Here's an amazingly novel idea: maybe angels and VCs who are lonely should have social lives where they can make sexual overtures? Making sexual overtures in a professional context where you hold a position of power (i.e. you are a angel/VC and you're making overtures to a female founder) is grossly unprofessional regardless of whether they are persistent.

I think you're missing the point here. How did the survey define which unwanted sexual overtures are inappropriate? You write that this was put in the context of harassment, but how this context was presented to the respondents has a big impact on what their responses really mean. At face value, it seems like the study considers all romantic advances to be inappropriate. This seems like an overly simplistic definition, as per my example here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225474

Asking for further context is entirely warranted. Studies like these can often be made (intentionally or unintentionally) to seem alarmist due to poorly defining categories of harassment. For instance, I was counted as a victim of sexual assault in one of my university's surveys because I answered yes to the question "have you received unwanted sexual advances in the last year?". Yes I had, but all of them were from people who ceased their advances after being denied and generally acted with respect. While there's always some element of discomfort in being put on the spot like that, I would absolutely not consider any of these instances harassment in any way shape or form. Asking someone out on a date or inviting them over for intimate contact, and ceasing all advances after being denied was considered an act of sexual harassment by this survey. I'm not kidding, if someone asked a person out respectfully, they got told no, and both parties walked away with no further contact this was considered sexual harassment. This also disturbed me because it not-so-subtly implied that I had harassed literally every person I had asked out on a date and was denied, even though I've never continued pursuing someone after being told no.

First of all, a survey about unwanted sexual advances in a professional setting is set against a background that's completely different than a campus survey; only if the campus survey was talking about "unwanted sexual advances from teachers or someone with a power imbalance e.g. TAs, coaches, etc." would the analogy be interesting. Was it?

Obviously the YC survey could be better worded and/or explained (perhaps the summary is less precise than it should be). However, it's pretty weird that your takeaway is to try to parse out these numbers, with no actual knowledge of anything involved, to try to make them seem smaller.

Second of all, you are going out of your way elsewhere in the thread to conjure up corner cases and thought bubbles where a VC/angel might have asked someone on a date ("an unwanted sexual advance" - maybe) without it being a conflict of interest. It's a maybe, but that's a real reach to imagine - first, it would imply that these people met up again after a clean 'sorry, we're not interested in your business'. It's not logically impossible, but it seems more likely that the "first order" effect was "a group of entitled VC/angel dudes acted like assholes as per usual".

Also 'inappropriate incidents' is completely undefined.

Working long hours doesn't immediately excuse you from adhering to social contexts, especially when there are obvious power structures present which evidently is rampantly abusive across industries.

'Innappropriate incidents' is entirely subjective and can't be defined beyond a personal context. If one party believes the manner in which someone else operates in a context is inappropriate, that's enough of a definition, especially in the context of such a survey.

That's unacceptable. If there are no firm, objective rules then anyone can be guilty of anything and "inappropriateness" loses all meaning.

I could consider the fact that you don't pray before eating something inappropriate in a work dinner context.

The "inappropriate incidents" bit is not "completely undefined" - it refers to the things in the list that follows. I think for a survey the response was surely detailed enough?

There are plenty of contexts in which men can make first sexual overtures other than investor/founder business (or similar economic power relations.)

> Things like Tinder where you can filter for "interested only" are pretty much a new phenomenon

Things like a brain where you can filter for “am I in an economic or other power relationship where a sexual overture is inherently implicitly coercive even if it is not explicitly coercive” are, however, not new, though apparently vastly underused.

Well, maybe not underused. Misused is probably more accurate; leverage rather than ignorance of the power dynamic seems common.

Let me remind you that a work setting is nothing like Tinder, nothing like a bar, nothing like any place where trying to get laid is considered OK.

You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you?

No, I'm implying there is a very high background rate of men asking women for sex, and I havn't compared this instance to the background but I assume women get propositioned at a very high rate _wherever_ they are.

> Let me remind you that a work setting is nothing like Tinder, nothing like a bar, nothing like any place where trying to get laid is considered OK.

My parents met in the workplace. I have a friends who have too. I havn't looked up the statistics but I assume it is double-digit percentages of marriages start as workplace relations. It is unfortunate if you think that isn't acceptable, because it clearly is.

> You wouldn't ask someone if they wanted to shag at a funeral, would you?

I wouldn't, but I don't see why it would be unacceptable. There are a lot of people at funerals who are't particularly committed to grieving but making a statement of social support, and they'd just be there doing what they do at any social event.

Conflating financial power relationship dynamics with garden variety workplace romance is some serious moving of goalposts.

Seriously, one of the major reforms in venture capital in the last 25 years has been to reduce the amount of power tripping that goes on between VCs and founders. That's the idea that YC is founded on. This is another example, and an incredibly shitty one. Why defend it?

