Commenter Archive

Help me understand what policy you think is failing and in relation to what specific types of incidents. These last two comments I'm reading as applying to rape or sexual battery. With those, the accused should be charged and if convicted go to prison for a very long time.

The list though, and these conversations, include a much, much wider array of conduct than that. Some of the things I've seen included were getting annoying text messages, or 'creepy lunch dates' or taking credit for something a female co-worker did the work on. There are of course also things (repeated, aggressive sexual advances after being declined, indecent exposure) that are worse than that, and do require some type of (proportionate) corrective, but that aren't as serious as rape.

My point above is that every calculation about this shouldn't automatically take us into assumptions of severe trauma and really hard and unfair decisions that sometimes victims of violent crime are forced to make. Overall though I don't think the pessimism is warranted. Violent crime, including sex crimes, have been in precipitous decline for decades. There are more women in more powerful places in the work force and more mechanisms to seek redress than ever before. This isnt to say things are perfect/more change isn't necessary or that there still aren't some really gross abuses of powers out there but I don't recognize the world you're describing and I don't think the statistics paint so grim a picture.

Well, to be clear, that's a totally different situation from my original comment which was limited to reporting news. I think I clarified it sufficiently to Maribou below but I'm definitely getting the impression I didn't explain myself well enough on that issue.

On this issue, which again I regard as separate, I don't see how there can be any general rule like that. People lie. People also gossip and repeat hearsay, but they also do tell the truth too. Every individual has to decide for themselves what to do if they learn about something wrong. Doing the right thing is hard, it always has been, and it can often come at serious personal cost. I'm open to ideas about minimizing the costs of doing the right thing (there are many rules already out there but we could probably do better). I'll never be on board with saying certain things are beyond criticism or doubt, and even if we all did agree on that I don't see how it'd help Weinstein situations. We want people to come forward not base their decisions around whisper networks or whatever we're calling them.

I think Roiphe is being cowardly and probably is full of it. Assuming she isn't I guess I'd have to see how the list was referenced. If it was that non-essential to the story I'd probably just omit the list entirely.

Generally though my view is that the press gives anonymity way too freely and journalists are turned into useful idiots because of it. The only time I think it's really merited is Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning situations. The story needs to expose something big and the threat to the source needs to be serious and non-hypothetical (prison, torture, and death to specific people can qualify, social media shitstorms, including the real nasty ones with threats, don't).

I guess I find this... challenging because we aren't talking about stranger in the parking garage scenarios. We're also talking about a really wide range of misconduct (I believe the list in question at least distinguished between violent/non-violent). It would take a lot to convince me that psychology is preventing a significant number of women from identifying and reporting misconduct perpetrated against them by people they know well under circumstances where at least some degree of corroboration is possible. This is especially the case when we're talking about stuff that's bad but not violent (harassment, unfair/creepy expectations based around sex, etc).

I don't think I said anything in this discussion about allegations made long after the fact in this thread but I probably have on OT before. I think they're a really bad hill to die on because evidence, witnesses, and memories all disappear and fade. Outside of really unusual circumstances I'm left relying on Blackstone's ratio. A lot of the psychological stuff about people forgetting or being unable to understand what happened at the time sounds to me suspiciously like the recovered memory stuff during the daycare scares.

None of this is to say I have any issue with whatever people need to do for catharsis. Also just because I'm skeptical of a lot of the post hoc explanations doesn't mean I don't think the systems we have in place are working adequately. My idea of reform would be making sure women know their rights and how to assert them (especially in ways that can create evidence/witnesses), really encouraging immediate reporting, and requiring high standards of investigation before the trail gets cold. None of that requires messing around with due process or convincing people to buy into ideas or theories they disagree with.

Gotcha now I understand. I meant from the perspective of a newsreporter covering what has become a national story. I don't think third parties who knew about it had an obligation to do anything. For example, if you were going to write an article about this list in the newspaper and knew who wrote it I don't think you'd have a legitimate reason not to name the creator. That's all I meant. Does that clarify?

People can say whatever they want. I've never said otherwise and I'm not imposing rules on speech of any kind. But if you level an accusation of criminal conduct in public you might be asked to prove it and the accused might defend themselves. It's weird to me that people would think something else would happen.

I'm still kind of lost on where you're going. I've never said people are prohibited from saying anything they want to say. My original comment was about when anonymity should(n't) be granted by a news reporter. What it seems like you're getting at is the right/ability to say something without consequences.

I'm hesitant to assume someone has a mental illness who hasn't actually said that's the case. I actually think the references to PTSD, disassociation, and similar psychological phenomena that permeate these discussions are themselves pernicious. If the argument is that women need to be taken seriously when they make these accusations (which they should) the last thing we should be doing is arm chair diagnosing them with things that hurt their credibility or call their agency into question.

I read her essay yesterday and I think she actually acquits herself well. Part of the reason I think that is because she can admit an error. That shows integrity.

Dude. I said I think identifying the source was reasonable in this instance. On the broader issue I'm open to things that make the way sexual misconduct allegations are handled fairer. We need to jettison the unfair assumptions about women, make reporting these things easier (to the authorities who can do something about them), and ensure they're taken seriously. What I'm not interested in is replacing one sexist set of tropes and stereotypes with another. If you think that makes me part of the problem well... all I can say is I'm at the table and open to reasoned arguments.

Gotcha. This is what I mean about a spectrum. At some point there was a jump. The internet is new to humanity in a relative sense but I think an adult ought to understand that once 'submit' or 'send' or whatever is clicked you're taking a risk that you will one day be confronted with whatever you said. These are highly educated, intelligent, professional, tech-savvy women we're talking about here, not children, and not wilting flowers.

