Sure, it gets confusing when you (apparently unintentionally) conflate your brand of asshole with the psychopaths in the topic. It sounded as if you were attempting to ameliorate their actions by presenting your behavior.
I apologize for being, upon reflection, unclear and misleading. Not my intent, and it is devilishly easy to do in the written medium 
(especially after a very tasty glass of wine)
And perhaps I also misread the comment I replied to. I read it basically as, “all aggressive, assholish behaviour makes you a trolley”. I may have misinterpreted that. But my response was, " here is an example of me being aggressive, and I don’t believe it to be trollish".
Shakes hand
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Last time I tried that the IT director screamed at me! Said that the server needed to be replaced! Now I use a regular table.
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Sorry if I’ve implied that Pao’s case applies to “women who sue their former employers”. And sorry if I’ve implied I’m trying to make a general point about discrimination.
This article is about: wealthy female executive passed over for promotion, thinks it’s gender (could be race) bias, sues employer who before this had an excellent record of inclusion.
So apologies to anyone thinking I am making a general statement, it is not intended that way, this is about the Pao case, and executives in general.
Yes the fairness rules are different for executives. I don’t think this has anything to do with gender or race, it’s just an unusually demanding job. For example: Travis Kalanick to Take a Leave of Absence. Here Are 9 CEOs Who Were Fired or Decided to Step Down. | Entrepreneur
Remember there are very few of these kinds of people, and in general, they are extremely wealthy. They are the 1% of the 1%.
Also, we’re talking about Ellen Pao. Pao v Kleiner has ended, and we have some facts:
- A jury (of 6 women, 6 men) ruled in favor of Kleiner on all counts.
- Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers happens to be the one of the leading venture firms providing opportunities to women (notes from testimony)
- Mary Meeker, a Sr Partner at Kleiner, and probably a woman many people have heard, testified in her own words, that, “Kleiner Perkins is the best place to be a woman in the [venture capital] business.”
- While employed at the firm, Pao (who is married) had an affair with another junior partner who was also married.
- Pao is married to a hedge fund manager, who you can look up and decide what you think about his character, but needless to say, the couple is wealthy by anyone’s standards.
Ellen Pao is not Rosa Parks. Pao is rich, and she was suing for $16M, and in the end wasn’t able to convince a jury on any counts. This was a monumental waste of time and money. I’ll do a Trump and double down: she should have kept her mouth shut.
If she just went down the street, literally, Kleiner is in a nest of VC’s, she could have gotten a 7 figure partner job elsewhere. What’s wrong with that logic?
From there, admittedly it gets murky. Did she help women’s discrimination issues? I don’t think so. John Doerr, the head of Kleiner, who is a big deal here, personally mentored her. That is an amazing benefit for Pao. Is Doerr going to want to mentor more women? Perhaps he will think twice. Is that good?
As I’ve mentioned, there is a groundswell of concern about the lack of women and minorities in senior positions here in Silicon Valley. Companies are trying very hard to fix this. Pao’s case did nothing to help the situation, and has set everyone on edge.
Should a woman/minority challenge fairness in her job? Of course. That is a different topic altogether. Are we ok now?
but that phrase has serious, serious connotations. it is used in the same vein as, “shut your mouth, woman” and “she shouldn’t be so mouthy”. all of which denote that yes, there is something wrong. and she shouldn’t talk about it.
perhaps the phrase you are looking for is, “after introspection she should have realized part of her performance problems were her”? or something along those lines?
but i don’t think you will find much sympathy with the charged rhetoric you are using, even if you mean something more nuanced.
oh, and if i told my CEO to keep his mouth shut, he’d fire me on the spot. there is a double standard here which is quite insidious.
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Unless you’re his public relations advisor. Then you’d be actually handsomely paid for such suggestions.
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My experience has been that teaching people to mind what they say is both more respectful and effective than telling them to shut their mouth.
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Any role of sexism in Ellen Pao’s departure is made murky by the rebellion of the subreddits over the firing of a female employee.
Most of your comments make me think you’re still quite young and inexperienced about the world, but this one really nails it.
No, believe it or not, 50 years ago people knew a lot more than a few dozen neighbors or townspeople. We even had TV and electric lights and astronauts and everything!
And guess what else? Engaging in civic life was something you actually showed up for, so people had a very clear sense of their “public life”.
/kids these days
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Yeah, I dunno where this flood of twatlas shrugged types have come from.
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Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of Get Off My Lawn!
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Now that’s the name for my neo-folk side project…
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The funny thing is that Rosa Parks wasn’t quite really Rosa Parks the legend. They recreated a scene that had occurred months earlier where the girl could not be used for PR because she was a pregnant teenager.
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Teaching them that they want to mind what they’re saying, and getting them to consciously accept the content and context of what they are saying is often just as fruitful as asking for them to shut up. If we assume sincerity, discussions are easy!
That is fucking funny.
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I am neither young nor inexperienced. Just very annoying.
Unless they were one of the few who travelled much, even knowing hundreds of people would typically involve those who had lived within the same ten miles as one’s self for their whole lives. Broadcast media is one-way, and everything was extremely localized. So it was much easier for most people to assume that “everybody” had opinions and actions much like themselves. The average person was not able to make their own video channel and/or publish a document read by millions of people, for negligible cost, without going anywhere.
Not sure what your point is about “showing up”. Are you implying that social activity in meatspace is somehow fundamentally different, more involved, than that which occurs through technological media? I am sure it is fine, but even then social activity was not formalized until it was documented and recorded somehow.
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You really have no idea what life was like a mere 50 years ago. It’s kind of sad.
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Maybe it would be more sad to assume that it would have been the same for everybody. Most people I talk with entertain peculiar ideas even of what life is supposedly like now!
That’s not at all what @anon67050589 is getting at… it’s not that people were the same, it’s that people generally knew their direct neighbors better 50 years ago. Mass media isn’t the only form of communication.
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Although the female employee in question wasn’t fired by Ellen. She was fired by a dude - so the redirection of this anger towards Pao is as sexist as it is tedious as it is predictable.
