Handling attraction in a professional setting
jordancooper.blog
jordancooper.blog
A study conducted for the New York Times study shows that Americans, especially women, have quite negative views of being alone with members of the opposite sex. Only 29% of women consider having a drink alone with a man who is not their spouse to be appropriate behavior, and only 63% think a one-on-one workplace meeting is appropriate. Some trends are surprising: when it comes to dinner, 60-70% of women 18-29 view it as inappropriate, but only 30% of women 55+.
I'm not sure what the takeaway is. To me it seems like the product of a culture that has trouble drawing appropriate boundaries between romantic and other contexts. Perhaps it is an outgrowth of the fact that people are basically institutionalized from ages 13-22. School is all consuming--it's where you "work," where you socialize, where you pursue romantic relationships. When people get out into the "real world," they have little experience with all the myriad difference social contexts of ordinary life, and see the workplace as a similar environment.
As norms change within a group, those who hold beliefs outside the Overton Window can become afraid to express those beliefs, and that leads to people simply not even comprehending another group's views. How did Trump get elected president? Why didn't we see it coming? This is what the people in my Manhattan office were thinking the day after the election. On the other hand, family members from Nebraska were laughing and asking how the coastal elite "didn't get it". We aren't talking because we can't disagree without falling out with each other.
I expect the same is true of sexual norms, dating norms, social norms, norms about drugs and alcohol, etc.
Generationally, the Snapchat generation probably has no idea what those growing up in the 1940s believed, and those who were teenagers during the American sexual revolution of the 1960s would probably be surprised by the way teens date and have sex today. We have vague ideas and notions but how many of us have had 30+ min conversations about these topics with people who are from a far off generation?
No one communicates and I believe historians of the future will feel it's an enormous tragedy that we don't have better surveys and public records of personal beliefs in areas that are controversial or highly personal. And more than just 'what do you believe', but 'what are the circumstances that led you to have those beliefs, what were the consequences around your actions that influenced those beliefs', etc.
I would also add that this institutionalization largely deprives youth of contact with adult role models, forcing them to figure out many things by themselves or from TV or the Internet. And models or advice which can be found there are various and not always provided with disclaimers regarding their accuracy and scope of applicability.
This breaks the most major way children have historically found their vocation: by asking people a few years older than them, who already have some small proficiency in the subject, to show them how to get into the subject. And, as well, being that mentor later on.
Some school systems try to recreate this effect with clubs, but clubs are broken at the most important point—the transition from elementary to high-school. It's the kids before the transition and the kinds after it that are most in need of this mentorship interaction, and there's no system in place to give it to them.
And this also breaks socialization: every year of children is now its own isolated cohort, with isolated social norms, entirely unmoved by what older or younger children would think of those actions. This is basically 90% of why "kids are terrible" in the Western school system: kids don't learn social norms from parents, but rather expect to read them on the faces of slightly-older kids reacting to their behavior. If there are no slightly-older kids (as in a uniform-age classroom), then there's nobody the kids trust there, who also has the maturity to disapprove. And there's no slightly-younger kids they feel responsible for behaving in front of.
To me it seems pretty obvious that this entire discussion is the product of trying to navigate powerful and ineradicable biological and evolutionary processes in a culture that thinks it has outgrown them (but hasn't and never will).
I don't know what the answer to this problem is, but I can guarantee that it will eventually lead to fewer women being hired in male dominated companies, and vice versa. Companies always lean toward taking on fewer liabilities, and given the "lunch is sexual harassment" atmosphere of today, these extreme overreactions to often well-intended conduct will turn into a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war.
It's incredible the victim complex so many people seem to have. We go through a bunch of news stories of people bluntly sexually harassing people they work with, and the takeaway is "lunch as sexual harassment atmosphere".
"Sexual harassment is sexual harassment" is the current atmosphere...
Although you make a good point, I'm not sure if I would have done it if she reported to me.
but managers should really be able to have one-on-one lunches with their employees. humanizing (not sexualizing) the relationship is important.
Do these people not do one-on-ones?
