Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mz | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

To me, the biggest problem is that most of these men were not engaging in behavior I could point out to someone else as "harassment."

I have pretty good radar for this stuff and I pay close attention to subtext. I often see this stuff well before other people would recognize the problem. My ability to conclude that "Oh, this man's problem with me he is has a Thing for me" is something that helps me protect myself from far worse outcomes than walking on eggshells, but I am almost never in a position to prove to other people that I really need to walk on eggshells because some powerful man has a Thing for me and, therefore, no matter what I do, it will be wrong. But I can still feel the weight of this constant burden.

I imagine (and have reason to believe) women with worse radar (or worse "luck") have it much harder.

My main point is that because most people in positions of power are heterosexual men, most men hoping to get promoted do not need to spend enormous amounts of time and energy worrying whether a man at work who is being friendly is really just hoping to get him out of his clothes. (Edit: That is poorly worded but I don't know how to fix it. In my experience, it matters little whether or not they actually hope to act on their attraction. In most cases, just the fact that a man has attraction to me turns into a big problem, regardless of what his actual intentions are.)

I am 50 years old. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two men (in my entire life, not just work experience) who were married, seemed to find me attractive, and weren't assholes to me over it. The majority of the time, if a man desires me and can't have me, I am going to suffer over it. Very few men are any good at going "Welp, it's unfortunate I met her after I got married." In fact, many men will be downright angry at me for the crime of turning their head and serving as temptation. It's a really terrible position for me to be in. There is just zero upside. It is all downside.

> To me, the biggest problem is that most of these men were not engaging in behavior I could point out to someone else as "harassment."

I would be interested in hearing which behaviors they were engaging in to bother you.

One man asked me for a date. He was a very nice man and was doing nothing wrong under company policy. He was a high level IT professional. He worked in a different department. He had no authority over me. There were plenty of people at the company who were married to each other. There was absolutely nothing "wrong" with him asking me for a date. But he was also the only individual I met in over 5 years at the company who knew what GIS was before I explained it. I have a certificate in GIS. I wanted to get into the IT department. It was clear to me that a senior programmer asking me for a date was not bad behavior per se on his part, but it nonetheless was not only not going to open doors for me, it was going to help close them. His interest in dating me was going to make it harder, not easier, to try to get an IT job. I never did get an IT job. I ultimately left the company. (Edit: IT jobs paid about 2-4 times what I was making. Had I gotten an IT job, I likely would have stayed at the company.)

Another man, also high ranking and also with no actual power me, kept looking for excuses to touch me in a "punch you in the shoulder" sort of expression of affection. It was clear to me it was an expression of sexual interest. He was a married man. I left the company not long after this began. Because I did not work directly with him and only knew him socially as someone I talked with in the cafeteria, I saw no reason to report it. Had it continued or escalated or had circumstances changed such that I did need to actually work with him, I was clear this was something I might eventually have to raise as a concern.

Women almost never initiate touching with men. It is well established this is a sex based "male privilege." Men tend to take it for granted that no woman is allowed to touch them without permission. I am clear that a man touching me without permission -- a married man, doing nothing to in any way benefit me and intentionally avoiding being helpful so as to not be seen as being sweet on me -- was violating my boundaries.

Another man -- well, it is a long story. I knew him socially through chit chat in the cafeteria. Purely by chance, he called me "doll" and "babe" the week before I learned he was slated to become my new boss. At the time, he did not know my name and I did not know he was married. The first incident occurred away from work and I was clear he called me "doll" in part because he did not know my name. It wasn't really offensive or bad behavior, but I discussed the matter with my current boss and got myself quietly moved to another team. I then walked on egg shells around him for 24 months until he was finally fired. One rumor was that he had been fired for sexual harassment. Another was that he had been fired for an illicit affair with a lower ranking employee. I made sure to side step trouble with him. I did so successfully, so there was no smoking gun. His actions were nothing to report to HR but I was clear I did not want him in charge of me. After he was fired, a former team mate who did stay on the team -- a very attractive woman -- confided in me that he piled work on her, made inappropriate remarks and gave her so-so reviews, probably as punishment for not be interested in his attentions. She had asked me earlier why I got moved and I had not divulged the real reason. I felt bad when I learned what he had been doing to her, none of which was blatant enough for her to go to HR. Like me, she was relieved when he was fired.

Those are the most obvious things I can think of off the top of my head and I have a deadline to meet today, so that shall have to do for now.

Thank you for an informative and insightful post. I have a niece who's getting a degree in the technology field, and I constantly worry about her having to face this kind of crap. Do you have any suggestions that I can give here to watch out for, before she enters the world of work?

Edit: Spelling

Once in a while, I blog about this problem space. She might find it helpful to read four of my five blog posts that hit the front page of HN. I am on a tablet, so posting multiple links would be cumbersome, but they are all lunked here:

Http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/hn-tools.html

The titles are:

The Grey Zone

Glass Walls

Oh my god, it's a girl

Nothing but a bunch of boobs

Best of luck to your niece.

