Comment by voces
4 years ago
Since the pattern is so similar, I now recognize this as a form of harmful #metoo activism.
- Attack entire community, not individuals
- Court of Public Social Justice
- The charges amount to unwanted advances being made during a social interaction where that would be acceptable -- not sexual harassment, nor illegal behavior.
Compare https://medium.com/@kristianlum/statistics-we-have-a-problem...
Make the problem about an entire industry: Holywood, Scala, MIT, Statistics. Garantuee public shaming and punishment for your target, by calling out criticism or disbelief as "victim shaming", people calling for you to lose your job, because they got angry reading a Medium post, not because you've been proven guilty by someone without a bias. Ending up in an apartment with someone in another country, drinking wine, but not remembering how much you drank, but you do remember that he did not drink anything (to play up him taking advantage over you), then crying and feeling upset, because someone makes an advance towards you, instead of feeling flattered and politely declining. Going skinny dipping at night in the sea with a bunch of clumsy rowdy tipsy researchers, then blaming an advance someone makes, on conference culture.
Go to the police, get your day in court, and let justice prevail. Not going to join a mob, because someone made you cry once. Even giving the experience sympathy would needlessly rile me up. I'd like to think about other negative things when interacting with Scala and its community, preferably technical.
Agreed 100%. One of the few levelheaded responses on this thread.
On top of everything you said, which I agree with, I’d also like to see less of these kinds of posts on Hacker News...
All for a "he hugged me", not even anything sexual
>I felt being taken advantage of that he had unprotected sex with me when I was intoxicated.
At least read the article before being dismissive.
Imagine being 20, getting raped, and having randoms on the internet completely invalidate how traumatic it was because they think you're just meming. Like damn and we wonder why women struggle in tech.
If you have a trauma: Work on it with a therapist in private.
Don't write a viral public post about it, ahead of the court case, invite others to comment on it, then blame the women struggle in tech on others who don't agree on the very strong, and damaging, qualifier of rape.
Rape is when you agree to have protected sex, but the man removes the condom sneakily, or the woman punctures the condom. What happened here was consensual sex without a condom, and one party regretting that after the fact (and being unspoken uncomfortable about it during).
Imagine having unprotected two-night stands years back, and suddenly your name is in a widely distributed article, charging you with rape. Like damn, and we wonder in a few years why the overreaction and demonization of the Scala community damaged its growth and inclusion.
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>advance towards you, instead of feeling flattered and politely declining
Do you know what "advance" means? It's old-timey English for aggression as in
"The enemy advanced on the capital".
No that's not how it's used to today but it still typically has very negative connotations. So I think it's rich irony that due to your own (probable) inarticulateness and (probable) bias you think something that could experienced as violence should be flattering.
> Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.
Sex has always had aggressive and domination elements. Some women even request you slap them during.
> because someone makes an advance towards you, instead of feeling flattered and politely declining
Convenient to leave out the rape in the next sentence, and the other rape in the next paragraph:
> I felt being taken advantage of that he had unprotected sex with me when I was intoxicated. Nothing felt right. I remember panicking and crying.
> There was another time that he insisted on having intercourse regardless of me saying I didn’t want to.
Sorry you don't like to think about that.
She talks like a doll lacking any kind of autonomy. It is not "we had sex", but "he had sex with me".
I don't know any woman who does not want to have unprotected sex, but just let it happen like that. Then come back for seconds, even though she is not in the mood.
Are there naive young women who lack self-authority and self-esteem to say no, to an older man who needs those women to get their fix and wants to make up for their unpopular youth? Yes. And that awkward dance of nature takes two to tango. Panicking and crying during or after sex does not a "rape" make (but the definition depends on jurisdiction anyway, and we haven't even let a court in the right jurisdiction look if it qualifies, so I'd like to avoid that term).
Unless you want to claim openly that a named person is now a serial rapist. I'd like to think it takes more than a Medium post for you to do that.
> regardless of me saying I didn’t want to
Why are you making up this story that she couldn't say no? She says she said no.
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