I don't know what it's like to be raped or sexually harassed, but I am frequently amused at how skeptics think it's so cut-and-dry to just report the issue. This came up in Kelly Ellis's public revelation yesterday that she had been sexually harassed at Google.
The following is Ellis's statement, and then one of her more earnest "Oh really?" critics:
Ellis: Rod Chavez is an engineering director at Google, he sexually harassed me, Google did nothing about it. Reprimanded me instead of him
Twitter user: That's a very serious allegation. Hope you have evidence to back it up.
Ellis: Lol already dudes going, "where's the proof?" Do you expect women to wear wires whenever they're sexually harassed? Trust women.
Twitter user: there is a difference between questioning and accusations. I'm not calling her liar. Just requesting evidence...In general, to have been a victim of a crime, and not seeing the offender be punished must be awful. But there is a reason...we have the right to a fair trial. We all know the consequences of letting random people on the Internet serve justice.
Again, I've never been raped. But the last time I made a criminal complaint, it was when I was robbed of my phone at gunpoint a few years ago in New York. Granted, I acted quite foolishly...not having my phone, and not having used a payphone in years...My first instinct was to continue heading home, which was about 6 to 7 blocks away, so that I could lookup the nearest police station and walk over there...not realizing I could dial 911 anywhere, or at least go into the nearest storefront. So that bizarre behavior led to me getting quite the grilling from the first detective to respond, who outright accused me of making up the story because I didn't want to admit that I had a rough night with a hooker who robbed me of my belongings (apparently it's weird for a man to walk alone through Greeenwich Village at night)?
Anyway, long story short, no big deal. I knew I had plenty of evidence that this happened to me, including having tracking software on my (Android) phone...and while that was my first time being a victim of a violent crime, I've had enough experience with cops (being a former cops reporter) to understand where the skepticism was coming from, and also, to know that it was pretty tame compared to what other victims get. That said, if that was the treatment that I got, for an extremely cut-and-dry kind of crime (not too many debates over what constitutes armed robbery)...can you imagine the process that a rape victim has to go through? Or in the case of Ellis, someone who experienced non-criminal sexual harassment? Reporting a crime or a violation isn't as simple as hitting a button, it always consists of a non-trivial process (for me, besides the 4 hours of waiting for and then talking to the detective on the night of the incident, I missed a couple days of work to go to the station, fill out paperwork, do more interviews, etc).
To use the parlance of today's times, there's considerable "friction" in reporting an incident, regardless of the complexity of the issue. Whatever your stance on "is sexual harassment a prevalent problem or not?", at least recognize that the reporting of such a problem is easier to think about than to actually do.
edit:
To elaborate a little more...in my situation, the choice to report a crime was pretty obvious: I want my phone back, and also, the robber is obviously in the wrong. Quite frankly, I don't think I would've gone to the cops had it been a midnight phone-snatching (it's New York after all)...but since the robber escalated it by introducing a weapon, can't really just ignore the incident.
From my understanding, a rape or harassment victim does not have even remotely such an easy decision. Besides the emotional trauma, there's a huge amount of plain confusion -- rape/harassment is almost always perpetrated by someone who knows the victim, and sometimes someone the victim considered to be a friend. If a friend randomly punches me and takes my phone, after the "WTF was that about?" that I'd go through...I'm not even sure I could just go straight to the cops...Maybe my friend was drunk? Or pulling an elaborate prank? I'd at least want to call him (or email him, since he has my phone). And I guarantee that unless the punch caused serious injury to me, the cops are going to say, "WTF is wrong with you and your friend?", not immediately put out an all-points-bulletin to arrest my friend. And even if he's clearly in the wrong, think about all awkwardness in your social network that comes when the cops do arrive and arrest your friend...and we're not even at the indictment phase yet.
So again, just making assumptions, but when the crime is as controversial and "he said/she said" as rape or harassment...the decision to make a report does not at all seem like an easy one.
