After the Time person of the year thing there was a bit of an online spat about who did and didn't get featured on the cover and who was most deserving of the credit. To me it seems a bit unseemly and unnecessary. I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017.
> I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017
I'm curious about the phenomenon. We had mass acceptance of horrifying behaviour. Switches flipped and what was dirty but tolerable became unacceptable. If we wish to replicate this process in other domains, it would be helpful to understand what happened.
This seems so odd to me. In the circles I am most familiar with, such behavior has always been seen as reprehensible. I suppose there have always been rumors that such behavior was commonly accepted in Hollywood, and as it turns out, silicon valley doesn't seem too different. Well, I think Washington DC deserves to be on that list, too. I wonder how common it is for more "powerful" people in other circles to get away with this kind of malarky?
As a non-SV insider, I was struck by something Vi Hart posted on Twitter recently[1]:
"When we were looking for funding or a home for our VR group, we were warned in private conversations against SO MANY funders and leaders within companies, by their equally powerful white dude colleagues. Often several separate warnings against the same dude. I KNOW YOU KNOW."
Sounds to me like the upper echelons know and don't care.
Most places that it's shown up are workplaces with powerful, almost untouchable figures (a TV star or a 'rockstar programmer' or a CEO or an elected representative, or, of course, a priest, going back a bit further), and defective or non-existent HR. I suspect it's less common in more normally-functioning workplaces, simply because people would feel safer in complaining to HR, and special accommodations for the predator would be less likely to be made.
Also, of course, it was not exactly advertised that this was going on.
more importantly if we wish to avoid replication in other domains it would be helpful if more people understood what happened. Our thoughts and culture are easily changed by those who know how to flip the right switches as you put it. This can work for or against any particular interest.
I think it is a combination of finally enough people starting to actively speak out against that behavior, the power these groups finally gained and amassed pieces of knowledge that those practices are really harmful. We just gained critical mass to flip the switch. To replicate it faster we should probably speed up human learning and development in some way.
I don't know which people were on the cover but I saw Fowler and many more on the "cover" [referring to the Time "Person of the Year" video on their website]. No one reads the magazine anymore, right? The real prestige is being featured in the video IMO.
I don't think it's possible to know. There are so many cultural factors that led to where we are today that it's all but impossible to draw a straight line. No doubt Susan Fowler had an effect on that culture. So did the first female Presidential nominee losing to an incredibly unqualified man (before anyone starts, no, I'm not saying that sexism is the only reason she lost), as did the fact that Trump himself had numerous accusations against him that were all but dismissed in popular consciousness...
I don't mean to diminish Fowler at all. But the moment we have arrived at is a huge collection of interconnected events, not a straight line from A, through B, to C.
I wonder if Clinton didn't have certain associations - Bill, Weiner, Weinstein (the Clintons were warned about him and met with him after the election to make a show about the campaign, only to later feign shock and distance themselves), would those accusations against Trump have had more power?
I know that's not your main point, it's just important to point out culpable people like the Clintons were instead of seeing them (or the campaign) as victims.
In late September, emails show, he was discussing a documentary television show he was working on with Hillary Clinton. He had long raised campaign cash for her, and her feminist credentials helped burnish his image — even though Tina Brown, the magazine editor, and Lena Dunham, the writer and actress, each say they had cautioned Mrs. Clinton’s aides about his treatment of women. Now, Mr. Weinstein exchanged questions about distribution rights for the show. “I am hopeful we can get a good price for this,” Robert Barnett, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, replied.
Two days later, Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, interrupted a vacation in Hawaii to field advice from Mr. Weinstein, according to the emails. The Wall Street Journal was reporting on turmoil at Amazon Studios, one of Mr. Weinstein’s business partners. He recommended an aggressive response that involved hiring some of his own team, including a libel lawyer who “makes sure everyone sticks to the right narrative,” Mr. Weinstein wrote. He added, “I’m happy to coordinate with whoever you’d like, as a friend of the court.” Mr. Bezos declined to comment.
My instinct is no - I don't think the allegations against Trump fell away because Hillary was compromised over them, I think they failed because, well, not enough voters cared. Which is part of what inspired the Women's March and so on.