I'm not sure I'm following you. If you're saying you think a list circulating among news reporters/media industry types on the internet is the same as 'watch out for Johnny' scrawled in a ladies' room stall we'll just have to disagree.

I don't really understand the question. Yea, there's a burden of proof that varies based on the situation/seriousness/potential consequences. Should there not be?

Who brought 'allowed' into it? People can say whatever they want.

Scale is important but so is the medium/publisher. Graffiti on the bathroom has a naturally limited audience, but it also has a very low credibility ranking. Putting something on the front page of the NYTimes is different, not only because it effectively reaches hundreds of millions of people, but, at least in theory, it comes with the understanding that the claim has gone through some very serious vetting/investigation.

@sam-wilkinson I concur with @reformed-republican. Yes, but only when the allegation is substantiated.

I think you could have a lot of interesting conversations about that, and there are times where I'd even agree with the sentiment. If we were talking about, say, hacking a computer to get at private emails or a private diary, I might even agree. That said, circulating something on the internet among a relatively large group of people is a pretty easy call for me, especially when its apparently starting to create repurcussions in the lives of people on said list.

It looks like it has? If someone is circulating a list including accusations of violent felonies (which I believe this does) widely enough to get on the media's radar (which it seems to have been) I don't see any legitimate reason for allowing the creator to remain anonymous. That includes if the list was going to be used as a reference for any reporting without full disclosure. Transparency is the only fair way to assess these allegations (and to be clear, they should be assessed).

I actually think that begs for some really unprincipled stances when all we're talking about is allegations of misconduct by one private person against another (as opposed to, say, state abuse of power). Once the list went viral finding out who made it and telling people so they can assess its credibility is totally fair journalistic practice.

Being someone who practices law in the healthcare world, generally on the provider side, it's important to remember that they're just people doing a job. It's a very important and sensitive job, but they shouldn't be treated as deities (or hucksters). Many do walk around with an air of confidence and infallibility, which I suspect comes from a mix of personality self-selection and the rigors of the training process.

My opinion is that the malpractice issue has a lot less to do with how treatment is provided and a lot more to do with how we pay for healthcare/support permanently disabled people. It could be treated as a purely professional matter if those injured weren't forced to rely on the tort system to cover their costs post accident.

You lost me at 'If you take out the qualifiers' and 'underlying thesis'. I suppose yes, if you ignore parts of the post and look for some amorphous underlying message that's in fact contrary to the things he plainly says it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

As I said before, none of it struck me as beyond the pale of normal discussion (your reference to the diversity program baffles me since people have been making that argument about affirmative action programs of any kind for decades and even if you disagree theres nothing about it thats ipso facto racist). It was dumb to post something controversial/critical of his employer on a company message board and I don't think he should win his lawsuit for other reasons I've articulated so I don't really understand what we're debating. I don't think the post was inherently offensive. Others obviously disagree. Cherry picking quotes and editing them for an analogy about race that doesn't add up or make sense in context isn't going to change my view.

I haven't read it since the initial controversy but I would boil his main argument down to something like:

'Every discrepancy in the number of men and women in coding/technology should not automatically be assumed to be a result of sexism just because there are times where it has been and times where it still is.'

Well I agree, that's at best a pretty myopic view.

Whether race and sex are identical is relevant to the *accuracy* of Damore’s claim but it’s not relevant to what the claim actually is.

I have no idea what the above means. As best I can tell the rest of your comment suffers from the same phallacy as the original.

@trizzlor

I think your question doesn't make sense in context unless you're also saying that race and sex are identical things. That's a pretty faulty premise.

@pillsy

I think there is a non-zero chance Damor was hoping for this result and as I said above, when you're provocative in the workplace you're always taking a risk. I also don't think he should win it because I think a victory would more likely than not make the situation he's complaining about worse.

What I think we should be doing is minimizing the extent to which we have knee jerk reactions about offense and using emotional reactions as justification for depriving people of their livelihoods. Damor is going to be just fine, but there are a lot of people out there who wouldn't, and at least parts of our culture seem hellbent on turning everything into some kind of personal affront. For clarity, I include the right wing 'you stand during the national anthem or you're al-qaeda sympathizing scum' crowd among them.

What matters in the law is not whether they made the precisely and absolutely correct call. What matters is if they made a reasonable one, and absolutely, “protecting the company from civil liability” is a perfectly valid objective to consider when debating whether the company’s action was reasonable or not.

This is true as far as it goes but I think the focus on that standard suffers from a bit of a litigator's bias. Enforcement agencies have a real impact on how HR/employers react to various incidents and complaints. California it seems has some unusual anti-discrimination law but DOJ, EEOC, and state ancillaries are constantly issuing guidance and other opinions and forcing settlements based on their interpretations of these laws. I would posit that the enforcement environment has as much of, if not a bigger role, in how companies react and set policy than what a plurality of staff think is or isn't reasonable (with the Damor situation we know some group complained but we have no idea how representative they are).

Now I don't know what, if anything, the relevant California agencies have said about this but we have seen recent episodes where radical interpretations of existing law have created all kinds of cascading effects. The most notable is the on campus insanity around Title IX. You don't have to have a lot of sympathy for Damor to be concerned about the government putting fingers on the scales for employers to fire people for wrongthink (I say this as someone who definitely would not support something like the California statute). What HR thinks is reasonable isn't happening in a vacuum.