Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by noonesays 3163 days ago
> I don't think anyone here is talking about "flirting."

Literally three comments up from your own comment:

> If you are the keynote speaker of a conference, DO NOT flirt with other attendees or other coworkers, regardless of the line of report.
1 comments
ghaff 3163 days ago
Fair enough. I did not see that and would actually disagree with it for appropriately non aggressive values of flirting. (If you’re a high profile keynote speaker specifically though, caution is increasingly called for.)
link
zaroth 3163 days ago
Greer's account of Scoble flirting with her at a hotel bar (drinks in both hands, touched her leg) is quite the counter-point.

It appears like that moment had a lasting and significant impact on Michelle. [1] The repercussions as Michelle tells them are certainly terrible. I feel badly for Michelle and want to understand better what she experienced from her perspective.

That was certainly unwanted sexual contact. Was it sexual assault? Possibly. Was is sexual harassment? Possibly! All unwanted sexual contact is not actually automatically sexual harassment. [2]

[1] - https://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/woman-accuses-robert-scoble-o...

[2] - http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/pdf/whatissh.pdf

link
ghaff 3163 days ago
I think that goes way beyond casual "flirting" in most people's book. Obviously people differ, signals get misread, and tolerances vary. I'm aware of one "code of conduct violation" report based on a Tshirt that made me roll my eyes--as well as the eyes of quite a few women I know. But that doesn't seem like a particular edge case as reported.
link
zaroth 3163 days ago
Touching someone's leg is considered flirting, is it not? Honestly, I did not mean to mis-characterize it.
link
ghaff 3163 days ago
No. I would not have said so Clearly it varies based on how well you know and your relationship with a person. But randomly in a semi-professional context?
link
zaroth 3163 days ago
It was clearly inappropriate, that's not what I'm asking. Inappropriate flirting is a thing. If I read in a book, "she touched his leg" I would call that flirting.

I feel like there's something I'm missing because, as recounted, his actions had such a strong and lasting impact to Greer.

Maybe this Scoble dude is just a nuclear style creep and just having to sit next to him is torturous. But that seems highly unlikely. I've never met the guy! I don't recall ever hearing him speak or watching a video of him even. So...

If I'm understanding the story, 4 people at a hotel bar drinking, one touching someone's leg. And what that led to, or possibly even caused -- I think it's fair to describe it as incredibly damaging? Obviously we want to avoid people being hurt like that. So, we construct social mores and civil law to try to prevent it from happening, and punish a small subset of offenders very harshly.

I'm a little stunned by all of it.

link