets the criteria for a hostile work environment.
Personally, I have the luck of being relatively attractive, but I have concerns for less attractive male colleagues whose innocent interactions will almost invariably be taken as creepy simply by virtue of being less attractive. The precariousness of their situation is made worse when some of these colleagues are on the aspie/autistic side of the spectrum and are often wholly unaware of how their interactions may be misinterpreted. Engineering used to be a safe haven for those on that end of the spectrum, where they didn't have to worry about their inability to pick up on nuanced social cues they don't possess the psychological skills to readily perceive in realtime so they are aware of a potential transgression before they commit it.
Work environments designed and curated by neurotypicals is actively hostile to those that are not neurotypical and we're witnessing the colonization of one of few professional areas where those who are not-neurotypical could safely operate. For all the talk of the value of diversity, cognitive diversity is never ever considered or even a topic of conversation.
To be clear, I'm not excusing overt and unambiguous sexual harassment. I'm merely making the point that human sexuality and human socialization are very messy affairs and that most situations are hardly ever free of ambiguity and misunderstanding. If we don't acknowledge that there often is a grey area, we risk creating very hostile social spaces for those who don't have neurotypical privilege and have little to no sexual capital to mitigate their interactions from being considered "creepy" by default.
http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
http://ozarque.livejournal.com/176349.html