Tinder sexual harassment suit: Another shining example of sexism in tech industry

Tinder, the popular dating app, finds itself in the middle of a sexual-harassment complaint from a former executive, who also says that she was an original co-founder for the app.   According to the  complaint filed by Former Tinder marketing Vice President Whitney Wolfe, her ex-boyfriend and CMO of the company, Justin Mateen publicly insulted her (he called her a whore at a company party in one instance). She also alleges that the CEO Sean Rad ignored her complaints and has included him in the suit as well.   Tinder has now suspended suspended Justin Mateen , while it carries out a probe of the issues raised in the lawsuit.   IAC, the company that owns Tinder issued this statement,   “Immediately upon receipt of the allegations contained in Ms. Wolfe’s complaint, Mr. Mateen was suspended pending an ongoing internal investigation. Through that process, it has become clear that Mr. Mateen sent private messages to Ms. Wolfe containing inappropriate content. We unequivocally condemn these messages, but believe that Ms. Wolfe’s allegations with respect to Tinder and its management are unfounded."    So while IAC has suspended Mateen, they also believe that Wolfe is lying about her charges against their company. In fact as TechCrunch reports CEO Sean Rad issued an email to this employees saying, “Whitney’s legal complaint is full of factual inaccuracies and omissions. We did not discriminate against Whitney because of her age or gender, and her complaint paints an inaccurate picture of my actions and what went on here.”   Before you dismiss this a complaint by a jealous ex, Wofle’s story in fact reveals that not only was sexually harassed by also faced gender discrimination at Tinder. And this isn’t something new for Silicon Valley.   According to Wolfe’s complaint, it was she who came up with the name “Tinder” for the service in mid-2012, shortly after its creation. For this, she was given the co-founder title in 2012. However Mateen told her that having a “girl founder” devalued the company, according to the lawsuit and that one year later in November 2013, Mateen and Rad removed her co-founder title.   But Mateen it seems wasn’t content with just getting rid of her co-founder title. ValleyWag has published all the text messages that were allegedly sent out by Justin Mateen to Wolfe and they clearly show a sulking ex-boyfriend, who was both vindictive and abusive. The messages are part of the complaint that Wolfe has filed against him.   Mateen tells Wolfe in one message, “If you threaten me, I will bark back like a psycho so you should know better.” He also gets very nasty about a supposed new man in Wolfe’s life and said that she preferred ‘social climb middle aged Muslim pigs that stand for nothing.’   During the messages, one can see Wolfe telling Mateen that this is harassment and that she would be forced to raise the matter with Sean as he was making it difficult for her to carry on with her job. Mateen replies confidently saying, “What do you think Sean will do? Stop threatening me.” According to the complaint, Sean in fact didn’t do much and allegedly called her “a dramatic or emotional girl.” The CEO also told Wolf it was her job to “keep Justin calm.”   Eventually the harassment got to Wolfe so much that she was ready to move on to another project and messaged Sean saying that while she didn’t want to sue the company,  she just “wanted to go peacefully and with what I’ve earned.” All she got was a curt reply saying she should email the CEO that she was quitting along with the reasons. When she asked for severance, she was told that there was no grace period for someone who quits.   The change of tone is quite evident from earlier messages from Sean, where he told her her that she was the co-founder of the app, and that she could use the designation on her Facebook page as well.   The Tinder controversy isn’t the only one showing up the bad boys of Silicon Valley. In March this year, engineer Julie Ann Howarth, who had long been a part of the programming network GitHub quit the startup over allegations of sexism and gender discrimination.   In an email to TechCrunch Horvath, described how the work place that she initially loved, changed drastically as the startup grew. She wrote that her “character started being discussed in inappropriate places…” She also faced harassment and threats from the founder’s wife (even though she was not an employee at Github), who asked her not to quit or write ‘bad things about Github.’ While this saga with the founder’s wife dragged on and Horvath was even pulled up by the HR and founder, another employee asked her out. When she rejected him, he began deleting her code from projects. You can read the full story here.   Also this year, RadiumOne’s CEO Gurbaksh Chahal was fired, after escaping jail term over criminal charges that he beat his girlfriend nearly 117 times. Despite video  evidence showing Chahal beating his girlfriend, the judge ruled in his favour on a technicality, saying that that the police had taken the surveillance video without asking for proper permission. Chahal was sentenced to three years’ probation, 52 weeks in a domestic violence training program and 25 hours of community service.   The full list of assault included repeatedly hitting his girlfriend in the head, assaulting her with a pillow, dragging her from the bed to the floor, and hitting her in the lower body approximately 15 times.   While Chahal was an example of extreme violence, sexism in the tech industry is not a new phenomenon. Recently the Snapchat CEO was one of the latest to find himself at the centre of a controversy after emails he sent to his frat buddies in college were leaked by VallegWag.  From describing peeing on women to shooting lasers at fat chicks to “have some girl put your large kappa sigma dick down her throat,” the emails didn’t portray him in the best light.   He later issued a statement saying,  “I’m obviously mortified and embarrassed that my idiotic emails during my fraternity days were made public. I have no excuse. I’m sorry I wrote them at the time and I was jerk to have written them. They in no way reflect who I am today or my views towards women.”   Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s early business card read , “I’m CEO, Bitch…” It’s not an exaggeration to say that using terms like ‘bitch’ on the business card isn’t just bad professionally but also highly sexist.   The bro-culture in tech isn’t something that is easy to break. Google recently announced a new project where it said that it would encourage girls to learn how to code. And while that is a laudable idea, getting more women to join the industry can’t be solved with simply equipping them with technical know how.   It is at the end of the day a larger cultural issue. Wolfe was never acknowledged as co-founder despite the fact that she came with the name for Tinder in the first place. She was clearly told that her gender was the problem. RadiumOne didn’t think it was okay to fire Chahal when the charges first showed up and instead waited for the social media furore after he was freed by the court to take any action against him. Horvarth was forced to quit despite the fact that she was in no way at fault.   In the end Silicon Valley, continues to laud boys who come up with brilliant apps and ideas, ignoring their sexist views. Which is probably why women are wary of joining in the first place.