People aren't archetypes or labels; that's too black & white, un-nuanced thinking. Psychological and sociological reseach proved most people act however they're expected to within a given power dynamic circumstance, except for a few outliers which will go their own way, for anti- or pro-community.

This wrong "bad apples" analogy as it applies to police or genocide perpetrators also is dangerous because it's simply untrue. Well meaning people will commit atrocities if directed to by a superior authority figure; the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram experiments underscore this.

Instead, there must be social and business pressures brought to bear to prevent emboldened behavior with accountability. If there is boundaryless affluenza anarchy, spoiled brats will overtly behave however they wish. If there are consequences, the behavior will be reduced and become covert. There must be constant vigilance on the part of those stakeholders to enforce consistent accountability for professional/personal behavior.

Yes. It is a slow, slow decline into the kind of behavior described in the article that could have been stopped or mitigated at any point along the way but wasn't. Not necessarily in terms of how someone is deep down, but in terms of their understanding of how they can/should interact with people around them.

Rather than refuse to understand how someone could have gotten there, let's try to understand the assumptions they made along the way. Then rather than pretending we're unaffected by the culture around us, let's see if we share some of those assumptions. If we want to fix things rather than be blindsided by them, these are at least the first steps.

> Instead, there must be social and business pressures brought to bear to prevent emboldened behavior with accountability.

Some of the actions described in the article are crimes - these assholes should be prosecuted.

People must be responsible for their actions, even if an environment influenced their decisions. Yes, to fix the issue, there needs to be larger societal change. But individual perpetrators need punishment as well.

There are two reasons for this. First, punishment of the "bad apples" deters others in the future, and brings about the larger societal change. Second, as a basic principal of a free society, people must be held accountable for their actions.

some people are assholes, very few but some

What Milgram and Stanford experiments showed: ordinary people might do something evil if ordered by a person.

What this article is about: rich white men are sexist.

I fail to see the connection.

Sorry but no. The two experiments you cite are ancient and riddled with holes, they are red flags for any psychologist worth their salt. The people described in this article are sexist assholes, plain and simple. You can argue all about how the environment they grew up in made them that way, but not that that's not what they are.

Milgram's experiment has been replicated several time, even in several cultures. Good to know social psychology researchers are not "worth their salt"

And yeah, actually, your culture and socialization is a big part of what you are. You can blame them, but refusing to try and understand how they became assholes means nothing will change.

>Nope. These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes.

To be fair, even an asshole may show some restraint when they have a clear understanding of consequences. Thinking their money buys them immunity from consequence is an enabler as they don't believe they have the slightest need for this kind of rational self-interest.

You are both right, an asshole is an asshole as you suggest, but even so, assholes are worse when they think they won't face consequences as the poster your replied to implied.

I think it's important to distinguish that these aren't people who are necessarily assholes to everyone. They have plenty of friends and acquaintances who would never believe they'd do something like this. And others who upon hearing it, would've assumed it was a harmless misunderstanding.

I think one of the larger problems that society is struggling with is the idea that two different people can be in very similar proximity, interact with the same people and yet one can have to suffer through radically different (and horrible) treatment.

The reason I believe this is so difficult, is the other person legitimately think "I know that person, I know that place, I've gone through that and I've never seen anything remotely close to that." And reasonably conclude that it didn't happen. It's difficult to accept that there is an entire world that they don't ever experience.

But we all need a find a way to account for this, because too many people go through beimg mistreated and their concerns are simply dismissed.

Exactly. This article helped me understand the whole situation a bit better: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...

How does their niceness in other situations matter?

It matters because it creates a situation where one set of people have an awful experience with someone, and another set all say "well, in my experience he's perfectly nice and would certainly never do something like that..."

I suppose the fact that they are assholes in one situation but behave respectably in another is what makes this discrimination? If they were assholes to everyone then....

I think it is an interesting thing I see with successful people that they often attribute too much of there success to their personalities and too little to luck and circumstances. This makes them believe their own bullshit about how great they are, and how bad other people are.

Because the people who have only witnessed them being "nice" are less likely to hold them accountable when hearing of their terrible behavior with others.

It proves that "being able to get away with it" is significant factor.

Intellectual consistency would require acknowledging the systematic repression of women in western history (not being able to vote, etc), and thus, the effects of what is still a patriarchial culture as often as not.

In other words, your argument attempts to ignore simple historical facts which you can verify easily on Wikipedia.

Where did I ignore that? I called their behavior reprehensible. I'm just saying that it's unlikely the behavior exists in a vacuum and that things are never as black and white as they're made out to be.

