Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss."
And that makes me so angry.
Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgusted and threatened. That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem.
(also, for anyone wondering whether the number of people affected really is "significant", I would consider even one person to be a significant number)
I also get really angry at posts like "This has never happened to me, so I'm sure it's all ok". This may come as a surprise, but individual experiences are not universal. That something has never happened to you doesn't mean it's never happened to anyone else.
And if you're getting tired of seeing posts like this, don't complain about the people making the posts. Complain about the people harassing them. It may seem counterintuitive, but the fastest and most effective way to stop posts like this turning up is actually to make more of them, until the harassment and abuse stop.
"This happens all the time" is never a valid excuse.
The problem is, just one person like this is "enough" to really mess people up. You can have hundreds of normal, positive interactions in a week and it just takes one a$$hat to make you forget all that. Thanks to the internet, one guy can ruin hundreds of other people's days. He (or she) can do it anonymously and safely from a great distance. For the overwhelming majority of us, there simply are no barriers to prevent this. We routinely filter out nuisance emails from Nigerian princes but very few people try to filter out the crazies.
Most of us, if given the chance to have our messages filtered, would choose not to do so. Most people are eager to please and want to know when somebody is unhappy so they can fix it. Only people in the most visible positions are faced with such a deluge of crap that they're forced to do something about it. For the average person, the aberrant attention that comes from a small amount of exposure, such as a conference talk, is just big enough to throw us for a loop but not so big that we'd think about taking steps to never see that stuff. This isn't only a problem for women. Men face it too.
Perhaps the time has come to approach harassment the way we approach spam. Namely, make it easy to report personal attacks so that we can start using the same techniques that block spam to block harassment.
IDK, she's talking about hundreds of vile personal messages. Sounds like more than one a$$hat to me.
And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats. I think when this kind of thing happens it should be called out. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
>And I can't help but notice that as a man I don't get this kind of abuse at all. Literally 0 rape threats.
Men rarely send men rape threats. A woman threatening a man with rape usually isn't seen as threatening due to power dynamics between the sexes (good luck overpowering the man to rape him?) So that doesn't come as a large surprise to anyone.
But a large number of men do receive death threats and threats to their family. "I'll kill your kids" and "I'll kill your wife" are still threats against that person. They are meant to intimidate and control that individual, fearing for the people he cares about. He'll receive a picture of his girlfriend with another man's semen plastered on it.
You learn to ignore it - because there isn't another way to deal with it. Blaming a specific community for it is a joke. What do you want the community to do about it? Say it's not okay?
Well it's not okay. We say that, but it falls on deaf ears. You want us to do something about it. But there isn't anything to do about it. Simply saying it's not okay isn't enough. It won't stop what happens. If you think it will, I'd love to hear your reasoning for how you came to that conclusion and what alternative universe you've wished yourself into.
Telling people that theft is not okay doesn't prevent all theft. Telling people that killing people is not okay doesn't prevent all murders. Telling people that [this] is not okay does not prevent all [this]. That's simply a fact of life.
What people are saying is: "No, this isn't okay. It's still going to happen. What do you want us to do about it, we can't do shit. You're going to have to deal with it."
Somehow that gets interpreted as "This is okay, we endorse it. We aren't going to do anything about it."
Actually I've done a good number of talks at tech conferences, and while I've gotten a few choice Youtube comments, I've never gotten any of the kind of shit thrown at me that female colleagues in a similar position have. The same kind of stuff described in this post.
And it's not exactly clear from your post why we should throw up our hands at a threat to someone's children, either.
> Somehow that gets interpreted as "This is okay, we endorse it. We aren't going to do anything about it."
Yes, telling someone that they shouldn't talk about the bad thing happening to them, that they should just get over it, is condoning it. Oh, no need for them to get into the particulars! I can just assume I've already experienced exactly whatever they're going to say and just tell them, "well, that's the internet for you".
Ever heard of the expression "Don't feed the trolls"? Most of the threats people get are non-serious. Two decades of internet experience tells me that very, very, very, very, very few individually targeted threats ever actually get enacted. So yes, you pretend they don't happen and don't give them the attention they desire.
In fact - the police will tell you not to talk about the threat after you report it to them. Discussing the threat gives them an audience, which is what many legitimate psychopaths desire. Someone to "watch their work" after it's been done. It's better to stay silent and let police investigate (and if they don't investigate, chances are they don't think it's a serious threat or there isn't anything they can do besides put you under police protection).
Also what do you expect individuals to do against an anonymous threat? Console you? Flame a throwaway account? When you talk about it and everyone tells you "Yeah, it happens to me too. Just ignore it." What's their to talk about? That it happens? Yes. We know it happens. There's nothing you can actually do about it.
To steal an example someone else used: spam email.
There's little you can do to prevent spam emails (only try and intelligently filter them). Spam email is going to happen whether you like it or not, whether you talk about it or not, and everyone gets spam email and everyone hates spam email. We aren't supporting spam by not wanting to talk about spam. We just don't talk about it because there is nothing to talk about. You ignore it. It's a part of the world we live in and openly talking about "I get spam email all the time this sucks!" isn't helping to stop the spam problem. After a point, people would prefer you would just shut up about spam emails. Us not caring to discuss something we have no control over doesn't mean we agree with it. It means it's pointless to discuss. Perhaps pick an issue that people have some control over that could be solved.
The problem is you're assuming that only carried-through threats are the problem here (that sheer volume of fucked up comments don't make eventually make it unpleasant to work in an industry), and that everyone reacts to threats the same way you do ("very few rape threats come to pass, therefore I feel fine walking to my car alone right now").
> In fact - the police will tell you not to talk about the threat after you report it to them.
No, they don't. They may tell you to not say anything if there's an ongoing investigation, but that's about it.
> Discussing the threat gives them an audience, which is what many legitimate psychopaths desire.
Not usually, but most people making these comments are not psychopaths anyways, and are part of the same industry as the rest of us (why else are they watching tech talks?), and do not stand well with their comments in the light of day.
> and if they don't investigate, chances are they don't think it's a serious threat or there isn't anything they can do besides put you under police protection
Go to a major city and get mugged, at gunpoint even, then report your missing wallet and/or phone to the police. Then let me know as soon as they catch the crook and you get your stuff back. I won't wait up.
It's beyond me why people see this sort of thing all the time from police, then presuppose that same force, with little technical training, will get right on those online death threats and catch the person behind them. Unless you attract major attention (and retain it), little is going to be done for you.
>and are part of the same industry as the rest of us (why else are they watching tech talks?
You act like this only happens in the tech industry. That's your problem. You seem to live in this little bubble of the world where you're blissfully unaware that this happens to anyone famous. Even marginally so.
>Go to a major city and get mugged, at gunpoint even, then report your missing wallet and/or phone to the police. Then let me know as soon as they catch the crook and you get your stuff back. I won't wait up.
What do you expect them to do in such a scenario? You seem to live in a novel where every crime can be solved by the most trace amount of evidence. This is the real world. A lot of crimes go uncaught and unpunished. Most home burglars don't get caught. Notice how my comment didn't stop at "don't think it's a serious threat" but includes "there isn't anything they can do".
How many threats do you think Justin Beiber (Bieber?) gets a day? He's still alive. He's still singing. Nothing has happened.
>It's beyond me why people see this sort of thing all the time from police, then presuppose that same force, with little technical training, will get right on those online death threats and catch the person behind them.
It's beyond me why people think that lesser trained, lesser resourceful people online who suffer the same treatment in many scenarios would be able to do anything about it either. But I guess getting attention and pointing people to your Patreon solves a lot of life's problems.
>That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem.
Is that really the case, though? If there's a violent criminal in a town, does the town as a whole have problem? Is the whole town to blame for the acts of that individual?
We should do what we can to stop this sort of abuse and make things better, but why do we have to spend so much time allocating blame to everyone in same field of work?
To continue along your analogy, that would be akin to the local population saying "there's need to involve police forces, it's only the one guy"
"Just because there's a violent criminal in town doesn't mean we have to do anything about it, we're on the whole nice people"
Instead of you know, assisting the police with their enquiries, teaching their kids it's not ok to slice open people, volunteering for search parties to find the victims, organising groups to walk kids to and from school, etc.
You kind of missed the analogy - we should do all of those things. The problem is that the acts of the violent criminal are being treated as the acts of the whole town.
No, they aren't. That may be what you're hearing, but I promise you that's not what the intended message is.
When someone says "This town has a crime problem," they're not saying "The town itself is committing lots crimes" or even "This town contains nothing but criminals." What they are saying is that it doesn't matter how many good people there are in the town, it's still that town's responsibility to do something about it. The town can't just wait around for some other town to come and fix things for them. Or go on letting people get robbed and killed as long as it doesn't happen to anyone that "matters".
Women say "This industry is fucked" because they want things to get better. Some people hear this and seem to think that if they personally didn't cause it, then it's not their job to fix things or even acknowledge the issue. But news flash, the only way things get better if the people who aren't causing the problem drive the change. Because the people who are causing the problem aren't going to. They're entirely happy with the shitty status quo.
Except, if we are going to make the analogy faithful to the real life scenario, the blame is not transferring the guilt of the criminal, but the separate crime of not doing anything about the criminal.
If there are violent criminals in a town running rampant and unaccountable, then yes, the whole town has a problem. How could you think otherwise? Every municipal election I've seen or read about touches on crime and response to crime.
> why do we have to spend so much time allocating blame to everyone in same field of work?
We only spend a lot of time on this because every time somebody talks about their actual experience, eight zillion dudes pop up to shout, "#notallmen"! Or to demand that the problem be proven to them right this instant with detailed studies in top journals. Or to say, "why are we allocating blame" when nobody was in fact blamed.
The tech industry has a problem. Do others? Possibly, but I don't care. Other people can worry about fixing their own industries. I'm going to worry about fixing mine. But it's not going to start getting better until people admit that there's a problem.
But is it really my community? The 'tech industry' is very broad - a software engineer at Google, a computer engineer at IBM, a Sysadmin at AT&T, a computer scientist at Volvo - they're all considered members of the tech industry.
Half of the industry has probably never attended a conference of any sort. 3/4 of the industry probably don't have personal blogs, or a GitHub.
There's no bar association or union or anything. You don't even need a degree to get hired. Grouping, say, an embedded systems specialist and a PHP dev into the 'tech community' is like grouping a welder and an auto mechanic into the 'construction community'. There are similarities, sure, but very little influence between groups.
That's my industry that's fucked. Not some random people on the internet, not some assholes in a convention. The statement is that the entire industry that I participate in, interact with and identify with is fucked.
You really need to rephrase, because the way I read this statement is contradictory:
Responsibility: the state of being the person who caused something to happen.
Blame: to say or think that a person or thing is responsible for something bad that has happened.
I think what you want to say is that we're asking people to stand against this sort of abuse, which seems to be happening to the extent possible. If you have suggestions for further steps to stop this sort of thing I think everyone is all ears, but the language you're using suggests random programmers and sysadmins should write long blog posts taking responsibility for negative acts of which they had no part and are against. That seems both pointless and somewhat insulting.
One meaning of "responsible" is basically synonymous with blame, but that's not the only meaning, or even the primary one.
If some random litters on my lawn and then walks away, they are to blame for the mess, but I am responsible for cleaning it up because it's my lawn.
As another example, there are plenty of American citizens who argued fervently against the Iraq war, so they aren't to blame for it, but they are responsible for paying the debts that result from it.
You and I are not necessarily to blame for the sexism and misogyny in the tech industry. But personally, I want the industry to be a welcoming place for everybody with technical skill, not just dude with thick skins. So I am taking my share of responsibility for my professional community. Would you like to help?
It is optimal when responsibility and control match, but they rarely do. E.g., parents have much more responsibility for children than they have control. Citizens and city governments have a responsibility to keep garbage off the streets, but they don't have perfect control of who can put garbage on the streets.
If you are doing what you can to solve the problem, then you have already taken your share responsibility for the state of the industry.
It makes you angry to think?
Is this the modern day internet in which lots of individuals say stupid things to get a rise out of people (troll for the lulz)? or is it a tech industry problem
Turn your base emotions off for a second and try to use your higher level brain facilities to target the actual root of this.
I'm an african-american in tech. Lots has happened to me. What has ever happened to you such that you can relate?
So, you're emotional.. angry about someone trolling a woman. So, you're going to go on an irrational rampage and fight any man to death who tries to bring clarity to the issue beyond your emotional white knighting?
Cheers man.. you're no better than the trolls who function on the same base instinct. Rise above it. This isn't the stone-age.
> So, you're emotional.. angry about someone trolling a woman. So, you're going to go on an irrational rampage and fight any man to death who tries to bring clarity to the issue beyond your emotional white knighting?
Cheers man.. you're no better than the trolls who function on the same base instinct
Yes, we call this sort of thing a straw man.
I do enjoy, however, that the OP is blogging "because she feels she's the center of the world"[1], alaroldai is an irrational, rampaging white knight, but you're just bringing clarity to the issue. No, you don't seem irrationally invested in the issue in the slightest.
> It may seem counterintuitive, but the fastest and most effective way to stop posts like this turning up is actually to make more of them, until the harassment and abuse stop.
You have evidence to back this up? Honest question.
"Bullying remains a big problem, according to the study data. About 76% of violent crimes that occurred at school were not reported to police, which is consistent with the findings that from 2006 to 2010, crimes against youth age 12 to 17 were more likely to go unreported than crimes against persons in other age categories."
Now, here's my question for you, mholt (and others), meant in a kind but very direct tone: why should someone need to prove that reporting more of these crimes is justifiable? Why quibble with that question versus addressing the question of, "is there a wrong being done and can I help stop it?"
There is a wrong being done. You can help stop it.
