I am not a woman. I am a large, muscular male who doesn't get bothered by anyone.

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.

Funny how far removed real problems are from our society.

"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.

Not many people could cut it through pioneer life [1], either. So, I don't get your point at all.

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

This from the guy who lived in his mom's basement learning to code[1] and whose "goal in life" is to get rich in an acquihire[2]. I have some pretty legitimate doubts that you know the slightest thing about either primitive lifestyles and their hardships, or modern lifestyles and their hardships.

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

Yeah, but he was right about one bit: "Tell the guy to get his hands off you, grab a seat, introduce yourself."

At the risk of being down voted, I wish I could upvote the comment above more. :)

As I'm reading, all I can think "Are you even remotely serious? We now can't have a discussion about gender without rfnslyr derailing the conversation, this time because he wants to harken back to early pioneer days?"

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?

Right, this is like responding "first world problems" to anything and everything. Great, so basically anything except food and shelter is meaningless. What would you like to discuss now?

Yeah actually I do. I have a huge problem with it. I have a huge problem with: some douchebag acted less than human towards me -> this is how it is like to be a woman in the tech industry.

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.

It's very amusing and ironic to me that you are completely projecting the air of "generalization". I didn't see the author anywhere saying "All bitcoin users are like this" and in fact, you'll find me chiding someone else, here, for saying that.

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).

The fact that this article even exists means she didn't do anything about it. It's not a helpless matter at all, but she's acting as if this is such a big event it warranted a whole essay on the matter. Like she just couldn't WAIT to leave the male stronghold of this meetup to seek emotional counselling online.

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.

> She ran into a super duper asshole

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.

Well, how about this analogy--you see a really beautiful girl and you try to hit on her. You're not afraid she'll throw her drink in your face, because most beautiful girls would never do such a thing, but wow, she's really drop-dead gorgeous and you don't know how to handle yourself and you find yourself getting really, really tongue-tied.

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

I think the problem with that analogy is the standard advice for men in that situation is to grow up and get over it.

Of course no analogy is perfect. The point of the analogy was to illustrate that even without someone actively trying to beat you up, acting normal can be difficult. That is the only aspect which I think those two situations share.

The difference is bautiful women crush me all the time, so there's strong precedence ;)

Then again, what kind of person gropes a stranger, in public, in front of a bunch of people who are sure to see and know who you are?

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

I would agree that the men who would hit a woman would almost exclusively fall in to the group who would grope them and say inappropriate things to them. However, I know way more otherwise well-socially-adjusted men who would make sexist comments but would never hit a woman.

Yeah, let's just get it over with and say he basically raped her. Let's increase the counter for "women get raped in public all the time" up by one. After all, even if he didn't rape her, the psychological damage was the same, so it counts. Also, let's put that guy in jail for rape.

No. Let's keep words meaning what they mean.

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?

"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.

In that case, your comment is misplaced.

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.

Sorry, I probably really misread you. I also read the article again and personally I don't think the situation sounds that threatening - there were a whole bunch of people there, including a good male friend.

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.

Ok. I am a big, intimidating looking guy (or so I've been told). Next time I see you, how about I just go ahead and put my hand on your waist, lead you to a chair, sit you down next to me than put my hand on your leg while saying shitty things about whatever group you might identify.

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

Could you even imagine such a thing?

I've seen a one guy sucker punch another over a woman, dropped him straight to the floor. All three were total strangers to each other, also everyone was probably drunk though. I agree that it is unlikely, but it isn't beyond the realm of possibility... also to assess the violence situation you have to factor in the crowd. If you're going to potentially start shit it matters if you happen to be surrounded by his friends.

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.

And unfortunately, the organizer himself was completely retarded about the idea that a woman would be involved in Bitcoin.

Well he damn near sexually assaulted her in public. Once he rested his hand on on her leg like she was his girlfriend, she had every right to be weary of this guy.

The actual threat is irrelevant. There is a physical power asymmetry, which can be intimidating.

In a situation like that, we're not talking about cold, rational threat assessment. You're dealing with instinctive assessments of, as another commenter said, power balance, from a part of your brain that's a) very concerned with physical survival and also b) attuned to the support of other people around. And if the guy got away with putting his hand on her leg in public, so reasons the lower brain, who knows what else he can get away with?

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.

Of course, by simple statistics, it is men that need to be afraid of being physically assaulted.