Historical oppression doesn't justify questionable behavior. I've seen many instances where women have "dated up" to help their careers. I even saw one instance where a female director dated the CTO and later the CFO to have someone to support her coke habit. Just calling out the men will never truly fix the problem. We need to be giving a consistent message to both sexes. These types of relationships (and expectations of relationships) are not acceptable under any circumstances. Because if it's wrong for men to pressure women but it's okay for women to pursue those men, then there can always be the hope in the back of the man's mind that maybe it's possible.

So if, say, 1,000 men got completely unsolicited propositions, groping, etc. and one man "dated up" at a company with women in high leadership positions, would you argue that those problems are exactly equally important and exactly equally serious and make sure to post comments about how incredibly important it is to ensure some balanced coverage and make sure everyone knows that it's not just solely a one-sided issue? Would you make sure to imply that anyone who focused on the much more common case was "justifying questionable behavior"? And try to drag the topic away from the common case?

Do you also do this in discussions of any other topic whatsoever? Whenever someone posts something about HTTP, do you make sure to post comments about Gopher and present it as being just as important?

I'm not trying to say they're equal problems. I'm trying to say that the one problem contributes to the other. In your example, the one man who dated up creates that possibility in the mind of the groper in those other 1,000 incidents. It's like the 1 super lotto winner among the millions who bought tickets. The event doesn't have to be likely for people to think that they might get lucky...people generally suck at estimating risk/reward. If there are zero winners, no one buys tickets, but since someone wins, millions play.

In the same way, if those advances were never successful, these men would quickly get the message and stop playing. But that doesn't seem to be the case since it's still happening way too frequently. If we want to stop this problem, we need to figure out how to get the message through that even in the cases where the advances were welcomed, they still did something wrong. And that requires more than just laying into those unfortunate few that are unlucky enough to do this kind of thing to women brave enough to come forward. It will require calling out those instances where the advances were welcomed.

This is a pretty good argument, or way of looking at it, which I almost dismissed simply because of the hostile tone you state it.

In particular, the last paragraph you could have done without. These discussions already get heated enough, IMO.

I disagree. It's quite possible the behavior was completely unsolicited and uninvited. Things are sometimes exactly as wrong as they appear to be. To assume otherwise, with no evidence other than your own anecdotal experience, is... well, pretty much sexist!

This article, and this conversation is about one pathology. You bring up a different one and say "we should treat them equally!" - that's not very different from the "all lives matter" bullshit. Sexism and discrimination of women in tech industry is a massive problem. What you described probably exists in some cases, but is not a) related to the problem at hand and b) orders of magnitude less profound. By bringing it up here and trying to tie those two together you're devaluating the severity of the problem at hand in the same way as if you went to an article about rape and started talking about those promiscous people who like sex.

Those pathetic douchebags were not "primed" by any experiences with women "dating up". They were primed, trained, protected and covered up by the shitty patriarchal society we live in. And it's worth tackling that problem without attempting to dilute it in "maybe she wanted it" sauce.

The other pathology is relevant because it contributes to the first one. It's not about equal exposure for the sake of equality, but relevant to understanding how shit works and how to deal with it.

No, it really doesn’t. The two have nothing to do with each other. One is quite rampant, while the other is quite rare.

Trying to see it from a cultural perspective, how common is it that female character "dates up" in books, TV and movies (and in particular, those targeting a female audience)?

Thinking back at the show Grey's Anatomy, ABC's highest-rated drama show, got a female lead, and was among the top 10 shows in the US. A recent joke the character made was that all of them married their bosses. While fictional, culture impacts perception regarding behavior and in turns causes behavior.

Everyone keeps mistaking my meaning. I'm not trying to excuse the behavior or say that it's okay. I've repeatedly condemned it. But we need to decide what we want as a result of bringing this kind of behavior out into the open. Do we want to punish and ostracize the guilty or do we want to minimize the occurrence of this behavior going forward? If it's the former, then by all means get out your pitchforks and we can condemn these men as fundamentally flawed human beings and women can continue to be subjected to this BS. But if it's the latter, then we really need to approach it from a more empathetic position. We need to understand the thought processes of these men to understand why they thought the behavior was in any way acceptable.

I see a lot of the vilification in these threads, but very little effort towards trying to understand. Chalking it up to "patriarchal society" may be fine from the standpoint of PC talking points, but it is intellectually lazy and just makes the situation more adversarial rather than one where we can come together and figure out the best ways to avoid this happening in the future. We want to make sure that the men who are in a position to abuse women like this learn why the behavior is wrong and not the steps to avoid (sms/fb/etc messages) getting caught.