Have you heard the phrase "don't feed the trolls?" Generally, if someone is saying hurtful things because they didn't know better, raising awareness is likely to help. If they're saying hurtful things to get attention, saying that they're hurting people and should stop is likely to be counterproductive.
I don't know enough to be positive in this case, but I'm guessing this is a case of "trolls", not a case of "ignorant people" (at least not ignorant in the sense of not knowing that they're causing someone distress).
>>> That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem.
I'm not disagreeing with you. But...
Isn't that true with everything? Is the medical industry fucked because some doctors are getting sued for malpractice? Is accountancy fucked because some accountants embezzle money? Are teachers fucked because some guy fails students who look like his ex?
I mean come on. These attitudes are in no way productive and the only reason the above post exists is to attract attention, not to fix anything.
Your examples all have something in common which is that the harm is caused indiscriminately by which I mean that there is I reason to think that any one group of people is affected more than any other. In other words they are like car accidents. Everybody has a roughly equal chance of being affected and therefore everybody has the same incentives to fix or not fix the problem. But when some problem affects a particular group of people disproportionately and when that group is itself powerless to fix the problem, well then the situation is fucked. Especially if those who do have the power to fix the problem instead choose to wash their hands of it.
> Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss."
I'm tired of people whining in a blog post instead of calling the police.
Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop.
"Two hours later, a Palm Springs police officer lumbered up the steps to my hotel room, paused on the outdoor threshold, and began questioning me in a steady clip. I wheeled through the relevant background information: I am a journalist; I live in Los Angeles; sometimes, people don’t like what I write about women, relationships, or sexuality; this was not the first time that someone had responded to my work by threatening to rape and kill me. The cop anchored his hands on his belt, looked me in the eye, and said, “What is Twitter?”"
Glad you posted this. They mentioned this incident in a segment they did on Last Week Tonight. The police are completely ill-equipped to deal with online harassment, even if they could determine the identity of the attacker, which they likely rarely can.
One, demanding that the victims do extra work to solve the problem is problematic in that it shifts the burden onto people who are already having a hard time. (If you think this can be easily solved, volunteer to deal with the police for someone. Or just pay for someone to act as an advocate.)
Two, if you were paying attention to previous victims of online harassment, you'd know that police generally don't give a shit, and when they do, it's an extremely hard case to pursue.
Three, if you're tired of people talking about their lives on their blogs, don't read their blogs. You coming on here to whine about other people supposedly whining is ridiculous. There are plenty of us who actually want to solve these problems and are glad when people post.
If you think calling 911 will benefit you, by all means do it. There are plenty of people for whom it is either not a benefit or an active danger. For them, I can understand why they don't call.
> Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop.
What evidence do you have that the police will do something? We could look at people like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, who I feel confident we'll agree have experienced massive and credible death threats. They report the threats they get to the police and FBI. Who's in jail as a result?
Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. I haven't seen or heard of many court cases dealing with this, and when I have it's been via a blog post. Calling the police might be helpful in the specific case, but unless it really is high profile, it's not going to help change the culture.
Now, if the harasser is 2 continents away, it's going to get circular filed. If the harasser is two continents away, though, you can just ignore the message.
However, if the harasser turns out to be in the same state or even the same county, the police will care a lot. And someone in the same state qualifies as an imminent threat. And has likely done it to other people.
>Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgusted and threatened. That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem.
There is not one "person in this industry" that was named or identified here. To project that anonymous internet trolls are "the tech industry" says more about how you view the tech industry then the industry itself or the people in it. What needs to stop is blanked condemnations of an industry, any industry because someone gets nasty tweets or emails. I got nasty email therefore the tech industry is responsible is not credible. Anyone regardless of who you are or what you do can end up with a mailbox full of nasty emails for innumerable reasons.
This is a strongly gendered phenomenon. Prominent women in tech have an entirely different experience than prominent men in tech. (This is mostly true for non-prominent people as well.) This comes up over and over and over.
But by all means keep clouding the issue in hopes of not having to talk about it.
The conversation that can be had is about slander and false accusations leveled against the tech industry as a whole. And the motivations of those who propagate such narratives. There has been no connection established between said emails and the "tech industry".
The implication that only girls get nasty emails on the internet and they obviously come from the "Assholes in the tech industry" is childish, not credible.
I'm currently working in a team that is 50% women, and I'm amazed at how many stories they have of previous work experiences and the culture of acceptance in medium sized companies.
I hope Jessie doesn't give up. Not only for the sake of our industry, but also for the sake of girls who want to make it in this industry and not have to put up with what jessie has had to put up with.
Her (or any person) having to leave our industry because of any sort of harassment hurts the rest of us the most.
Rather than going the law enforcement harassment route, is there any way we as an industry can stand up for Jessie and the rest of the woman who are being abused by a few assholes?
Just yesterday I met a friends niece who wants to become a game developer. She's only 14 now, but what a shame it would be for her to give up on her dream because some idiotic moron, mentally incapable of forming real normal relationships, has ruined our industry for her.
This doesn't need police action (though nothing wrong with that), it needs us to be outspoken and supportive. Maybe also a bit creative in how we handle this. I'm all for finding ways of kicking these offensive guys out and bringing more women in.
Agreed. What Jessie is dealing with is classic internet trolls. They don't give a damn about "Women in Tech", her or anything else. All that interests them is finding a target to dig a reaction out of "for the lulz". They do it because it gives them little endorphin pops to think about how upset their victim must be and because it's very low risk. That's all there is to it. If there was any perception of risk in their activity, they wouldn't do it.
Making it clear that "this is simply unacceptable" will only encourage trolls. They aren't ignorant. They don't even have an agenda. They're simply selfish. The only way to discourage them is to introduce concrete risk to the unwanted activity.
You're thinking about Something Awful around 2005, or 4chan's /b/ in 2007 or so. That's not what we're seeing.
While I'm hardly a rigorous ethnographer of the Internet's cesspits, my (often firsthand) observations suggest that "for the lulz" was never as significant a motivation as it was made out to be, and it's less so now than then.
Too, trolling "for the lulz" tends to show a pretty typical pattern of high intensity combined with short period -- people doing it just for fun tend to get bored and wander off after a little while, save in the relatively rare case of a high-value "lulzcow" who can be trolled over and over to good effect (i.e., producing responses which lulz trolls consider funny.)
Meanwhile, the attacks directed at our female colleagues seem to vary widely in intensity, but to occur over a relatively long period; sometimes it ebbs, and sometimes (as for example in the wake of increased public prominence, such as a conference presentation) it hits high tide, but pretty much all our colleagues who've chosen to speak up about it have described it as an overall ongoing thing.
That's not a characteristic pattern of lulz trolls; for one thing, they don't have the staying power, and for another, lulz trolls actually do go away if you don't feed them. Instead, that's a pattern characteristic of people who are doing what they do, not for its own sake, but as a tactic to advance some purpose -- in this case, I think a reasonable surmise is that they actually are trying to drive women away from the industry, by making it just not worth putting up the bullshit involved in staying in it.
Maybe I'm wrong. Since I got bored of 4chan, I've only seen trolls when they're being well fed --such as right now. I guess it comes down to:
Which is most likely to be the more prevalent source of the problem?
A) There is a small, but significant population of men in technology who aggressively harass prominent women in tech and they do it primarily because they want to actively work against the growth of female participation in the general tech community.
B) There is a small, but significant population of people on the internet who enjoy aggressively and anonymously harassing anyone they think they can get a good reaction out of. Some of these trolls participate in the tech industry. Their distant familiarity with prominent women in tech makes those women into particularly fun targets.
The problem of aggressive, anonymous harassment in tech is almost always portrayed as A). But, I believe B) is by far the more prominent source. This misportrayal distracts the conversation from discussing real solutions. Instead, it actually feeds the trolls by generating highly entertaining, heated arguments where neither side is even talking about the real source of problem: them.
It is A, as the responses above, and hundreds of blog posts and similar discussions have made clear. There are big disparities in the gender balance, specifity, longevity, and personal nature of the attacks. And it happens to women who are not prominent in any sense of the word.
I think you want it to be B, because you don't want to believe it's A. But it is definitely A.
> They don't give a damn about "Women in Tech", her or anything else.
I disagree. If this was a pure love of fucking with people, men and women would get equal levels of this. But that's definitely not the case. They have a strong opinion on women in tech (and in gaming): they're vigorously opposed.
> The only way to discourage them is to introduce concrete risk to the unwanted activity.
I'm all for that. But it's tricky. There are good reasons names are rarely named in situations like this: the consequences of a public fight are often worse for the victims than the abusers. If we want consequences, we'll have to find ways to make it safe for victims to come forward, and we'll have to give them confidence that reporting abuse will actually do some good.
> If this was a pure love of fucking with people, men and women would get equal levels of this. But that's definitely not the case.
Women in tech and gaming are targeted because they are juicy targets. They have a high reward/effort ratio. It's easy to get hooks into a woman in tech/gaming. Vigorously opposing them is a means to the end of getting a reaction. It's relatively much harder to get a reaction from a man for being in tech or gaming. So, the trolls go for the low-hanging fruit.
> I'm all for that. But it's tricky.
Definitely. If this was easy, it would have been solved long ago. This is a problem as old as the internet. I'm just trying to direct attention to the actual problem. Indictments of whole industries are worse than distractions. The confused, heated, misguided, highly emotional arguments are troll dessert! Watching people in this discussion get angry at each other is the cherry on top of all the effort they put into Jessi.
I agree that they can cause more damage to women, but I think that's mainly because the culture (and the tech industry) is still substantially sexist.
But it's precisely that endemic sexism that makes me suspicious of your theory that of all the people being terrible mainly to women (misogynists, cat-callers, street harassers, pick-up artists, date rapists, abusive partners, exploitative bosses, etc, etc, etc), these trolls are the only ones who happen to be perfectly free of bias.
Do you have some explanation of how all of these people happen to be so unusually free of bias and then take up a hobby where they abuse women for fun? Otherwise, Occam's razor suggests that this is just the on-line form of the culturally endemic male abuse of vulnerable women.
> Indictments of whole industries are worse than distractions.
Nope! Definitely not. People are perfectly happy to let problems exist when they're on a large enough scale, because they don't see themselves as having a way to act. But this problem exists in our industry, and we can fix it here if we want. I sure do.
And people ask why more women don't speak at conferences or at meetup groups or contribute to open source software, or even publish blogs. It's because we are SCARED. We know what the consequences of making our voices heard can be, and it's terrifying, and we question whether it is worth the risk.
I think you're being a bit overbroad in speaking for all women (that's the kind of thinking which leads to sexism in the first place). Frankly the 'consequences' here are receiving a bunch of unsavoury PMs. i.e., there are no real-world, physical, dangerous consequences. So the fear of contributing to a community because of it is unfounded. It's just a side-effect of Internet culture, and it happens to men too.
The author received private messages saying that someone jerked off to a picture of her at a conference and also photoshopped pictures of her full of blood.
Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences. This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physical assault needs to go back to the 1950's where it belongs.
>Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences.
No, in the vast majority of cases they don't. Trolls gonna troll, sorry. I'll bet we can count on one hand the number of times Internet death threats have led to actual deaths.
There's a reason authorities don't investigate or prosecute stuff like this.
>This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physical assault
Sorry, what? How is a death threat sexual harassment?
I don't know how to respond to your assertion that receiving violent messages on a regular basis is only harmful if there's a credible threat of follow-through.
It's simply not normal to have to read email threatening you or making sexually harassing statements. No one should have to put up with that. The fact that you seem to think that this is normal is deeply concerning to me. If you regularly receive harassing messages, that's not okay and I'm really sorry. I'm really glad that you're apparently able to handle that without lots of mental anguish, but it's not something we as a society should shrug off.
> How is a death threat sexual harassment?
Please read the linked post. If you can't find the instance of sexual harassment in the author's blog post... god help you.
You're trying to move the goalpost here, and folks are right to not let you do it.
If you think abusive behavior is OK, show some courage of your convictions and just say it outright. Don't sit here playing word games that make you look like a coward.
I don't think abusive behavior is OK, I just don't think Internet PMs or e-mails even register above 1 on the 10-point scale of things that are abusive. Sexual assault at a conference is reprehensible and must be dealt with; abusive private messages are an uncomfortable consequence of participating in an anonymous distributed network.
If someone sent you an email every day from different email addresses with the same text saying they were going to rape and murder you, and included your home address, pictures of your family and pictures of weapons, that wouldn't bother you?
How do you know there are no real-world consequences? You're just gonna assume it's some 14-year-old kid trolling you and not one of the many insane people in this world who might actually do something? Based on a hunch?
The day I seriously worry about a 14-year old internet wanktard harassing me in my home is probably also the day that I go to jail for blowing away said internet wanktard because they were unlucky enough to threaten me in my home whilst I was there.
>You're just gonna assume it's some 14-year-old kid trolling you and not one of the many insane people in this world who might actually do something? Based on a hunch?
Based on evidence and reasoning through probability. Thousands of Internet trolls send tens of thousands of death threats every day. On a given day, the probability that even one of those death threats is acted upon is a sliver greater than zero. As in, maybe there are one or two cases per year worldwide where a troll brigade carries out some real-world action corresponding to its threats. Though even that, I suspect, is an overestimate.
Wow, completely insensitive to reality. Photoshopped photos of blood and so on represent serious intimidation. Which one is the troll and which is the one who follows through, finds your address and makes it physical?
I would say that death threats can have very real-world consequences, and if I were to receive them the real-world consequence would be that I would be scared for my life. You tell me how that isn't the real world..
> It's just a side-effect of Internet culture, and it happens to men too.
This is false-equivalence horseshit. It may also happen to men, but it happens a couple of orders of magnitude less. I've spoken at a number of conferences and never received anything like this. If you talk to prominent men and women in tech about their experiences, they get radically different levels of abuse.
