Should we believe men too when they're victimised by women, or is this a one way deal? What if it's a man and a woman accusing each other, or two men or two women. What if the dude is a historically oppressed minority?
Would you please not take HN threads on ideological tangents and into flamewars? We're trying to avoid those things here. You also crossed repeatedly into incivility in your comments, which is not cool. We ban accounts that do these things repeatedly, so please don't.
Anecdotally, I'm in the process of being sexually harassed by a director at the company I work for and choosing not reporting it. I plan to leave in a couple of months, my startup is in the final stages of closing a seed round - getting in to a sexual harassment lawsuit right now is the last thing I need in terms of stress and career.
The power dynamics are significantly different though, I don't feel at all in danger, I'm a 6'2 man who lifts weights in his spare time, so it's more of an annoyance than anything truly worrying. I understand that this person may go on to harass the next person who fills my role, but I simply have too much personally riding on the outcome of the present to leverage it in that way.
> more of an annoyance than anything truly worrying
I'd certainly be pretty worried if someone in a position of power over me was doing anything of the sort. Even if you don't have to worry about the individual literally overpowering you (Which in itself would be a tough thing to prove you were not the aggressor if you are a muscular 6+ footer and had to push off an aggressive advance)
that isn't a historical problem the way it is for women
Any feminist will remind you that sexual harassment isn't about sex, it's about power. With more women in positions of power these days expect the number of harassment cases where men are the target to rise.
Most people that report harassment are taking a big career risk (and if they go public like Mrs. Fowler did, inviting abuse from Internet mobs) by doing so, so yes, I'm going to default to believing people that report harassment unless I can find credible evidence it didn't happen.
An example (from a case I was involved as a witness in only last week). A jury must be 100% confident that the evidence presented confirms their beliefs. The judge will say "do not decide based on if you believe it happened but instead on the evidence presented". There a world where the jury can believe it happened (and deliberate for 4.5 hours) but still come out with not guilty because the physical evidence is not there. In historical sexual abuse cases (of which this was one) - the CPS (Criminal Prosecution Service here in the UK) will not take on the case if they did not think there was a good chance of winning and yet the only real evidence here was witness testimony and no forensics. It didn't matter that the jury obviously believed it happened - they did their job and realised that was only an opinion and not backed by evidence.
"I believe you" can mean you believe what the person is saying WITHOUT it meaning you take it to be 100% factual.
In this circumstance, it can mean you believe them (as in, trust them) but you're not "convicting" anyone of anything. But you ARE giving them the comfort of "trust."
> it can mean you believe them (as in, trust them) but you're not "convicting" anyone of anything.
If they say "X touched me inappropriately" and you say "I believe you" meaning "I trust you", then that means "I trust that you are telling the truth".
(Actually, what I think you're really talking about is a kind of social nicety, what is in reality a white lie. Where people will say "I believe you" as like a kind of gesture of good faith towards a person. Like indicating that you're not going to be biased against them. But it's not actually a statement of belief. In other words, it does not have a meaning in terms of a type of belief).
well, as obstacle1 has explained below, then you're not actually talking about beliefs. (which was what the original discussion did concern).
E.g. in some of these situations you are actually lying to the person (in a mild way) and not actually expressing a belief at all.
An analogy. I might say "I went to the store", but actually I was at a friend's place, and I said this because I wanted to come across a certain way.
It is not that the statement "I went to the store" has these two interpretations. The notion of going to a friend's place isn't a different interpretation of that statement, it is just that I'm not telling the truth.
I don't think that's accurate. I can believe you without being absolutely convicted that you're accurate or correct. I can believe your testimony to me in good faith, but understand it may not be accurate.
> I can believe you without being absolutely convicted that you're accurate or correct.
Of course - and that means you still think (to some degree of conviction) it is true. The original context that spawned this discussion was implying some sort of interpretation that did not involve a belief of some sort in the truth of the statement.
> I can believe your testimony to me in good faith, but understand it may not be accurate.
If someone says "X touched me inappropriately", and you respond "I believe you" then this response means "I believe your statement" not "I believe your testimony was in good faith". (Or it is a kind of white lie, as discussed elsewhere in this thread).
> If someone says "X touched me inappropriately", and you respond "I believe you" then this response means "I believe your statement" not "I believe your testimony was in good faith".
