A former Bay Area tech CEO was fired earlier this year after allegedly enslaving, torturing, and sexually abusing his assistant. He claims the pair had a consensual relationship that people would “celebrate” if it were fictitious.
Former Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng denied the allegations levied against him and the billion-dollar company he co-founded that were made by a former employee in court Thursday.
"The shocking and vile claims in the lawsuit are categorically false, and I reject allegations that I subjected someone to any form of abuse during my tenure as CEO or at any other time of my life,” Lanng told The Messenger.
In the complaint, an unidentified woman alleged that Lanng sent her into “a dark abyss of unwanted sexual horror," according to The Mercury News.
Don’t know either of them, but have to doubt her unwillingness based on the fact that any reasonable person I know would never sign or do that if they weren’t into it.
More specifically, “this person enjoys being abused as can clearly be seen by the fact that they engage in contractual BDSM, a well-known device that kinksters use to negotiate BDSM power exchange.”
The only unethical thing here was hiring the person he was dating - this article is exactly why you don’t do that.
Everything described her aside from their unethical relationship is a sign of a loving kink relationship - like being collared is generally considered a big relationship step in BDSM. This looks like stupidity biting him in the ass more than it looks like abuse.
So any time a contract is signed it’s never coerced or forced in any way? Looks like you figured out abuse. Just make them sign a contract and you’re scott free.
You can not have sex with your employee or employer. The power dynamic ensures it can never be totally equal and there will always be some duress. If someone holds the power over your finances including your health insurance, saying No is never that simple.
I never thought of it that way. I always thought of it as “don’t shit where you eat” because I ain’t at work to make friends. I’m here to get shit done.
It’s both, really. After some misadventures in my youth, I have refused to engage romantically with anyone in an organization I’m employed by. “Don’t shit where you eat.” As I have moved up to supervise others, it goes doubly so for people within my chain of command. That would be highly unethical.
Essentially, one is practical advice and the other is a matter of ethics. If you follow the first, the ethics are easy.
I think it’s healthy to have clear boundaries with coworkers, they are not the same things as friends.
That said I spend 41 hours a week working, no way I’m not going to socialise with my coworkers. If I don’t make any friends after several years of working at a place I feel I have done something wrong.
You never had to sit through a sexual harassment training where they explain quid pro quo?
Numerous times, and I may have even paid attention once or twice. I generally don’t do anything involving harassment because its wrong and immoral, because having relations with coworkers is not what I consider morally acceptable due to the risks to anyone involved in such an affair and in general, against my own moral judgement.
And I have SEEN harassment in the workplace.
They were dating before he hired her, also mentions that hiring her was a mistake
Well, that was horrifying to read.
Based on the article they were together before working together. Because of that, while there may of course be elements where some position of power was abused after they started working together, it’s quite unlikely that everything here was against her will.
This is likely a case where both people have been shitty to each other in some way.
I don’t get it, the same story is repeated time and time again, how hard is it to not be a terrible person?
Unless they were born or raised with empathy, which is an obvious no, nothing bad happens to them if they’re terrible. A ton of enjoyable things happen, even.
At that point, you’re weighing the opportunity to do whatever you feel like at no consequence against doing what other people tell you to do for none of your own benefit (the only measurement that matters). Technically at a moderate cost to the one reigning themselves in. Under the looming threat of nothing if you do not comply.
I know the question was purely rhetorical and born out of the same frustration that I have. But I wish we’d drop this weird notion the more humanitarian of us seem to default to, like people who do this shit just haven’t had the golden rule properly explained to them yet. They know. And they’ve figured out it’s currently a farce.
