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.
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.
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.
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.
They were dating before he hired her, also mentions that hiring her was a mistake
It’s never that simple, sure. Which means it isn’t as simple as saying categorically “you can not”.
Hiring her was a lapse of judgment. The rest of it sounds like a good time. BDSM relationships involving power exchange can be healthy but there is a huge risk that a messy breakup can go this way.
If my wife and I ever got divorced, I know she’d have the power to rake me over the coals with receipts. So I can give the guy the benefit of doubt, because based on what is alleged and my own personal experience it sounds reasonable that it might’ve been completely consensual at the time.
However as we grow as people, we can recontextualize our experiences and decide that hey this was really unhealthy and he should’ve known it was unhealthy and that she wasn’t capable of consenting, and that could even be right. Some people give enthusiastic consent and it turns out to be some PTSD trauma response. Given the number of people in kink with trauma in their past, the lines can get really blurry.
I’m not saying she wasn’t abused for sure, just that from a kink perspective his side of the story seems as plausible as hers. Regardless, I hope justice, whatever that may be, somehow prevails. But this case is going to hinge on whoever is more credible on the witness stand I think, and less on indisputable truths.
While the dom/sub fantasy is a common one, we need to remember that it has to stay a fantasy.
This was the real world, with a real world power dynamic in the workplace. That made consent dubious. And the number one rule of this sort of relationship is that CONSENT MUST BE CERTAIN.
Anyone with half a fucking clue would would not have this kind of relationship with an employee.
The employment came after the relationship and continued after it. I think that’s a key difference that isn’t conveyed in the headline. Yeah ethically he shouldn’t have hired someone he was in that kind of relationship in, but at the time I’m sure it felt like a reasonable thing to do. Infatuation is like that.
Also saying dom/sub has to stay a fantasy is a different suggestion altogether and one I disagree with although perhaps only by degrees. It depends a lot on how real you allow for a fantasy to be. Ultimately there should be a safe word that allows a sub to withdraw consent at any time and so consent is always certain even if it’s being vehemently denied by both people. In that manufactured ambiguity is where the excitement lies for many people.
The thing most people don’t realise is in a dom/sub relationship it’s actually the sub who has all the power. They can withdraw consent etc. any time they want Having someone you’re in a relationship with directly reporting to you is problematic and most companies would explicitly not permit it.
At the time hiring her seemed a reasonable thing to do. And therein lies the test of a person’s character. And what we’re seeing is the consequence of a failure of his character.
And yes, if you seek excitement in the ambiguity, you can absolutely choose to do that. Some people like risk. Some people like skydiving. No one should be surprised that occasionally the parachute doesn’t open. We can be sad that the situation ended like this, but not surprised.
This is entirely based on a quote of him saying they were dating. Did she coberate that? Did anyone else? Is there a known history of their relationship or just this guy saying it exists?
This is the kind of nuanced response I was struggling to draft in my mind. I hope no one was abused. If she was, I hope she is vindicated.
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.
The ex-CEO said that he was dating the woman who sued him before hiring her at Tradeshift in 2014, which he called a “grave error of judgment." He also noted that the “plaintiff went on to work for Tradeshift for approximately five more years after our relationship ended.”
This raises so many red flags to me.
I can’t comment on the alleged activities, and we don’t know her financial or emotional situation in 2014 when she was hired, but it sounds waaaay more complicated than “boss treats random new chick as sex slave”.
I hope she’s in a better place now (mentally and emotionally).
Based on being together before she was hired. That is literally the opposite of baseless.
He could very likely be very wrong in his assumptions - and they are assumptions - but definitely based on information provided.
… but definitely based on information provided.
Then look around for more info.
He acknowledged the inappropriateness of hiring someone he was romantically involved with, calling it a “grave error of judgment,” but refuted any claims of abuse or harassment. Source
Bryan Freedman, the plaintiff’s lawyer, denied Doe and Lanng ever dated. Source
Filed with the lawsuit was the alleged nine-page slave contract that appears to have Lanng’s signature. Source
The woman accused Lanng of trafficking her across countries including the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Japan, trips during which she was allegedly “sexually assaulted, including being bound against her will and beaten to the point of bleeding.” Source
The phrase “baseless assumptions” does not mean that no base was provided. It means that the purported base is inadequate to support a causal likelihood that the assumptions are true.
Besides which, your argument is one of semantics, which you’re welcome to.
Man… being into kink is dangerous if you have money and there’s a scorched earth breakup. I have heard people in kink circles say that having a contract signed by both parties offers some protection, but here it is being used against him in court. Eeek.
It’s fine as long as you don’t do it with employees. If you find a woman with no social or financial dependence on you, you will be golden. It’s actually not that difficult since most of the adult woman population isn’t directly employed by you and a portion of them like being subs and doing kinky shit.
Apparently they were dating before she was hired. I can see how easily lines could be blurred when in love. The saying don’t shit where you eat is appropriate with regards to work and relationships, but often people can’t help themselves.
Sometimes people can’t help themselves? You are describing the defense of every single crime in history.
He is a fucking Millionaire in charge of a company and you are talking about him like he failed the marshmallow test.
that people would “celebrate” if it were fictitious.
Well that’s just delusional. How exactly did he make it this far while having trouble separating TV from reality?
He’s talking about 50 Shades of Grey. Which is a work of fiction that has been systematically pointed as problematic.
