Start asking before you touch in situations where you know you don't have to.
I know it's awkward. But the reason people like Joe think they can put their hands down someone's pants is because we don't have a cultural practice of "ask first". They see you put your arms around that friend of yours who doesn't mind at all, and they think "Ah, cool... so you can just sense if she's cool with it and then go for it".
Of course you're not a scumbag, so you'd never put your hands down someone's pants without asking, but that's the thing... scumbags can't tell the difference. They don't see the difference between you rubbing your friend's back because she's having a bad day--your friend who is happy to have a little contact from you--they don't see the difference between that and them taking a body shot off of their employee without asking. In both cases they just see someone making their best guess at what someone else wants, without asking, and going for it. That's the cultural standard, that's your standard, so that's what they hold themselves to.
Basically, right now we try to draw the line between ask/don't ask as close to the ok/not ok line as we possibly can. But in a world where people make mistakes that means there are lots of "accidents". The only way to prevent those accidents is to move the ask/don't ask line further into "ok" territory.
Sexual assault might seem like an issue between individuals, but as long as we see it that way it will continue happening. If we're serious about changing it, it's something we have to collectively take responsibility for.
If hundreds of times a week these people see the rest of us asking our wives, asking our friends, asking everyone "do you want a backrub?" and "can I kiss you?" and "is this ok?" then their expectations change. They'll start to feel weird not asking. And maybe some of these assaults can turn into near-assaults.
The problem with "ask first" is that it is a self-defeating behaviour in current culture: Touching is an integral part of flirting and also common in interactions that don't involve sexual or romantic interest. And the current social norm is to start with light touching at a non-intimate place, and see if the other person reciprocates. Doing so is associated with confidence. "Can I touch the outside of your arm?" would be perceived as creepy for two reasons: It will be considered a sign of insecurity, and people often aren't explicitly aware of the implicit rules on touching, and would thus find the request strange.
Asking first already works well in some sexual subcultures as well as some professional settings: For example, in some armies, a superior will ask a soldier whether they may touch them before fixing something that's wrong about the way they are wearing their uniform. That's a very professional way of dealing with having to touch somebody who is reporting to you. The hard question is how one can engineer this cultural change in society in general. I would love to see that happening in my lifetime
Agreed, and it's way beyond the social norm to do it at all in public and in front of other people(!) :-)
I can wrap my head around someone thinking a quick kiss in an informal setting without explicit permission could be brushed off, but sticking a hand down the pants of even one's significant other in a public context is way beyond any social norm I'm aware of except perhaps at an orgy.
What are you talking about? Among the subset of the population who participates in hands-down-pants, roughly zero percent of these interactions begin with one of them asking for permission first. It simply doesn't happen.
I can assure you that my method means I do not rape people and your method means you might. And that's regardless of how many people employ my very reasonable and clear method of determining consent. Has the thought ever occurred to you that the fact that people believe ambiguous signals to be consent may actually CONTRIBUTE to the fact that 1 in 5 women experiences rape in their lifetime?
I think a much more workable solution would be to collectively attempt to abandon the shitty American brand of alcohol culture that seems to be a fairly common contributing factor in a lot of these stories about rape and assault.
Alcohol makes one stupid, not cool. I have no idea why it is held in such high esteem in the US tech industry.
I'm so with you. After reading this (and a lot of similar) account, I knew, that I would never(!) enter any conference like that, regardless, where it is held.
An drug-induced culture like that is just hurtful/unhealthy. Regardless of the drug they put into their bodies, I have an internal policy never to mix with druggies.
I am really shocked, that it seems so normal to drink that much booze. Hey, I really like a glas of wine here or there, a glas of good scotch once in a while. But I am not 15 (coming from Germany) anymore. I do not have to be dumb playing cool drinking booze.
So I really hope for the OP, as I really hope for the american tech-conference culture. For the first: I wish her the utmost and very best. For the second: Grow up!
> An drug-induced culture like that is just hurtful/unhealthy. Regardless of the drug they put into their bodies, I have an internal policy never to mix with druggies.
