> But in another sense Harvey Weinstein is always your boss, because you never have a stable position, you’re always looking for work, and if at any point you piss off Harvey Weinstein you could wind up unable to pay your rent next month.
I mean it seems to me that the bigger problem here is the fact that a Hollywood blacklist still exists. Like there are other production companies, so you should be able to just not take jobs from Miramax -- which would still be unjustly limiting, you'd still be paying the price for someone else's wrongdoings, but it wouldn't be total disaster. Except in reality, Weinstein could, and others still can, get people blacklisted, so actually the situation is much worse in the way you describe.
Like -- what's up with that? How is blacklisting still possible in Hollywood? Are there that few production companies, that little competition, that they can successfully collaborate like this? Is this not a violation of antitrust law? What's going on here?
I'm trying to sympathize with the privacy angle RE: why we should treat sexual harassment outside the workplace differently than we do in the workplace. I'd be surprised if the legal difference is driven by a moral judgment that one is less damaging than the other - my guess is that the reason we have laws on one that are more strict than the other is because of the liability of companies being involved making it easier to put someone "on the hook" for bad behavior that otherwise slips by (and may also be illegal but is difficult to enforce - sexual harassment is still a crime!)
But people who engage in repeated sexual harassment that, if done in the workplace would be illegal IMO are shitty people? And having an entity who can investigate those concerns would be a good thing? Certainly the government doesn't have a great track record of investigating even rape cases in a humane and fair manner, so perhaps the fear is any entity tasked with that is likely to fail similarly?
I guess I just feel like even the use of the phrase "ordinary creep at a party" really underscores how we tolerate unethical and problematic behavior ALL THE TIME and we really should not. So I think life norms should drift closer to workplace norms. Without the structure of a job perhaps there's no clear consequences, but "That person says creepy sexual things and is no longer welcome at my home" being something people talk about and collectively enforce seems totally ok, and if some org took it upon themselves to investigate and make lists of those people the hazards are clear but I think the net outcome for my life would be helpful.
While sexual harassment is a real and serious problem that needs to be addressed by serious measures, I felt a mild sense of alarm seeing this concept of "workplaces without borders", especially applied to the AI risk community. The thing is, sexual/romantic relationships in a workplace are often frowned upon even when they are enthusiastically consensual. Relationships between supervisor and subordinate are usually considered entirely off-limits. I'm worried that if we start expanding the concept of "workspace" from an actual office or organization to vague and vast scales such as, viewing the entire AI risk community as a "workspace", we will cause serious and unjustified harm to people's romantic opportunities.
I, for one, definitely don't want boys to be afraid of making romantic overtures towards me because they are afraid it will be deemed inappropriate just because both us are in AI risk. More generally, I think that professional communities are, for many people, their main source of social connections, and banning romantic relationships there would severely harm their prospects.
All this is not to say that sexual *harassment* is okay, whether inside or outside the workspace! But, since this post talked specifically about the differences between in-workplace and out-of-workplace norms, some caution is needed, and we need to make sure that there always remains a common-knowledge user-friendly socially accepted way of initiating things.
> And, yes, a person consensually having sex with a producer or director in exchange for a part is ethically quid pro quo sexual harassment, although don’t take your legal advice from me.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Obviously spreading lies about someone because they refused to sleep with you is wronging them, but I don't see how you can get to "offering a woman favours in return for sex is wronging her" without accepting the whole anti-sex-work argument. I think normally when this is bad it's bad because the person distributing favours had some obligation to another party to use them "correctly" and selling them for sex is akin to embezzlement. A director hired by a studio to make a good movie would be violating that if they cast their girlfriend as the lead actress, but AIUI Actual Harvey Weinstein was a partner at the firm he made movies for, so the only people who could make that specific complaint would be his fellow partners.
> It is also a hostile work environment to have to limit your actions in order to avoid someone sexually harassing you.
This is incorrect. If I choose not to work for Company X because a Company X manager has a reputation for sexual harassment, that is not a hostile work environment. "Hostile work environment" is a legal term with a well-established meaning.