Because "unwelcome sexual advances" is a spectrum from acceptable to unacceptable.

The acceptable part of that spectrum is very small (being a guy awkwardly asks a girl for sex, she says no, and that is the end if it) and the unacceptable part is very large (fondling, using pressure from corporate power, etc).

However, despite the fact it is small, the acceptable part of that spectrum is important to protect because there are a lot of men who are not very socially adept, but want to have sexual relation with women and don't know many outside the workplace. They should be able to seek out relationships in their comfort zone without risk of formal censure. I assume there are a lot of women in a similar position.

In this particular instance "unwanted sexual overtures or sexual badgering" is probably more of the badgering end that we don't want, but the language here is important - there needs to be /some/ tolerance of unwanted sexual overtures that do not lead to badgering. Being awkward, being wrong and misunderstanding a situation isn't a punishable offense. Being persistent, using threats or getting physical is.

And so I'd like to see a little more clarity on what the low-end standard being used here is. It is important to the conversation. In a minor way.

In a situation where there is a lot at stake, socially savvy people generally want to know the answer will be "yes" before the question is asked.

Historically, when men were the primary breadwinners and women were expected to be homemakers, a man asking for a date from a woman he had determined was single was not likely to be causing big problems for anyone. If she said "No" and he dropped it, no drama would ensue.

This is not true where they are business colleagues and she has career aspirations.

I had an entry level job at a Fortune 500 company for over 5 years. I wanted to get a better paying job more in line with my education in the IT department.

One day, a senior programmer asked me for a date. I'm sure he had stopped to consider if he was in the clear and determined he was. He wasn't doing anything wrong and he wasn't going to get in trouble.

I'm equally sure he didn't stop to wonder how it impacted my career aspirations. It basically killed any hope I had of getting a job in his department. Simply asking me out closed doors for me.

I left the company shortly thereafter. I left for largely unrelated reasons, but that incident made it clear to me I could basically give up all hope of ever escaping the Pink Collar Ghetto I was trapped in because some powerful man at the company saw me as date material and never stopped to ponder how that framing might impact me.

In over 5 years, he was the only person I ever met at the company who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it. He never once wondered what my career goals were, nor what my unusual skills might do for the company. Nope. He just got all excited about the possibility of getting a date. Full stop.

This is the essence of why we are seeing studies like this one about the impact on women in specific, even though anyone can be a victim of sexual harassment.

If you need a trillion dollar idea: teach socially unsavvy people how to recognize a yes before they have to ask the question.

I know you can make boatloads of money, because I am one of those unsavvy people and every bit of information about dating basically comes down to:

"Here are 10 hints that tell you she might be interested. If you want to know for sure, ask. Oh and she might be too polite to actually turn you down, so here are 5 more tips to recognize when a yes actually means no."

This means don't ask colleagues for a date. Instead, ask social acquaintances from other parts of your life.

Whether you are socially savvy or not, you should treat all business associates first and foremost as people looking to benefit professionally from their relationship with you. Treating women like their professional life is irrelevant because you find them hot is fundamentally not going to go good places. It tends to undermine them professionally. This isn't a way to "win friends and influence people."

Operating under the old rules is frequently not (apparently) problematic for well established people who belong to a privileged class. For purposes of this discussion, that would be men who make good money and see themselves as "catches" because of it -- edit: which describes a large number of HN commenters -- sometimes while being quite bitter about all the gold digging whores in the world and failing to see that if you bait your hook with money, you shouldn't be surprised if that is the type of fish you attract.

Additionally, some blind spots are genuinely rooted in personal disability. Lack of social savvy can be due to Autism Spectrum Disorder.

I have two sons who likely qualify as ASD. I find it very effective to give them helpful tools for navigating the social landscape and avoiding the worst errors they could make due to their personal handicaps. I find it quite counterproductive to blame them as if they are being troublesome on purpose.

I try to keep that in mind when framing comments of mine. I'm human and I don't always get it right by any stretch of the imagination. But that's where I'm generally coming from.

There's a gap between an overture which gets a “yes” and one which is unwelcome, within which an overture is acceptable and will not adversely impact a relationship even though it is declined; how wide this gap is varies by individual and context (it tends to be particularly narrow, and sometimes of negative width such that there are unwelcome advances that will be met with grudging acquiescence, where the recipient is on the downward side of a power imbalance) and, I suspect, is on average in our present society much narrower for women than men (becaus of, at least, general social power dynamics rather than necessarily any inherent gender feature.)

While obviously one will prefer that the answer be yes to any overture (even an implicit one), I think that—particularly with the kind of subtle, implicit, preliminary overtures that are used to gauge interest before an explicit overture is made—the thing a savvy individual will want to be certain of is that the overture will be within the permissible range irrespective of whether it will elicit a positive response.

