
A sexual harassment survey of 600 men - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/28/upshot/sexual-harassment-survey-600-men.html
======
jhiska
Self-reported. Not a random population. The numbers are higher because most
men (the ones who refused to take part) are intelligent enough to not denounce
themselves to the NYT for serious sexual offences. Not reliable, and may do
more harm than good, because it maximizes minor harassment, but minimizes the
numbers of serious harassment.

~~~
sevensor
Furthermore, the correlation with Trump approval is totally fishy. These
numbers don't rule out the possibility that men harass women at roughly the
same rates regardless, and self-report differently due to their awareness of
the issue.

~~~
soyiuz
It makes sense that those who condone harassment would support others who
harass, or at least tend not to see other harassers in a negative light?

Self-reporting bias would certainly have some effect, but not as much as brute
similarity of worldviews regarding women, gender, sex, workplace etc. Like
attracts like. Nothing fishy about that.

~~~
whatok
Harvey Weinstein, several actors, tech people, politicians, etc who were
serial harassers/assaulters were all outspoken on "women's rights" and
feminist causes. It's very easy to think your own identical behavior is
different from others and demonize people in turn. There are countless
examples of this.

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ameister14
This is a bit ridiculous, as the questions aren't specific. For example, I've
definitely said something some people might consider offensive at work in the
past year, but it wasn't sexist and it was in context. According to this, I
would be categorized into 'made sexist remarks' regardless.

If you send a friend a direct message on slack with a comic that other people
might find offensive, or reference something that they did the night or week
before, would that fall into multiple categories?

I've designed surveys before and been trained to do so in a way that limits
inherent bias. This doesn't seem to be a well thought out or designed survey
set. Also, what is a SQL server reporting system doing asking people about
sexual harassment?

~~~
parenthephobia
> This is a bit ridiculous, as the questions aren't specific.

The issue is the editorialising the results, _and_ not providing the _other_
questions they asked, the actual results, or a more detailed description of
the methodology.

If they did that we could ignore the article and potentially discovery
something useful in the results.

> Also, what is a SQL server reporting system doing asking people about sexual
> harassment?

That's gone over my head.

~~~
ameister14
at the bottom, the small print says the survey is from SSRS

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ScottAS
Interesting survey, but it seems very disingenuous that the researchers have
lumped in "objectionable behaviour" with "sexual harassment". These sets do
not have that much overlap.

"About a third of men said they had done something at work within the past
year that would qualify as objectionable behavior or sexual harassment"

Objectionable behaviour: doing something your boss doesn't like, breaking
process, even being an outspoken feminist could be considered objectionable
behaviour. If you have not completed one "objectionable" action in a year you
must be a robot.

"Made remarks that some might consider sexist or offensive?" \- There are so
many acceptable remarks that some might consider "offensive". Eg. "God is not
real".

Seems like bad research to lump these sets together and then present it
strictly as a survey on sexual harassment.

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weberc2
It's unfortunate that the most prominent behaviors are characterized so
vaguely. It seems that "could be considered offensive by some" is an extremely
broad criteria that is likely to be padded with benign behaviors, especially
given that these categories are each about 4X the size of the others, and the
variance is otherwise quite low. Given that, I wonder what the aggregates look
like after throwing these categories out? What percent of men engaged in any
of the remaining categories? How are offenders distributed across blue/white
collar jobs, etc.?

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randyrand
Notice nearly all of these end with "which might offend someone."

Is that really how we draw the line? Someone, anyone just has to be offended?

I think we really need to reevaluate sexual harassment law and culture.

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soyiuz
Bottom line: besides being unethical, harassment at work results in a less
competitive labor market (a huge percentage of talent opts out of the
industry), a less productive workplace, and shoddier products (lack of
diversity mirrors the lack of customer engagement). This is to say that doing
the right thing is also good for business.

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TheOtherHobbes
Was expecting a survey of men who had been sexually harassed at work.

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jackvalentine
I'm surprised "Jokes or stories" and "Sexual remarks" had a similar
proportion.

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smsm42
What is bothering me here is "some might consider". I know for a fact some
consider picture of a frog or milk to be a racist symbol (sad, but true). I
know that calling oneself handsome can be construed sexual misconduct[1], what
if I have done that? Another things that "some" think are sexual misconduct or
sexist: compliments & drink invitations [2], fitting clothes[3], "ladies and
gentlemen" [4], accidentally misspelling somebody's name [5], prioritizing
facts over opinion [6], talking about sandwiches [7], using word "genius"[8].
True, some of these examples border on the insane, and some are opinions of a
tiny minority that are clearly offense mining and oversensitive. But the
questionnaire doesn't have any allowance for that - if I know _some_ might
consider using the word _genius_ sexist, and I said that word, if I am a
honest person, I have to report "yes" to that question, and forever enter the
official scientific statistics as a sexual harasser. I think there's something
wrong with that.

[1] [http://thetab.com/us/columbia/2016/10/01/i-was-reported-
for-...](http://thetab.com/us/columbia/2016/10/01/i-was-reported-for-gender-
misconduct-for-calling-myself-handsome-in-class-2611)

[2] [https://www.dailywire.com/news/23852/study-lot-young-
people-...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/23852/study-lot-young-people-think-
compliments-drink-amanda-prestigiacomo)

[3] [https://www.truthrevolt.org/news/university-oregon-
appropria...](https://www.truthrevolt.org/news/university-oregon-
appropriately-fitting-clothes-now-cis-privilege)

[4] [https://www.dailywire.com/news/18600/london-tube-just-
banned...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/18600/london-tube-just-banned-
innocuous-phrase-be-more-amanda-prestigiacomo)

[5] [http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/04/u-tennessee-student-
accuse...](http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/04/u-tennessee-student-accused-of-
sexual-ha)

[6]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/77849809757...](https://mobile.twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/778498097576116224)

[7] [https://www.dailywire.com/news/22084/australian-feminists-
lo...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/22084/australian-feminists-lose-their-
minds-over-emily-zanotti)

[8] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-
news/c...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-
news/cambridge-university-sexism-row-genius-lecturers-students-a7787401.html)