Also, Internet culture is not something that has been going on for thousands of years. It is entirely new. So either a) this should be a pretty easy fix, or b) it's actually part of something bigger than "Internet culture".
I don't know who you're talking about and curiously neither does Google. This comment appears to be the only mention of 'Val Adams' to ever appear on HN.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're above making up names in hopes that nobody will check your references. Could you provide a link detailing whatever incident you're talking about involving Val Adams?
There is a small culture of people online who make a hobby of harassment. They don't have an agenda. They aren't representative of anything. They're not distinguished by being part of any particular industry, race, sexuality or economic status. They are simply selfish individuals.
They do it because it gives them little endorphin pops to think about how upset their victim must be and because it is a very low risk activity. That's all there is to it. They don't particularly care about "women in tech" or "women in gaming" to any extent beyond the fact that the controversy gives them a hook they can latch on to dig a reaction out of their victim. Or infinitely better: the press!
The only way to prevent this activity is to attach a small but concrete level of risk to it. Quoting the article that chuckcode linked about Reddit's "Violentacrez":
> "My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment," he said. "I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time."
> There is a small culture of people online who make a hobby of harassment. They don't have an agenda. They aren't representative of anything. They're not distinguished by being part of any particular industry, race, sexuality or economic status. They are simply selfish individuals
I wish more people understood this. It is a big problem with no solution. We can keep spamposting these tropes of #gurlgamers and #womenintech but the problem isn't really that these arenas are overtly hostile to women. The problem is that if you are in these arenas you are just more visible to the type of people that enjoy harassing people. I think doxxing is one of the biggest sins on the internet. Anonymity and privacy are fundamental pieces of American and Internet culture.
Doxxing someone is really the only way to stop these things happening, and even then they must actually care about what society thinks of them. Also, if you are wrong you could ruin an innocent persons life. So no easy solutions. Explaining tolerance and these angry women first campaigns alienate people from the causes. They don't harass women and are normal people. The people that actually do bad things couldn't care any less about this "education" and the flamewars this stuff starts make it all the more funny to them.
This is an insanely hard problem to solve, and it might actually not be possible to fix. The answer might be to have thick skin and hire a security company to put alarms and cameras in your house. It isn't fair to someone like the subject of this article that is an intelligent, attractive, hard working person to be punished for having these attributes, but it is an answer even if not a great one.
There are no social problems so large that we can't fix them once we develop the will to do so. We don't develop the will until we admit that these problems are tractable.
Completely agree that this is a fixable problem that we must resolve before some "responsible" institution comes along and trades our freedom on the internet for security.
I do think that there is an interesting twist for humanity though as we try to move into a virtual space. Much of the social norms that are hard wired into people to allow us to get along involve actual facial and other cues only accessible in person. It will likely take some training and some time figure out how to deal with each other remotely. There is a lot of work in psychology looking at things like "social identity theory" that people have applied to internet interactions (with some colorful summaries [1]).
I do think that many folks will be surprised in the future to find that the internet isn't quite as anonymous as they think. There are only 7 billion or so of us and google and others could process everything we've ever written in an afternoon. Certainly a lot of folks have been surprised to find that their emails aren't very secure and can hang around for a long time. If you wouldn't say something to somebody in person then it usually isn't a good idea to say it online as well with possible exceptions for concern for your own personal safety when constructively criticizing the powerful.
Thanks for the link, chuckcode. Skimmed a bit and added to the "read before bedtime" pile.
There's a lot of interestingness around anonymity vs. pseudonymity. From what I've read and experienced, it comes down to how much you value a particular identity in a particular context; from there, it's all about framing incentives around the identity that you value. Violentcranz didn't value the online persona enough that online incentives mattered; when he was outed by a journalist, he valued the real life incentives enough to stop the online behavior.
But I want to add a counter statistic.
I've only had pleasant experiences from people trying to help me.
The only shit I got in the industry was from a business manager trying to push our team into a death march.
There are many factors out in there in the world.
We need to put things back into context, rather than just saying things like "Our Industry is fucked".
It feels like lately its too easy to forget the majority of people in tech (i've found) are incredibly decent human beings both men and women.
That's true of the majority everywhere, I think, but the minority in this case has a disproportionately large impact -- for example, in running Kathy Sierra, a highly competent professional with a great deal to contribute, out of the industry entirely.
I'm happy it hasn't impinged on your work life, and I hope it never does. And there's still folks being hurt by a malevolent minority in and around our industry.
When does that majority of incredibly decent human beings, both men and women, start to care enough that they refuse to accept this any longer?
Focusing on the minority is important, and kind of the point of article. The vocal minority in the tech world seem to be more unreasonably misbehaved than other industries. Imagine a woman in the medical industry or energy sector who gives conference talks and blogs...no way she's going to get this level of harassment.
The level of abuse the author has endured is ridiculous and she certainly has my sympathies. It reminds me of Louis CK's routine about why he doesn't give his kids cell phones (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c) which boils down to without seeing the other person they can't empathize about the effect their words will have on other people. I can't help but wonder how these pseudo-anonymous people will feel when they find out that they aren't all that anonymous in the long run. When gawker unmasked "Reddits biggest troll" Violentacrez he certainly had a change of feelings when he had to stand behind his words and actions[1]. Freedom of speech is one of our most important values and anonymity is an important source for social change and equality for all. Using these gifts to rain down insults on others rarely works out well though in person and likely won't work out well on the internet in the long run either.
I've sort of thought that this was a fairly consistent phenomenon since the origin of the internet, and that as more and more people come online they've been exposed to it and don't think it's reasonable. And to some extent they're right - it's not reasonable. Unfortunately being a public figure, especially by critiquing that phenomena, is going to attract more of that abuse.
It pains me to see people call that sort of thing an issue with the "tech industry", though. Not that the tech industry is perfect, but that grouping in the internet trolls with people who care and want to fix the things that do need fixing is really counter-productive when you're trying to win a war of hearts and minds.
It's not so much grouping internet trolls with the tech industry, but that the tech industry is having a problem with its troll population.
This might be purely because we're the first out of the trenches... we got the first trolls because we were the first to adopt online communication, and we have the first gamergate because we're still ahead of other industries/communities.
I think we need to associate this sort of thing with the tech industry, because only then will we be able to fix it. Shrugging it off as "universal behaviour" will just mean no-one tries to do anything about it. In order to "un-fuck" this industry, we do need to accept that we do this. You (as an individual) may not and I may not, but we as an industry troll our women and minorities. And until we as an industry accept that we do this (and that it's a bad thing that we need to stop doing) it'll never stop.
Is one person enough to blame the entire industry? Or two? Perhaps 10% of the industry is trolling women and minorities. Is there any evidence of that level of participation?
>In order to "un-fuck" this industry, we do need to accept that we do this.
This sort of ultimatum is exactly the thing that promotes hostility against confronting these issues. If somebody wants to help, why do they also have to take blame? It actively turns people away who refuse to take that blame. It makes no sense.
OK, fair point. So you don't like taking blame for other people's bad actions, even if those others are part of your community. I get that. We're also having that discussion around Islam too.
But to my mind, this is what makes a community a community. If good things happen we all share credit, so when bad things happen we all share blame. We, collectively, respond to events together. And we police ourselves, which is a form of taking responsibility as a community for the actions of a minority of our members.
So yes, if one of us behaves like an asshole then we as a community take responsibility for that, deal with the asshole, and apologise to the victim.
However, if one of us behaves like an asshole, and we as a community shrug our shoulders and say "not our problem, some people are just assholes" then other communities do have a right to say that we condone it, that we are at fault, that we as a community are behaving badly.
That's how I see it anyway, and why I think we need to accept responsibility.
Your post has inadvertently cemented how little sense of community I get from being a "tech" person. Tech doesn't feel like a town hall meeting in a new home I just haven't integrated with yet, it feels like commuting into NYC for work and looking around on a subway car.
I don't know what shared credit or shame I take part in sharing that is specific enough to identify with. Do we really respond to events together? A decade ago I may have said yes, but now all the opinions I see getting play are bog standard points plucked from the American political spectrum. Nothing wrong with that pre se, it just indicates to me whatever tech was, it's too large and/or too assimilated to have unique perspectives anymore.
The "voices" of tech are more and more often tech-adjacent rabble rousers or wanna-be standard-bearers. I don't identify with them any more than I do the corporate speech of big brands trying to play up the fact their core product is software in an attempt to use the cachet of tech and make their corporatism more palatable.
Over a decade ago I did have a sense of community in tech, but even then it was a community defined by unreasonable passion in a corner of a subfeild. Now that the headcount has exploded across the board, I'm supposed to own a non-programmer troll on twitter, or micro-aggressions at an office more degrees of separation away from myself than Kevin Bacon?
The only time I felt any sense of community in the last few years, is when someone is telling me I belong to one and online harassment is my responsibility.
Well the way this is playing out for the Muslims isn't great for them.
If the same follows for us, then any self-identified member of the tech community will automatically be suspected of being an asshole by everyone else.
I have no idea whether your plan to not identify with the tech community will work. Maybe you're right and it's grown too much to be seen as a single community. Be interesting to find out.
But isn't Islam an counterpoint to your argument to hold the whole community responsible? Or are you just making the detached observation that because it happened to them, it can happen to us?
It's already happened to us, and it's not sexism (not that it would excuse anything, but as far as sexist industries go in society, I think we're low enough on the list to escape external criticism). It's the shocking elitism and douchbaggary that has come to define "tech." If you're in NorCal, you probably see it daily. Or if you really want some outsider perspective listen to John Oliver's comedy routine at The Crunchies, it's pretty cutting.
And the best part, both with the sexism and the way tech startups business models piss people off: the largest concentration of it comes from the "tech" people who are really the tech-adjacent business folk that came to tech just looking to make some cash.
yeah, just trying to spot parallels with other communities that have "problematic" minorities.
I see the elitism and douchebaggery as part of the same problem, it looks like a lack of empathy for others, though I don't know whether that's a cause or symptom.
The sociopathic non-tech founders would get nowhere and be capable of nothing if we didn't actively support them by building their stuff. We need to teach more techies to say "no" to assholes ;)
> So yes, if one of us behaves like an asshole then we as a community take responsibility for that, deal with the asshole, and apologize to the victim.
This is where I see the problem... We aren't a town, or a single company, or a government. There's no Computer Science union. So how do you propose we 'deal with' these assholes?
The tech 'community' really doesn't have a lot of power over its members. There isn't any singular accreditation association, there isn't a bar exam to get in. You don't need a membership in the ACM or IEEE to get or hold a job. Sometimes, you don't even need a college degree to get a job in the industry. The only thing unifying the tech community is an interest in technology.
Conceivably we could coordinate and ostracize / not hire problematic members.... but that's not a road we should go down (who determines when someone is being problematic?), and even if it was there would still be companies hiring outside of the loop.
And even then... most of this kind of harassment happens from anonymous accounts. If you know who they are, maybe you notify their employer about their behavior. Maybe, call the cops. But how do you 'deal with' an asshole like this if you don't even know who they are?
I'm not blaming the victim here - harassment is a major problem that needs to be addressed. But this is the internet - harassment is easy, regardless of whether you're next door or on another continent. The best defense is privacy.
I run a small blog, just posting some of the projects I work on. I had an issue with some obnoxious comments - nothing like this, but annoying nonetheless. So I dealt with it in the simplest way - my blog doesn't have comments enabled anymore. It doesn't list my email, my home address, or my phone number. There is a simple version of my resume on the blog, but the only way to contact me from my website is via LinkedIn.
I agree that we share responsibility for the actions of members of our community. I disagree that the tech industry is one large community.
yeah, I agree with that, though obviously the problem is less with how we see ourselves and more with how others see us: If you turn up to a BBQ, identify yourself as a coder/founder and immediately people assume you're a sociopathic/sexist asshole then you have a problem. Telling people you're not part of that community isn't going to help.
This is less about the tech industry and more about the culture of the internet. A loud minority enforce the culture of anonymity on the internet and having a public presence will open one up to getting caught in the crosshairs. Being a "public figure" has always opened one up to these sorts of things, the internet has made the barrier of entry very low for spamming and threatening someone. I don't see any solution to this.
Got something for those of us who aren't mathematicians? I mean, I appreciate you've put a lot of thought into this and I'm sure it seems perfectly sensible to you, but expecting us mere mortals to determine our response to a given situation by matrix multiplication is maybe expecting a little more than our capabilities can afford.
the matrix multiplication will be done behind the scenes; you can just pay attention to the output: a number for each other person, saying how much you are likely to respect them, given who you say you respect.
it's like a count: how many friends respect this person, how many friends of friends, how many friends of friends of friends, etc.
Kudos to her for standing up to it, but she should clearly never have to. This kind of thing just shouldn't be happening...
I don't think I know anybody who does this to women. I really hope that's because I don't actually know anyone who does, and not that people I otherwise respect are secretly doing this. How would a person know, if it's anonymous?
Well, maybe a few ways. The question is, are these all actually anonymous? Jessie's post lists messages on IRC and e-mails. I'd bet some people get harassed on Twitter, Reddit, or other widely-used platforms. Some of these people must be identifiable, surely? At the very least, some might be using the same username/e-mail address across many services, and might end up using one in relation to a job application.
The last thing I'd want is a witch hunt, where innocent people end up on the wrong end of an Internet lynch mob. What I'm about to wonder out-loud might be a bad or ill-conceived idea, but here goes:
Would it be reasonable/helpful/worthwhile to have some centralized place where these kinds of harassments can be forwarded and grouped? E-mails with headers, tweets with screenshots of the full context, IRC messages with Nickserv registration info, etc., so that repeat offenders would have a form of evidence (and I stress evidence) stacked against them? Some form of "witness" system, where other recipients (Twitter users, IRC users, etc.) can sign off that they saw this take place?
