I remember seeing some show about Microsoft and some other company. The other company felt threatened by the encounter, that Microsoft was implying or stating that they would ruin the company. Representatives from Microsoft remembered the meeting very differently. The show dramatized the different perceptions of the meeting based on the different descriptions given.

Even though Microsoft swore they were not being threatening, they did, in fact, put the other company out of business.

If you are dealing with an 800 pound gorilla, the feelings associated with being so much as looked at wrong can be quite strong. With someone in a powerful position treating someone in a vulnerable position so aggressively, her description is not unreasonable.

Also, she said "PTSD-like."

Unless you're well-versed with the concept of PTSD, either through research you've done, or because you suffer from it yourself, or because you have a close friend who does, you should be careful talking about it dismissively like this. The popular conception of PTSD is a caricature. In reality, we've only recently begun seriously diagnosing and investigating it, and getting a sense of its prevalence.

In particular, the notion that a person reporting PTSD who hasn't been "observably" (in this case, through the details of a TechCrunch post) crippled by it isn't really suffering from it is both false and pretty offensive.

There really needs to be a guideline on HN about comments diagnosing (or dismissing the diagnosis of) mental illness in other commenters and the subjects of stories. These comments happen with some regularity, and they are never productive.

Indeed, a lot more people have ptsd than is generally guessed because there is a great variety of life-altering trauma than people imagine. The caricature of ptsd is that it's something that veterans and rape victims have. It's too serious for anyone else to even think about having. It takes over your life and makes you into a crazy person, or nearly so.

The reality is that these are just the most extreme cases of ptsd. Many people who have suffered through comparatively more minor traumas nevertheless exhibit ptsd symptoms that can affect their quality of life in a daily basis. For example, emotional trauma in childhood can easily lead to the core ptsd symptoms such as irritability, isolation, hypervigilance, anxiety, flashbacks, etc. But because these are due to events considered less serious than combat or violent physical assault they can often go untreated and ignored.

For the record, this is the exact statement in the article:

For a year after Pollock groped me, I experienced what I now realize were PTSD-like symptoms. I had not anticipated them and was completely unprepared to have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and anxiety attacks in situations or around people that, for one reason or another, triggered memories of the incident, which took place on October 7, 2015.

You are being incredibly dismissive of the piece and part of your justification is the term PTSD. You feel it is over the top. When the inaccuracy of your own statement is corrected, you double down.

This does not look like a good faith argument. It looks like an excuse to be dismissive.

Mental illness is ultimately a personal issue that affects everyone very differently. You get a picture of this with how the same SSRI or other medication can have wildly different responses in people.

I wouldn't be so flippant and dismissive of terms like PTSD and Depression. For the person suffering them they are going to be very real and different than everyday sadness or misery. Even if for us outsiders they don't meet some documented guidelines of what they are.

You don't get to set the bar for her. That's something she was reserving for the most special people in her life, he took it from her, despite clear protestations, and it felt like he faced no real consequences for it. I can see how that could leave one with a pervasive feeling of disempowerment and victimization.

>You don't get to set the bar for her.

Words have meanings, just because someone interprets them in their own way, doesn't mean they can claim X when it's not considered warranted.

So regardless of this particular case, we can, and do, society collectively does set the bar for what can be considered X or Y -- and someone can argue based on that.

(That said, grabbing her hand and not letting go despite attempts to free it, and groping her body, clearly fits the bill for sexual harassment and a stressful situation).

You are being pedantic. Clearly the bar getting set in this case is what degree of sexual assault is traumatizing. That is a personal issue, even within our collective society, and you don't get to set that for the victim.

Pedantry over trivial side issues serves to distract from the primary issue at hand, which, as another commented, doesn't make your priorities look so hot.

Have you ever looked at the definition of assault and sexual assault? Because those words have meanings, and typically definitions of sexual assault include groping as an example. Not just "sexual harassment and a stressful situation".

Not the legal one, besides it's not the same in each jurisdiction/country.

According to Wikipedia: "Harassment can include "sexual harassment" or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature." and "It includes a range of actions from mild transgressions to sexual abuse or sexual assault."

I referred to a "stressful situation" in justifying the PT(S)D claim, i.e. to say that this was indeed stressful (as I explicitly say), whereas you seem to be in the impression that I said it to downplay the incident.

Not for medical issues. You, or I, or anyone else on here doesn't get to say she doesn't have PTSD. That's up to a doctor.

If I'm allowed to be pedantic, and going beyond the story under discussion, people can (and should be allowed to) disagree even for medical issues. It's not just blind trust to whatever diagnoses doctors do. Talking of course here for "soft" diagnoses -- few would disagree with an actual physiological diagnosis of a medical problem.

Until a few decades ago, homosexuality was a disease that was OK to be cured with things like electroshock treatment. Heck, people had lobotomies inflicted upon them, in the 20th century, for all kinds of BS reasons. Here on HN too, many will attack the prevalent over-prescription of drugs and diagnoses of ADHD to children.

'dang, this has been the top comment on the post for the last 20 minutes. You and others at YC who want to make the enviroment on HN less hostile to women (and people with PTSD and other invisible disabilities, and to people of all varieties who have been sexually harassed) need to understand the impact things like this have.

[edited to clarify that this doesn't just make it a hostile environment to women]

That comment was flagged by the time we saw it. 20 minutes is not nearly long enough for the community process to complete, and instantaneous moderation is impossible. Nor would it be a good thing if it were possible.

Something that seems plain to me: if overtly malicious troll comments can survive at the tops of threads for 20+ minutes, and troll-ridden threads get (reasonably!) flagged off the site, then trolls have a hecklers veto on HN.

You don't know if that comment was malicious (I don't think so), it survived long because apparently not that many people share your opinion that it should be gone (really, it only takes a few downvotes and flags to kill) and the thread got flagged off the site because for the last half year or so all controversial threads are hammered as soon as they reach the front page.

So while your logic is sound, there is no reason to panic because the assumptions don't hold.

Pretty sure you've never been groped against your will.

Seriously, please don't go tell random people you don't know "pretty sure you've never X", especially if X is related to experiencing distress and/or a traumatic experience.

You have no idea whether they have. At best it doesn't add to the conversation, and at worse you're wrong and making everyone feel awful, yourself included.

The first comment about the bar being too low for PTSD did this too. Neither is helpful.

That's not a safe assumption to make.

What that would prove, even if it was true? It's like saying to someone who is arguing against the death penalty "you didn't have your family killed by a robber".

Even if that's true, that might make them more impartial and clear-headed on the issue, rather than less. The same reason that defense lawyers usually reject jurors that had personal experiences about the offence on trial.