She went public with concrete names and bad things that happened to her while working at Google, regarding both an engineering manager Rod Chavez, and a VP, Vic Gondotra. While there were a few of the expected "where's the proof" people on Twitter, as Kelly said, the large majority of responses she got were supportive, from lots of men and women.
In addition, in the google+ thread, several people from inside Google expressed shock (they only heard about it now, it wasn't common knowledge across the company) and mentioned that a lot of noise is going on internally right now about this.
Gondotra isn't still with Google, but Chavez is. I would bet that won't be for long.
Overall, the responses internally at Google were horrible, back then. HR tried to save the company from liability, not help her. But when she went public now, the responses were good, and change might actually happen.
As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The article here is correct to say that it's scary to be a whistleblower, but Kelly Ellis shows it's possible to be brave, and that the industry and community will in fact react positively when you do.
> While there were a few of the expected "where's the proof" people on Twitter, as Kelly said, the large majority of responses she got were supportive, from lots of men and women.
You raise a good point, but the problem is that not all supportiveness is equal.
There are a lot of people who share their opinions when an incident like this goes public, and depending on what communities you happen to draw the attention of, the response may well be more positive than negative. But there's a much smaller number of people (like bosses and future bosses, for instance) whose response will have a real, tangible effect on your career and future.
If those few people happen to be an unlucky random sample -- like, say, the HN commenter who said about Kelly Ellis that "the only thing I have learnt from this and the Adria Richards nonsense is when I am hiring I will screen for radical feminism" -- then the supportive comments from complete strangers don't mean much. And so it's understandable why someone would be reluctant to take that risk.
The reluctance is understandable. But we can't understate the positive: In that very google+ thread, more than one former colleague from Google said something to the effect of "I've always considered you someone to try to hire for my future startup, and I still do."
In other words, even if some wary bosses would see any whistleblowing as a risk factor, the fact is that the large majority of responses she got were positive. People believe her, and people strongly feel she got treated unfairly. She's also, according to many accounts, a talented engineer. Signs for her future employment are very positive.
She also mentioned herself that her current job at Medium is with a very supportive team. (edit: i misunderstood something here)
Once more, none of this is to diminish the understandable concerns with going public with allegations. But in the Ellis case, I think we see that the overall outcome can be quite positive. It's good for the whistleblower, it's good for the tech industry as a whole, it's really just bad only for the small amount of bad people we need to get rid of.
I don't work at Medium. I'm taking some time between work right now. I don't think I could have written this if I had a job with a conventional employer. No matter how great my employer is, if the post got popular, it would be pretty irresponsible and could hurt my employer. I'd at least talk it over with my coworkers and have addressed it directly in the article.
Most likely the New York police department you spoke with were under strict orders to reduce the number of reported muggings in their area. Police officers in NYC boroughs have reported the requirements that they refuse to take reports, when the statistics are not in their departments best interest. I have no comment on the relevance to the canonical issue, but this friction you speak about from your mugging is due to corruption, not normalcy.
You bring up a good, valid point, but one that is mostly orthogonal to the issue at hand. To the victim, it doesn't really matter if the friction faced is caused by malice or bureaucratic ineptitude...whether it's the detective who personally doesn't give a shit, or whether it's a detective with a heart-of-gold-who-normally-would-givea-a-shit-but-doesn't-want-to-be-the-squeaky-wheel-tonight...the result is the same to the victim.
Also, in defense of the NYPD detectives, I do not think it was "corruption" that caused the issue...again, things are rarely so black-and-white, good-and-evil. The next day, I was assigned a more enthusiastic detective, and a week later, the suspect was caught by an alert detective who was made aware of the suspect's description. The better explanation is that my story fit the pattern/biases of the initial detective who feels he's seen this shit before, etc. etc., and in his years of work, feels he's entitled to some skepticism.
But again, whether it's the result of actual "corruption" or just "normalcy"...who can really tell the difference?
Do you expect women to wear wires whenever they're sexually harassed?
Since the twitter response is predictable by now, and sexual harassment tends to occur over repeated interactions, it's surprising that woman haven't started to make recordings of sexual harassment before making allegations about it.