I think a lot of the problem (other than active malice) comes from people not recognizing the effects of context and lacking empathy and thus projecting their own broader range or permissible-even-if-not-interested onto the recipient of their advances.

People should not seek out relationships with those over whom they wield significant power professionally. That's a pretty decent and obvious rule most people live by.

While there are exceptions, if someone doesn't intuitively understand the reasons for the rule they should seriously consider dating outside of their professional environment.

This is especially true for people who are likely to make such advances to those under them through sheer ignorance of social norms. The set of people who make advances and badger others usually do so in bad faith and have practiced ways to hedge, mislead, and leverage the people around them to remain safely tolerated. That leaves the decent, socially inept people wide open to be made examples of by HR because they never thought to use their power or influence to threaten others. (Or, out of desperation they start to use that influence to save face.)

That may sound unfair to the socially inept. But the point is that there is no way to separate the wheat from the chaff-- people acting in bad faith who get caught almost always claim social ignorance, or harmless intentions, mis-communication, etc. There is no credible way to signal to an underling that a sexual advance comes without the threat of badgering or other more subtle repercussions. (And esp. no way to explain one's actions as harmless after the fact.)

And that's not even to mention situations where an underling says yes to an ostensibly "non-badgering" advance because a) they confused the wheat with the chaff and b) the power imbalance makes them think they have little choice. If the person making the advance is not particularly socially aware then it greatly increases the chances that they take the lack of error reporting as consent. Meanwhile, the underling is convinced that reporting an error would result in immediate or eventual termination. Not a particularly sound system for exploring romance IMO.

Anyway, those are just a few reasons why most people believe strongly in the rule I stated above. It's a field of social land mines. If one is socially inept then an entire class of problems vanishes simply by following the rule. (Besides, widely-available web dating services do exist.)

Being asked by a VC about sex, going on a date, or grabbing a drink while trying to secure money from them is far worse than being fondled by some random guy in a nightclub.

This is actually really inappropriate IMO. Who the heck thinks it's okay to "awkwardly ask for sex"? No. You awkwardly ask for a date or some such, and -- if that is accepted -- then within that context the rest can be opened up. Maybe we're just in extremely different cultures.

If you don't see why it would be unacceptable, then why wouldn't you do it? You're admitting, whether you intended to or not, that you do in fact recognise that such behaviour would be inappropriate given the context – just like offering unwanted sexual advances to a subordinate in the workplace is clearly inappropriate.

I have a friend who has expressed to me that she thinks prostitution should be legal. By this logic, she would be a prostitute if it were.

Do you really think that's true?

https://observer.com/2015/08/better-bed-than-dead-why-mouner...

Sexual overtures at a bar: okay.

Sexual overtures at a sex party: very okay.

Sexual overtures at a house party: prob okay.

Sexual overtures at a grocery store: eeeeh maybe if you're really hot and she gives you the look.

Sexual overtures at the office: very not okay

Sexual overtures at a VC event: way not cool.

Sexual overtures at an office party: not good.

Sexual overtures at an official after-party of a business event: nope.

Sexual overtures at the after after party with those 10 people who wanted to party some more after a business event after party: depends, read the room.

It's about context. Don't be a creep.

There are absolutely situations in bars and house parties where one should not make any kind of move. Likewise, there are office parties where one could.

Before I get to the next bit, it's important to realise and understand that "no" really does mean no. With that in mind, it's also true that there are men and women who say "no", but still mean yes. This is one small facet of that whole debate, but the point is subtleties matter. People saying "no" when they mean yes is still a real thing, like it or not, and some people have a hard time differentiating when this is the case. There are also people who of course don't care, but they are far less controversial. What we need to do is all pull together to work to clarify how we communicate interest in each other. And that means all people, of all sexes and genders and orientations and class.

I believe some situations require more assurance of “it’s okay” than others. In the office, I’d have to be super very absolutely certain it’s okay before saying anything. At a singles event in a bar I might lead with a sexual overtone and see what happens.

And no always means no. Once you say no I say sorry and move on.

Although I do like the policy of a sex club I was at once: If you do anything you have to apologize for, you are banned from the club for forever.

More venues should adopt that policy.

I was especially surprised to see someone get that and say that context matters, but then still start reeling off "yes"s and "no"s to settings without context.

Interesting. Multiple women I know started dating co-workers (in entirely different parts of the company) at work parties, and did not think it was bad or unusual. Perhaps interpretations of statements like "don't be a creep" are a lot more diverse than you think.

I think this is a big part of why online dating is growing in prevalence. Why take the social risk of being labeled a "creep" when you can go to places where whether or not women are interested is determined upfront?