That's true, but this is literally how 99% of human interaction works out.
My dad might say "Hey, can you help me with something on the house in two weeks?" and I don't even know what day yet, so I'll say "Of course, would love to!"
It's... not a 100% completely honest response, but it's the polite one. Rather than saying "I have no idea because I lack information, please tell me the date and I'll get back to you."
In reality, I say sure, I commit, and as more information is acquired we adjust the situation: just as would happen in the original scenario.
White lie or not, it would be inappropriate and needlessly damaging to reply to your colleague in such a way "I have no idea if what you're saying is true, sorry, but I'll look into it."
We're talking about the action of "believing" a colleague when they come to you with a complaint.
It would not be healthy for anyone involved to actively show skepticism towards them.
If you do not show some level of skepticism, you default to a state of belief. As in, you believe your colleague at face-value for the complaint brought to you.
We're _not_ talking about convicting someone of a crime. We're not talking about taking immediate action on that belief.
>If you do not show some level of skepticism, you default to a state of belief.
Well, no, you default to a neutral state of receiving information, sans judgment.
Also it is not true that if you do not show skepticism, you default to some specific state. You could hold any number of opinions without showing skepticism -- what you are showing the other party is irrelevant. "Showing" or expressing belief is not the same thing as believing.
>As in, you believe your colleague at face-value
If you are pretending that you believe your colleague while silently reserving judgment or judging disbelief, you do not believe them in any meaningful sense of the word. You are disguising your judgment of what they are saying so as to not cause further conflict -- i.e., acting. That is very different from believing what they say or even 'believing at face value'.
Of course you can. You can believe the victim while saying that the evidence doesn't meet whatever bar you set - in criminal matters that would be "beyond all reasonable doubt".
It's fine for people to say "I think he did it, but the prosecution didn't prove it, and so I found him not guilty."
If you believe someone, that means you think what they said is true.
In this mindset you've setup a guilty until proven innocent framework because in your mind you already believe to be true any accusations leveled at someone.
When someone levels an accusation, the only belief you should hold is that it's a serious accusation that needs further investigation because someone has risked a lot by leveling it.
Believing anything that comes out of someone's mouth to be true when there are massive consequences to their words is unethical.
>It's fine for people to say "I think he did it, but the prosecution didn't prove it, and so I found him not guilty."
You cannot believe someone to have done something and personally believe that the person is not guilty. They may not be guilty under the framework of the law, but you are still treating them as guilty in your mind. If you worked with the accused and you had a strong sense of ethics, you would never treat that person the same way again, even though the accusation may have been proven to be fabricated.
It is unethical to take accusations at face value that will ruin people's lives.
100% on-point, but I'd caution about bringing judgement into these matters.
Believing a colleague when they come to you with ANY complaint does not mean you're going to pass judgement, or you even have to. It means listening and doing that in a way that does not discourage future complaints.
> Believing a colleague when they come to you with ANY complaint does not mean you're going to pass judgement, or you even have to. It means listening and doing that in a way that does not discourage future complaints.
Your attitude towards them -- listening etc -- is a completely orthogonal matter to whether you believe in the truth of their claims.
There seems to be this wishy-washy notion of "belief" that's causing confusion in this thread, where "believing" is equated to "not being judgemental".
Saying "I believe you" means "I believe what you said is true". There are no interpretations that are contrary to that.
Yes, you can modulate the strength of your belief but they're all beliefs that the statement is true. The great-grandparent comment (the one whose meaning this discussion was about) was implying something other than belief in the truth of the statement.
Different standards should and do apply in criminal trials ("innocent until proven guilty", "beyond a reasonable doubt"), civil trials ("preponderance of the evidence"), and the workplace, where anything goes.
I am saying employment is at will (in most US tech contracts) and an employer can terminate your contract for any reason. "Anything goes" = there's no set standards of proof
IANAL but my understanding is that employer can terminate you for no reason (as in not giving a reason). But if an employer fires you for cause and that cause is unfounded they can be sued for wrongful termination.
This handy list suggests you have a claim if you report you were harassed and your company fires you (retaliation), but not if you are fired after someone falsely accuses you of harassment.
And trusting people to have free speech is definitely going to be abused by people who want to say controversial things. And trusting people to use encryption is definitely going to be abused by criminals who want to commit crimes. And trusting people to own kitchen knives is definitely going to be abused by people who want to stab others.
