Even if they didn't it would be irrelevant: when it comes to sex, teenagers and young adults are much more influenced by their friends and by culture at large. A music video has much more influence than mom being bossy again.

But, again, I'm just speculating.

At least that is certainly the case where I grew up. You keep your hands to yourself (and typically leave it to women to initiate things since doing otherwise will often result in issues).

This is a severely optimistic take. There is a generational aspect but the main problem is lack of respect and empathy and those follow no generational boundary.

I mean, technically I suppose the empathy and respect may be something that you can teach, and if those are lacking then education aimed at raising empathy and respect needs improvement. However I think we are dealing with an issue that will be more difficult to resolve than just adding this material to high-school curriculum. Teaching empathy and respect is much trickier. (And with some people, it may be flat out biologically impossible (though google seems to be suggesting to me that researchers believe that psychopaths can choose whether or not they feel empathy, which is better than I suspected.))

http://www.newstatesman.com/glosswitch/2013/09/there-no-grea...

This article says that research shows young people having weird attitudes about rape.

Maybe there are problems with the research; maybe the results would be very different if people were asked about the situation in the article.

But to just say "this is a problem with older people" feels sub-optimal.

Unusually the writer of that comment has received 12 separate gifts of reddit gold subscription (from 12 separate people) -- reddit's social tipping system (they're $4 or so each).

I've never really understood the potential-physical-confrontation argument. It must be a very, very small minority of men who's first reaction to being embarrassed and shamed by a woman is to physically assault her in public?

But it doesn't have to lead to actual physical assault to be uncomfortable or cause negative lasting effects in one's life. The intimidation, the mental abuse aspect of it is enough. If you've been mugged without being shot, it might make a little more sense to you.

And really, he put his hands on her inappropriately, so he's already committed physical assault -- not to get all bleeding-heart emo feminist or anything. But that just ain't right.

"The intimidation, the mental abuse aspect of it is enough."

versus

Collecting wood in a forest 40km away so you can stoke a fire and your family can eat.

Tell the guy to get his hands off you, grab a seat, introduce yourself. Everyone needs an emotional baby sitter and therapist nowadays.

1. Lived in the woods by myself for an extended period. Fun looking back on it now, but was not fun at the time.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7112803 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7052008

Your trollish derailment of gender threads on HN is rather telling. Or do you have any point related to how this woman was groped without her consent, repeatedly?

Next time somebody gives me an off handed remark about something, I'm going to generalize as well and cry wolf online.

It's blowing up a problem that isn't a problem at all, way out of proportion.

I get groped at bars all the time by women, I don't make a whiny blog post about it. Kind of funny she made the post and claimed to "have a thick skin".

She clearly suffered a fair amount of emotional trauma from this rather mild leg grabbing. Did she do something about it? Of course she didn't.

Women in the tech industry is the next phase of Shakespearean drama.

Every time some retarded bullshit gender article meanders across my front page on HN, I'll shit post it. Why? Because HN is not your personal feminist platform. Flood twitter with your personal garbage.

You just want to reduce this to something that you can dismiss and ignore, because it's complicated and you can't hold your own when it comes to the details. And, in this case, you're just putting words in the author's mouth in order to invent a way to demean and dismiss her. Classy.

>Did she do something about it? Of course she didn't.

I don't even know what "Of course" is supposed to mean there, but I'm pretty sure it says something not-so-great about your default position and open-mindedness on this issue.

edit: Can't keep up with your edits (it's okay, I do it too)

>Kind of funny she made the post and claimed to "have a thick skin".

And again, you'll note that this is very much a recount of what happened. In fact, she explicitly said she doesn't think she was violated (and I disagree with her, but that's her prerogative).

I am very open minded to problems that matter. There is no problem here. She ran into a super duper asshole, didn't outline her boundaries immediately, and instead is further polluting the tech industry with this gender nonsense. Next time some random grabs me by the shoulder that I don't know, I'm going to write an essay on it as well.

Did she get fired from a company because the CEO hates women? No.

Did she get physically assaulted or raped because she's a woman? No.

Is her pay significantly lowered simply due to the fact that she is a woman? No.

Did any significant change occur in her life from this encounter with this ONE douchebag? No.

Those are real problems which beg real discussion. This is an emotionally unstable girl who feels the world revolves around her and her gender. I know the type.

So why do I care? Why is it only women who blog about this emotional hot air?

It creates a false view of the field for other women, and when they go into it after reading crap like this, they assume this is what it's like.

Well not just that. If anyone at the meeting made it clear that the comments that were happening were not appropriate or welcome either I missed it in the article. It most people this creates the perception that it is acceptable behavior according to group standards. I would bet this perception of group standards is studied phenomena that is the default perception by the majority of people. So it seems reasonable that most people would get uncomfortable by the situation.

It's like that for women confronting large men, except without the happy butterflies in your stomach.

You really can't put anything past someone who has absolutely no restraint or regard for people.

But we can say this guy violated her space and insulted her dignity and acted in a way that would make most people cringe if not shun the guy.

I wouldn't trust him after seeing him display that behavior. Would you?

Of course I wouldn't. Neither would most people in the Bitcoin community. Nevertheless, now we have "this is how women are being treated at Bitcoin meetups".

Btw not only would I not trust him, I also wouldn't like him.

I don't think this guy represents any group of people either.

I was commenting on why the woman might be justified in worrying about a physical attack if she embarrassed the creep because he obviously doesn't have much in the way of boundaries.

Nevertheless, "she could have said something" is of course not an excuse for rude behavior. I wouldn't want to excuse his behavior. As I said, if I knew him, I probably wouldn't like him much and certainly wouldn't encourage him to attend further meetups.

Then we'll see how you feel about the situation.

Could you even imagine such a thing?

Anyway, although I agree with treating unwanted advances with reciprocal escalating naked hostility, the meetup organizer is really the only one with the power/knowledge to enforce standards of behaviour.

Disclaimer: I'm a man so I've never dealt with that exact situation, but I've observed the above thought processes in awkward situations, and I would assume it's amplified in the described situation.

I do wonder about this sometimes. Like, when have I ever cared what the guy who hit me with his car thinks of me? When have I ever cared what the guy who stole my MP3 player thought of me?

I know "stop caring" isn't useful advice, but I wonder sometimes why any woman would care what an assaulter has to say in the first place.

Maybe the analogous situation is if you got mildly rear-ended, damaged cars but no injuries. Do you loudly call out the other driver and accuse them of negligence/recklessness, or do you calmly exchange information, file a police report, then let the situation be addressed when you are back home?

It's not really a good comparison, but I think it at least makes a little sense that you wouldn't try to call out the other driver on the side of the road after the accident (at least not without police present).

Note that all of the property crimes you mentioned are different in one key way: a large subset of society doesn't initially try to blame the victim when it happen. Nobody is racing to explain that your car was asking for it or that you must not have taken enough steps to make your MP3 player unappealing, all of which are depressingly routine for victims of sexual assault.

She was there with a friend, and two have an advantage over one in a physical confrontation.