
The MeToo Backlash - nwrk
https://hbr.org/2019/09/the-metoo-backlash?
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colechristensen
Two points. First studies that consist of surveys aren't really very useful
because they don't measure how people act or think, they measure how people
answer surveys. It is extraordinarily easy to change how people answer by
wording things in different ways. People lie on surveys and surveys ask bad
questions.

Second, if you want to make a difference you have to train people to have the
confidence to report and train leadership to actively reinforce that
confidence.

I have involved myself in a few situations where someone would tell me about
an incident and how it was reported which made it abundantly obvious that even
though an incident had been reported, the manner in which it was reported was
soft-balled in a wishy washy forgiving way to management instead of directly
reporting what happened and how it made the victim feel. Really good managers
will see through the wobbly report and drive to discover the truth but good
intentioned managers often take soft reports at face value and maybe respond
with a warning for an action that warranted immediate dismissal.

The most vulnerable people often have the most self doubt and even when those
people have the courage to report something, that doubt plays a big role in
the reports and translates into weak responses.

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Traster
I think this article touches on two really interesting points: The first is
whether people are able to correctly identify sexual harassment, and the
second more elided point is the MeToo movements address of power structures.

On the first point, I think it's really interesting that even relatively
respected people often come out with incredibly disingenuous arguments about
how women's rights and the Metoo movement has made it simply _impossible_ to
know how they should behave[1]. I do say this is disingenuous, because people
do know right from wrong, and people claiming they don't seem to think that
admitting to a deep lack of moral judgement somehow shifts blame onto society.

Now, obviously, if you take the comments less literally - "I don't know how to
behave" and more seriously "I don't like how society has changed to favour my
group less" \- you get to another troubling point. A more general attack on
MeToo and women's rights that really comes from a place of giving very little
value on women in society and very little value on having a meritocratic
society when it actually impacts rich white men. Personally I find that
troubling, those are not the sort of people I'd choose to work with. As much
as you want to identify and stop instances of sexual harassment, we do need to
tackle the wider problem of enabling.

The second issue I think is that MeToo essentially called out individual men
for their behaviour. But what it highlighted, and basically failed to tackle,
was that the men doing these things were almost always enabled by power
structures that literally sided with the powerful man over the woman.

You would've thought this is what an HR department is designed to stop, but
time after time, that doesn't happen. Take the example reported just this week
where Google's response to a manager sleeping with a subordinate was to damage
the subordinate's career and let the manager carry on. When Dave McClure was
accused of inappropriate behaviour, he paid a price, but what people haven't
really come to terms with is that Christine Tsai, his colleague at 500
startups was aware of the accusations, she knew what was happening, and whilst
trying to cover for Dave publicly, didn't take the accusations seriously
didn't challenge the behaviour and continually backed him. So what happened to
Dave's colleagues that enabled his behaviour? She's now CEO of 500 start
ups[2]. Do you think 500 Startups has more men like Dave at it? Well we don't
know, but what we do know, is that if there were, the CEO of the company
certainly isn't going to address that behaviour.

So actually, yes, it's justified for women to feel less confident because of
MeToo- because MeToo identified these things happened, and did nothing to
change the power structures and the people in these institutions that enable
it.

[1]:
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1165348114904911872?s=20](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1165348114904911872?s=20)

[2]: [https://www.vox.com/2017/8/2/16086036/transcript-erica-
baker...](https://www.vox.com/2017/8/2/16086036/transcript-erica-baker-sarah-
kunst-sexual-harassment-diversity-women-recode-decode)

~~~
com
> You would've thought this is what an HR department is designed to stop, but
> time after time, that doesn't happen.

I have heard, regularly in my career, that HR is tasked with protecting
management from employees. In that light, why should we be surprised that a
function established to protect one of the power structures wouldn’t act
against it?

I have been fortunate that I’ve really experienced that form of HR allegiance
to management over people only once in my professional life. It was pretty
egregious though, covering up regular-enough violent attacks on junior staff
by a VP-level staffer.

