
Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley - anthuswilliams
https://elaineou.com/2017/07/09/sexual-harassment-in-silicon-valley/
======
49531
>The Times describes some founders who put up with unwanted sexual advances
because they were desperate to raise money for their startups. There’s an old-
fashioned word for what these ladies are doing that I shan’t repeat here.

What? I'm not sure I know what "old-fashioned word" the author is talking
about...

The author then goes on to explain that men have to put up with shitty people
to raise money as well.

As a man who has dealt with shitty people in an array of business situations I
can say that none of my run-ins have included sexual assault.

The stories coming to light are not about "unwanted sexual advances" as much
as they're about actual assault, or at the very least harassment.

The only people who benefit when we are dismissive are the abusers.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
After the first time someone makes an unwanted sexual advance, you whether you
are a man or a woman have the choice to walk away and NOT take their money!

From the article - "The only thing more timeless than the abuse of power is
the tolerance of abuse by those who most need the money.". Many people want
the funding bad enough to keep interacting with unpleasant people and tolerate
the abuse and hence ensure it continues.... they do have at least the choice
to walk away, same as men, or better yet bring it to public awareness. Yet
many choose to take the money and then complain - at that point they have no
right to complain, because they have actively perpetuated the cycle of abuse
in exchange for money and helped the abuser grow a little more powerful.

If any founder desperate for money took money from a terrorist group, we would
condemn them for colluding with the enemy, not give them sympathy for how hard
it is to get funding.

You can't take the bad guys money, knowing full well what it cost you AND
complain about it. That is the problem. I explained more in another comment
here.

~~~
cbsmith
> You can't take the bad guys money, knowing full well what it cost you AND
> complain about it.

So basically, if the problem is endemic, you're screwed and you should be
happy about it.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
You are putting words in my mouth. The problem is powerful people get away
with a lot of shit, and the solution is to publicly expose them so they lose
face, or AT LEAST stop doing business with them.

If someone continues to do business (and thus helps) with a bad actor, that
action of doing business and taking money speaks much louder than any words
they may have.

If you genuinely care about sexual harassment but you still take the money,
the net effect of that is the bad guy gets another portfolio company and grows
stronger. It conveys a childish attitude - a wish for the world to be perfect
while taking actions only in your interest, that help the bad guy in this
case.

All talk and no action doesn't freaking help anyone, except perhaps the
authors reputation. As a society we are all supposed to applaud these people
as heroes? Sorry I will save my applause for those who take action - the
others have my sympathy the same as millions of other people dealing with bad
people.

~~~
cbsmith
> If you genuinely care about sexual harassment but you still take the money,
> the net effect of that is the bad guy gets another portfolio company and
> grows stronger. It conveys a childish attitude - a wish for the world to be
> perfect while taking actions only in your interest, that help the bad guy in
> this case.

I'm sorry, but what you are describing seems, if not childish, incredibly
naïve. It presumes a scenario where there is always ample access to
opportunity without facing sexual harassment.

------
tashi

      The Times describes some founders who put up with unwanted sexual advances because they were desperate to raise money for their 
      startups. There’s an old-fashioned word for what these ladies are doing that I shan’t repeat here.
    

So, women who reject these advances but don't want to object too loudly out of
fear of burning bridges or being seen as a troublemaker, are being accused of
prostitution. What a fascinating way to smear the victims.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
The problem is many people keep objecting in general but without ever
providing ANY evidence or at least asserting clearly "this person X did Y".
Taking generalized accusations at simple word of mouth is lynching, its not a
scalable solution for society. There will always be people who lie or bend the
truth when its to their advantage, unfortunately thats the world we live in -
thats why we require evidence and a judicial process in crimes.

I know it must be very difficult, but basically powerful people get away with
all kinds of things including but not limited to sexual harassment because of
the same fears women have against reporting them - burning bridges, fear of
repercussions, they might have strong reputations and powerful friends etc
etc. For most of us, the only choice is to leave that environment because of
that fear. Harassment, unfortunately it can be a bigger offense, but women
face the same choices as anyone else - leave or risk a fight with a powerful
person... It sucks but it sucks the same way for everyone.

She ultimately makes a good point - "The only thing more timeless than the
abuse of power is the tolerance of abuse by those who most need the money.".
Many people want the funding bad enough to keep interacting with unpleasant
people and tolerate the abuse and hence ensure it continues.... they do have
at least the choice to walk away, same as men, or better yet bring it to
public awareness. Yet many choose to take the money and then complain - at
that point they have no right to complain, because they have actively
perpetuated the cycle of abuse in exchange for money and helped the abuser
grow a little more powerful.

You can't take the bad guys money, knowing full well what it cost you AND
complain about it.

------
ralusek
"Male founders have to run this emasculating gauntlet too, except that they
can’t blame gender discrimination for how dirty they feel at the end of the
day."

