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Comment by asymmetric | Hacker News Reader

This is terrible, and one more reason to despise Uber, but I find the usage of the word "survivor" out of place in this context, at least in my understanding of its meaning.

I know this is not the main point to take home from this situation, and I also know I'll be attacked from making it, but I felt it was important nonetheless.

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Her usage of "survivor" is appropriate both in terms of being alive (i.e. not committing suicide after traumatic experience) and being whole as a human being (i.e. having healed enough to function in society).

There are countless studies linking sexual harassment and intimidation to suicides, just look it up.

> just look it up.

How about citing a source if you make a claim?

It is far from unheard of for someone to kill themselves in these situations. Also, still working in the industry could be considered surviving and someone who left the industry due to this treatment could be considered someone who didn't survive.

So i'd say survivor fits perfectly.

Committing suicide over something like this seems a bit extreme. Don't want to trivialize her suffering, or the gravity of what happened, but infantilizing people also doesn't help in making them stronger.

Of course it's not up to me to decide when committing suicide makes sense (does it ever?), but this is the issue I see with the word "survivor": it seems to want to portray what happened in terms of a life threatening situation. As far as I can tell, it wasn't.

Now, back to the main issue, i.e. sexual harassment at Uber.

Survivor i.e. being alive and not having killed herself - this type of abuse can drive people to kill themselves. Is that surprising? She may have also meant it in a less dramatic sense: been through it but got out. Many people who've been abused at Uber are probably still at Uber.

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