Basically, create a sort of tech industry predator list. Not everyone on there would be readily identifiable, but maybe some would be. I certainly would check it before hiring anyone, look up GitHub usernames and such, and it might help give people who don't experience this a better sense of just how terrible and prevalent this all is.
So, good idea, at least in part? Terrible idea with too much potential for further abuse? Somewhere in-between?
I'm going to avoid addressing the community-created offender registry idea, because like you I'm not sure how to even begin evaluating its potential harms.
But I think that law enforcement will inevitably create something of the sort. Like John Oliver's harrassment video from a few weeks ago described, these are real crimes being committed and the state has an interest in solving them. The current weak link in prosecuting offenders is in training officers and prosecutors to recognize that a crime was committed and in providing them the tools to gather enough evidence for a conviction. And I hope we'll get there soon.
Once there is a lower bar for and less social stigma attached to reporting these crimes and having those responsible judged in court, there will be a public record. So whether someone in our community makes a death threat in real life or via Twitter, they'll face the same social consequences as well as legal ones.
Yeah, there is a lot of potential for abuse. Mostly hoping that it would spur on some additional thinking in this area.
John Oliver's segment was great. What I'm unsure of, though, is how much a cop can really do? The offenders are not necessarily going to be in the same general area. They may not be in the same country. This would need to be handled internationally, in some way, wouldn't it?
Law enforcement has done a pretty decent job at cooperating across jurisdictions in their war on poor people who use drugs. I'm willing to bet that, if they cared about the issue, they would find a way.
I'm also willing to bet a huge portion of these people are domestic.
John Oliver's segment massively downplayed the fact that men also get harassed online, to the point that I lost a lot of respect for it. It effectively made online harassment a female only problem, which it most definitely is not. This is an issue without gender. A perfect example is reddit's Unidan, who has received multiple death threats.
First, we don't really have static IPs, not even static prefixes on IPv6. You could narrow someone down to their city by their host mask, but that can still be any of 5,000,000 people. And all they have to do is change their MAC address and renew their DHCP lease to have a new IP.
Second, easy to submit faked screenshots to get someone flagged as a bad person. When you get (in)famous enough, trolls start using false flag operations against you.
Best bet is probably a service where registration requires absolute proof of ID (Facebook's "I pinky promise I'm really $madeUpName" isn't enough.) But that still has issues with stolen logins, tricking the registration system, the harassment having your real identity known can cause, and it would keep away decent people who value their privacy.
Practically speaking, this has happened among SJ activists using social media; see for example the "Block Bot", "call-out culture," et al.
What has been observed is that the harassment doesn't "go away", so much as metamorphose into indirect forms. Now when abusers get attacked, they weaponize their own victimhood into a backlash, suddenly sending out dozens of messages that build up a sympathetic story. They bury their past by opening a new account, but openly declare themselves to be the same person, so as to bring along their entourage. They threaten suicide to raise the stakes(and in most such cases, they are actually unstable enough for this to be a serious concern). Abusers can be popular despite evidence against them, through a mix of propaganda, misinformation, and well-meaning onlookers who thoughtlessly share. There are many gambits that allow you to be an awful person with few penalties.
For this reason, many of my friends who were or considered being involved in activist efforts have gotten burned and would prefer not to be visible at all. The rest of them indicate some of the personality traits that allow them to tolerate or thrive off of sustained abuse, despite its toxicity.
I currently believe that the Internet is too dangerous to broadcast open thoughts on, but it has an alternate possibility of suggesting those thoughts without saying them. The wise will find the wise without anyone being the wiser.
Absent any binding reputation system with meaningful consequences, making such a registry public would be a pretty broad abuse risk; you'd need extremely heavy moderation, distributed over a large number of people, and even then you'd just be increasing the effort required to abuse the system, rather than eliminating the possibility. Given the potentially serious consequences of being blacklisted this way, I'd be very hesitant to make a registry like this public.
On the other hand, I'm really not sure anything less would be worthwhile -- keeping such a registry, but having it be private, would I think be hardly better than nothing, in terms of actually bringing this kind of misbehavior under control.
There's a tradeoff here that I'm not sure I'm qualified to evaluate.
On the one hand, I don't really care for the idea of an industry blacklist in general, on whatever grounds.
On the other hand, I'm not having to put up with death threats, rape threats, depraved sexual harassment, et cetera ad nauseam, simply in order to try to do my job to the best of my ability.
Taken all in all, I find myself in favor of a public registry. After all, no one has to act on anything they find there, and having a solid base of information out there would give the industry at large an opportunity, heretofore lacking, to put up or shut up -- either demonstrate that this kind of malbehavior is beyond the tech industry's civilized pale, or demonstrate that the tech industry is the boys' club it's been accused of being and has no particular desire to see that change.
I'm honestly not sure which is the more likely result, but I have to say I'd be interested to see the experiment made.
> Basically, create a sort of tech industry predator list
People with your blacklists, you never learn...
> The last thing I'd want is a witch hunt,
That's exactly what it is.
If one get abused,one must report it, contact someone in the business involved and even file a complain at the nearest police station. But lynch mobs on the internet ,no. If a business doesn't do enough against harassment then expose it. But don't go after individuals and ruin their lives because "internet justice".
I just want to understand why people do this. If some men were afraid of losing their jobs because of a big influx of women I'd at least comprehend (but definitely not agree with) that behavior, but it's a job free-for-all now and seems like it always will be, so I just can't see what the motivation could possibly be. If they're just pure sociopaths, why don't they harass men this way as well?
Because they're insecure and want attention - if they can elicit a response from her then a woman has acknowledged their existence. Or because they feel innately that they are superior to women because they are male, and then cant comprehend that she is more prominent than they are, which makes them angry.
Immaturity essentially, given teeth by the anonymous power of the net and some distorted belief in freedom of speech (on the part of the companies that should be excising this crap).
> Or because they feel innately that they are superior to women because they are male, and then cant comprehend that she is more prominent than they are, which makes them angry.
Mo’ne Davis got famous for being the first girl to pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series at 13. She also plays basketball and football - she is very talented athletically. She appeared on talk shows and the cover of Sports Illustrated. Disney announced that they were going to make a movie about her.
A grown man (college baseball player Joey Casselberry) reacted to this with the following tweet:
"Disney is making a movie about Mo’Ne Davis? WHAT A JOKE. That slut got rocked by Nevada"
A grown man called a 13 year old a slut. A slut! Because she was getting well deserved attention.
Athletics tends to support arrested development. I have a hard time regarding a college baseball player, even one who almost certainly is taller than I am and packs a lot more lean mass, as a "grown man." I do hope that the athletic director at his school had a long talk with him that will make him think a long time before doing anything remotely like this again.
It looks like both genders are harassed quite a bit, younger people being harassed more. What surprised me in this article was men being physically threatened more than women.
I suspect that if you put threats of rape into the physical threats bucket (it is, of course, a physical threat, but it often gets its own bucket, or gets put into a sexual harassment bucket) the results might be different.
Men can get harassed too, but threats of sexual violence understandably create a much more visceral reaction in women.
Because men usually don't feel as vulnerable they can to a greater extent disregard certain types of threats or not get exposed to them (especially the sexual ones).
Unfortunately the abusers/bullies have a larger more powerful arsenal for attacking women than men.
Because women are the easiest target, essentially.
The people who do this essentially are pure sociopaths, and they pick the easiest targets because they're bullies. Women are an easy target for several reasons:
1. Isolation. Women are a minority in tech and there's a larger social stereotype that women can't do math/are incapable of advanced reason/whatever tosh you want to throw in here. That means it's easier to tell women they're trash and undeserving and have them believe it. There's not a lot of people most women can go to to complain about this or receive validation that these are poisonous lies without triggering another stereotype, being weak and vulnerable.
People would rather sit in silence and take it than be seen as a whiner.
2. In performance oriented cultures it's very common to shit on each other as an in-group building behavior. People who can 'take it' are the in group and people who get offended are the out group. Bullies can exploit this by knowing exactly how far they can push and make it seem like good natured ribbing even in a public social context. More subtle bullies can take things further by establishing unique contexts for minor slights to give them greater meaning that isn't there for other people, so that when the victim complains they seem irrational and crazy to observers. (Another stereotype of women.)
3. Cultural factors. All those stereotypes regardless of how much truth there is to them become self fulfilling prophecies. Women are weak and vulnerable is essentially an advertisement for bullies to go target women, bullies enjoy hurting women more for reasons that could be basically summed up as actual misogyny.
As for harassing men as well, they do. They just use different words when they do it. It might be helpful to throw out terms like 'women-hating' or 'misogynist' and zoom out a bit to look at the ways bullies hurt people in different contexts. Bullies don't care who you are, they will hurt anybody who will give them the warm fuzzies of having gotten someone. And to do that they will use whatever tactics or words will hurt.
These people use rape threats and death threats against women because they hurt. Women as a class are the most receptive to this sort of negative input for various cultural and yes physical reasons I won't elaborate on. But bullies have all sorts of tricks to use on other people. If you're a typical heterosexual male they'll tell you you're gay and unmanly. If you're gay and proud they'll tell you you're deviant scum. If you're a minority they'll call you racial slurs and insult you with stereotypes. If you have visible pimples they will tell you you're ugly. They will pick out whatever salient features are available to hurt you with and use them. It's less helpful to think of a lot of these people as racists or what not so much as optimization processes for suffering and tears.
They don't care who you are, they will hurt anyone.
I used to engage to in this sort of behavior to some extent. I grew up with a repressed sexuality and no knowledge of how to relate to women. Then, I suffered endless social rejection. I spent all my time in front of computers, and got good at programming.
We need to educate people
(1) How to relate to other, respectfully
(2) How to get over their anger
(3) Tell them this behavior is unacceptable
Tech has many misfits. There are many guys, who've spent their lives in front of computer screens, and haven't developed healthy ways of relating to other people. Yet, they can still be great at technology with the power that brings.
Thank you. I have long wanted to speak to someone who admits to doing this type of thing as it is very hard for me to understand.
I realize it might be painful to relive a bit, but would you be willing to go into some more detail (it is a throwaway anyway). What did you do, what were you thinking as you did it, and how could someone have reached you sooner to do 1/2/3?
This is terrible. Are scenarios like this really common? I work with several women in the office, but have not heard of them dealing with such harassment. Is our situation unique?
Either way, I hope this changes soon. There's no reason for acting like that.
>have not heard of them dealing with such harassment
Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Opening up about harassment opens you up to more problems than it solves sometimes. You get labeled as a trouble maker or people don't believe you or say you made it up or whatever.
You probably haven't heard it from them because complaining about such is so often labeled as "whining" and met with replies of "get a thicker skin." Even if you, specifically, are a genuinely sympathetic ear, they've likely been burned too often to open up yet again.
I have a few female programmer friends, and they only ever spoke about "well, you know, not too many women in the field" in careful, guarded tones.
Until the Adria Richards thing happened, and I said something like "I don't really think either of them should have been fired, but I also think it's shitty how common those stupid sexual jokes are. I wish we could get past that stuff."
And it was like they realized they could actually trust me, and started opening up to me about actual specific stuff--like a constant barrage of junior high sexual jokes, being talked over or ignored constantly (which never happens to me, a tall white dude), being hit on, being not quite hit on but followed around and lots of awkward eye contact and vaguely nice gestures that ends up adding to something as inappropriate as being hit on, and on and on and on.
You know how they want to be treated? As people. But that's not really good enough--they want to be treated as people, and they want their coworkers to show maturity beyond what junior high school boys show.
Is this all male programmers? Of course not, not at all.
Enough that they have stories that could fill an afternoon?
Please do not bring the Adria story again - she made a fuss because of an adolescent joke she overheard two rows behind her in a private conversation, which was NOT DIRECTED AT HER, and was not about females or sexual or any other interaction with females. All the same while making crass jokes herself in her social media accounts.
As opposed to this case, where some sickos clearly send very troubling messages DIRECTLY ADDRESSED to Jessie.
She should call the cops immediately.
Aaaaand, our two divergent reactions to the Adria Richards story is probably why these friends of mine (the female programmers) probably felt like they could trust me with the stories of their experiences;
e.g. I'm not going to tell them they're wrong, I'm not going to try and reinterpret their stories...I'm just going to listen.
I was not re-interpreting the A.R. story - the facts were what they were.
EVERY STORY about harassment (or threats or otherwise troubling behavior) should be reported/heard, but putting the two stories we are talking about in the same basket is not fair - Jessie's case is in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CATEGORY - it is personal and threatening - unlike the other one.
being talked over or ignored constantly (which never happens to me, a tall white dude)
I love how you extrapolate this as a general maxim.
But ultimately, I find the parallels to junior high school to be thoroughly unconvincing. Yes, schools can be hellholes, but for completely different reasons than the one you imply, as has been written in detail by the likes of Ivan Illich, John Holt and John Taylor Gatto.
> You probably haven't heard it from them because complaining about such is so often labeled as "whining" and met with replies of "get a thicker skin."
One need only look here, where many of the responses could be retitled "Talking points from gamergate" or "redpill leakage".
I think it's a different thing for women who are publicly visible and eg talk at conferences, or have popular blogs or have some level of leadership etc.
The women coders, designers and testers I've worked with and known well personally have never mentioned experiencing any online abuse either. But they have all been private nine to fivers* who don't have any visibility or online presence beyond their immediate family, friends and colleagues.
It would probably be a completely different story if any of them felt like sticking their heads up above the parapet and identifiably participating in online tech 'culture'. Especially if they dared to state an opinion on anything.
I think there's a difference in exposure between being a tech worker and being a public geek/hacker etc. Colleagues or bosses are more accountable for their actions than semi anonymous bullies on the net.
* No disrespect intended by that label at all (for men or women). Just that they weren't geeky hobbyists and didn't indulge in tech stuff outside work. In fact I kinda envy that these days, but I still can't let it go.