Yes, we can all make factually true, but totally irrelevant arguments that don't change anything.
You're talking about the rights of individuals. A person has the right to free speech and a person has the right not to be harassed.
A person does not have the right to be trusted, but can expect to be taken seriously on a claim of harassment if they have earned trust or if they provide evidence to back up the allegation.
This suggests that trust isn't or hasn't been abused by harassers at places like Uber. There, Uber HR trusted harassers when they said "I didn't do that," or they just didn't care.
I'm going to default to believing people that report harassment unless I can find credible evidence it didn't happen.
The UK police had to back off from a similar policy that the after high profile investigations that were dropped with no criminal charges being made. They now take complaints seriously and try to keep the confidence of the complainant but don't start off with unconditional belief from the outset whilst still proceeding, at first, on the basis that the allegation is truthful but testing the accuracy of the allegations and the evidence with an open mind.
in a criminal trial the most common form would be an alibi, which is proof that the accused was somewhere else and not in the place the crime occurred at the time the crime occurred.
I don’t know why you would think otherwise. Yes, if a man of any background complains of victimisation, then take those complaints in good faith and investigate them.
FFS, dude. Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them. No old fashioned norms are still levied on them everytime a woman speaks to them. They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to. To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick.
>Men hold the vast majority of power in our society.
Power isn't based on gender, it's based on wealth. Do you think abuse of power will suddenly end once the majority of wealthy individuals are women instead of men?
Power is enacted through multifarious means, with wealth being one of them. Wealth isn't a requisite for power. Generally in the US, positions of power are held by men, because of (or in spite of) an interconnected system of laws, norms, and a history of (generally) men telling people what to do. And those gender-based ideas enacted in laws and norms and our culture have percolated through our society to affect everyone in ways we often can't detect.
The point is that yes, for these reasons and many others, we should "believe women when they report harassment in the workplace."
It could be you or your family having connections to powerful people. Being famous. But what's important as it pertains to our conversation: being in an authoritative position, e.g. a teacher, law enforcement officer, manager, or company executive. All of these people can have an influence, or "power," over others -- including, but not limited to, women.
As your question doesn't really have anything to do with our debate, I respectfully decline to answer. It was nice talking.
I am extremely pro feminist, but I believe this particular tactic is one of feminists most self destructive anti-patterns.
It's one thing to say women have substantially more cards stacked against them on average. But it's another to say men have no cards stacked against them.
Your position is particularly harmful to feminist aims, because one of the core feminist teachings that we need to get through is this:
Don't assume a woman is a certain way because of stereotypes. Between group differences are smaller than within group differences.
Women can be less sporty than men on average, while still almost half of women are more athletic than the average man.
Similarly, women can have more cards stacked against them on average, while still nearly half of men have more cards stacked against them than the average woman.
The place we need to get to, which I believe intersectional feminism advocates, is to understand each person and situation individually, and consider that there are always many axes of oppression operation simultaneously.
To address your assertion directly: that a male victim of sexual harassment has no cards against him, consider this:
The flip side of "boys will be boys", a meme used to let rapists go unpunished, is "boys must be boys", a meme that men always want sex and therefore if he had a drunken hookup he must have wanted it. This goes far beyond the less accepted (though still frighteningly effective) meme of "she was drunk so she must have wanted it". Women are not presumed to want sex all the time.
I consider that a card stacked against men. We have precious little shared framework for thinking and talking about the times we don't want sex. It's not equivalent to the deck of cards that is patriarchy, but it's a card.
I think feminism will profit greatly from taking a stance on how people should be treated better, rather your stance, which is a stance on which people should be treated better (women).
I still believe WATM is usually a derailing technique used to distract from discussions of women's rights, I just don't believe that in the current climate it benefits the feminist movement to respond to them as such. It doesn't take much effort to say "sure, men too" and doing so reinforces other key feminist rhetoric.
I was mostly trying to point out how ridiculous camelite's argument sounded. I thought maybe we should instead have a serious conversation about the events leading up to Uber's current troubles, and how they reflect on our society and our own individual mindsets. But apparently this isn't the place for that.
Anyway, yeah, of course everyone has different circumstances. I didn't mean literally no men, just as the grandparent comment didn't mean literally believe all women. I was speaking generally in order to be comprehendible to a guy speaking generally and hypothetically.