This is why both pathologies are relevant. I'm not trying to blame the women who try to use their sexuality to their advantage or even those that engage in consensual relationships with men in a position of power. But because those instances exist and these men have likely witnessed them personally, even if they're rare, they create the possibility in the minds of these men. It's an exploration of the thought process that led them to act in this way. Perhaps it's not what these men were thinking...it's just my projection, but no one has presented any argument or any other substantive possibility. They've just, like you, overreacted and sought to distort what I was trying to say because it didn't match the outrage and need for vengeance that they feel.

> Do we want to punish and ostracize the guilty

Yup, that one.

> or do we want to minimize the occurrence of this behavior going forward?

False equivalence. I would imagine if VCs and investors get the message that if they hit on women they'll be fired, they'll stop doing it.

> I'm not trying to blame the women who try to use their sexuality to their advantage or even those that engage in consensual relationships with men in a position of power. But because those instances exist and these men have likely witnessed them personally, even if they're rare, they create the possibility in the minds of these men.

Okay, so to combat this "pathology", we'll say, "If you engage sexually with someone who approached you in a professional context, consensually or otherwise, you're fired". Seems easy enough, and that takes care of the problem.

> I would imagine if VCs and investors get the message that if they hit on women they'll be fired, they'll stop doing it.

You imagine wrong. Instead, they'll learn how to do it without getting caught. Lesson one comes from these incidents. Don't leave an electronic or paper trail. It's much less likely these women would have come forward if they hadn't had electronic records of chat sessions to back up their assertions.

If you only treat the symptoms of the problem, it will keep returning in different forms. You need to address the root of the problem and your over-simplified view of the issue will never allow you to do that.

In theory, there could be an intelligent psychological model that analyzes a male VC's brain and provides thoughtful suggestions to them to dissuade them from this behavior right before it occurs. While that's a nice thought, it's incredibly unrealistic.

The far more practical approach is to catch the bad guys over and over again, make examples of them and mete out punishment. That's how criminal deterrence works in every other field. No reason to make an exception here.

> Yup, that one.

So you're advocating for zero tolerence.

>> But because those instances exist and these men have likely witnessed them personally, even if they're rare, they create the possibility in the minds of these men

There was never any suggestion that any of the men in the article observed some woman "dating up" and as a consequence of that felt justified to grope or send inappropriate messages to the women in the article.

The men in the article themselves did not even try to portray their alleged actions as justifiable, or excuseable by association with any other past behaviour. They either admitted their behaviour was wrong or denied they ever behaved in this manner.

And yet, here you are relating a story about a woman you once saw "dating up" to try and explain those men's behaviour as something else than a simple mistake that should not be repeated.

How is this useful, exactly? In what way does it contribute, besides changing the subject and trying to shift the blame on the people who, in the article, were reportedly subjected to undeniably inappropriate behaviour?

> Everyone keeps mistaking my meaning.

This should tell you to stop and think about what you’re really saying.

No it shouldn't. What he is saying is just fine if people would take the time to actually read it.

It's not even that people are disagreeing, it's that they see a trigger word and stop reading, then launch into a straw man attack. I see that frequently in these "social justice" threads.

>> But because those instances exist and these men have likely witnessed them personally, even if they're rare, they create the possibility in the minds of these men

Btw, this does not compute. Those instances are "rare" but those men have "likely" witnessed them? When something is rare, most are unlikely to witness it.

Welcome to the law of large numbers. Winning the lottery is a rare event--more than one in a million. A hard drive failure is a rare event--most drives can have trillions of successful reads and writes before they fail. Yet we've all seen the people holding up those oversized checks and who among us has never had a hard drive fail on us?

These guys see hundreds of pitches. There's hundreds of VCs in the valley. Something can be rare--less than one in a hundred and still be likely. Rare for a single instance can be likely and expected across a large number of instances.

There's a bit of confusion here with "the law of large numbers". People do win the lottery, but because it's very rare, only very few people do so. Hard drives may fail if they remain in use over a very long time, but only a few drives will remain so.

Accordingly, the "law of large numbers" as you report it, means that either only a handful of those hundreds of VCs in SV have witnessed inappropriate pitch behaviour, or this inappropriate pitch behaviour is not rare.

Regardless of the exact quantities, it remains true that an event is either unlikely to be witnessed, or it is not rare. That an event will be witnessed even though it is rare doesn't mean that it will be witnessed often.