Curiously enough, I've heard some stories about Oktoberfest. Needless to say it's way more popular with tourists than with locals. And the mess (including train stations, hostel vicinities, etc), well, doesn't need explaining.
My guess is that it's closely related to the collegiate alcohol culture, which is just as shitty and pretty much ubiquitous, and which many younger devs were a part of before graduating into industry.
There seems to be this growing idea that isn't helpful to the women's movement, or if not then to feminism. Being propagated in stories like this, which is that women are for some reason less capable of dealing with situations as they are occurring.
As men we are expected that if a situation is going somewhere we don't like, to assert that we don't like it. Why isn't the same true for women? "I draw the line at the shot being done by my direct superior, it would be unprofessional." or "Don't touch me anymore please." It isn't even like this was tried, she supposedly assumed that was impossible.
Then laments afterwards for months? I mean... it's asking for babysitting. Everyone else is to change their behaviour so that there isn't the possibility of mentally scarring someone who doesn't assert themselves.
Then for people to claim that police or authority figures don't take sexual assault seriously when every time one of these stories comes up it always ends in the guy being dealt with swiftly and without mercy. Always. In this case he lost his job and apparently that's not even enough. I can only assume the author wants him on a sex offenders registry.
Totally agree. This line in the original story was also evidence of the expectation of guardianship/protection:
I was a deer in headlights staring into the eyes of the two
male bartenders hoping someone would help me.
I don't know about you, but I can think of exactly one time in my life when I felt like a deer in headlights and that was in 2002 when I had an M16 in my face and a 9mm pointed at my temple. Long story.
Start asking before you touch in situations where you know you don't have to.
I think this is based on incorrect understanding of the real cause of the problem. The problem was not the lack of knowledge about the fact that she was not consenting - it was clearly apparent to everybody else, she did not need to verbalize it. The problem was that he was not able to perceive her obvious signals or did not care about them or was not able to control himself. Therefore we need men who have empathy, respect for other people and self-control. Men like that do not need to ruin intimate moments asking weird questions. Men who are not like that ignore even clear no, verbal or nonverbal. That's the problem - the lack of empathy, respect, self-control. Not getting hammered might be important part of solving that. The rest is more complicated - how can society support personal growth and maturity?
But it also needs to be said, that a technical conference isn't the right place for heavy drinking or "body shots". It's just unprofessional.
I think what we need to change is not only attitudes towards sexual harassment, but also towards professional behavior at conferences. Which means drawing the line much earlier. Nobody should ever feel they need to do heavy drinking or "body shots" in order to be "accepted" into the community or "bond" better. That includes both sexes, I know men who do not like to drink, but do so in order to "bond" with the community.
Disclaimer: I am not explaining or justyfing anyone's behavior here. What was described in the original article was unacceptable by any means. So please don't go off with a knee-jerk reaction to this post, but think about what I really mean.
I wasn't there so I don't know, but were her signals only obvious at a distance of a few feet. From the description of the events they were physically close and from what I read she only implied only two non-verbal clues and one verbal clue:
(1) Expression on her face as she looked at two male bartenders waiting for them to help.
(2) Not reciprocating in the kiss
(3) Mentioning that Joe has a wife and children to which he replied “Don’t’ worry about it we have an agreement”.
The first one would have been completely missed by Joe because he was caressing her back and kissing her forehead. So that one doesn't count as obvious. The second is difficult to say whether it was obvious or not without being party to the kiss. Only Joe and Justine can fairly assess the obviousness of that non-verbal clue. Drunk people tend to kiss pretty poorly, even consenting adults, so I'd say that's a pretty shitty clue as well. Lastly, the third clue is ambiguous because it is not about what she wants or does not want but what he should or should not be doing. With that statement, she in a way put responsibility to continue or not in Joe's hands. If he does in fact have an open relationship with his wife where they can seek out other sexual partners, then to Joe its entirely possible that her sentence could have been misinterpreted as "I'd like to, but you have something good in your life and I don't want you to make a mistake". That sentence was not about her decision but about his.
