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Comment by logicalmind | Hacker News Reader

As the father of two daughters I am somewhat appalled by the responses here. I'm not taking anyone's side, but the responses here are shocking to me. I don't know what to say, but, WOW! Maybe I need to rethink the advice I am giving my daughters.

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Defensiveness, denial, etc

Are you reading the same site? What I see is lots of perfectly reasonable people saying "it's really horrible that this sort of thing happens, and we've got the pitchforks and torches ready, but we're not going to put a noose around this guy's neck based on a blog post alone".

My original post contained the words you quoted. As I scrolled down the page I realized that the posts were less offensive and edited my post. Yet, at this point in time, a number of the top upvoted comments are quite defensive and in denial.

Could you cite some specific examples of replies that appall you, and perhaps give a short explanation of what you take issue with? That would help make this discussion more concrete, and hopefully more productive.

Sure, Here was the original top comment I found appalling:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875900

This right here is called denial. In short "I have a friend, who is like this guy, who was accused of the same thing and he got off." Which in my opinion is denying that the female involved is telling the truth and that this person is completely innocent.

Additionally, this is the second highest post as I type. I don't think I even have to respond. At this time, the comment that makes the same point as me is downvoted to the negative:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875948

At this point I don't want to continue further defending my point. Downvote me if you like. I find the responses here about 50% disturbing and 50% uplifting. That is no reflection on HN, but on the tech community. Before today I would have gladly recommended to my daughters to follow a tech path. But after tonight I've lost my innocence on that. I've never really thought about these issues from a woman's perspective before tonight. And I've never really been involved in a situation like this. So my responses might be a bit different than the typical younger 20's male responses. And I'm fine with that. Maybe I've just lost my innocence.

> Before today I would have gladly recommended to my daughters to follow a tech path. But after tonight I've lost my innocence on that.

This type of thing is, unfortunately, by no means exclusive to or even at all more common in tech than anywhere else. By all means try to prepare your daughters for the world, but I think evaluating tech as any different in this respect would be a disservice to them.

You may be 100% correct, it's just that it hadn't become real for me. I am in my late 30's and have father-friends in various industries. When I went to school there were a couple of female students in the class here or there. We treated them no different than any other students. There were plenty of embarrassing sexual advances by students, but nothing along the lines of sexual assault. Men and women of the tech community were the smart students.

I've talked to many father-friends who have sons and daughters who go to various high schools and colleges. I've heard stories of sexual assaults and very unfortunate situations. But I could always justify them to myself as inferior disciplines and sad situations.

It's not like I thought this never happened in tech. Just the combination of highly skilled, top company, person in tech and the response of a general community that I highly respect give me pause.

In general, I think I am older than the HN crowd, so I am fine with thinking a bit different.

we had a conversation on the geekfeminism blog a while back about the issue of not talking about the bad stuff in tech - you might find it insightful, in terms of how some women who are in tech, and have deal with this shit, think about it: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/06/10/dont-mention-the-war/

Is there any other career path where women are LESS likely to be assaulted?

Nuns seem pretty safe.

False accusations of sexual assault are not uncommon.

I'm not logicalmind, but I think the single most appalling comment I've read thus far was http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1876272

The "anyone involved in feminism and getting women involved in open source is a man-hating liar and is probably lying about sexual assault" tone is too misogynistic for words, cloaked in a thin veneer of "let's not rush to judgement" for plausible deniability.

Was the comment edited? I can't find your quote.

The first item in quotation marks is my interpretation of the author's tone, for better or for worse. The second is a slight paraphrase of "Please lets not assassinate".

If what happened, happened, it's non-ideal. Was it a horrible thing? Not so sure. Should it be a crime? Not so sure. Look I think I should never have to encounter someone who's rude to me, or launches into some long story about their life just because I bumped into them in the hallway one time -- but should that be a crime? Probably not. Sexuality and romance and human relationships are very very messy and irrational and play by a different set of rules than a lot of our "civilized" thought processes and paradigms follow. Should every woman who goes to a bar expect to be groped? Of course not. Should every woman probably expect that it could happen, and may happen eventually? Of course. Will they survive afterward? They should. Unless they traumatize easily, of course. Some people have weaker personalities than others, and no two people are alike exactly.

And I can guarantee that for every father who worries about how his daughter might one day be groped by a man, that there's at least one daughter who hopes or fantasizes about being groped by a man someday too. (Of course, probably by a man she is attracted to or perceives of him as an Alpha, etc.) Sex. It's messy stuff.

>there's at least one daughter who hopes or fantasizes about being groped by a man someday too.

I like to fantasize about all kinds of disgusting things.

However, if a stranger came up to me in a bar, and simply presumed that I would like to have one of these disgusting things done to me, I'd be quite offended.

Fantasy is one thing, reality is another.

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