Rule #2: don't be unattractive

Say I sought VC funding, and met a single investor. In the end, I decide to accept funding from another firm. Afterwards said single investor congratulates me on getting funded and asks me out on a date now that we no longer have a conflict of interest. I decline because I'm not interested in this investor.

Did I receive an unwanted romantic advance from an investor? Absolutely. I was asked out on a date when I didn't want one.

But was I harassed? It seems dubious to say so. At the time of the advance I had no business relationship with this investor. If the questionnaire specifically said unwanted advances _during_ the search for funding that would be a different situation. But that context isn't given, hence the confusion.

Since YC has not provided how these terms were defined in the questionnaire, we're left to speculate - hence the confusion and contention exhibited in this thread.

Do you think it would be helpful to have a rule book for men that exactly stipulates what kind of interactions with women are professional, respectful, and friendly?

Are men that stupid? (I’m saying this as a man myself).

With that out of the way, the important thing is that injecting one's own assumptions into a survey question risks making vast misinterpretations of the results. The survey merely listed "unwanted sexual overtures". You seem to assume that every reader of this question shares your interpretation as "unwanted and unprofessional sexual overtures" or "unwanted sexual overtures received while seeking funding from an investor" or similar. In practice, many people actually try to answer survey questions honestly. The result of relying on unstated assumptions about the interpretation of survey questions is highly dubious survey results, as I illustrate in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225907. And not to mention it risks trivializing the impact of sexual harassment, because plenty of people may look at broad definitions like this and think that the majority of cases of harassment identified by studies like these aren't harassment at all.

You seem to care about the classification and definitions of questions present in the survey.

I care about finding ways for men (myself included) to understand and think about their blind spots regarding sexual harassment.

I am not saying that you are wrong within your chosen frame of what you care about. I am saying is that your frame is not very relevant to my frame.

I am also saying that focusing on the survey question is indicative of how you rank the importance about these issues.

It’s like the house is on fire, half of the residents of the house are saying “let’s get outside right now”, and you’re saying “hold on, let’s stay inside and figure out whether the fire’s origin is an electrical fire or a wood fire?”

Regardless, I wasn't even the original commenter that pointed out the ambiguity of this item in the survey. I only responded after roenxi asked for greater context, and other commenters replied with the unqualified assumption that this item was universally interpreted by respondents as only referring to coercive advances. I merely pointed out the fact that, as it was worded in the original document, it was not exclusive to coercive advances and potentially included non-harassment examples that would fit under the terms used (and provided an example).

Also, if my frame of discussion isn't relevant to you then why did you respond in the first place?

You know, you’re so right. Why waste my time with someone who clearly doesn’t care about the core issue at hand?

If anything, our industry has more of of these sorts of people, so yes, some people actually do need a rule book. A survey providing meaningful data on what is and isn't wanted would thus be incredibly useful not only to help these people navigate the workplace, but to women who have to suffer social ineptitude.

Considering your interest seems to be in reducing women's suffering in this regard, I honestly don't know why you're being so difficult about clarifying the meaning of the data.

What you're basically saying is, because 5% of people don't understand the common norms that are blindingly obvious to everyone, the 95% must go out of their way to explain and accommodate the minority.

Why is the onus on the 95% to do that, as opposed to the 5% to have the recognition that their lack of grace in this context is an issue and instead choose to find a different playground?

I'm going to be cold about this: if you do not have the ability to navigate the social norms within a professional working environment, you ethically should not be allowed to pursue romantic interests there. Bottom line. Accommodating to that inability should never come at the cost of someone else's discomfort, nor are you entitled to pursue any possible interest just because you happen to work there.

Yes. Why is that bizarre? Do you think we should accommodate blind people? Should we install ramps in buildings so the physically disabled can access them?

> Accommodating to that inability should never come at the cost of someone else's discomfort

There's no such thing as a right to comfort. I could just as easily turn it around and say that someone's comfort should never come at the expense of another's ability to work so they can put food on the table. Ideally, we should endeavour to support both goals, not sneer at people because we think we're better than them.

> I'm going to be cold about this: if you do not have the ability to navigate the social norms within a professional working environment, you ethically should not be allowed to pursue romantic interests there.

Let's rephrase: "I'm going to be cold about this: if you do not have the ability to navigate the physical spaces of a professional environment, you should not be allowed to work there."

"Stop being such a creep" and "stop being blind" don't really feel all that equivalent to me.

A creep doesn't understand what makes him creepy, that's the whole point. So it seems like the "advice" is both cases is equally unhelpful.

This line of thinking makes it more difficult for actually decent guys to get a first date. By the way, women like sex too and will make those overtures.

If you haven't had a first date with a person, keep the overtures off.