I asked my only female coworker about this, and she said she had never experienced sexual harassment, and found tech culture tame compared with finance, where people would shout at programmers over the phone if things went wrong.
Ugh - yes, ignore my comment. I misread your intent completely.
FWIW, I know someone who takes a very public stand online with a few feminist issues and she cops brutal reactions on the net. I think many people simply cannot contain their natural reaction to beat down someone (especially a woman) who they perceive as being successful, or not deserving success by some metric (beauty, body, etc) unrelated to the point.
You do realize that finance is one of the worst places for representation of women and is recognized as a cesspit? (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0316/072_terminated_women....). It's wonderful that your friend has had positive experiences throughout her career.
She never said finance was sexist, only that people were rude in general. I'm not making any claims myself, only relating the experience of a colleague.
I have nothing but admiration and applause for Jessie's stance. I do hope she does everything she can to get those perpetrating such deeds into the hands of law enforcement.
You can say 'this isn't a problem with our industry, it is just internet trolls' but people outside our industry aren't going to docker conferences or paying attention to presenters at them.
It might not be YOU that does this type of thing, but someone you work with is. You know who I'm talking about and you don't shun them or expose them... and until you do, author is correct, this industry is fucked.
But how do any of us know what online presence others we work with have? I don't pay any attention to what my co-workers do on their own time. They may be jerks in quite a few arenas; it can be quite invisible to me.
I’ve gotten hundreds of private messages on IRC and emails about sex, rape, and death threats.
Not sure what IRC channels she has been hanging out in, or what her spam filters are letting through, but this has not been my experience at all... in 10 years of contributing to OSS.
However, attractive female posts videos (yep, even conference talk) on the Internet, and attention ensues?
Maybe it's not an "industry" thing. Maybe it's something else.
[EDIT] -- Wow, thanks for the votes folks. The author wants to blame "the Industry" for something that is not unique to the industry.
I've found that you can absolutely chalk up "online death threats" to idiots vying for attention.
Impersonal (distant) threats are not created equal to in person threats.
Edit: The harm is subjective. The whole point of such a message is it's designed entirely to shock or offend. To give the pests actual power over you is the greatest part of the problem.
Not saying it should be ignored either. Instead of being melodramatic, we should be pragmatic like we were with email spam. The next step is to create tools giving greater power to the users to pro-actively prevent such nonsense.
If I had a nickel for every death threat I've received on the Internet I'd be rich. Death threats from Internet brigade squads are wildly different from actual death threats you need to worry about. Hence the downplaying.
I consider myself to be fairly active online and I can't recall the last time I received a death threat on the internet, if I ever received any at all.
I'm pretty sure that receiving pictures of you covered in blood goes way beyond any acceptable standard. I'd be pretty freaked out if I got something like that sent to me.
You don't worry about the difference because in practice you are more likely to die in an airplane crash over the course of your life than to die at the hands of an Internet death threat-giver.
I imagine that risk varies for those saying something other than the status quo. Often those people are keys to progression of society. Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, etc.
I do not know the author of the blog but that's horrible. No one should have to face that. Unfortunately, behind the anonimity of the internet, trolls and disgusting people will harass pretty much anyone and there's not much anyone can do.
Given the responses I see here, it seems pretty obvious that this is a 'problem with the industry' regardless of whether it's a problem with or that sprouts from the internet.
It seems evident that Jess has experienced terrible things in the process of performing her job. That she would post so adamantly to her blog suggests that the problem is not going away, and she is probably not receiving much of a helpful response from the people around her, presumably including her colleagues. The obvious implication is that as male-dominated industry, most of her (male) colleagues are not familiar with the type of abuse she is receiving and, when they hear of it, are dismissive, taking an attitude of 'not my problem/job description' rather than offering support or assistance.
If that doesn't make it an industry problem, I don't know what would.
But you should know that her colleagues (me included) take this super seriously, and so does our employer. We are doing everything we can to support her, and to make the attacks stop. We also want to contribute to fixing the problem beyond this one instance, and are looking for the best way to do that. If you have ideas I would love to hear them!
My apologies for suggesting that you would be callous and unsupportive of a colleague in such a stressful situation. It's easier to understand how this connects the industry to such abuses by bringing one's company into the discussion, but you are right that it is unfair to you and her other colleagues who I know no better than Jess herself.
But I'm glad to hear that you would take this seriously. And Jess sounds like a hell of a person. I know it would be difficult for me to handle the kind of abuse she describes.
This is not common and, given her focus area in tech, it just happens to be more pronounced among those individuals. Ever heard of 4chan? All it takes is one post of your info and you'll get a swarm of people descending on you...
Linux/open source is full of such individuals.
They do it to get a rise out of people and the internet is a nice anonymous vehicle to do it under. Has nothing to do w/ the broader industry of tech and more to do with a group of misfits who like to frazzle people for the lulz.
Get the police involved and keep these unfounded broad based attacks of a whole industry to yourself. By making such statements, you're attacking people unjustly and doing the same thing to others that is being done to you. Techies are not rapist... I could care less if you're male/female. The industry is not fucked. You just got trolled by some dweebs on the internet.
One pronounced incident and everyone is ready to cast stones at an industry.. If anything, this needs to stop. It's really getting old and, as someone who does their best to value/see people as equals as a good number in tech do, I'm getting tired of this sh*t.
And while I believe it's true that not every woman in tech gets harassed, it's obvious that a much higher percentage of them get this sort of shit than men. And it only gets worse as they get more visible for the good work that they're doing.
You say you're tired of this shit. How do you think these women feel? It's not you writing the tweets and emails, but if you become complacent and say "that's just how it is some times" you are a part of the problem.
Never stop fighting for equal treatment. Never say it's OK.
This isn't pretty common nor are any of the off the wall comments and threats she's getting serious. It's called trolling. Have you been on the internet in the last decade? If you're dumb enough to let someone get under your skin, they will and will do so even more.
I'm a minority. Do you know the kind of shit I've had to deal w/ in tech. Note the 'deal with'. Were supposedly in a society where women are demanding to be seen as equals just as men are. Guess what men have to do ? Deal w/ shit .. Shit we don't like on a daily basis. I don't get to create a blog post and have a swarm of women running to my defense? Why all the white knights when women have to go through shit? So, no.. there are standards that are still there. Standards by which men by and large defend women and treat them even above men.
I'm a minority (African American) in tech. Yes, please lets have a sit down so you can tell me all about the kind of crap that occurs. I'm obviously oblivious to it all and have no perspective.
It's not o.k but it's called trolling and this has jack shit to do w/ the tech industry and everything to do w/ the clown assery that is par for the course on the internet. So, I don't in anyway support her blog post. It is ignorant and ill-informed. Just think about it... You think men making six figures at prominent tech companies with a social life, a girlfriend, wife/daughters, and moms are sitting around typing out death threats and rape threats to some random woman in tech when they get home?
No. This is not common. It has jack shit to do w/ the tech industry and everything to do w/ shock-and-awe trolling on the internet. It's 2015. Get up-to-date with what's happening on the internet and stop running to women's rescue every time they have to to go through shit. They have announced they want to be seen as equals and treated as men are .. So, let them deal with and overcome their own shit... trolling being the least of things to be all bent out of shape about.
You disagree? Well, I guess some things haven't changed in society.. Namely that men by and large are still quite protective of women and hold them on high... Quite Contrary to what she and you are trying to portray...
I have been on webforums since I was a wee lad and I've spent much of that time as a dyed in the wool troll. I "get" trolling. I understand the psychology that drives people to troll. I've been trolled myself. But there is a difference between calling somebody 'and idoit' and the sorts of harassment that is still all too common today.
Don't think I don't understand how it happens. I went to /v/ at the height of gamergate. I've seen doxxings before too. But as I've become an adult it has become a deeply disturbing part of a culture I once cherished as my own.
But if nobody speaks up, if nobody is there to raise the counterpoint and make a frustrated social outcast think about what he's doing, change will come too slowly for me to be fine just sitting by and letting it happen.
I don't want to diminish what you've had to deal with either. I don't think it's somehow more OK. But I don't think that anybody should have to deal with bullshit based on their cultural history or who they are, regardless of how it's presented. If you had written that post about he shit you've had to deal with being black in a primarily white field, I would still be here, as disgusted and as eager to see a change.
Is this a problem which applies exclusively to the tech industry? No. But I refuse to accept that it's just part of living in the internet age. I truly believe that if we can make people understand just how not-ok this sort of thing is, we have a shot at correcting these sorts of behaviours for the next digital generation.
You have a relateable experience people could learn from. But they don't like the message, so they'll resort to the media approved category of blame (sexism). I appreciated your posts in this thread and wish you didn't get so thoroughly downvoted.
lol @ all the downvotes I'm getting for this and the swift retracing of upvotes of my initial thread due this extended commentary.
I would delete this but i'm going to let it stay...
Just goes to show you the depth of people's view on such issues. You want to go on and on about surface issues and foolishness that has nothing to do w/ the root. Yet, the minute someone brings up something real.. Oh no !! That's too much for you. Back to regularly scheduled program of man/tech bashing/white knighting a woman who was a victim of internet trolling and making all men out to be savages..
Engage in commentary then instead of anonymously pulling out your whiteknight sword because I'm not towing the comfort line you're accustomed to. You feel something was wrong in my commentary, hash it out with me. I'll respond and hopefully a higher truth is arrived at. My main thread went from 11 upvotes to -3 in a matter of seconds because I 'kept it real'. Only with one person having the decency to engage me. That's not white knighting? Back up the votes go
Agreed mholt.
I never said this harassment was ok. It is not ok and threats can be followed up by police if she really wanted to get even...
I am saying that it looks like modern day internet trolling to me. Sign on Xbox live or a modern gaming network ..
People are threatening and calling each other vile names all day long. No one cares if you're a female/male or what your ethnicity is. However, if you provide that info, that gives them more ammo to try to mind fuck you ... The aim is to frazzle you w/ extreme comments. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=For+the+lulz
This has nothing to do w/ the tech industry. I only voiced that I am getting tired of people, especially now-a-days, going on a bash party against men every time some woman goes through something. The majority of men, regardless of industry, still want to respect and protect women.
So, here we are.. A woman gets trolled on the internet and, because she feels she's the center of the world, it's ok for her to incorrectly cast this against males in the tech industry? The majority who are running to her defense and ready to fight each other to the death to prove they are worthy of women? .. Come on, give me a break.. That's what i'm trying to say.
And there's deeper issues to address here really. Were "equals" but the gender defending still isn't. Men are still running to the rescue of women at the slightest peep of wrongdoing.. The reverse isn't true.. So, I stated in extended commentary : Contrary to what is being portrayed, men still are stepping all over each other to defend women.
The rampant retraction of the upvotes my initial post is seeing just goes to show how men are willing to stab each other in the throat even when the truth is mentioned just to show a woman that they support them. Those same base tendencies are what steered a bunch of trolls to target Jessie. Same root.. Different leaf.
unbelievable .. Yet another showing though that you get the society/industry you deserve.
\/ To the link below.. keep up the shallow fight.. If you're not comfortable digging into the dirty details of the root, you're just playing whack-a-mole .. Feels good but nothing is achieved and you're likely being manipulated towards some further end-goal that is more harmful (for us all).
> The majority who are running to her defense and ready to fight each other to the death to prove they are worthy of women?
Do you honestly think people on HN--where the majority of users are anonymous--are saying things in order to "prove themselves worthy" of women? Like, is that actually something you believe, or just a reflexive thing you say? It's dumb enough that you have to go mansplain 4chan to people (because "for the lulz" is just so complex that I'm sure no one here could figure it out on his or her own), presume to understand how you would react to emails like those Jessie has received when you've never had to, and posit vague conspiracy theories without further explanation ("you're likely being manipulated towards some further end-goal that is more harmful").
Sorry, I realize this isn't exactly the worst post here, but it's frustrating to me because I think your attitude is highly typical of software engineers and is a large part of the reason why shit like this keeps happening. Women do not feel comfortable talking about the things they have to deal with because of posts like this, and it helps normalize harassment.
It's easy to say that this happens all the time, urge folks to call the cops, let them deal with it, and otherwise don't make a big deal.
So here's the thing: people have been calling the cops; the cops are ill-equipped to deal with this. The inherent structure of police agencies in the U.S. is oriented around physical communities and jurisdictions. More than 5/6 of the sworn officers are below the federal level, thus not easily able to pursue investigations across state lines.[1] but it's easier to push this conveniently to being a problem for the cops than it is to think and choose to act.
You could instead:
* lobby your congressperson and senators to start a federal reporting program.
* develop a set of tools that helps narrow the source of these threats, along with a toolkit of self-serve legal forms to demand IP information so victims can submit full evidence to police
* support EFF and others who are helping fight this
* stop blaming the victim
mholt, you ask how Astrocyte's is part of Jesse's problem. Here's how:
* Astrocyte is assuming that none of this has already been done.
* Astrocyte is refusing to do some research and learn about the current state of affairs before minimizing the concerns of people actually experiencing the problem.
* Astrocyte is demanding that victims prove they've met Astrocyte's standards before those victims are supposed to raise broad-based concerns publicly.
* Astrocyte is writing this off as an isolated thing despite it clearly being more than that.
* Astrocyte is doing so publicly while implicitly urging others to do the same.
Astrocyte is choosing to push this problem away and say it's not as big, as wide, as common, or as horrific as it is. That's Astrocyte's choice. People are responsible for their own choices.
>And while I believe it's true that not every woman in tech gets harassed, it's obvious that a much higher percentage of them get this sort of shit than men. And it only gets worse as they get more visible for the good work that they're doing.
