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Comment by zachwooddoughty | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a fan of saying we should "take whatever she says with a grain of salt". It's casually dismissive of the entire situation.

If you want to accuse her of having fabricated the entire story, do that and try to find evidence for it. From the limited evidence provided surrounding this incident, there seems to be a fair amount of evidence supporting her.

Declaring oneself "bitchy" and wanting to "smash the patriarchy" does not mean you are inclined to quit your job and falsely call out several members of your former team.

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However, wanting to "smash the patriarchy" might indicate that one subscribes to third wave radical feminism, whose definition of sexual harassment includes talking to a woman without her explicit permission.

As such, yes, I would give the accused the benefit of the doubt, at the very least until I'd heard the other side of the story.

Edit: Took me a while to find any of the actual, concrete accusations in that monster of a thread, it seems that Vic "said a number of throughout the years" which is pretty much exactly what I expected, and Rod, on at least one occasion, said something that does sound pretty damn horrible out of context. I apologize if I seemed dismissive, but I'd still like to hear the other side, such as it were.

At the end of the day, I'm mostly worried that getting the Internet at large involved in this will lead to another witch hunt in the style Donglegate.

> whose definition of sexual harassment includes talking to a woman without her explicit permission.

That's inaccurate. "Third wave radical feminism" is not a monolithic belief structure, and it certainly doesn't prescribe "talking to a woman without her explicit permission". I consider myself on board with radical feminism, and I consider that an absurd definition of harassment.

I think there should be a fair investigation into the incident, but I don't think it's helpful to make dismissive remarks about feminism or the potential validity of this claim.

All the evidence that currently exists about this evidence is a quote she posted on twitter and some supporting comments from other coworkers. Attempts to determine her stance on radical feminism have no bearing on deciding whether or not her supervisor made an inappropriate remark.

The story she relates doesn't strike me as stretching for a harassment definition. If true, and I have absolutely no reason to doubt it, it is pretty clear that this Director is nowhere near any kind of fuzzy line of harassment. This is clearly harassment and no matter what brand of radical ideas she subscribes to, if any, the Director is egregiously wrong to have said this to any employee.

The oxymoron phrase "third wave radical feminism" immediately betrays an uninformed and ahistorical position on feminist movements; it's not just oxymoron as in contradictory but also as in "silly to the point of humor". I recommend Judith Lorber's "Gender Inequality" as a start to educating yourself about the subject that you are trying to discuss.

Maybe I'm wrong about the recorded histories of third-wave feminism and radical feminism; can anyone care to inform me otherwise?

On one hand, yes, I believe third wave feminism and radical feminism are divergent (third wave being an inclusionary branch), but according to Wikipedia, anyone who recognizes and opposes the patriarchy is a radical feminist, so one could reasonably consider third-wave to be a sub-type of radical feminism. (I think if you used the term "radfem", that would be more clearly distinct from third wave feminism--that term seems used along with terms like "terf".)

Disclaimer: I'm not very well educated on this at all.

It's very telling that you claim to want to "give the accused the benefit of doubt" and immediately begin accusing someone of being a liar and having ulterior motives.

I guess the benefit of the doubt only extends to men.

I definitely don't think she's lying about this, but someone with such a strongly-worded bio is definitely more likely to exaggerate or be over-sensitive to perceived sexual harassment. (Think Adria Richards)

I appreciate the perspective that we should make sure to be on the look-out for bias, but I don't think it's helpful in this particular instance.

When your first response to a claim of harassment is "let's consider the bias of the accuser", it casts doubt on the legitimacy of the claim. I'm not saying we should jump to assuming she is telling the truth, and a real investigation should be followed to determine the legitimacy of the claim.

But regardless of the resulting investigation, I'd rather bias the initial reaction to "thank you for sharing this, sexual harassment is a problem in the workforce", instead of using her Twitter profile to cast doubt on her claim.

It isn't really your place to call a someone else "over-sensitive to perceived sexual harassment," especially when they're on the side that has traditionally been recipient of most of it.

It is your place to listen and try to understand the world they live in, those traditional recipients of sexual harassment.

Her story is quite a bit different from Adria Richards.

I would hope that everyone would be "sensitive" to sexual harassment, in that they would be ready to identify when it is happening to them and others. How can a perosn "exaggerate" quotes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_conte...

What do you think I am quoting out of context? Be specific

detcader: How can a perosn "exaggerate" quotes?

I gave you examples where people can exaggerate quotes.

edit: please drop the attitude...

You should take everything on twitter with a grain of salt, no offense to particular people.

Fair enough, but it seems her tweet is being supported by others' perspectives, which I think gives it weight.

Twitter and Google+ seem like reasonable places to post a complaint you want to take public.

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