We Americans have always been said to be puritanical. Originally, this was based on religious morality adopted by society. Now, it seems to be based on the constant overhanging fear of men as potential abusers. (Is a constant overhanging fear of men as abusers much different than a constant overhanging fear of brown people as potential criminals? There are statistics to support both.) As a victim of sexual abuse as a teen, I'm well aware of the potential for bad things to happen out of the view of society. However, the frequency with which weird intentions have been erroneously ascribed to me strikes me as a bit off kilter. I've even watched a woman weirdly freak out on me and ascribe such things to me for doing and saying absolutely nothing.
One thing you pick up, if you read enough history, is that people ascribe clandestine evils to people as a means of aggression or attack. The Salem witch trials had an economic/resource allocation basis. (Resource allocation problems bring out the worst in people. Jared Diamond's analysis of Rwanda is another example.) There's also a history of women of higher status using such accusations as a means of "punching down" on men of lower socioeconomic status, often across racial lines. Such accusations are particularly potent for being lurid. In mentioning this, I'm not trying to imply that all accusations are weaponized false accusations. What I am saying is that human nature just as much applies to both men and women, both the good and the bad.
So what to do, if you live in a world that simultaneously contains innocent people, clandestine evils, and the opportunistic false accusation of clandestine evil? The solution lies in a society that emphasizes openness, truth, and the protection of the individual. The presupposition that someone is prone to do something based on an inherent trait is particularly dehumanizing. It's just as epistemically bankrupt and dehumanizing to presuppose bad intentions to someone on the basis of sex as it is to presuppose bad intentions to someone on the basis of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or their place of national origin.
We call out countries that would throw individuals under the bus for their purposes. We should also call out ideologies that advocate throwing individuals under the bus for their purposes. (The protection of the individual is, after all, the foundation of liberal values.)
(P.S. You can tell if someone is too far gone as an ideologue if you set a trap for their presuppositions, and they can't help but blunder into it.)
This might just very well be because in the former age bracket, the women are still very young and are not quite experienced in how to handle and deflect unwanted male attention. Older women on the other hand, have been through a lifetime of this and thus may be a lot more comfortable knowing that they know how to be safe and handle inappropriate behavior better.
> “If I couldn’t meet with my boss one on one, I don’t get that face time to show what I can do to get that next promotion”
That's a fascinating perspective.
> Any rule about avoiding meetings that applied only to one sex, even if unspoken, would most likely be illegal,
But rules that applied without regard to sex would be legal.
Note that, for all their flaws, heterosexual single-sex workplaces do cleanly avoid the problem of mixing sex with work.
Practically impossible, unless you've developed actual gaydar[1]. Joking aside, you can't actually guarantee that unless you're talking about very small companies. Give me a company of 50 single-sex people, and there's probably at least one LGBT person there.
[1] In which case I look forward to your forthcoming HN post.
Since the “problem of mixing sex with work” extends to work-related contacts that are not employed by the same employers, but who are (or are employed by) customers, suppliers, or other business partners of the firm, it is not at all true that an exclusively heterosexual single-sex workplace avoids the problem, unless all workplaces and their direct customers, etc., are exclusively heterosexual and of the same single sex.
The difficult situation is one where you develop genuine feelings for someone that you work with every day, intensely, day in and day out. When the attempt of both parties to refrain from a relationship itself becomes an issue that you console each other over, ironically sending you into a relationship.
Or what if the woman approached the man, aggressively so? This does happen. Maybe not so difficult, but a different dynamic, and maybe a different reason to refrain, that turns this piece on its head.
Although well-intended, there's a certain sexism in these kinds of stories, a kind of "knight in shining armor" for the modern age. I realize that in most cases the issue is male -> female attention, but sometimes it is female -> male, or [fe]male <-> [fe]male, and it seems like we tend to assume everything is the same.
I'm trying to figure out what concerns me about this piece, because I'm not sure I have a problem with its content. I'm thinking it's not really what's written in the piece, but the subtext, context, and assumed reasons for writing it, and what to generalize.