That said, it's a fascinating thought exercise to wonder where President Clinton would be today, if the same sexual assault revelations happened. As the first female President married to someone accused of various sexual improprieties I suspect it would be a very difficult needle to thread.
Do not know about impact but Ronan Farrow's Weinstein story was published in October and put together over the course of a ten month investigation [0]. Susan Fowler's blog was posted in February. I'd imagine Farrow probably started on his story before the investigations started; especially since Weinstein was a well-known story. If Farrow's article was posted before Fowler's, I want to say that there would still be the same reaction. A lot of people had no idea about Fowler and Uber but people definitely know about Weinstein.
I remember there was an episode on the podcast The Daily where Michael Barbaro interviewed a reporter who worked on the Harvey Weinstein story. I think they said that The New York Times had tried to pursue this story in the past, but they really wanted to make another push for it this year to expose the unreported stories of sexual harassment.
Personally, I don't think Weinstein, and the after effects on other public figures, would have blown up to this level without Susan. Actually, going even further back, people like Ellen Pao and their stories have been consequential as well. I would say stories like Pao's cleared the way for Fowler.
Not to be dramatic, but I think this example is very timely and appropriate for showing the impact of an uncensored internet. We can only guess whether impact like this will still be possible without net neutrality.
Not speaking dismissively of Susan's contribution, but I think so. Her story snowballed into a lot of shady shit going on at Uber, and Kalanick wasn't ousted as a direct result of her allegations. Weinstein himself kicked off a pattern of high-profile ousters based directly on the allegations. I think they're slightly different scenarios, and contributed culturally in their own way, and why she was one piece of a broader picture in Time instead of person of the year by her lonesome.
(I realize the irony in my typing this, that I appear to be saying Weinstein was responsible for something a number of people would argue a woman started, but hey. That's not what I'm saying, and you get my point and what I'm trying to say.)
Put another way, Susan didn't go after a high-profile leader directly. She went after systemic issues in a company. Weinstein, on the other hand, showed a lot of people that high-profile leaders are vulnerable to public attention, and that became a slightly different species of snowball. Both are cultural contributions.
I wouldn't dismiss the butterfly effect so quickly. She was certainly early in this wave, and the cumulative inertia has to be part of why things ended up as they are.
I don't. I think the allegations against Weinstein were severe enough that they could have stood alone, and didn't vastly benefit from the cultural change that Susan started with Uber. The point being made was that Weinstein might not have happened had Susan and Uber not happened, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Which is NOT to say I discount anything that did, which I'm guessing from voting I did not express clearly enough.
The allegations against Weinstein are mostly years old though. Is it just coincidence they were raised in this current climate? Fowler's revelations contributed to an environment that made it easier to speak up.
Edit: The reason I find Fowler somewhat unique is that her background, credentials, writing skills, etc, made her hard to dismiss. It was very believable, perhaps to some that might have tended to challenge similar stories.
So it seemed to open a door for women that had similar stories, but not the same level of gravitas. It also primed the media to pay attention to this area.
Yes and no. People spoke up before Fowler; why are we hinging the culture on her? Something I think a lot of people are overlooking is that she was heard on a larger scale than anybody before her, but lionizing her as a result is actually disrespectful to the plethora of examples who came before her and were just unlucky (I guess?). I can think of a number of prominent examples within tech that didn't get any of the attention outside of tech, but I will not rehash them here.
That, to me, indicates that something else shifted culturally to allow the Uber thing to help contribute to that environment. What is that? Was it the scale of Uber? Was it something about Fowler? Was it that the same power dynamics that suppressed revelations about Weinstein were starting to degrade within insular tech? I'm personally curious about it, and I don't think Fowler's blog post was solely responsible and folks should start making conclusions about cultural shifts, is my only point.
Edit to your edit: Careful; you're lightly claiming that accusers before Fowler were unbelievable and easily dismissed.
Sure, but would they ever have been published prominently? Historically, there's been a bit of a code of silence about this sort of thing. It's quite plausible that the Uber story loosened things up a bit.
I think it might be stoking the fire now, but there wasn't really all that much of a response when allegations were made about Trump, either by voters or the media. It's really hard to see that as the jumping-off point. As a result of the current climate, indeed, Trump's allegations are being re-examined by the media.