Generally speaking, as a group, yes -- especially when compared to the social pressures put on women. Yes, that's changing, but we still have a way to go.
Happy to hear any difficult and unrealistic social pressures you think we regularly face today.
I don't want to get into a back and forth with you on this topic so I will politely decline your request.
I just wanted to say that it seems to me like you are speaking about broad generalizations and that is not the same thing as speaking about real people or individuals. Also, that your generalized idea of men is based on the premise that that general man is a wealthy and powerful person, but this is not the case for most men.
> Men hold the vast majority of power in our society. No cards are stacked against them.
If you "believe women who report sexual harassment", and more specifically, if you believe women who report sexual harassment in "less clear cut" scenarios than Susan Fowlers, then you are deliberately stacking the deck against the specific men who are accused of sexual harassment, some of whom will invariably be innocent. How much comfort the fact that other people with the same genetalia tend to fill the boardrooms provides to the accused, I will leave to your imagination.
> They aren't constantly reminded by our culture to be gentlemen or look handsome or bring home the bacon or do anything they don't want to.
Men aren't reminded constantly by their culture to do things they don't want to do? Where do you live, because it sounds like paradise to me.
> To say "think of the men!" here is either willfully ignorant or just being a dick.
It's neither. It was an attempt to puncture what I saw as misguided rhetoric. A good old WhatAboutTheMen is an efficient approach because the commenter's default reasoning for not "just believing" men would likely mirror mine for not "just believing" women. And so I don't have to spell it out for them.
I'm not going to nitpick about any individual discussion points you guys have going on, but I'll chime in to say that your approach to thinking about men/women in our society seems...disingenuous.
We can imagine utopia and then imagine how we would treat people in that setting. That seems to be what you're doing. But if we're not actually in utopia, then we really are tipping the scales in some way. And that does suck, and sometimes that means that one group is going to be treated unfairly, but often it's about the lesser of evils.
disingenous: lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically
I'll do you the honor of not questioning your sincerity without even making an effort to address any specific thing you said. Seems like an almost...pusillanimous...thing to do.
> We can imagine utopia and then imagine how we would treat people in that setting.
I am not suggesting a solution to the existence of injustice, which is what a utopia would entail. I am merely pointing out that simplistic rhetoric about believing accusors will not solve the problem.
> But if we're not actually in utopia, then we really are tipping the scales in some way. And that does suck, and sometimes that means that one group is going to be treated unfairly, but often it's about the lesser of evils.
And there we part ways. Adding up all the bad stuff that happens to one group, comparing it to all the bad stuff that happens to another group, and saying "if this makes the bad stuff in the big pile smaller, then having more bad stuff in the small pile is acceptable collateral damage" is not a good approach. Applied in the large it would quite likely lead to two much bigger piles. I know you probably don't recognise that as what you're doing, but your reasoning is far too simplistic given the complexities of the problem.
I was commenting on the mindset one would have to take the positions you have, which is why I didn't address individual points. I guess that was lost on you.
edit: fine, apparently people get downvoted if they're not pedantic.
"and saying "if this makes the bad stuff in the big pile smaller, then having more bad stuff in the small pile is acceptable collateral damage" is not a good approach. Applied in the large it would quite likely lead to two much bigger piles."
Show your work. Why is that "likely" to lead to two bigger piles?
> I was commenting on the mindset one would have to take the positions you have, which is why I didn't address individual points. I guess that was lost on you.
There's a word for that, you know.
> Show your work. Why is that "likely" to lead to two bigger piles?
If we both agree that we want fewer incidents of harass ment, a higher fraction of harassers punished, fewer false allegations, and fewer incidents of innocent people being punished... then that's a pretty complicated problem, right? Now multiply that by the number of potential harassers and harassees in the world. My "work" is simply the observation that a complicated problem isn't solvable by simplistic rhetoric. Of course, given the climate, that spiraled, as it does.
Seems to me that the some of whom will invariably be innocent will be significantly low.
Saying "just believing" isn't the best phrase the OP could have picked but neither was your rhetoric. It just contributes to the divide between men and women.
I'm neither rich nor powerful, and I don't feel pressure to do anything outside of ensure my own survival. I mean, I could get a girl pregnant and still have a hell of a lot less to worry about than she does.
