Re:Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley
by burkaman on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @10:49AM
(#14744627)
> if you were to ask them how many grievances they've faced because of their gender, they would probably be nuisanced that you're even asking about it.
The next time you talk to one of these awesome engineers, please actually ask them this question. Maybe I'm misreading your comments, but at no point have you talked about discussing this with someone besides yourself. Don't just rely on your own observations and experiences, talk to people with different ones. I've never encountered a work environment like the one I'm describing either, but I've encountered plenty of women who have.
Obviously this can't be true for literally every woman in every office, but we're both generalizing here. This is true for quite a few people in the US and probably the world. When you read these blog posts where people are talking about actual incidents that are blatantly related to race or gender, do you think they're all lying or something? It's not really debatable that this stuff is incredibly common. And you don't need to rely on the huge number of anecdotal blog posts, there's plenty of statistics too if that's what you prefer. For example: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract
Finally, if none of this convinces you, consider the idea that the appearance of corruption is just as harmful as actual corruption. Even if we pretend that discrimination no longer exists in America, there's clearly still a problem if so many people think discrimination exists and act accordingly. So what do we do about it? Ignoring the problem and telling everyone else to ignore it doesn't seem like it'll work.
The next time you talk to one of these awesome engineers, please actually ask them this question. Maybe I'm misreading your comments, but at no point have you talked about discussing this with someone besides yourself. Don't just rely on your own observations and experiences, talk to people with different ones. I've never encountered a work environment like the one I'm describing either, but I've encountered plenty of women who have.
Obviously this can't be true for literally every woman in every office, but we're both generalizing here. This is true for quite a few people in the US and probably the world. When you read these blog posts where people are talking about actual incidents that are blatantly related to race or gender, do you think they're all lying or something? It's not really debatable that this stuff is incredibly common. And you don't need to rely on the huge number of anecdotal blog posts, there's plenty of statistics too if that's what you prefer. For example: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.abstract
Finally, if none of this convinces you, consider the idea that the appearance of corruption is just as harmful as actual corruption. Even if we pretend that discrimination no longer exists in America, there's clearly still a problem if so many people think discrimination exists and act accordingly. So what do we do about it? Ignoring the problem and telling everyone else to ignore it doesn't seem like it'll work.