There are always 'circles' where this is considered appropriate behaviour.
In the fashion world there are a few photographers which almost openly do this, known to us mostly because they got so used to it they put their dick in a girls mouth unannounced and rather than suck it she talked to the press about it. [1]
An old colleague worked at an IT company thirty years or so ago and on the upper management floor, as he described it, the secretaries were all paid $200k/yr and up to be, essentially, professional hookers.
It is almost certainly a problem in some circles in the tech investors industry as well.
This is just a, very welcome, statement to tell investors that if they want to be such an investor they'll be locked out of YC forever and to tell founders that they can expect to be backed up when they report this.
I meant considered appropriate within their moral framework.
I wrote it to stress that it's often group behavior, with the enablers and supporters that go along with it, and that you shouldn't think about it in terms of the 'lone distraught person.'
Just to be clear: I would never, ever, wish to be associated in any manner with a person or organization that operates on such a moral framework.
I'm baffled that this was downvoted. Does someone really not think that such groups of people exist? You must never have heard of college fraternities.
That's a pretty meaningless distinction if it has no other consequences – it's essentially demoting this to the level of seriousness of wearing non-matching socks and the only people who benefit from this are the abusers.
We know it does happen. Then: the optics that result from however many incidents happen have an outsized impact on all women (and, for that matter, similarly vulnerable men) considering venturing into VC-funded tech.
