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Comment by woodman | Hacker News Reader

Her complaints about the office politics make up the bulk of the text - I experienced much the same as a man. Her complaints about woman specific issues, like accidentally having an affair or being upset about not being able to take off 4 months in an insanely competitive industry... I'm not terribly impressed.

The sex talk complaint is interesting though - consider whatever emotional response you've arrived at, but with a slight twist: a straight man having to listen to gay men talk about gay porn stars. So what are we talking about here, 'don't ask don't tell'? Because I'm totally fine with that - I don't enjoying hearing the sexual fantasies of my coworkers (regardless of orientation), anybody know why that didn't work for the military?

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Wow, so much to unravel.

First: "Don't ask, don't tell" wasn't about sharing your sexual fantasies in minute details. It was simply about your sexual orientation, and it was discriminatory because it was obviously accepted to mention your opposite-gendered spouse, or have a photo of them somewhere people would see it.

And since you experienced the same as a man: how often did one of your superiors set up a fake meeting on the other side of the continent, which then turned into an attempted 'romantic getaway'. Did you also have to physically push him out of your hotel room, where he showed up in his bathrobe?

Having been in the military when DADT was the rule of the day, I can tell you that it was applied a little differently than your characterization. Yes, locker room talk happened among the junior enlisted (E1-E3), yes the straight guys could get away with it while the gays missed out. That was the extent of it, after you hit NCO there was pretty much no more sex talk - and I never once saw a photo of another dude's wife. We knew everybody's orientation and didn't care so long as we didn't have to hear about it.

As far as the hotel story. Yes, I've experienced a much lower budget version of that - I had a gay VP setup a meeting at an empty satellite office. He made his pass and I stared blankly for a couple of seconds before continuing my work on the white board. On another occasion I had a female coworker show up at my hotel room asking for some help with the presentation she was working on, I handled that the way you should: "I'll meet you in the lobby in 10 minutes."

"Don't ask, don't tell" meant something very different in the US military - barring openly LGBT people from service, but allowing "closeted" LGBT people to serve.

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