<story><title>Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower</title><url>https://medium.com/@katylevinson/sexism-in-tech-don-t-ask-me-unless-you-re-ready-to-call-somebody-a-whistleblower-e5d545e547b0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattmaroon</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sorry but this is insane. I guess I can only speak to the segment of the tech industry I&amp;#x27;ve been exposed to, but a woman would not be labelled a liability for reporting a rape or an assault, unless maybe it turned out to be false, in which case that&amp;#x27;s no different than any other industry. I am sure workplace rape and assault happens in every industry, unfortunately, but I&amp;#x27;ve seen no evidence it&amp;#x27;s more common or accepted in tech than anywhere else. It&amp;#x27;s certainly not systematized or condoned. I can&amp;#x27;t believe Google (for whom she has worked) has any more lenient of a policy on sexual harassment or assault than any other Fortune 500.&lt;p&gt;And if it were this bad, why would she fear being ostracized? If my options were to stay in an industry and be repeatedly harassed, beaten, and raped, or switch careers, I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;d be a tough call.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jusben1369</author><text>If you look through the comments here and in other similar threads you&amp;#x27;ll see numerous variations on the &amp;quot;what wait? just leave.&amp;quot; It&amp;#x27;s an understandable but wrong response to these situations. It shifts the problem from the perpetrator to the victim. It&amp;#x27;s similar to asking women to be covered from head to toe so that they can&amp;#x27;t somehow tempt males. The onus isn&amp;#x27;t on the male to control his desires it&amp;#x27;s on the female to ensure that his desires are not aroused. So if rape and sexual harassment is happening at a workplace don&amp;#x27;t blame the victim for not leaving blame the perpetrator for bringing that into the workplace.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sexism in Tech: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready to Call Someone a Whistleblower</title><url>https://medium.com/@katylevinson/sexism-in-tech-don-t-ask-me-unless-you-re-ready-to-call-somebody-a-whistleblower-e5d545e547b0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattmaroon</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sorry but this is insane. I guess I can only speak to the segment of the tech industry I&amp;#x27;ve been exposed to, but a woman would not be labelled a liability for reporting a rape or an assault, unless maybe it turned out to be false, in which case that&amp;#x27;s no different than any other industry. I am sure workplace rape and assault happens in every industry, unfortunately, but I&amp;#x27;ve seen no evidence it&amp;#x27;s more common or accepted in tech than anywhere else. It&amp;#x27;s certainly not systematized or condoned. I can&amp;#x27;t believe Google (for whom she has worked) has any more lenient of a policy on sexual harassment or assault than any other Fortune 500.&lt;p&gt;And if it were this bad, why would she fear being ostracized? If my options were to stay in an industry and be repeatedly harassed, beaten, and raped, or switch careers, I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;d be a tough call.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>geofft</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think there&amp;#x27;s a particular reason to believe this is significantly worse in tech than it is elsewhere (although if this I&amp;#x27;m wrong, I&amp;#x27;d definitely appreciate being corrected on this). But there are a few things I&amp;#x27;d say:&lt;p&gt;- Tech has this particular weird cultural self-view that we all see ourselves and each other as middle-school nerds emerging victorious, as people who got past the bullies and the ills of &amp;quot;normal people&amp;quot; society, as people who were friendless (and dateless) in school but have found our own little environment now where we can be accepted as we are. So there&amp;#x27;s a tendency to think that we&amp;#x27;re not &lt;i&gt;capable&lt;/i&gt; of the same sort of awfulness, and that we&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;better people&lt;/i&gt; than the other industries. There&amp;#x27;s a tendency, subconsciously, to think that if someone&amp;#x27;s saying something bad about any of our people, they&amp;#x27;re no better than our middle school bullies. We need to get over that and admit that the tech &lt;i&gt;industry&lt;/i&gt; is like any other industry.&lt;p&gt;- On a different and simpler note, tech is &lt;i&gt;our&lt;/i&gt; industry. I don&amp;#x27;t have nearly as much say about the culture of, say, big law firms or furniture design studios, than I do about the culture of companies where I work and where I might consider working.&lt;p&gt;Regarding Google, did you see this discussion, which was on the HN home page yesterday? &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/+KellyEllis/posts/L4wawXpNt25&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;plus.google.com&amp;#x2F;+KellyEllis&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;L4wawXpNt25&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>