In the US it varies by state.[1] In "one-party consent" states, you can record any conversation you yourself participate in. California is an "all-party consent" state, though, so this approach wouldn't work for most tech companies.
The Twitter thread starts here:
https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/574092972624490497
The following is Ellis's statement, and then one of her more earnest "Oh really?" critics:
Ellis: Rod Chavez is an engineering director at Google, he sexually harassed me, Google did nothing about it. Reprimanded me instead of him
Twitter user: That's a very serious allegation. Hope you have evidence to back it up.
Ellis: Lol already dudes going, "where's the proof?" Do you expect women to wear wires whenever they're sexually harassed? Trust women.
Twitter user: there is a difference between questioning and accusations. I'm not calling her liar. Just requesting evidence...In general, to have been a victim of a crime, and not seeing the offender be punished must be awful. But there is a reason...we have the right to a fair trial. We all know the consequences of letting random people on the Internet serve justice.
Again, I've never been raped. But the last time I made a criminal complaint, it was when I was robbed of my phone at gunpoint a few years ago in New York. Granted, I acted quite foolishly...not having my phone, and not having used a payphone in years...My first instinct was to continue heading home, which was about 6 to 7 blocks away, so that I could lookup the nearest police station and walk over there...not realizing I could dial 911 anywhere, or at least go into the nearest storefront. So that bizarre behavior led to me getting quite the grilling from the first detective to respond, who outright accused me of making up the story because I didn't want to admit that I had a rough night with a hooker who robbed me of my belongings (apparently it's weird for a man to walk alone through Greeenwich Village at night)?
Anyway, long story short, no big deal. I knew I had plenty of evidence that this happened to me, including having tracking software on my (Android) phone...and while that was my first time being a victim of a violent crime, I've had enough experience with cops (being a former cops reporter) to understand where the skepticism was coming from, and also, to know that it was pretty tame compared to what other victims get. That said, if that was the treatment that I got, for an extremely cut-and-dry kind of crime (not too many debates over what constitutes armed robbery)...can you imagine the process that a rape victim has to go through? Or in the case of Ellis, someone who experienced non-criminal sexual harassment? Reporting a crime or a violation isn't as simple as hitting a button, it always consists of a non-trivial process (for me, besides the 4 hours of waiting for and then talking to the detective on the night of the incident, I missed a couple days of work to go to the station, fill out paperwork, do more interviews, etc).
To use the parlance of today's times, there's considerable "friction" in reporting an incident, regardless of the complexity of the issue. Whatever your stance on "is sexual harassment a prevalent problem or not?", at least recognize that the reporting of such a problem is easier to think about than to actually do.
edit:
To elaborate a little more...in my situation, the choice to report a crime was pretty obvious: I want my phone back, and also, the robber is obviously in the wrong. Quite frankly, I don't think I would've gone to the cops had it been a midnight phone-snatching (it's New York after all)...but since the robber escalated it by introducing a weapon, can't really just ignore the incident.
From my understanding, a rape or harassment victim does not have even remotely such an easy decision. Besides the emotional trauma, there's a huge amount of plain confusion -- rape/harassment is almost always perpetrated by someone who knows the victim, and sometimes someone the victim considered to be a friend. If a friend randomly punches me and takes my phone, after the "WTF was that about?" that I'd go through...I'm not even sure I could just go straight to the cops...Maybe my friend was drunk? Or pulling an elaborate prank? I'd at least want to call him (or email him, since he has my phone). And I guarantee that unless the punch caused serious injury to me, the cops are going to say, "WTF is wrong with you and your friend?", not immediately put out an all-points-bulletin to arrest my friend. And even if he's clearly in the wrong, think about all awkwardness in your social network that comes when the cops do arrive and arrest your friend...and we're not even at the indictment phase yet.
So again, just making assumptions, but when the crime is as controversial and "he said/she said" as rape or harassment...the decision to make a report does not at all seem like an easy one.