

VC Pavel Curda Admits He Pestered Woman Entrepreneur For Sex In “Deal” Email - berkeleyjess
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/european-investor-admits-he-pestered-woman-entrepreneur-for-sex-in-deal-email/

======
kingnight
"I am ready to apologise again in person with a big bouquet of flowers"[1]

How patronizing.

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/voice/2014/08/20/sexual-harrassment-
te...](http://thenextweb.com/voice/2014/08/20/sexual-harrassment-tech-
industry/)

~~~
ceejayoz
Not just patronizing, but continuation of the shitty, harassing behaviour that
got him in trouble. Giving flowers is easily read as a romantic gesture.

~~~
GuiA
Well, to me it's fairly clear that this guy probably has a very misogynistic
view of the world in general, and that he genuinely doesn't have the self-
awareness to realize how inappropriate and douchey his behavior is (I guess
anyone with that sort of behavior doesn't have that self awareness).

The problem is that when "we" call him and out and shame him, he'll play the
apology game because he's smart enough to realize that that's what you should
do - but his underlying thought patterns and behaviors will remain the same.

So, what do we do/what can be done for people like this, who have lived for
several decades with their way of thinking, to actually shift their
perspective and make them be respectful towards women/minorities/etc. beyond
just mere PR reasons? (or, to state the same problem in different words, how
do I make my 70 year old uncle Mitch respect black & gay people "for real"?)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> or, to state the same problem in different words, how do I make my 70 year
> old uncle Mitch respect black & gay people "for real"?

You can't. General sentiment changes over time as people "age out" of society
and those with other beliefs enter the majority. See: Gay marriage tolerance,
recreational drug tolerance, etc.

------
jxf
While the content of the e-mail is of course noxious and appalling, what's
really awful is the sense of entitlement exuded by this. It isn't just an
obnoxious proposition: it's an attempt at coercion. "I won't leave until you
sleep with me" isn't usually put so clearly by harrassers, but there you have
it.

> Following that story, Curda – who is divorced – yesterday Tweeted that his
> email had been “hacked”.

Isn't "I've been hacked!" becoming a pretty trite excuse these days for when
one is caught in an embarrassing situation involving e-mail, technology, etc.?
It almost invariably turns out to be a fairly bald lie. [0]

[0]
[http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55877.html](http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/55877.html)

------
was_hellbanned
This reminds me of a Reddit post from yesterday:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/2dyi9j/look...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/2dyi9j/look_ill_be_completely_honest_with_you_i_want_to/)

In particular, the bit about the persistent apologies. From the Reddit link:

 _He 's distanced himself from the situation - his nauseating apology texts
are dripping with the clueless narcissism that deeply engrained chauvinism is
made of: "I know you said not to contact you anymore but I have to apologize
so I can get over this... This has turned out almost the exact opposite as I
thought it would [sic] and has caused me inexplainable [sic] discomfort .... I
just have to come out and say it, I like you."_

Also, some of the stories in the comments had similar elements, like:

 _This exact thing happened to my current gf after she was raped. She just
wanted to bury it and he kept pushing his guilt on her for about a year
sporadically begging for forgiveness and for her to help him convince himself
it wasn 't actually rape._

The initial behavior is bad enough, but the continued demand for interaction
and forgiveness is entitled and pathetic.

Incidentally, I'm curious as to why I saw this link on the front page of HN
from my phone, but when I jumped on the desktop to comment, I was unable to
locate it anywhere on at least the first four pages of HN. Now it seems to be
back on the second page.

~~~
GuiA
> Incidentally, I'm curious as to why I saw this link on the front page of HN
> from my phone, but when I jumped on the desktop to comment, I was unable to
> locate it anywhere on at least the first four pages of HN. Now it seems to
> be back on the second page.

Yeah, that's happened to me very consistently over the past few months. I'll
see a link on my phone in the first 10 positions, switch to my desktop (where
I'm logged in) to comment on it, and it has just disappeared from the front
page.

Given the frequency at which I observe this, I suspect the mods do this (maybe
programmatically, maybe not) with articles that are likely to be
"controversial".

~~~
dang
> I suspect the mods do this (maybe programmatically, maybe not) with articles
> that are likely to be "controversial"

We do this (no need to suspect—it's not a secret) but the greater effect comes
from user flagging.

Why do we do this? Because hot controversies automatically get upvotes due to
being hot and controversial. If there were no countervailing factor, HN's
front page would consist of those, plus celebrity stories, trends of the
moment, and the like.

The site's mandate is for stories that are intellectually interesting. That's
far from the most powerful kind of interesting, so it needs to be protected
from the other kinds.

Moderators doing this is not a perfect solution or even a good one, but it
works, and has worked this way for years. We're definitely interested in
finding a better solution long-term, though. In the meantime, I think most
(though not all) of the users flagging stories are doing so responsibly and
with the mandate of the site in mind.

------
GuiA
_" Hey <initial>. I will not leave <city> without having sex with you. Deal?”_

Aw, poor thing, he doesn't even have the mental bandwidth to use different
copy for his messages :( Maybe someone can start a company to generate unique
sounding sexual harassment messages? I predict a $10M acquisition.

~~~
tomp
The bigger question is how did he manage to send (1) 2 messages with
practically identical content, (2) one via email, another via text, so he
probably retyped the second one, (3) using the correct initials for each
woman, and (4) without any spelling mistakes, _while he was completely drunk_
(according to his own testimony. Something stinks here.

~~~
potatolicious
Considering he tried to lie about it by claiming he got hacked, I wouldn't put
a huge amount of stock in whatever he's saying now.

------
ChuckMcM
Sad of course, Damaging to Pavel no doubt, but was there any learning? This I
don't know. Will this stop Pavel the next time he drinks too much with an
attractive entrepreneur? Will it let Gesche simply cut off contact with folks
like Pavel in the future without a second thought?

In the ideal outcome people who are making misogynistic and inappropriate
comments will get marginalized and their success and influence will fade,
while people who are targets are able to shun such people without hesitation
experience success and acceptance. And thus purge this sort of behavior from
the community.

That will take a while I think.

Given my experience of how long its taken to go from 'business as usual' to
today, about 15 - 25 more years.

~~~
elyrly
Pavel brash nature to send this email out is a number of indication that
previous pursuits has been successful.