The law of large numbers doesn't say that rare things happen often, is what I'm saying. Because that would be an oxymoron, not a paradox (which that "law" is meant to illustrate).

> Intellectual consistency would require acknowledging the systematic repression of women in western history (not being able to vote, etc), and thus, the effects of what is still a patriarchial culture as often as not.

Actually I'd say that dismissing a reasonable point about interactions between individual people using a narrow interpretation of history to establish a non-standard epistemology is the greater intellectual mistake.

In other words, that women couldn't vote 100 years ago says absolutely nothing about whether a venture capitalist abused his relationship with a client or whether a potential client tried to use sexuality for a competitive advantage.

i'm sorry, but this response is so meaningless it's basically just 'fuck you'. you could say it in response to absolutely anything regarding women.

I was always wondering why it is not appropriate to watch the skirt of a woman when I find it nice. Do not get me wrong, I come from a family of feminists, happily married with kids.

But I am also pragmatic : when I wear a nice costume, it is too show off. When going outside, I know I will be surrounded by people who will watch me.

If I wear a flamboyant shirt, I cannot be upset that people are watching me. I find this normal. I will not find normal someone complaining or even getting in contact with me because of that (though, why not?) but watching, even intensely, is OK. If I do not want to be seen I wear jeans and a blue t-shirt.

This is why I do not agree (including with my wife and mother) that women who wear nice, revealing things do this "for themselves". They do not. Le any other animal, we show how good we are. But we are evolved animals and this do not mean "take me", something people (mostly men) forget.

In short : watching someone who decided to exhibit is absolutely fine. Anything else is crossing the line.

Perhaps their intention is to look attractive to someone they know, and you’re not part of the intended audience. That doesn’t mean you can’t look, but watching “intensely” is likely to make some people very uncomfortable and you should be respectful enough to not do it if you’re not sure it’s welcome.

If she touch his junk or send him text invitation for sex, then absolutely we should call it harassment and call that out.

I wouldn't call it harassment if the CxO or investor in question desires such behavior.

Men need to work hard to jail those assholes, here's why: They are the reason why men are described as generally threatening, discrediting and imposing huge constraints in advance on all men who show proper social restraint and respect for women.

While I get and understand your sentiment, the problem is that being an asshole and a creep isn't illegal in itself. If some male VC groped a female founder in the course of trying to set up a funding deal, then sure, press charges and make it right, but texting a founder "Why are you still with your boyfriend/partner/girlfriend? We should go out for drinks, I'm so much better than him" is just wrong, but not criminal.

As much as I would like to see punishment for clearly abusive and shitty behavior like this article describes, 90% of the time it comes down to character profiles as this thread explains. Even if it found its way into court, the defense would almost certainly try to be framed as a misunderstanding. Instead of punishing and potentially ruining lives for what is sounding like thought-crime, lets just get men off the pedestal and put them on the same goddamned level as women. A woman shouldn't have to defend her reputation for not being slutty if she gets groped, assaulted or raped, and more importantly shouldn't have to fear retaliation for accusing someone of being not just an asshole, but a dangerous asshole.

Men aren't going to be on the front line of this for the same reason white people aren't on the front line of combating racism [0]: even if we don't do awful things one side effect of which is to reinforce privilege, we still benefit from that privilege. A woman seeking funding has to worry about all the things a man seeking funding has to worry about, plus she has to deal with being pressured into sex. That's not great for society, but it is an advantage for men.

[0] as a white man, it is my privilege to make sweeping statements about whites and men b^)

I wonder how many innocent people we'll end up condemning with this posture. It's not like history lacks any examples that demonstrates that this is exactly what happens when you get tough and prosecutorial. You're pretty much sanctioning a pitchfork and torch attitude and that evolves into mobs that are often wrong.

These days it feels like we've learn nothing from stories like the Scarlet Letter that describe a time from our history where we treated women how you now propose that we treat men. Neither gender deserves this.

I wonder how many innocent people we've already condemned with this attitude.

> You're pretty much sanctioning a pitchfork and torch attitude and that evolves into mobs that are often wrong.

What you are seeing is the decline of rational and logical thinking. No one wants to think critically anymore, because smart phones reduce available cognitive resources.

So you end up in situations where an inflammatory, poorly researched article emotionally hijacks the brain of a person who would have normally been capable of rational thinking.

I'm not saying that's the case here, but there are numerous cases where outrage porn has ruined the lives of innocent people.