I guess I worry that in trying to deal with the massive problem of sexual harassment, the actual messiness of other situations becomes stereotyped and painted over. And then we get blowback.
Of course, that's not to say we shouldn't stop taking big steps to address the pervasive, unsubtle issues.
Eliminate any excuses at all. It's just common sense for a lot of people, but as we've seen recently not all.
I was meeting potential roommates when I met a girl who I found very attractive. We had a great conversation, but for other reasons (location, timing of leases) it didn't work out. Later, after finding a roommate and moving in, I checked in with her to see if she would like to go out on a date. She replied yes, and we went out and had a great time.
Despite not being coworkers, I was mindful of the fact that we had initially met for the purpose of discussing being roommates which I consider a platonic relationship. Just like what the OP says, when I asked her later, she appreciated the fact that I didn't ask her out right away, but waited until later to do so.
Its not rocket science to get this right. Its pretty much common sense.
If we're still assuming the best, then part of the way to fix this issue is to explain to the people who know don't know better what the boundaries actually are and why. This is the same reason why it's important to teach people about affirmative consent.
On the other hand, if we stop assuming the best, then we start getting into "they're violating people's boundaries on purpose, not by accident, so teaching them boundaries will not help, they cannot be helped" territory.
Perfect hypothetical example of someone "who doesn't know better" would have been if the OP of the article had ignored the Investor/Founder boundary and asked her out on a date.
But even if we do assume that he's a predator, the fact that he (and many others who have used similar excuses) thinks that saying he didn't know any better is a valid excuse means that we need to work on emphasizing that that sort of thing is absolutely unacceptable, so that it stops becoming an excuse predators can use.
After all, two people falling in love is more important than any business deal.
Two people falling in love is not more important than love-seeking behavior poisoning the well for everyone else trying to make their careers. There are tons of other more appropriate avenues for that.
Why do you assume there power imbalance was rare? Before recent years, marrying a boss or a professor was quite common.
FWIW, among famous people in tech: Jeff Bezos married an underling; Bill Gates married one of his employees; Sergey Brin married an employee's sister, and dated an underling; Larry Page dated an underling.
That occurred in a context where women were categorically limited to lower level roles, so almost any heterosexual workplace relationship involved a power imbalance. You wouldn't expect the same dynamic on a going forward basis, nor is there any reason to structure the workplace to accommodate such relationships.
Who gets together with someone thinking "Hrm, in 10 years time I'll probably be lower management and she'll still be regular staff"?
Because it's not a huge share, it's a small-but-not-insignificant minority.
In comparison, how many met at a club? At college? At Disneyland? While backpacking through Ireland? Through online dating?
For example, "Work (1/10); College (1/30); Disneyland (1/1,000); Backpacking through Ireland (1/100,000,000)"
Work would then be the best place to find a partner with significantly higher chances of occurring than anywhere else, even if "anywhere else" comprises the remaining 90% of couples as a collective. For "only 10%" to be a bad thing, other locations would have to be significantly higher. For example, "College (6/10), Local Club (2/10), Disneyland (1/10), Work (1/10)"
Where the other 90% comes from is very important in whether or not 10% is vastly significant or not.
The three that are over 20% are “through mutual friends”, “online”, and “at a bar/restaurant”. Work is #4, at less than half of any of those.
Back around 1990, work was #2 at around 20% (still well behind mutual friends).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/08/how-m...
A bit of a tangent, but I'm a tad amazed "through mutual friends" is as high as it is. Statistically, I'd think I'd be able to think of far more couples around me that I know met through a mutual friend. I would've ballparked it at less than 3% if I had to guess it myself.
Still an uncommon thing among the people I know and with that statistic I would think it should be much higher. I just thought it was interesting that my personal experience differs so much that I'd have assumed it was much lower than it is.
And "how we met" is such a common couple's story, unless I assume my friends are liars, "met at a party" or "at a (mutual) friend's wedding" is maybe one or two of their stories.
If two founders of different companies happen to meet at a conference, there is nothing inherently wrong with them dating (assuming it doesn't cause some kind of conflict of interest due to their businesses). But an investor-founder relationship needs to be platonic.
