Also getting offended by peoples actions, worldviews and literally punishing them for this... destroys humans.
Words do hurt, jokes can be offensive. But there is a line what you will do to retaliate.
You can brush it off and move on with your life and make the mental note, that the guy is an _ss.
Or you can go and punish him through a series of humiliating procedures which will definitely have an impact on his life, his career and possibly destroy him. You do more damage to him, then he did to you.
Is it worth to punish someone for a joke? Because if it is, then you might bring back the death penalty for stealing a can of beans from the grocery store. Or agreeing that people should commit acts of terrorism because someone made a joke about their faith?
The biggest punishment should have been that their line-manager has a private talk with the guy, or sitting down the three of us and find a common ground. Not running to the head of the company and filing for harassment.
And frankly I wouldn't want to work with a person like that. Not because I want to tell rape jokes and not because she is not a man. It's because I don't want to work with someone where I always have to be careful what I say, how I say it and watch my behavior for 24/7 to not become a target for harassment lawsuit.
Being oversensitive can make one into a toxic person as well, not just bad behavior. And because of this issue, people will avoid her, because they will be too afraid to have any kind of connection with her. And who's fault will that be? The men? Why not, it's always the men apparently.
I'm a father of two girls, I want a future with gender equality, but not the one where you force people into behavioral patterns to accommodate the system. Clearly then the system is bad. It's a relationship between the genders, we have to work together. We have to give to be able to take. Sometimes it's ignoring minor things like an inappropriate joke and sometimes is being thoughtful and not say stupid inappropriate jokes.
I hope this clarifies my stand on this matter. In a nutshell: Rape jokes are bad. Harsh punishment for a joke is also bad.
If I say "I'm too white for that" or "my male brain cannot process that many stuff at the same time", am I'm being racist and sexist? No, because I'm just joking about my own stereotype.
If I would want to verbally assault a women, I can do that without ever referring to her gender.
The other hugely important factor is the body language and tone, that completely get lost in the reporting, I can say "I'm going to brutally murder you and hang your corpse up a tree", which sounds like a legit death threat, however, if I say this to you, it depends on how I say it.
So clearly, worrying about what people say without context is backwards.
Reads like a PR boilerplate.
I get that the joke was made in bad taste, but why imply that it trivialized sexual assault? That’s either disingenuous or ignorant.
Apple employee here:
I only want to provide context. None of us want a toxic environment. We, at Apple, pride ourselves on the fact that we are accepting of all backgrounds, nationalities, genders, religions. I, personally, have struggled with ensuring a diverse set of folks on my team or all backgrounds. We love the fact that we're helping to lead the industry with regard to diversity. And "Danielle's" case is unfortunate.
Danielle is of course an alias to protect the original identity. And I sincerely thank Mic for doing so. In an internal chat, someone made a reference to the "Hide Your Kids Hide Your Wife" meme about something technical. But this wasn't the intention of the sender. Danielle, a gay transgender male, explained that this was an inappropriate reference, the offender apologized immediately and said that this comment was not to make fun of rape.
Danielle in this case had a unique set of circumstances that made her especially sensitive to this kind of comment. And we should all be careful about what we say. And I completely agree with her that this kind of content has no place at Apple.
This thread was meant to be forwarded to Tim Cook, but was accidentally sent to a large internal group. This is how it was leaked.
I wish Mic would release the full emails with names redacted so that you all would see what was actually said.
The lesson here is: think about what you're saying. Sexual assault destroys humans.