Then why does their behavior disproportionately affect women, who have less power to complain about their behavior? If this were entirely an aspect of their character or personality they'd be an asshole to everyone equally, not opportunistically take advantage of people who have less ability to stop them.

> they'd be an asshole to everyone equally

I think they often are. But you don't hear about it, because almost no one cares about males at the bottom of the social ladder. At the bottom, men are "valued" (for a lack of a better word) even less than women.

Or perhaps being an asshole to someone in the mailroom because you didn't like the way round a letter was put on your table is not in the same scale of things as trying to coerce someone to have sex with you

>Then why does their behavior disproportionately affect women

I'm sure they use their positions of power in many different ways that affect both men and women, but their sexual advances obviously target women because most of them are straight.

Part of poor character is picking on people from a position of power, when they have something you want. Part of poor character is putting your urges ahead of your empathy.

Mostly due to the halo effect.

Generally, when guys get screwed over by a terrible VCs it's "well they're a terrible vc ... you know them." But when it's by women "they crossed this boundry? I'm shocked!"

By your definition of "asshole", are openly bigoted people not assholes because they're not "an asshole to everyone equally"?

But that's not the definition that was given:

> These people are assholes because they know they can get away with it.

So yes, openly bigoted people are assholes. But if they knew their bigotry wouldn't fly, they would at least not be open about it and not be assholes to people.

>women, who have less power to complain about their behavior

The exact opposite is true. Almost nobody would take a man who complains about sexual harassment seriously. Just look at the night and day difference in response to teacher student abuse when the student is a guy or a girl.

I do not understand what world people live in where constant special concern is twisted into a lack of it. I mean, I do, in so far as it's just benevolent sexism masquerading as equality, but I can't wrap my head around those people considering themselves rational.

The lack of concern is evidenced by nothing actually being done about it.

They act that way because the other person is in a vulnerable position. Most of them will shrink pretty fast when confronted by someone who is not. So they are "selective assholes" so to speak.

This works everywhere there is a social hierarchy, starting from extended families in tighter-knit societies.

The problem is that this sort of hierarchy rewards two abilitys- sliming and kicking - and (if you are good at that) upholding and extending hierarchys.

>These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes. Never attribute to rational decision making what can be attributed to rotten character.

This kind of thinking is even worse than what they did, because it crystalizes them into some of their decisions and deprives them of being human.

While their acts are bullying, harassment, etc., this characterization is not that different to labelling a race inferior (or attributing some other characteristic as an unshakeable part of it). Only instead of a race it does that to a person (or a number of persons) based on past behavior.

People change, people can behave like assholes in one instance and be sweet and caring in another, and tons of other distinctions.

In the end, this type of thinking is what condemns those convicted in the US to inhuman treatment -- the belief that they are incorrigible because of something they did, and as thus deserve only hell.

Mister Rogers says:

  But the very same people who are good sometimes
  Are the very same people who are bad sometimes.

High functioning sociopaths. A person can be an asshole and not know it. A sociopath knows they're not acting within acceptable social norms and hides it. These investors are sociopaths. An asshole will make a comment and not deny it. A sociopath will try to twist it into a seemingly logical action ie "I was just trying to get rid of her because I didn't like her idea." By that logic who knows how many Jehovah's witnesses this person groped and/or fucked.

>High functioning sociopaths.

That's actually a medical/psychiatric diagnosis. I don't really think it applies here (or maybe it does, I don't know, I only know that you can't just throw that casually at run-of-the mill creeps).

I believe OP was referring to the studied fact that leaders and business moguls tend to exhibit many more of the sociopathic check points than the ordinary person.

Right, you might call these people manipulative, but on a level where they can camouflage their behavior.

Bill Cosby for instance could possibly be considered one. His also seems more methodical. What's worse: 60 possible rapes spanning decades or 60 possible rapes spanning a year?

> By that logic who knows how many Jehovah's witnesses this person groped and/or fucked.

I'd love to know what you mean here, because I can't see how this follows anything.

To get rid of them. Me, I start going on about the benefits of trepanning, and invite them out to the workshop ;)

I see :).

Life pro tip: just say them in a calm, explicit and direct manner that you are not interested in receiving their visits and information from them. They respect that. They might show up after a year or so, just to check out if this is the same family living under the number.

They're pretty organised and respectful in what they do, so polite and direct works best.

I prefer to open a door in leather pants with no shirt and say "Ah yes, did you bring me the virgins?"

You have never seen slow walkers move that fast from the building.

Seriously, yes. And indeed, I've sometimes enjoyed talking with them.

I mean... rotten characters can make rational decisions, to achieve their rotten ends.