> But in another sense Harvey Weinstein is always your boss, because you never have a stable position, you’re always looking for work, and if at any point you piss off Harvey Weinstein you could wind up unable to pay your rent next month.
I mean it seems to me that the bigger problem here is the fact that a Hollywood blacklist still exists. Like there are other production companies, so you should be able to just not take jobs from Miramax -- which would still be unjustly limiting, you'd still be paying the price for someone else's wrongdoings, but it wouldn't be total disaster. Except in reality, Weinstein could, and others still can, get people blacklisted, so actually the situation is much worse in the way you describe.
Like -- what's up with that? How is blacklisting still possible in Hollywood? Are there that few production companies, that little competition, that they can successfully collaborate like this? Is this not a violation of antitrust law? What's going on here?
I'm trying to sympathize with the privacy angle RE: why we should treat sexual harassment outside the workplace differently than we do in the workplace. I'd be surprised if the legal difference is driven by a moral judgment that one is less damaging than the other - my guess is that the reason we have laws on one that are more strict than the other is because of the liability of companies being involved making it easier to put someone "on the hook" for bad behavior that otherwise slips by (and may also be illegal but is difficult to enforce - sexual harassment is still a crime!)
But people who engage in repeated sexual harassment that, if done in the workplace would be illegal IMO are shitty people? And having an entity who can investigate those concerns would be a good thing? Certainly the government doesn't have a great track record of investigating even rape cases in a humane and fair manner, so perhaps the fear is any entity tasked with that is likely to fail similarly?
I guess I just feel like even the use of the phrase "ordinary creep at a party" really underscores how we tolerate unethical and problematic behavior ALL THE TIME and we really should not. So I think life norms should drift closer to workplace norms. Without the structure of a job perhaps there's no clear consequences, but "That person says creepy sexual things and is no longer welcome at my home" being something people talk about and collectively enforce seems totally ok, and if some org took it upon themselves to investigate and make lists of those people the hazards are clear but I think the net outcome for my life would be helpful.
While sexual harassment is a real and serious problem that needs to be addressed by serious measures, I felt a mild sense of alarm seeing this concept of "workplaces without borders", especially applied to the AI risk community. The thing is, sexual/romantic relationships in a workplace are often frowned upon even when they are enthusiastically consensual. Relationships between supervisor and subordinate are usually considered entirely off-limits. I'm worried that if we start expanding the concept of "workspace" from an actual office or organization to vague and vast scales such as, viewing the entire AI risk community as a "workspace", we will cause serious and unjustified harm to people's romantic opportunities.
I, for one, definitely don't want boys to be afraid of making romantic overtures towards me because they are afraid it will be deemed inappropriate just because both us are in AI risk. More generally, I think that professional communities are, for many people, their main source of social connections, and banning romantic relationships there would severely harm their prospects.
All this is not to say that sexual *harassment* is okay, whether inside or outside the workspace! But, since this post talked specifically about the differences between in-workplace and out-of-workplace norms, some caution is needed, and we need to make sure that there always remains a common-knowledge user-friendly socially accepted way of initiating things.
> And, yes, a person consensually having sex with a producer or director in exchange for a part is ethically quid pro quo sexual harassment, although don’t take your legal advice from me.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Obviously spreading lies about someone because they refused to sleep with you is wronging them, but I don't see how you can get to "offering a woman favours in return for sex is wronging her" without accepting the whole anti-sex-work argument. I think normally when this is bad it's bad because the person distributing favours had some obligation to another party to use them "correctly" and selling them for sex is akin to embezzlement. A director hired by a studio to make a good movie would be violating that if they cast their girlfriend as the lead actress, but AIUI Actual Harvey Weinstein was a partner at the firm he made movies for, so the only people who could make that specific complaint would be his fellow partners.
> It is also a hostile work environment to have to limit your actions in order to avoid someone sexually harassing you.
This is incorrect. If I choose not to work for Company X because a Company X manager has a reputation for sexual harassment, that is not a hostile work environment. "Hostile work environment" is a legal term with a well-established meaning.