Well of course. Assume that 1/x of men harass and 2/x (ie twice as high a fraction) of women harass. Since this industry has so many more men than women more women will be harassed than men, even if each individual man is less likely to harass.
>it's obvious that a much higher percentage of them get this sort of shit than men
No, it isn't obvious, since even in the case of women all we have are lots of really visible anecdotes, not statistics.
It could easily be the case that the number of death threats received by males heavily outweighs the number of death threats received by females.
I know that I don't write reactive blog posts every time some troll threatens to gut me via PM. I wonder if other men disproportionately act like me (compared to women) and thus since we aren't screaming about troll death threats it is assumed we don't receive them.
It is not normal or okay to receive death threats after presenting at a professional conference. I've presented several times and have never received a threat. I can't even imagine that happening.
Maybe there are some subcultures where this behavior is something "Everyone" experiences. Certainly that's not the case in mainstream tech.
(As an aside, techies aren't the only people who use the internet, and I'm pretty damn sure that receiving death threats via email after presenting at professional conferences isn't a thing.)
I'll bet it's happened to anyone who has even slightly stepped into the spotlight of the Internet at large. I've received all kinds of death threats via PM, some extremely 'creative', and I've died precisely zero times. It's one step higher than fiction on the 'I need to worry about this' scale, and every investigative/institutional agency in the world agrees.
It's fucking outrageously common. It might not be in your face, but it's an insidious and unrelenting horror to everyone it does affect.
It happens to be particularly bad in the tech world for a bunch of reasons, but women have a shitty time pretty much everywhere. On social media (mansplaining, innuendo, inappropriate messages, stalking, trolling, death threats), on the street (catcalling, abuse, stalking), in their homes (partner abuse)…
Why are you so sure that it's not common? I keep reading articles like this and I'm inclined to believe it's more than a coincidence. I dearly wish this woman's experience was an outlier but that is hard to believe.
I truly wish that there was a bright light I could shine over the world of software relieving the clearly disturbed souls of this woman's abusers from whatever pain it is that they act out of. It's extremely sad that my faceless colleagues have so many issues with women, and sadder still that these innocent women have to bear the brunt of it.
How is what the author described "one pronounced incident"? One email or IRC message could be a "pronounced incident". What she describes is clearly much worse, and points to a deep problem - not an one-off "incident".
The reason why "trolls gonn' troll" isn't an acceptable excuse is that straight white men don't get told that people are jerking off to their conference talks.
Same reason I mentioned sexual orientation - they factor into how people are treated. And yes, different permutations are affected in their own unique ways as well.
I am a colleague of Jess, and have witnessed her dealing with this ordeal. She is a badass and doesn't need anyone to speak on her behalf. But some aspects of her experience are relevant to all of us and we have to talk about it.
1. If this is happening to you and you haven't spoken to anyone about it - please do. There is a specialized support group at https://www.crashoverridenetwork.net . Even if you feel you can handle it yourself, it will help spread awareness. Part of the problem is that not enough people are aware of just how common these attacks are.
2. This is real. She is not making it up or dramatizing it to "get attention". How incredible is it that in 2015 this needs to be said? In fact she has downplayed the whole thing for months (months of continuous harrassment!). At first I didn't understand why - but seeing some of the reactions here, sadly, I think I understand.
3. Yes, law enforcement is involved. Those people are breaking the law and must face the consequences. The good news is that they are likely to get caught. Unlike other forms of cyber-crime, this particular crime id actually quite risky if the victim is determined and well-supported. The people tracking them down are well funded and have a great track record. Speaking for her employer, we will spare no expense to make sure the people responsible get what they deserve.
4. In addition to law enforcement, if you know of a legal way to help make those people regret what they did, please contact me. Our employer will foot the bill - or if it's really too expensive for a single private company to fund, I will find money elsewhere. Forgive my French but: let's make the motherfuckers pay. This also applies to increasing the risk for future crimes like this.
5. It's true that this kind of trolling is probably not a product of the tech industry itself. It is a deeper problem that will haunt us for some time, like racism, drug abuse or road rage. HOWEVER, after reading some of the comments here, without a doubt our industry is contributing to the problem through ignorance and sometimes plain stupidity. If you're downplaying this as "just trolling", asserting that gender has nothing to do with it, complaining that women are getting unfair attention, or assuming the victim is just trying to get attention: I'm sorry to say you are part of the problem, in the same way that climate change skeptics are part of the problem. You are not voicing a valid opinion; you are ignoring facts collected over years of research and professional experience by people who know better than you. And in the process you are forcing us to keep debating the reality of the problem, when we should be focused on fixing it. So when Jess says "this industry is fucked", I say: she is right. We're allowing our fellow technologists to be victimized right under our noses, and we're basically doing nothing. So let's fix it.
6. With the help of the comic artist Laurel (who has also experienced harrassment) we made a T-shirt to raise awareness. We're going to print and share as many as possible, but if you want to pribt your own, here's the hi-res PSD: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ikdlu6gavn669l/s-dockercon-harras...
Doesn't look like it's been mentioned yet but there is very related project called Online Abuse Prevention Initiative (OAPI http://onlineabuseprevention.org/). It would be a good idea to talk to them in addition to what you are already doing.
I would strongly advise against backing OAPI. The CEO & founder is Randi Harper. Her online persona is quite hostile, and she is often the instigator of online harassment. One of my acquaintances was the target of her ire. Her e-mails and call-outs eventually caused him to seek psychiatric help, including medication.
So while I support the goal of OAPI, I think the founding members have attitudes that hurt the cause more than help it. I wish there was an organization I could recommend instead, but so far I haven't found anything. If anyone knows of alternatives, I'm all ears.
I'm sorry if you think I'm part of the problem, but I don't see how those two points relate to my comment. Heck, I agree with pretty much everything shkyes said.
I didn't know labelling Randi Harper a harasser was a gamergate tactic. I know almost nothing about this whole gamergate business. I just visited the OAPI's site and recognized the name Randi Harper from my acquaintance's experience. He had a very rough time because of her emails, Facebook messages, and tweets. For that reason and that reason alone, I voiced my concern. I don't have any other motive.
Digging deeper, I see that Harper herself has been on the receiving end of some outright egregious behavior. I can only express my condolences for her and condemnation for her attackers.
Still, it seems to me that her organization will likely cause more harm than good in curbing online abuse. One can feel sympathy for another human being while also doubting their fit for a position.
But honestly, this whole topic is radioactive. No matter one's opinion or how delicately it is put, it gets misconstrued and pigeonholed. It's impossible to have an honest, nuanced conversation.
2. Unsubstantiated smears, and categorising her as "hostile". You're using an anonymous "throwaway" account, so there's no evidence whatsoever for your claims.
5. Downplaying the extreme harassment as "egregious behavior". Perhaps you (or anyone reading) might want to go look it up yourself, there's pages and pages of this sort of unbelievably obnoxious drivel: https://twitter.com/search?q=%40freebsdgirl%20%23gamergate&s...
The only reason that Randi created GGAutoblocker and the OAPI was because she was targeted by gamergate. And their tactics are, essentially, what you're doing right now - smear tactics.
Throwaway? My account is over 5 years years old. Please look at my comment history.[1] I'm not a troll or a single-issue commenter. I use a pseudonym because sometimes I want to say things that I believe to be true, but would cause me unnecessary grief if attached to my real name.
"Egregious" is downplaying? I used one of the strongest adjectives I could think of. Replace it with synonyms: their behavior is appalling, shocking, atrocious, abhorrent. I do not support them. I think they are terrible people. I cannot condemn them any more strongly than I already have. Please stop insinuating that I'm part of such a despicable group.
I'm glad Randi Harper created GGAutoblocker. I support the idea behind OAPI. I just don't think Harper is the right person for the job, as she has said some very not-nice things to someone I know, and it significantly impacted his quality of life.
I want the same thing as you: For people to converse without becoming targets of harassment, abuse, threats, or otherwise extremely unpleasant or dangerous communication. That's why I'm voicing my concern about the founder of OAPI. There is no other motive at work.
As I said before: No matter one's opinion or how delicately it is put, it gets misconstrued and pigeonholed. It's impossible to have an honest, nuanced conversation.
How can I disagree with you any more civilly than I already am? Yet despite such civility, I have to deal with implications that I'm part of an odious group of trolls and psychopaths.
Ok, fair enough, you want to keep HN and your personal life separate. And you may be otherwise sincere (at least, you seem to be based on your posts), but that separation makes anything that you post hearsay unless you can back it up externally. You should probably take that into account when trying to bring things from your personal life over into HN.
So perhaps rather than continuing the same pattern of "Randi bad, because I say so", perhaps you can point out somewhere where she's currently failing? I also note that OAPI is more than just Randi, there are several people involved: http://onlineabuseprevention.org/
I was curious, so I clicked on the Twitter search link you posted. This conversation took place between between Randi and a developer (Johannes Meixner a.k.a. xmj):
randi> xmj: kindly go fuck yourself.
randi> step the fuck back.
randi> jesus fuck, are you a gamergater?
randi> you are going on twitter and starting shit, and you just brought freebsd into it
randi> and now you're coming after me with bullshit on twitter that you won't even back up
randi> go. fuck. yourself.
randi> xmj: you're a fucking disservice to the project.
randi> and to open source in general.
randi> except you decided to get involved and talk shit to me and talk shit about code of condcuts
randi> i wouldn't have even known who you were had you not decided to be a dumbshit.
randi> you're giving the project a bad name
randi> and you should take it out of your bio on twitter.
randi> you grow up, you piece of shit.
randi> jesus
randi> another privileged dumbass
randi> whatever, dude. i'm emailing the foundation about you. they have a big push right now to try to get more women into the project, and your kind of public bullshit is the perfect example of why there isn't.
randi> go fuck yourself.
All I can say is, hopefully Randi learns something about her own behavior from the anti-abuse work she's undertaking.
Just so you know, the OAPI is run by Randi Harper, who herself has harassed many people. Most notably Vivek Wadhwa and Claire Schumann, but there are more names on that list.
I wish you luck in tracking down the guilty parties. Threats are not okay, no matter who makes them.
I'm not a particular follower of Randi's and still couldn't help but see the Vivek stuff going on. I wouldn't have labeled it harassment; what I saw was a loud and unrelenting public call for accountability. I don't believe she threatened, doxxed, or otherwise harassed him. Do you know differently?
What I would call harassment is that Randi was doxxed as well as swatted, seemingly by the same sort of folks involved in this situation. She seems to have decided to aggressively stand up for her rights and the rights of others.
I'm sure that makes many uncomfortable, some so much so that they create new profiles in social media to comment on it without risking their reputation. Which is fair, though you have to ask yourself why.
Fair, and we can disagree. I'll say that I'm not a fan of urging people to die in fires.
However, it's noteworthy that her review made several clear statements, some opinion and some fact, in her own name. She didn't resort to ad hominem attacks, nor doxxing, nor swatting. And evidently 370 of 1218 people found it useful in some way.
Also noteworthy that Stop the Goodread Bullies isn't a balanced, objective news source. Their coverage makes clear that SJW is a pejorative term that equates to bullying[1]; that they're happy to damn with innuendo rather than fact[2] and they're seemingly okay with pulling quotes out of context[3]. The only mention of Vox Day, who has participated in the same bullying review activity[4], is in the article you shared. Ergo, I'd tend to say they're not unbiased.
Still, they're not aking lewd suggestions or threatening peoples' lives, so I'm glad they're out there working to represent their opinions directly.
As I mentioned, I'm not a particular follower of hers; I guess I should have mentioned I'm also not her apologist.
Sorry I can't answer your question. I don't know what she was doing in that tweet; you provided no context. It's clear you believe you have the answer, though, and that you care enough to create a throwaway account; pull up a four year old tweet; and present in a discussion that really isn't about Randi. Seems like she's important to you.
I don't really get what is going on here. Why are people spamming her with death/rape threats? There doesn't really seem to be any context given. Is it literally that someone decided that she was a good harassment target for completely unknown reasons? Why is she a notable figure?
Obviously it's hard to know for sure. But most likely this is the work of "harassment hobbyists" who have no particular agenda other than the moronic thrill of messing with people from the safety of their keyboards. There is a great explanation elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9836242
Most likely, Jess appeared on their radar because she is a very active and popular maintainer of Docker, a high-profile (and occasionally controversial) open-source project. She is known for impressive and sometimes hilarious hacks using Docker, witty and informative technical articles, and for contributing a great deal to the friendly and welcoming atmosphere of the Docker community. In short: she is awesome.
Ahh, I see. I, for some reason, came to the conclusion that she worked for Docker coding Docker the company stuff, not coding Docker the project stuff.
Those are the same thing :) Everything Docker builds is open-source and built together with the community. The exception is Docker Hub, our cloud service which is built by a separate team.
So, Jess is a core maintainer of Docker who happens to work full time for Docker inc.
I think the question for many will be, 'how to fix it'?
As people who run businesses, we can work on policies and culture. As events organisers, we can spread the word and raise awareness. As writers, we can write about this.
In answer to point 4, in terms of legal, you can always sue people for harassment. That's also a way of bringing attention and raising awareness. That might not be what the victims of trolls want, however, and you have to balance any needs for revenge against other people's needs to get on with their lives.
I know we have a zero tolerance approach to this stuff. But we are not a police force - the web is the perfect for helping people to be anonymous.
Thanks so much for writing this up. Happy to help getting those shirts out. Let me know if there's any way I can help out, with the shirts, or any other way. This just has to stop.
To the physical aspect of Solomon's point number 1. I have taught self defense in the past for years.
Rule #1:
Don't be in the situation.
Interpretation:
Obviously don't walk down a dark alley alone. But in this context, don't deal with it alone. Be sure people know you are in danger. Surround yourself with colleagues, friends and those whom you trust. Solomon is spot on: Don't be alone physically, emotionally, professionally.
