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Last October, AngelList, a company that helps tech start-ups raise money and hire employees, held an office retreat. In the Hollywood Hills, far from Silicon Valley, the firm's mostly male staff mingled poolside with bikini-clad women who had been invited to the event.
Before the afternoon was over, Babak Nivi, a founder and board member at AngelList, said things that made Julie Ruvolo, a contractor, uncomfortable about working at the company. His comments included a suggestion that the women, who were not employees, warm up the pool by jumping in and rubbing their bodies together. The incident was described by two entrepreneurs who were told about it in the weeks after it occurred but were not authorized to speak about it.
Precisely what occurred at the Hollywood Hills event and the details of the agreement are not publicly known. Several weeks after the party, each side signed a nondisparagement clause as part of a settlement, the two people said. And neither Ms. Ruvolo nor AngelList are permitted to talk about what happened that day.
As more harassment allegations come to light, employment lawyers say nondisparagement agreements have helped enable a culture of secrecy. In particular, the tech start-up world has been roiled by accounts of workplace sexual harassment, and nondisparagement clauses have played a significant role in keeping those accusations secret. Harassers move on and harass again. Women have no way of knowing their history. Nor do future employers or business partners.
Source: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/21/abuses-hide-in-the-silence-of-non-disparagement-agreements.html
Related: Silicon Valley Women Frankly Describe Sexual Harassment
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday July 24 2017, @04:26PM (3 children)
Well I, for one, am glad that I do not get invited to these parties.
Holy fucking shit! Everybody here knows how often I'm pissed at a feminist for implying that not only are all assigned males heterosexual (er… stupid me being an indeterminate gender thus heterosexual being a nigh-meaningless concept when applied to me… can we agree on calling the thing that 90% of men and 10% of women experience “gynephilia?” Just in this comment do I don't need to attempt the linguistic equivalent of division by zero?) The reader hopefully, at this point, will understand that this behavior pisses me off no matter who it comes from. When feminists doing it, they are being bold-faced hypocrites. When cisgendered gynephile men do it, they are being sleazeballs. (And when POTUS does it… don't worry, I'm working on constructing a distress beacon to contact the lizard people with nothing more than stone knives and bear skins… I saw two people from the 23rd century stuck in the early 20th century on Sol III attempt something similar on a TV show once, but they also had a magic spacetime-bending rock formation they could simply walk into.)
So anyway, it pisses me off to high hell when a feminist assumes I'm a gynephile. It's an old scar and a wound that tends to open again easily. Why the fuck should it be any different when somebody does it to somebody of any other demographic for any other reason? It pisses me off that feminism presumes that the sole reason I have an advanced infiltrator woman suit is invasion of the women's rest room for the sole purpose of raping somebody in a smelly, stinky, dirty, disgusting bathroom stall. It pisses me off that this dude presumes that these women are at this party solely to provide him sexual entertainment.
So that's out of the way. On to the next problem.
Holy fucking shit! Everybody here knows how often I'm pissed at a feminist for implying that assigned males are born into a gender caste that exists solely for the sexual satisfaction and financial security of the supposedly superior gender caste. So for me personally hearing about this pool party and the expectations the employees have of these “non-employee” women does fill me with disgust, but for this specific issue I can run back to my assigned gender caste and hide from it. But I mean… what? Are these women independent contractors? is that what they call the world's oldest profession in SV? Did that guy invite people who are not, in fact, being paid to sexually entertain gynephiles, and expect them to do so for free?!
So… there are problems here. The operative question is: what do we do about it? Hmm, feminism, what the fuck do I do about it? Let me ask my question more pointedly.
Given 1.) that assigned males who are programmers and sysadmins do not receive invitations to these kinds of parties, 2.) that those in attendance are gagged by the gaslighting asshole managers running these parties, tell me, oh feminists, WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO TO STOP THIS? Tell me, oh feminists, that you are not retaliating against people upon whom those two conditions are enforced because you are too cowardly to retaliate, using the full, focused power of the media, against the gaslighting asshole managers who CREATE these conditions. Instead you turn on people who are powerless and go, “neener neener misogynerd can't get laid, loser dork is a loser dork!”
Well, I can imagine something that might be amusing. I read a lot of stories on the internet about gender changes. There are magical ones, sci-fi ones, realistic ones, all kinds of shit. Now, I am consistently disappointed that in these stories, the character changing gender is doing so a good 95% of the time against their will or against their preferences. However, in the real world, gender change always happens because of a courageous person exercising their free will and right of “my body, my choice.”
So here's my suggestion. Let's make reality's numbers as concerns sex changes look a bit more like the statistics of gender change fiction. I think I've found a group of venture capitalists who are just begging for some help to understand what life is like when one is a woman. Can we revoke the right of “my body, my choice” when somebody will not stop being a chauvinist pig? Can we, in any credible way, threaten these gaslighting asshole managers with being forced through gender transition if they do not knock it off?!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 24 2017, @05:00PM
Holy excessive ranting, Batman! Kurenai is in top Monday form!
> So for me personally hearing about this pool party and the expectations the employees have of these “non-employee” women does fill me with disgust,
> (...)
> Did that guy invite people who are not, in fact, being paid to sexually entertain gynephiles, and expect them to do so for free?!
That guy had a party for his employees, and assumed that they would enjoy the sight of, or company of (contact level wasn't specified) a few strippers or whores.
Tech company rewards (mostly) hard-working (mostly) guys with luxury, booze and T&A, hoping to foster a friendly culture, goodwill and thus promote retention and hard work. A male-friendly pat on the back.
The fact that this is 2017, and some of this stuff isn't deemed proper anymore, didn't hit them until some lady complained (either that she didn't get kind of the eye candy she wanted, or that a sexualized ambiance with her co-workers was unpleasant, pick the most likely).
Meanwhile, my boss wants us to work every weekend and awkwardly brought us bagels after the last major release. Given we only have straight guys in our team, we'll take the eye-candy pool party in a blink (would prefer cash equivalent, if available).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @07:23PM (1 child)
> ... in the real world, gender change always happens because of a courageous person exercising their free will and right of “my body, my choice.”
Probably true now in most of the world, but my understanding is that historically eunuchs didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. For just one example, the king wanted to keep his boy's choir working well up in the high registers...
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday July 24 2017, @08:34PM
Good point. I was being rhetorical rather than strictly accurate. Another real world situation where gender change is forced upon somebody is homosexuality. Alan Turing comes to mind. While as I understand it the UK government did not force him through an entire process that would qualitatively look like gender transition, he was forcefully medicated with estrogen. I believe in Iran the choice for homosexuals is to undergo a process that would qualitatively look like gender transition or undergo public stoning. (On the bright side, Iran will pick up 50% of the tab on the sex change! Only San Francisco has a better deal on free sex changes! Buy one get one! All inventory must go to make room for new 2018 vaginas!)