Think of it from this angle: You are a heterosexual man pitching a bunch of heterosexual men to get money for your startup. The industry standard is that investors can sleep with founders that are pitching them. If some woman comes in, sleeps with all the investors on the board and gets scads of money for her startup while you get turned down because there was not enough money for both, are you totes happy with that outcome?
The reasons for disallowing an investor-founder romance go far beyond protecting women from predatory male behavior.
You may not care, but most of society does care. They want money to be invested in products that will do good things for the world, not in products started by people who are simply willing to sleep their way into power. If rich people want to pay for sex, they can hire sex workers. This is not a good way to do business and create something of value. It means the wrong products are getting funded for the wrong reasons.
That said, been there. Done that. Married her. :-)
The only thing that I could imagine that would make the breakup bad, would be if I didn't show her respect, wasn't honest with her, etc.
If I did all of that and we decided to go our separate ways, I feel that we would have been okay professionally. We both needed our jobs and couldn't afford to get fired - especially not in 2009.
These aren't edge cases. These are the basic ground rules.
The possibility of falling in love there is less important than maintaining a professional work environment. Workplaces don't exist for matchmaking. That's not why people are there. If it happens in a way that doesn't negatively impact the workplace, that's great. But that's ancillary.
To me, if I were in that position I would ignore the basic ground rules and see where it goes. Take a chance on love and if it doesn't work out then go find another job.
We need a lot more people saying this sort of thing. I am so glad to see this on the front page.
For me, the point of view of the writer is blindingly, blazingly obvious. Women have brains too, ya know and maybe just maybe they don't @#%@^# appreciate being appreciated for only one thing when they just burned 3 years (or a week or 25 years or whatever) of their life working hard for something. No man would want a woman (or another man!) to do that to them, it's only fair to return that expectation of respect.
For me, too, it's about what future - near and long-term - that I want to see. I don't want to see a world built where most of the time, advancement comes on the back of such behavior. I need - most people need - to know that their effort will eventually produce a reward. Not wonder, ok, I did all this work, am I going to fail at the sexual part? That bloody sucks.
Isn't it just being a professional? Why is that difficult for some people?
We need to say things like this and keep saying it so that the people who didn't get the memo before they started their careers have some hope of getting the memo before it is another scandal in the headlines. It isn't constructive to just let people mess up that bad and then hang them high while making zero effort to clue them before it goes that far.
Some people will still take it too far. We can't stop all of it. But only giving attention to the matter when things go wrong and then having a public shit show is actively harmful to the goal of opening doors for women. For one thing, it creates the impression that there are no good guys, that sexual predators are the norm and it creates a very threatening atmosphere. To some degree, it does so unnecessarily.
Yes, I deal routinely with the issue that a lot of men are only talking to me because they are hoping for a hook up and that is problematic. But, for me, a better solution is to know there are men I can connect with professionally than to get the message that "ALL businessmen are wolves in sheep's clothing and you just have to expect to be groped and to put up with lewd remarks. That's just par for the course."
It has been hard for me to make those connections, and I can't help but wonder if part of the problem is that having heard so much negativity, I was being suspicious at times when it wasn't warranted and thereby cutting my own throat simply because all that I was hearing was "ALL men are just like that." And that isn't a problem that gets solved by the good guys remaining silent and the ugly incidents getting all the press. It is a problem that gets solved by having positive examples to follow so I can more effectively recognize when I need to worry and when I don't. Being on guard all the time is not a good way to win friends and influence people. It is counterproductive if you are trying to establish business connections.
A moment's thought makes is less 'blindingly obvious'.
Seems to be a bit of a confirmation bias.
I'm a woman. Some man revealing to me that my hopes, dreams and future are something he is willing to trample in pursuit of sexual gratification for himself is not endearing. It is the opposite of endearing. It makes it clear to me he is a predator and cannot be trusted.
The question that gets answered by your choices is a question of character. Doing the right thing means you may get a shot at it later and she will know she can trust you. Hitting on some woman under circumstances where it is ruinous to her dreams is not a way to establish a loving relationship with anyone.