This is something I think about a lot. I am white & I am male, so my race and
gender are naturally things that I don't think of very often (and I understand
that constitutes a level of privilege). An exercise that I like to do
sometimes is just imagine the situation I'm experiencing as if I was female,
or as if I was black. If I'm in a meeting and everyone ignores what I'm
saying, as a white male, there is no voice in the back of my head saying "it's
because I'm female." If I don't get a job, or the interviewer was
condescending, there is no voice in my head saying "it's because I'm black."
So I entertain these ideas every once in a while, and it's actually amazing
how many misfortunes I can quickly associate to being black or being female,
that had I actually been black or female I would have ABSOLUTELY attributed to
those features.

What makes this interesting is that my point isn't to say that a female or
person of color won't actually have a different experience, and face real
instances of racism and sexism...because they absolutely will. The thing that
I DO find interesting is that they basically have no "control" experience by
which to measure their victimhood. Once you've taken on the role of a victim,
any number of injustices that are just part of human nature can be attributed
to whatever you perceive as the source. The end result is a major
overestimation of remaining institutional injustices, in my opinion, and the
constant reinforcement of this victimhood status is largely responsible for
continuing to plant this voice in the head of individuals that is constantly
asking "am I being treated this way because I'm ________."

The inverse is obviously true in that a white male is very likely to
underestimate the injustices encountered by a black person or a female, but I
find this to be much less interesting. The reason being that no person is very
aware of the injustices we DON'T face, we are acutely aware of the injustices
that we DO face. If a black man experiences a 15% increase in injustices vs a
white man, the white man is likely underestimate the impact of those of the
black man. The black man, however, can rightfully attribute those extra 15% to
the fact that he his black, but there is no clear differentiator between those
that were truly racial in nature vs those that would have been encountered
regardless of race.

~~~
burkaman
> Once you've taken on the role of a victim, any number of injustices that are
> just part of human nature can be attributed to whatever you perceive as the
> source.

Why do you think this is happening? When a woman is ignored in a meeting, she
doesn't think "it's because I'm a woman". She thinks "every single day people
make jokes about me sleeping my way to the top, they try to hit on me while
I'm doing my job, they criticize my outfit even though they've worn the same
suit every day for five years straight, they refuse to meet with me alone, why
would this meeting be any different?"

Next time something bad happens to you, don't just imagine being female or
black in that moment. Imagine if you've been female or black for your whole
life, and have direct daily evidence of people not respecting you.

~~~
daenz
Except people can be generally shitty to you for most of your life regardless
of your race or gender or any other label, so one more experience of a person
being shitty isn't evidence of any of those things. It's what the parent post
meant about "control experiences." There's no accurate baseline to judge true
prejudice vs general terribleness, because it's all being viewed through the
lens of oppression. From people who play the race or gender card, I cannot
recall ever reading about them ever blaming any experience on people just
being baseline terrible, even though "privileged" people experience that
baseline terribleness every day, but have nothing politically correct to blame
it on (speaking for myself, nor would I want to blame it on anything besides
human nature).

~~~
qb45
> Except people can be generally shitty to you for most of your life
> regardless of your race or gender or any other label

There is even more to it: people can be just randomly shitty to you and use
your gender to carry out the shittiness simply because you react to it. Female
programmer: you'll never be a real programmer, male programmer: you'll never
be a real man. The thing that matters is _your_ personal insecurity, not the
attacker's bias against any gender.

Add the fact that some people are really allergic to others complaining about
being oppressed for no discernible reason and you are on a straight way to
some very unpleasant life experience.

------
chasing
Here's the deal:

People looking for investments in their businesses are not panhandlers. They
are not begging. They do not deserve to have any abuse tossed their way. They
are people working in a business environment trying to create a mutually-
beneficial arrangement. They are professionals, as are their investors.

> The Times describes some founders who put up with unwanted sexual advances
> because they were desperate to raise money for their startups. There’s an
> old-fashioned word for what these ladies are doing that I shan’t repeat
> here.

This is wildly offensive and just stupid beyond all belief. A woman who has a
start-up she's trying to raise money for is a WHORE if she puts up with
unwanted sexual advances from investors? Or is Elaine Ou saying that a woman
who has a start-up is a WHORE because women who go "begging" for money deserve
to be treated like sex objects?

Am I misreading that? I must be. Please help.

~~~
bsder
> A woman who has a start-up she's trying to raise money for is a WHORE if she
> puts up with unwanted sexual advances from investors?

She is saying that if you put up with this kind of behavior rather than
cutting it off, you are part of the problem.

To be fair, this goes for men, too. I have had the "joy" of turning down
funding because the person involved was such a jackass. Fortunately, he wasn't
offering a huge sum of money.

Add another zero, and my partner and I would probably have been in a major
argument. And two zeros and I probably would have swallowed my pride. I
acknowledge that I can be bought--I just hope my price is high enough to make
it worth it.

I really don't envy women in this environment. Lots of people running VC funds
_really_ like to throw the power imbalance around even towards men. Adding
sexual dynamics to the mix has to be ferociously toxic--think about the abuse
of Hooter's waitresses and then dial the restraint to zero.

------
glangdale
It's nice that she decides to call women who didn't report unwanted sexual
advances "prostitutes" without having the guts to actually say that for the
record.