That all being said, I was definitely inappropriate for Joe to do what he did because of their professional relationship, with him as her superior and her as his subordinate. For that reason, I definitely agree that its a firing-worthy HR violation. However, she is as responsible for unprofessional behavior. In what US country would the following ever be acceptable common workplace conduct:
began to start rubbing my back and kissing my forehead (let
me say this is not uncommon behavior between me and men I
consider close friends. I have a close relationship with a
lot of my former EdgeCase coworkers)
Overall, it's black and white case of sexual misconduct from an HR perspective, but based on her recollection of the events, its pretty far from a convincing claim that she effectively communicated that she wasn't consenting to the only person in the story that matters, Joe. They were two drunk adults who made poor decisions. Both are responsible.
I think think that's a great solution, but I think it will work best in conjunction with what I'm proposing.
The trouble is that there will always be a wide range in people (it doesn't have to be men) in terms of empathy, respect, and self-control. Even if you succeed in totally changing the culture around empathy, there will still be individuals who are empathetically challenged, just based on physiology.
What I'm suggesting is that we need an "ask first" culture in order to create a buffer. I'm basically advocating a redundancy solution.
I hear what you are saying and it sound reasonable... but I just cannot imagine myself asking that question in that situation. Wine, candles, excitement of 'the first time with her' and tenderness... and suddenly I hear myself saying 'can I stick my hand into your panties?'
Talk about a mood-killer. Please try to imagine it. If your proposal gets traction I will probably never have sex again. It's a good thing I do not live in the US - I am afraid they will need signed contracts for that. I am sorry but I really think we are solving the wrong problem here - this is not going to save the victims but it might ruin something very precious. Am I being over-sensitive?
If you haven't, in a soft voice, in a comfortable place, in a responsible way ever asked someone if they would like help taking off their pants... you are missing out. It's not that hard. Really. There are lots of reasonable questions that also act as good communication that I really don't want to teach you. Hey! There's a good question to ask next time!
"because you feel like it" ... this is a terrible thing to conclude. Let's just all 'feel like' getting consent, alright?
Please do not pretend that I am saying something terrible that I never said. It is obvious from what I said in this thread that I am all for 'getting consent' - I just do not think that problem of lack of respect for women can be solved by mandating verbal consent instead of non-verbal. I think your latest response is intellectually dishonest because it takes my "because you feel like it" quote out of context in such a way which implies that I would be OK with no consent at all... that is something I would never say.
Exactly how would you ask that questions? (I'm honestly asking, I grew up in a country where personal space are quite strongly respect - even hugging between close friends are almost nonexistent.)
Start asking before you touch in situations where you know you don't have to.
I know it's awkward. But the reason people like Joe think they can put their hands down someone's pants is because we don't have a cultural practice of "ask first". They see you put your arms around that friend of yours who doesn't mind at all, and they think "Ah, cool... so you can just sense if she's cool with it and then go for it".
Of course you're not a scumbag, so you'd never put your hands down someone's pants without asking, but that's the thing... scumbags can't tell the difference. They don't see the difference between you rubbing your friend's back because she's having a bad day--your friend who is happy to have a little contact from you--they don't see the difference between that and them taking a body shot off of their employee without asking. In both cases they just see someone making their best guess at what someone else wants, without asking, and going for it. That's the cultural standard, that's your standard, so that's what they hold themselves to.
Basically, right now we try to draw the line between ask/don't ask as close to the ok/not ok line as we possibly can. But in a world where people make mistakes that means there are lots of "accidents". The only way to prevent those accidents is to move the ask/don't ask line further into "ok" territory.
Sexual assault might seem like an issue between individuals, but as long as we see it that way it will continue happening. If we're serious about changing it, it's something we have to collectively take responsibility for.
If hundreds of times a week these people see the rest of us asking our wives, asking our friends, asking everyone "do you want a backrub?" and "can I kiss you?" and "is this ok?" then their expectations change. They'll start to feel weird not asking. And maybe some of these assaults can turn into near-assaults.