> I guess the point of this story, and why I share it now, is that there is a right way and a wrong way to handle attraction in a professional setting. The right way is to back the fuck off and let people do their work despite any attraction. The wrong way is to blur the line.
I'd like to hear peoples' opinions on under what circumstances (if ever) it's OK to hit on someone at a corporate holiday party, assuming there is no power imbalance.
IMO, assuming no power imbalance it's only ok if you don't work together in any capacity regularly or could, if the relationship goes south, stop working together regularly in a very quick timeframe.
That's all there is to it, and I don't know what else to add. Do some folks not learn this, not care, or just don't know what it means? Really, it's just the Golden Rule isn't it?
And really, we should update the golden rule from "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" to something more like "Do unto others as they would have done unto them," because people can have different preferences.
(Now, ignore for the moment that I'm gay, which has an entirely set of other groups and expectations.)
For Evangelicals, it is acceptable to be friends before dating. In current secular trends in the college educated population, women (generally - there are exceptions) expect a man to be up-front with romantic intentions, unless (as above) there are circumstances preventing that intention.
There are boundaries to asking someone out if such changes happen. For example, sometimes it is acceptable-ish to ask someone out when they're exiting (or in) a relationship, and there are times when it's a cause for rejection. Most times, it's cause for rejection, unless it isn't. Can you distill the rules into an easy golden rule pattern? I know I can't.
What the author is suggesting is that romance is inappropriate between potential investors and founders, regardless of how objective their roles and interactions are outside the sphere of Romance. I disagree with this zero-sum approach. While it's essential to maintain objectivity, if it takes away the humanity, what exactly is the point of this, or anything
This is in no way saying you have to give up your humanity. Not hitting on people you shouldn't be hitting on is not like some kind of vow of celibacy. There is a time and place for trying to pursue romance. On the job with another professional whom you have power over is not it.
For hundreds (thousands?) of years, the separation between the sexes and the expectations placed on their roles were intensely ingrained in human cultures across the globe. In less than 100 years we have upended thousands of years of cultural norms. That's no small thing.
One of the implications of this is that we are encountering situations for which we have absolutely no rule book. We just don't know how to respond to them. At all. We are stumbling around in the dark, blindly trying to figure it out, all the while trying to create a future any of us actually want to live in.
I know I wouldn't want to live in a world where my female colleagues were continually plagued by the question of their advancement relying on the fallout of a single attempt at a romantic encounter. That is not the future I want to build.
We set these boundaries - like the writer of this article - because the long term effect is that we build a world where men and women can work side by side without destroying their relationships. If more men did as he did, we would not be experiencing the hyper-sensitive environment we are seeing now. The long term effect of this behavior matters far more than the short term desire to hook up.
As in all things, there is a time and a place. The moment when a woman is attempting to get her business off the ground, and you can help her sink or swim, is not the time or place to be expressing your interest in her. She's got enough to be worrying about without that. Maybe there will be (or won't be) a later, where that moment IS appropriate. That is what happened in this case. It won't always.
He included her point of view and her needs and wants in his decision making. That is what he did. That is an incredible sign of respect. That is the future I want. There is no loss of humanity here - in fact exactly the opposite. Our humanity is also seen in the hard choices we make.
That's the humanity I want to be part of.
Lets take a more common and less obvious situation; dating coworkers: If things don't work out, often one of the pair will need to leave their job - probably her.
A considerate person would realize that "Would you like to get drinks tonight?" really means "Hey, lets see if we have some chemistry and if it doesn't work out, I'm OK with you losing your job."
Work isn't the same as school.
I think males tend to be oblivious to the downsides of asking a scrum-mate out on a date. After all, it's not awkward for them. I mean, who wouldn't be flattered to be asked out by me right! Even if she didn't accept this time, she's really going to enjoy pair programming with me in the future.
This is where the concept of consideration comes into play - a considerate person thinks about how their actions will will affect others, in this case the coworker you ask out or the rest of the team.