Predators first isolate prey from the herd. Be smart enough to recognize this and avoid it.
And please, if a situation feels sketchy, remove yourself. Stubborn does not equal heroism. Be proactive with your safety and well being. It is yours.
Our Industry:
Our industry is _not_ fucked. I am part of that industry and I refuse to be characterized thusly.
I can sympathize with Jesse's indictment of the industry as a whole and do not cast aspersion on someone in her situation reacting as she has. I am sorry that it came to that level of frustration, pain, fear for her.
However we who are _not_ experiencing the stress of such a terrible situation are obliged to keep a level head. As a group we need to recast the cause of her frustration (and that of others in similar situations) into something more effective. Individual people in our industry are fucked. Let's identify these individuals and remove them from our industry.
Finally, to echo on another of Solomon's key points: Let's do it legally.
Thank you to Docker for seeking to identify these _individuals_ and prosecute them.
I want to help raise awareness to show that we stand with people like Jess who are having to deal with this bullshit. Where can we order the t-shirts? We must make it clear that this kind of bs will be met with fierce resistance from now on.
I'm not sure how an opinion could be invalid? Maybe to another, but obviously not to the person who has that opinion.
> asserting that gender has nothing to do with it
Of course it does in her case. I feel bad for her, and it totally sucks. However, this is what trolls do. They troll people for various illogical reasons.
> So let's fix it.
I am not trying to be rude, but this is so naive it is painful. You can't do anything to stop trolls online, especially intelligent technically proficient ones. You can behave respectfully and enforce societal norms in your own office and daily life. That is all you can do. Be a good person in real life and hold people to a reasonable standard.
> You can't do anything to stop trolls online [...]
So painfully wrong. There are many things you can do, including not giving up and walking off. You just have to decide you've had enough and are willing to do hard work.
Speak out, even when it's not in your own best interest.
Support people who are targeted.
And, last but not least, don't pick pedantic points to argue while losing sight of the main issue: it absolutely stinks to be a woman in tech.
I am not trolling I am just being a realist here. I recognize that it totally sucks, and it does seem to be harder for women in certain arenas because they are targeted by trolls more heavily. That being said, this comment is wishy-washy feel good fluff, and doesn't address the real issue.
If i was being harassed online how would I employ these tactics? These are just cliche motivational phrases.
> not giving up and walking off
> had enough and are willing to do hard work
> Speak out, even when it's not in your own best interest
None of these would do anything to prevent harassment.
It's disingenuous to switch from your original context in which you, a bystander, urge listeners to believe that this is an unsolvable problem, to the context of the victim, which you aren't.
If you, the bystander, decide to take a stand rather than write this off as too hard a problem to solve, you help the victim by giving them support, and you help future victims by decreasing, however slightly, the chance that harassers will continue to believe that their behavior is tolerable.
If you, the bystander, are willing to spend time on one person who doesn't yet understand but who may be willing to think, and then to move from thought to action, your efforts gain leverage and that minuscule probability decrease becomes larger.
If you, the bystander, continue to do this, even without being a victim yourself; if you do this in places your voice can be heard; if you do this even when you gain no personal benefit, you hopefully influence the people around you to at least think deeper, and from there, to act in some way that fits with their conscience. And in doing so, you give the victims hope for a day when this isn't their norm.
It's not a clogged sink. It's also not an intractable problem.
I have been thinking about this more and more lately. It is a security problem, not a social one.
>So let's fix it.
I posted a thread earlier today trying to solicit advise about solving this and posted some of my own advise. I realized that there is a lot that can be done but I was focusing on the attacker. This is much more about defense than it is about offense.
> This is much more about defense than it is about offense.
What you seem to mean by this is "I don't believe we can prevent threats from being sent".
Harassment is also a cultural issue. A vast amount of people live among a circle of friends who believe that sending things like death threats in anonymous emails is something that can be done light-heartedly. It's what transpires when people downplay the situation by saying "They can't be serious" or to "Just ignore them".
You mix up the need to stop an offender in action, with the need to remove the situations in which someone becomes an offender. Changing this "acceptable threat" culture is the offense you describe as less relevant, but it's key to a long-term change.
Thank you for thinking about this. It's a very worthy topic for thought. If you'd care to link the thread you mention, I'm sure others would like to help.
Reading posts like this leaves me feeling angry (that it happens at all, this day and age), bewildered (what kind of callous jerkwad sends death/rape threats to a stranger over editorial content) and helpless (what can I do to help or prevent this from happening further?)
I give credit that there is a problem. I genuinely want to help improve things (my daughter might want to follow her old man into this field one day). What can an unassuming white developer do beyond publicly stating "This is unacceptable", and setting the right example of personal behaviour?
There are so many people in the tech industry that have no business being there, that suck and have no passion, that are assholes and aren't willing to teach newcomers. The fact that women in tech is an issue or that women get harassed by men for being in the industry when there are more glaring issues is an absolute mystery.
Men that harass women for being in the tech field are juvenile. If anyone talks to my daughter like that, or sends her messages like that...God help them.
If what she claims is true, it must take some rather large amounts of wherewithal to continue in this industry, for which I certainly applaud her. It's also rather hard to imagine or contend the manner in which many in our industry behave; I certainly know that if my girlfriend or sister had been treated like this, I'd certainly feel rather violently inclined (as human nature often leads one to be) to end that behavior. You know, while I certainly don't always agree with the spirit in which we try and enforce things like diversity and often think that victim-hood is taken a little too far, it's perhaps harder to understand the filthy, trashy and rather base individuals that would treat Ms. Frazelle in this manner. It doesn't give me a lot of hope sometimes for my gender or for our culture as a whole; my thoughts go out to Ms. Frazelle that things get better for her.
1. condolences for some horrifying abuse (please report to cops/FBI/etc) 2. "this industry?" understandable feeling but really a wild accusation that's part of a larger media craze. why shouldn't we analyze the horrifying behavior described in terms of public figures and celebrity in general? what is it about tech in particular? 3. conditional on "this industry" being worse than others, are the causes of abuse toward women who are public figures different from abuse toward men who are the same - relevant as we try to fix what is broken in particular about "this industry" to reduce unexpectedly high abuse toward women and/or men.
It's offensive how whenever topics of bigotry and hatred in tech come up, the ensuing conversation is always dominated by regular commenters (typically privileged white males) giving their two cents on something they've never experienced and have no way of relating to. Here's a radical idea: if you're actually interested in supporting and being an ally of women, people of color, LGBTQs and other minorities DO sit back, let them speak and listen. DO NOT inject your own unsubstantiated and unhelpful opinions into a topic you by definition cannot relate to.
You are new here, so I will just say that this isn't tumblr and we do not categorise people based on the color of their skin, nor take kindly to those who do.
I am convinced that this happens because the anonymity that the Internet provides. And so the best way to combat this is to post the incidents on a public site. Blow away the anonymity and these people will retreat like the cowards they are.
I would set up a website where people can post these - sort of like the previous F*cked Company website, but I would have to look into legal issues if any that were relevant.
I'm convinced that there is a highly vocal group (of young men, most likely) that are hell-bent on breaking Internet communities and even corporeal communities with their grotesqueries. And when they're challenged, they howl "but you're censoring my free speech!"
And here's the part where I address obvious arguments against it, to try to save everyone some time:
0. You're seriously suggesting that people who threaten, sexually harass, or otherwise behave toward women in tech, in such fashion as to (at the very least) necessitate posts like Ms. Frazelle's, should be doxxed, confronted in person, and beaten.
Doxxed and confronted in person, certainly. But let's not lose all sense of nuance; I think beatings for a first offense are a little disproportionate, unless the first offense is itself exceptional.
1. This is vigilantism!
No, this is a community choosing to police itself in a more vigorous fashion than has previously been the rule. Vigilantes, historically speaking, tend to (literally and figuratively) shoot first and ask questions later, if at all. I think that's wildly disproportionate here, and that the mere suggestion of potential real-life consequences, for this sort of malbehavior, will almost certainly produce a remarkable change in the extent of bullshit that women in our industry find aimed in their direction.
2. This is a problem for the police to handle!
Let me know when they start!
3. Doxxing is a crime!
Some actions which might be taken in the course of a doxxing attempt are crimes, to be sure. But you might be surprised how much you can lawfully, with a little effort, learn about someone who doesn't put a lot of thought into anonymizing himself because, after all, who's going to come after him for something as trivial as trying to chase someone out of an entire industry because she happens to be female?
4. Assault is a crime!
Oh, certainly. I think it's entirely possible to have a reasonable conversation with someone, in the course of which is offered advice on patterns of behavior which would be frankly better for everyone involved, without trespassing into the realm of assault proper.
5. Battery is a crime!
It sure is. And, of course, all dry sarcasm and deadpan humor aside, I would absolutely never encourage anyone to commit a crime.
On the other hand, I grew up in a place and a time where anyone who behaved in too excessively unacceptable a manner did so at risk of receiving more than merely verbal chastisement from the members of his community; put simply, someone who made himself enough of a stench in the nostrils of his fellows, for long enough, could expect them eventually to respond to his misbehavior in vigorous enough fashion to leave bruises.
In no small part as a result, the place and time where I grew up were, and the place largely remains, known for the politeness and courtesy characterizing social interaction there, and such methods as I allude to above are hardly ever actually necessary in practice; for the most part, the simple knowledge that such a response might occur suffices to prevent it actually needing to.
Granted, very few in the tech industry have personal experience of such robust social interactions, and I think I don't go too far in saying that there's a certain squeamishness around the subject. On the other hand, given that nothing else yet tried has worked worth a damn, I think we'd be short-sighted to dismiss such ideas entirely out of hand.
6. Two wrongs don't make a right!
Perhaps, but I've never understood the perspective from which it is wrong for members of a given society to correct misbehavior which fails to live up to that society's avowed standards.
Of course, given the rather pathetic extent of our industry's accomplishments in preventing the kind of behavior under discussion here, anyone could be excused for imagining that, collectively, we don't give as much of a damn about this kind of abhorrent behavior as we claim we do.
7. Women don't need this sort of white-knighting from men in the industry!
Perish the thought! Frankly, I am too often embarrassed and ashamed to admit myself a member of an industry where behavior such as this is acceptable to any extent -- even by the people who actually engage in it. That I should, even in jest, feel myself moved to write a comment like this one, is frankly mortifying.
Put simply, if our industry were composed of the professionals we flatter ourselves it is, I wouldn't have written this and you wouldn't be reading it. If you feel yourself personally insulted by that statement -- good! You should, because you, too, bear a share of the responsibility for letting such abhorrent behavior run effectively unchecked.
There's too much of that behavior, too widely spread, for anyone to argue that it's "just a few bad apples". Our industry has a problem. As members of that industry, we have a responsibility to address it. Some of us are trying to live up to that responsibility. Most of us aren't. I'd like to see that change.
8. But this kind of response will just make things worse! Even if you do confront this scum in person, they'll just take it out on the women they're already abusing.
That's not impossible, but I think it's also not at all likely. It's long been recognized that anonymity is tremendously empowering, for good or ill; the perceived absence of risk seems to be what drives a lot of the venom we see directed at women in our industry. Too, if anonymity weren't a major enabler here, we would see the people who spew this filth doing so under their actual identities, and likely in public, as well.
That being the case, I think taking that cloak of anonymity away should have a very strong effect on the people who engage in this kind of behavior. In short, I should think it'd scare the hell out of them!
It's one thing, after all, to talk shit when you know you won't ever have to live up to it. It is quite another to talk shit when you can be reasonably sure that you will. In my own experience, and in my observations of others, this latter condition tends to result in a healthy degree of circumspection, something I think is long overdue here.
9. But you can't change people's minds this way, only their behavior! They'll still find ways to mistreat their female colleagues -- they just won't be able to be as overt about it.
True enough, but also an example of the perfect as an enemy of the good. And besides -- honestly, if someone's an asshole enough to do this kind of shit, he's already using whatever other methods of abuse he has at hand. Just because we can't take all of them away at once doesn't mean that taking away a cheap, easy, and disproportionately filthy one isn't worth doing.
--
And, of course, there are all kinds of hairy details I haven't addressed here, not least because I'd like to think I can keep at least one or two people reading all the way to the end. Lest we forget, this comment is written entirely in jest, and any extent to which you take seriously anything herein is entirely your responsibility.
Even if you think it's totally stupid and wrongheaded, though, I'd take it as a favor if you respond by offering a suggestion which
a) hasn't been already tried and found useless,
b) offers some prospect of success, and
c) isn't just more of us all sitting around beating our gums about how terrible this is, while largely not bothering to try to do a damn thing about it.
Come on! This is our industry. This kind of rampant shitty behavior is our responsibility. It's up to us to find something effective to do about it, and do it. Sure, I've made a stupid suggestion, but at least I've made a suggestion. If you want to tell me my suggestion is stupid, great! When you're done doing that, make a sensible one.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but... Sometimes people are jerks. It happens. The issue here is systematic jerkiness towards sentient beings based on whether they have an A or B dongle. ...It boggles the mind!
Kathy Sierra explicitly called out one of her harassers weev and his posse (def not what you'd call a "Social Justice Warrior", and weev initially copped to harassing her and has been trying to deny it subsequently).
Places like 4Chan and KotakuInAction are not some fucked up false flag operation simply by virtue of the vast number of man hours involved.
And even ignoring all of the evidence that contradicts your theory, i'd like to point out how incredibly unsympathetic and unhelpful your theory is.
Even if there were some psychotic cadre of rabble rousers out there harassing others, IT WOULD STILL NOT BE OKAY IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. And there would still be the very practical problem that people were being harassed.
There are people out there who are trying to address harassment on the internet with technological and social means, and despite the size of the challenge, this is something that needs to be addressed.
Harassment is not okay. Never said it was. Nobody thinks it is.