------
GuiA
This post is pure victim blaming that adds nothing of substance to the
conversation ( _" The Times describes some founders who put up with unwanted
sexual advances"_... clearly the people who have come forward precisely DO NOT
put up with the unwanted sexual advances?!?!?!?!). The author should perhaps
realize that they are privileged to have never experienced the distresses many
have reported, instead of smugly dismissing it with an argument that amounts
to "well I'm old and I see no problems here" (EDIT: never mind, turns out the
author was born in 1982, not worked in the valley since 1982, which makes her
argument just "I'm a random person and I see no problems here", even less
forgivable).

I have a very hard time understanding what kind of mind, when given the choice
to support rich powerful people who abuse their power or women who just would
like to get their work done and build a career in a professional environment,
chooses to believe and stick by the former.

Given that this is on the front page already I expect my post to be heavily
disagreed with, but at least people who have experienced
discrimination/harassment can see that not all of the HN users think it's
their fault.

------
d--b
She says "it's not that bad" and then goes on to explain that abusive behavior
happens because of the capital raising dynamics.

So in fact the abuse is happening...

It's understandable for a woman to come out and say "look it's not that bad",
because it's true that in a majority of cases, women in tech are treated fine
and the media shouldn't make the tech environment look like it's a giant
college dorm.

But, at the same time, it is true that some pockets of college dorm culture
still exist. And because the tech culture is so homogenous (geeky male college
grads) and isolated, extreme and abusive behavior towards those outside the
culture arise more easily.

Media attention is necessary so that the people who evolve in that culture day
in day out can have a reality check.

------
ryandamm
The title misrepresents the universality of the author's perspective.

More plainly: this is HN clickbait. Ignore, please, read on at your peril.

------
greggman
Random Non sequitur: I love Black Mirror but for the most part it concentrates
on possible negative consequences of future tech. Episode S01E03 in particular
concentrated on the possible negative consequences of having always on eye
based video cameras that record your life 24/7 (or at least while your eyes
are open). That reality doesn't seem too far away. 5 to 15 years? Maybe not
implanted eyes by then but some fashionable version of Snapchat Spectacles.

If that world ever comes to pass what would be the positive consequences if
any. Would it solve most sexual harassment issues since in that world most
sexual harassment would be recorded? How often would it be clear sexual
harassment vs individual interpretation?

While on the topic of individual interpretation you might find this season of
The Heart interesting.

[http://www.theheartradio.org/no-episodes/](http://www.theheartradio.org/no-
episodes/)

------
naiveattack
This discussion should be about empowering women.

Not about painting people who've made mistakes with a brush. Not about placing
blame.

If a friend / family member of yours, a woman you cared about, was in a
situation where she was being harassed by someone with a cheque in his hand,
what would you want her to do?

------
propter_hoc
Ah yes, I remember this person. She started an unlicensed Bitcoin-based
derivatives exchange where the public could bet on the success of startups,
and was fined and shut down by the SEC (not before posting an ill-advised rant
first: [https://archive.is/DOVJZ](https://archive.is/DOVJZ)).

Previous HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642186)

Edit: I appreciate the questions of the relevance of this fact. My perspective
was that Ms. Ou appears to consider Silicon Valley / the startup world a place
where the usual rules do not, or perhaps should not apply. I should have been
more explicit about this in my original post.

~~~
rosser
_Ad hominem_ much?

EDIT: Particularly ironic, given your username.

~~~
savanaly
Ad hominem? That's an awesome thing to have on one's resume.

------
FussyZeus
How did this make front page of HN? This adds literally nothing to the
discussion apart from rehashing arguments that were old hat in 2008, by an
author who openly admits they are part of the privileged group largely
responsible for the problem, complete with an oh so classy “well I can’t SAY
it, but you know what I mean” as if sideways implying garbage opinions is
somehow morally superior to having garbage opinions.

Is this satire?

~~~
nextlevelwizard
Maybe people are getting sick and tired of this constant bashing of
"privileged" men (especially white men) and this is welcomed opinion.

It's good that bad people are exposed, but when the opinion starts to shift
more and more towards grouping all "privileged" people in same group (like you
are doing in this very post) it is only creating a bigger problem by making
gender and race the primary thing that defines a person instead of their
character.

~~~
FussyZeus
The idea that nationalism will save industry is a welcome opinion in rural
America right now (speaking as a white male in rural America) but a welcome
opinion does not equal (and in fact, rarely does equal) a CORRECT idea. White
men need to not take this shit personally which believe me, I understand is
_incredibly_ hard to do but the fact is that people like me were born into a
system designed _by_ people like me, _for_ people like me, and even though
I've had my share of rough times, I can't then go and claim that racism and
sexism are over because I overcame them and I've seen women do the same thing.

Just because one room is saved does not mean the rest of the house is
therefore no longer on fire and we can all go home. There is still work to do,
and "good enough" for 51% of the population, is just not good enough.

Now if you want to make the case that an opinion or idea that makes you _feel
good_ is inherently as legitimate as one backed by numerous anecdotal
accounts, solid demographic data, and downward trends in the industry then
you're free to die on that hill, but I will not be doing so.