Oh, I also wrote another one that might help her, it is linked from here where there is additional commentary: Http://feministslacking.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-silence-of-lambs.html

> But he was also the only individual I met in over 5 years at the company who knew what GIS was before I explained it. I have a certificate in GIS. I wanted to get into the IT department. It was clear to me that a senior programmer asking me for a date was not bad behavior per se on his part, but it nonetheless was not only not going to open doors for me, it was going to help close them.

I'm not sure I understand this. What import does familiarity with GIS have? What led you to conclude that hanging out with IT department employees socially would make it more difficult for you to join the IT department?

I have a certificate in geographic information systems. It is an IT field. He knew what it was and was a powerful man in the IT department. If I had been male, he could have been a networking opprtunity. He was well positioned to understand the value of my niche training and what relevance it might have for a company drowning in information overload. That angle apparently never crossed his mind. He only thought of me in terms of being an attractive woman that he wanted to date.

It was against the rules at the company to sleep with someone you were in charge of, even if not directly -- even if there were several layers between your position and theirs. Therefore, any high ranking man in a different department that slept with me was de facto barring me from ever working under him. Depending on his position in the department, this could bar me from a single team or multiple teams or the entire department.

I wanted an IT job. Him asking me for a date was potentially making it impossible to ever pursue that at the company where we both worked. I am sure that did not cross his mind. He made enough money, he could have provided for me even if I did not work. But I want a career. I did the homemaker and mom thing already. I am not looking for a man who wants me to be his little lady. I want one who will support my dreams instead of one who assumes it is all about his. I did that once. I got burned. I want something better the second time around. If I can't get it, I am content to remain alone.

> It was against the rules at the company to sleep with someone you were in charge of, even if not directly -- even if there were several layers between your position and theirs. Therefore, any high ranking man in a different department that slept with me was de facto barring me from ever working under him. Depending on his position in the department, this could bar me from a single team or multiple teams or the entire department.

That clarifies things. So he would have been your manager had you successfully joined the IT team you applied to?

I was not 100% sure what his position was in the departmental heirarchy. But, yes, that was the crux of my concern.

>Therefore, any high ranking man in a different department that slept with me was de facto barring me from ever working under him.

He was? And here I thought that such actions required agreement on both parts to take place (without there being a crime committed).

Let me put it this way:

If we slept together, it was against company rules for him to be my boss. If I turned down the date, I would not be barred from working for him, but rejecting him was not going to establish a good working relationship. It would not be a good career move to personally reject a man and then seek out a job working for him.

So, in practical terms, simply asking me for a date, regardless of the outcome, was closing doors for me. I am sure that before he asked, he thought about whether or not this could harm his career. He apparently did not think about the impact on mine.

So, yes, while you are correct that I would have to consent for sex to happen, his decision to take an action based on his attraction to me that limited my career prospects was, in fact, unilateral and something I had no control over.

> Women almost never initiate touching with men. It is well established this is a sex based "male privilege." Men tend to take it for granted that no woman is allowed to touch them without permission. I am clear that a man touching me without permission -- a married man, doing nothing to in any way benefit me and intentionally avoiding being helpful so as to not be seen as being sweet on me -- was violating my boundaries.

This honestly is news to me as a male. I've had a fair amount of women touch me without permission. Not like hand on thigh or anything, well a couple times, but hand on hand, hand on shoulder, hand on ass, hand on waist.

Not saying you're wrong but from my personal anecdata this is not well established. >.< I could bring up more things but to be honest all they are is experiences I've had with the women I've worked with. I try not to let it paint my views of women overall. Also trying to think back if i've accidentally touched anyone at work wrongly, I probably have but might have just been absent minded about it.

If that happens absentmindedly is that bad? If so that probably means I'm some sort of male pig because I can't say I never did that at all with any certainty.

There was some female speaker who talked about this. A man in the audience stood up and, iirc, pissed on the idea. She walked out into the audience and placed her hands on his upper arms. He was livid and described it as feeling like he had been "raped."

Things are changing, but this remains generally true.

If you were absentmindedly touching me, my judgement of that would depend on a great many factors. I have had male friends who were honest to god just friends.

Again, I drew my conclusions about the man in question based on a great many factors. It wasn't any one thing. But the touching really stood out, in part because he smacked me hard enough one day that I felt assaulted. I chose to not contact HR. Purely coincidentally, I quit not much after that incident.

>Women almost never initiate touching with men. It is well established this is a sex based "male privilege." Men tend to take it for granted that no woman is allowed to touch them without permission.

Not what I've seen at all. My own experience and socialization is that women are allowed to touch with far less risk than a man is. This stems from the false stereotype 'men always want it' be it sexual advances or touching. Men also have less recourse to complain about such incidents and are treated far harsher when they do (may not within the last few years as the LGBT movement went mainstream, but some time ago it would result in many others ridiculing you for being gay).

If anything, men are more allowed to touch other men than women, which itself may be a problem (as touching tends to build trust, thus resulting in a tighter knit group of men only which, completely unconsciously, excludes women).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com