This is a lot of aggression, and it makes me think that you are just as closed to alternative viewpoints as those with whom you are discussing this topic. I think you should completely re-evaluate your approach to debating this in the future.
I see what you're saying, but I've laid out many other, less aggressive points and remained open to any good counter-argument.
I'll take the downvotes for this, but I think certain stances people are spouting on this thread are aggressively perpetuating the poor societal values I've been arguing against. They're aggressively playing down the consequences of their sexist mentality and normalizations. And because I'm a not-impoverished white dude who doesn't worry about being persecuted for my opinions, I expressed them.
(Also, the "selfish dick" part isn't meant to be taken personally. Many people are selfish, and own up to it, and wear the badge proudly. That's great. But to argue for sexism under some pretense of a noble cause is bullshit.)
I didn't have a chance to read this before you deleted it, but let's get one thing out of the way immediately: I'm not a white male, yet you seem to be attacking me (and others who think you are doing more harm than good) on this presumption.
You need to understand that the way you engage others on the internet is harmful to your viewpoints. You honestly come off as hostile and even childish. You're fabricating complete strawmen and attacking them. I honestly have to question whether or not you have some sort of personality disorder, given how upset you get over things that the people you are attacking have not said or even implied. You also seem to be extremely self-loathing, and you want to project that onto others.
> You honestly come off as hostile and even childish. You're fabricating complete strawmen and attacking them.
> You also seem to be extremely self-loathing, and you want to project that onto others.
These are funny sequences of statements.
Anyway I wasn't attacking you; I was arguing against the ideas presented, that we should "think about the men!" first when we're discussing women reporting sexual assault. The paragraph I deleted implied that anyone who holds this worldview either hasn't ever listened to a woman or is self-centered. I could've put it better, but frankly I was tired of arguing.
And I was fixing the record because you said "blackrose is exclusively thinking of rich and powerful men when framing his argument." Which is false, and I believe I offered good evidence for in my simple example.
Your second paragraph breaks the site guidelines. It's not ok to argue like that on HN, especially on divisive topics. If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
> then you are deliberately stacking the deck against the specific men who are accused of sexual harassment, some of whom will invariably be innocent.
This is really a stretch in logic, and the oxymoronic "some of whom will invariably be innocent" gives away your motives on this topic.
Parent comment was saying we should give a little more credibility to reports that women make about sexual harassment in the workplace. It's a pretty good idea that would make everyone's lives better (even ours, the men!). But if your reaction to that mild suggestion is hostility and misleading arguments, you're contributing to the problem and encouraging more "manly" behavior that necessitates women's blog posts and company culture course-correction.
It's not even a tiny weeny little stretch of logic. It is self-evident to anybody who is thinking clearly about the matter.
> Parent comment was saying we should give a little more credibility to reports that women make about sexual harassment in the workplace.
No. Wrong. Parent comment said "believe women who...", not "give a little more credibility to reports that women make about sexual harassment". Do you understand how those two statements are different? Your one doesn't even make sense. Crediblity is "the quality of being believable or worthy of trust". Credence is probably the word you were thinking of. I don't think I'm smarter than you, but these sorts of mistakes do go to show that you are not thinking clearly.
> It's a pretty good idea that would make everyone's lives better
Not the falsely accused. They are men too, right?
> But if your reaction to that mild suggestion is hostility and misleading arguments, you're contributing to the problem and encouraging more "manly" behavior that necessitates women's blog posts and company culture course-correction.
The suggestion is not mild. My reaction was not hostile. My arguments were not misleading. I'm not contributing to the problem of some men being sexual harassers, except perhaps at some absurdly theoretically removed degree, which would leave me damned for pretty much any I comment I could make. I'm not encouraging manly, or even "manly" behaviour. My comments don't necessitate women's blog posts, if by that you are referring to Fowlers call-out. The latter is in fact an absurd charge against me on a personal level, as I'm sure you would recognize after mature reflection. That I necessitate company culture course-correction is likewise absurd, though flattering.
Luckily we have the power of inference and ability to understand what statements mean even when people use different words -- unless, of course, we have an axe to grind, which is what I'm seeing here in your comments.
Your counter arguments haven't convinced me. But it was nice discussing this. Hopefully others will see this thread and make their own decisions.
I can see you're trying to rise above your instincts here, and that is a good effort. However, you should have left out the parting shot about the axe.
