Re:This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup
by meritt on Friday January 24, 2014 @04:54PM
(#7118373)
I hope we're intelligent enough to differentiate between "unwelcome physical groping" and "overheard some guys make private a joke about 'dongles' and overreacted" but you do bring up a valid point certainly.
I guess I just get tired of people in general who complain about things and never take action to remedy it, then go back and garner support by preaching to the choir. I'm absolutely aghast that it happened to her but I just wish people would start being as vocal in person as they can be on their blogs.
Re:This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup
by scott_s on Friday January 24, 2014 @05:28PM
(#7118608)
I think you are not acknowledging the difficulty of calling someone out on the spot. It is awkward, and puts a complete stop to the actual, desired activity. It also puts the victim through two unwanted situations.
As others have also said, people in such situations are sometimes so surprised by the infraction that they are stunned, and at a loss for how to react. It may take them time after the event to process what happened and determine how they feel.
The reason that others in the thread have brought up blaming the victim is that you have not acknowledged these aspects of the situation.
Re:This is What it's Like to Be a Woman at a Bitcoin Meetup
by 4bpp on Friday January 24, 2014 @05:12PM
(#7118492)
Yes, the "dongles" story is not really comparable to this and I don't see any agenda I would consider desirable being served by conflating the two. While the old "would you find this okay if the genders were reversed" benchmark seems insufficient to me, a stronger version along the lines of "would you find this okay for every possible assignment of genders to the people involved" both clearly distinguishes the two and preempts the "I'm sure every man would be happy to be groped by random women!" defense one hears all too often in the case of situations such as this one.
There is a lot the unmentioned presumable majority of perfectly reasonable guys at that meeting could have done to make the few bad apples feel excluded and uncomfortable in a way which would far surpass any explicit callout by anyone in its effectivity, but unfortunately, in practice, most people are very reluctant to use social signalling in any rational or deliberate way.