But "calling someone out" means nothing. Tim Hunt was "called out", and mobbed out of his career on the basis of personal accusation alone, with zero actual wrongdoing.
Mob violence is bad, no matter who does it.
I asked for thoughts, because I want so see the evidence that contradicts this theory. Please, please, PLEASE show me some evidence that I am wrong.
I want to be wrong, because being right about this is scary as fuck.
Tim Hunt is a nobel prize winner. He already made his career. And the thing he was asked to resign from as an honorary position so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Please, please, PLEASE show me some evidence that I am wrong.
I already did. Your theory doesn't make any sense because of how insanely labor intensive it is. Revenge porn sites, 4Chan, GamerGate, the Fappening, all of it is too involved and complex for even a determined group of false flag rabble rousers to execute on.
And again, on top of all of that, they would be harassing people, which would make them not people who believe in fighting harassment by definition.
So here's the crux of the matter. Even if your theory was true, all you're doing is distracting from the point, not addressing harassment or any of the possible ways harassment could be prevented.
p.s. given that you haven't actually engaged any of the points i've made i don't plan on writing you any more replies. I hope that you endeavor to do as Abraham Lincoln once said and "Be excellent to each other"
I think shoeluckpotland's original post was wrong to to call those involved in the posited conspiracy, faking both sides, SJWs. The giveaway there being 'faking both sides'. That's how I would see it. It doesn't make it any less horrible for a woman like Jessie being verbally attacked of course.
I thought the post was otherwise great, floating what I feel is an important idea to consider. I've never tried to write on HN before and I've never seen a post replaced with [flagged] before. How does that arise? Is it ever reversed?
Respectfully, I think your rhetoric doesn't help the situation. It's not "gas-lighting" to be skeptical of the prevailing narrative that tech is a misogynistic boys club. The thing is, the harassment that Jessie is facing could literally be one person, right? Do you deny that?
Absolutely no one suggested "was okay in any way shape or form", but the fact that you used all caps really drove the point home for everyone who wasn't sure.
It's like, you get shamed if you even suggest that this might possibly be attributed to something other than "misogyny in tech".
Would it matter to the author whether it was one person or many in her specific case? Would it make the harassment any less troubling or alarming?
Would it matter to the general case, since the author's story of harassment is certainly not a unique one in our industry?
So what point would the answer to your question prove one way or the other? Not much. Which is also why OP's post is horseshit both from a rhetorical perspective and from a human perspective.
OP's theory is a minimization tactic. Oh, well the harassment is probably only one person. Oh, the harassment is probably by a troll or troublemaker who's trying to cause a gender war.
The author's case is not unique. In trying to minimize the source of harassment you are attempting to undermine the author's point.
She is being harassed for participating in our industry, and that is really fucked up. There are people in our industry who either believe this behavior to be acceptable, or they think they can get away with it.
So, once again, how about we dispense with the crack-pottery, either do something helpful or maybe just lay off the "add comment" button.
So you're interpreting my first three posts on HN as "trying to minimize the source of harassment"? Because that is a lie. If you persist in spreading it I'm likely to give up my embryonic life as a contributor here. I don't think you have any reason to do this to me or the OP, based on what he's written, but I get the idea. Nasty place to make a mark, despite the value I've accrued as lurker for a number of years.
The tentative interpretation of the OP makes the evil of the attack even worse than you think it is. Can't you see that? This doesn't make the OP's interpretation right but it's a clear consequence.
And nobody has answered another question of mine: the rules by which the OP has been suppressed and whether these can be reversed.
That I found less annoying than your previous post. It's infuriating to be told that I'm not interested in actually engaging in a conversation when I'm sure that I am but it's less annoying than the implicatures in the previous one so thanks.
One thing it might be worth mentioning: my commercial experience of the software industry goes back to 1980. It's only with the advent of social media built on the Web that I've ever heard (those assumed to be) programmers express such horrific and hateful things to women. It incredibly bothers me.
Does that give some context for the kinds of things I'd be interested to discuss here?
I'd also still be grateful to know how exactly the OP became [flagged] though, thanks to jessaustin, I can now see it again personally.
Everybody brings themselves and their assumptions to a conversation. All conversations are a negotiation over a shared space (however temporarily we may share that space).
I'm not calling into question whether you believe harassment is a bad thing or not (because frankly that's a pointless question to ask. Anybody who's asked point blank if they support harassment is going to say no).
The rhetorical structure of the conversation is what i am concerned about and steering the conversation around.
It is problematic from a rhetorical standpoint to debate whether or not the original author is being harassed by a single person or multiple people, because it distracts from the authors point, we can make no headway without further facts (which we are not privy to), and whether or not she's being harassed by a single person or multiple people is not pertinent to either the problems at hand or possible remedies.
So, then from a conversational point, one has to ask themselves what is the rhetorical purpose of asking the question? Is it intentionally to distract from the author's point? Is it to float & further the OP's theory? Is it morbid curiosity? Is it just carelessness or ignorance (and i mean that in the descriptive and non-pejorative fashion)?
Which of those are appropriate justifications for further pursuing the line of inquiry? I'd say none of them are, which is why i've been pretty vehement in knocking the foundation out from under them.
The door is always open for someone to supply a justification for why it matters and should be discussed, but skepticism isn't a good justification just the same way that pascal's wager isn't a good justification for believing in a Christian God.
Several thoughts, some reasonable and some probably stupid, split into separate comments so the reasonable parts can be discussed and the stupid parts torn apart separately:
It's not really a tech industry thing. It's a more general aspect of humanity. There are a lot of people, who enjoy harming other beings [1] if they can do it without bringing trouble upon themselves. The internet greatly helps these people do that, because it provides a way for them to communicate anonymously.
Since so much of tech industry interaction involves the internet, becoming known publicly in the tech industry will attract this kind of asshat behavior. It's probably not much consolation, but you'll get similar harassment on the internet outside the tech industry, too. Heck, even online chess gets surprisingly nasty when anonymous players are involved.
[1] I said "beings" instead of "humans" or "people" because I think there is probably a connection between the kind of lack of empathy that allows one to try to harm a stranger over the internet and the kind of lack of empathy that allows far too many people to torture animals for the sake of torturing them.
Since the power that the attackers have in these messages is the reaction of the recipient, it might be possible to turn this around. In part 2, I suggested filtering and trashing (or sharing for research into de-anonymizing the senders). How about going beyond ignoring the empty idiots and embracing their idiocy?
Make a game of this. Have a scoring systems where you get points based on the number of threats you receive a month, with bonus points for photoshops and such. The person with the most cumulative points for the year could get an award and a nice prize for being best at annoying internet idiots.
This is reminiscent of one way that the KKK was fought. The "Superman" radio show in the late '40s ran a 16-episode story in which Superman took on the KKK. They presented the KKK as an organization of ridiculous people with silly and stupid rituals, and it greatly hurt the KKK.
I think there is a material disconnect from your experience of "idiotic harassment" and the experience of most victims of harassment. For many, perhaps most --- bearing in mind that you don't hear lurid details of most peoples' experience! --- it's not a game, at all.
Since the power that the attackers have in these messages is the reaction of the recipient, it might be possible to turn this around.
Yes, but not by using the mechanism you go on to describe. You simply have to show the harasser that their harassment doesn't bother you. The points system won't convey that to a troll. Worrying about trolls enough to join into such a system validates, not defuses, their efforts.
We need to start including some internet human interaction training in high school or elementary school. This should cover two things.
First, it should cover how the person on the other end of an internet interaction is another person, with feelings, and so we should keep that in mind. It should cover how it is easy to forget that, and so say things online we'd never say to someone's face.
Second, since that isn't going to stop the problem, people need to be warned about the jerks who like to harm people for the sake of harming them (see part 1), told that they are likely to encounter such people at some point, and get shit directed at them. They need to be told to not take it personally, the senders are not mentally well, and just filter their messages out.
These kind of email threats are overwhelmingly empty, in the sense that the person sending them is almost certainly not actually going to come over and do the things threatened [1]. Their power lies entirely in the threat itself.
Consider training your spam filter to recognize these threats and automatically trash them. I would hope your normal correspondence with friends and coworkers, and the correspondence you solicit, is sufficiently free of rape threats and the like that it should be easy for modern filters to separate out the latter.
Actually, don't trash them. Separate them out and make them available to anyone who wishes to study them. If many victims pool their threat data, someone may be able to infer enough to bust the anonymity of some of the senders.
[1] Exception: if you are doing things that will anger the kind of people who are willing to physically harm you evenif it means they will likely be jailed or killed, then you need to treat these as real physical threats. For instance, if what makes you prominent on the internet is your work in successfully keeping abortion clinics open in deeply religious states, take threats as being serious physical threats.
I don't understand why you assume that most threats are empty. Are people who mail you rape threats actually going to rape you? Probably not. Are people who are unhinged enough to send a rape threat capable of harming you in other significant ways? Yes, they are.
To be clear, what I mean by "empty" is that the harm will be from the effects of receiving the message. The message is not a warning of an upcoming attack--it itself is the attack.
I assume this because I haven't seen any stats showing otherwise, and so I'm assuming that those making these threats are similar to those who make similar threats against athletes and entertainers, which we have more experience with.
The kind of people who will actually carry through with threats to murder or rape are almost always people who have a close connection to the victim, typically former spouses or former romantic partners or former business partners, or are people who are motivated by some kind of fundamentalist religious belief and believe they are doing God's work.
It's possible that this will change. The rise of swatting may be a sign that it is starting to, although swatting has mostly been directed toward non-tech targets so far. Swatting lets you call down offline harm with the emotional disengagement of online.
I think you are underestimating how different most people are online compared to offline. A heck of a lot of people who are civil offline turn very nasty online.
No, you've missed my point. I'm saying that your analysis is fixated on the idea that e.g. a rape threat predicts a rape. I'm saying, "sure, maybe you're right", and rape threats really don't predict rapes. But they probably do predict other threats: career damage, reputation damage from forged posts, online breakin attempts, &c.
Ah...yeah, I was focusing on things directed directly to the victim in this part, not on things about the victim directed to third parties or the general public.
I would suggest education to combat that--as part of teaching kids early about nasty trolls and how to handle them, teach them that they have to be skeptical of negative personal information about people they get from strangers on the internet.
However, I fear that would probably not work. Easily believing rumors without good (or even barely plausible...) evidence seems to be a general tendency of people. Hell, people will believe that bike lanes are part of a UN plot to take away the guns of American civilians [1], so I suppose I should not be surprised that they would readily believe a rumor that someone slept their way into a job or distributed child pornography of their own kids or stole someone else's work.
I currently have no ideas on how to effectively fix this.
> I’ve gotten hundreds of private messages on IRC and emails about sex, rape, and death threats.
Is this actually true, or are you over-exaggerating? I know of other girls in tech that are pretty decently well-known and don't get nearly that much harassment.
But then again, they don't post their faces, so idk.
I already thought this was something of importance, like, talking about a bubble or concerning trends in the industry. What I got was an emotional rant of someone who got trolled. Our digital media have more than enough possibilities to blacklist the baddies, or even whitelist the people you want to be in contact with. Don't look at things you don't want to see, nobody is forcing you to.
I see a lot of comments here ranging from support to trolling... since this is HN there is more support and (at last check) only one troll.
And that's really my point. No matter what, if you put yourself and your two cents into the public domain this stuff is part of the territory.
Granted in a perfect world we wouldn't have such trolling or at the very least there would be some authority doing online moderation and sanctioning. However life isn't and will never be fair, let alone the fact that such policing of the net is just not sensible.
So what to do really? Well I subscribe to the belief that an insult is an agreement between two people, if I don't agree, it's nullified, it doesn't even exist and I'm really not bothered.
Clearly this stuff is getting to her and after reading her blog post it really seems like it's affecting her emotionally. At the risk of being blunt, I think this will just encourage the trolls.
IMHO she either goes forward with a belief structure that deals with the trolling or she (sadly) takes a break from being in the public eye.
You have a good attitude about insults aimed at you. However, many people have lived lives that make such a healthy attitude impossible for them. I don't think progress is served by saying, "well it sucks that little girls are taught to stay 'safe' by taking the opinions of fuckwits seriously but I didn't teach them that so tough shit!" I doubt there's a magic bullet, but it would be better if we could build communication mechanisms that didn't expose women to the vilest excretions of the world's collective mental sewer.
Hi, well firstly it saddens me somewhat that you think I was suggesting that, as you put it, "well it sucks that little girls are taught to stay 'safe' by taking the opinions of fuckwits seriously but I didn't teach them that so tough shit!"
Honestly for me it's not about sex. I believe men and women are in fact equal and anything less than that is ignorance.
As for a 'silver bullet', there won't ever be one. Best I can do is teach my son gender equality.
I'm glad that you're sad. You certainly did suggest that this person who has reacted differently to trolls than you imagine you would in her situation should "take a break from being in the public eye". If you think about it a little you'll see why my paraphrase of your sentiment is pretty fucking exact. Then you can change your mind and not be sad anymore.
And that makes me so angry.
Sure, maybe not everyone in the industry is an arsehole. But enough people are, and those people are vocal enough, that a significant number of people feel disgusted and threatened. That should be enough to tell you that even if the majority are lovely people, the industry as a whole still has a problem.
(also, for anyone wondering whether the number of people affected really is "significant", I would consider even one person to be a significant number)
I also get really angry at posts like "This has never happened to me, so I'm sure it's all ok". This may come as a surprise, but individual experiences are not universal. That something has never happened to you doesn't mean it's never happened to anyone else.
And if you're getting tired of seeing posts like this, don't complain about the people making the posts. Complain about the people harassing them. It may seem counterintuitive, but the fastest and most effective way to stop posts like this turning up is actually to make more of them, until the harassment and abuse stop.
"This happens all the time" is never a valid excuse.