Which brings in all the problems with the Pence view. It reinforces the glass ceiling / old boys club, because friends talk about business on the golf course (or at the LAN party), and then women get excluded from that.
Worse, it's a policy adopted only by the self-conscious people who wouldn't otherwise have crossed the line anyway, and not the bastards going around groping people left and right, which increases the proportion of interactions with the latter category.
The problem seems to be that there are obvious benefits to standing right on top of the line (increased probability of friendship/romance) but nobody wants anybody to cross it, and that can't happen. If you tell everybody to stand as close as they can to an invisible line that nobody can quite agree on the exact contours of, every time a moderate person actually draws their version of the line you'll find a whole slew of people standing on the wrong side of it, because it's everyone even slightly less moderate than that. Ask a conservative (i.e. puritan) person to draw the line and everybody will be standing on the wrong side of it.
Rejection sucks. Nobody wants to get rejected, so nobody wants to be thrust into the position of the villain who has to reject someone. But the world where nobody ever has to reject someone is the completely sterile one.
The uncomfortable no is the price of the opportunity for yes. Nobody who internally knows that the answer is no wants that "opportunity" thrust on them, but how is the other party supposed to know that ahead of time?
And it's no help to point out the obvious cases. There are things that 99.99% of people agree are over the line. The problem is the things that 75% of people agree are over the line, because then 25% of people are doing them.
Some might, I don't. Some crap people do crap things. I discuss work issues in work. Out of hours work discussions exclude all kinds of people, people with families, women (again in particular) with children and those who prefer work situations to social ones. I occasionally meet male and female colleagues one-to-one in coffee shops during work hours, to talk things through, but I don't drink alcohol with them.
I haven't studied Pence's view, but I am a married man and I rarely meet women socially one-on-one. I socialize very occasionally with my team . I have seen so many times where a manager socializes with his team, then they do a bit of texting, then one hits on hard times and needs a shoulder to cry on, then they fall out and the company has a sexual harassment case to deal with where maybe it is just a 'lovers quarrel'.
I agree with the other poster that said that having sex with close colleagues is wholly unprofessional. There are plenty of people on earth.
What is so bad about talking business outside of work?
Yeah, and I feel bad about that. Hopefully things like professional societies, meetups, etc. can mitigate those factors.
And realistically, in my experience as an experienced software developer, the whole golf course / LAN party thing just doesn't happen. Or if it does, I'm certainly not benefiting from it either. Maybe for CxO's or people in sales, I wouldn't know.
It tends to be much more subtle than most people expect. The boss asks your coworkers about you and people say nicer things about people they're friendlier with. Or you're hanging out with someone outside of work and end up talking about work for a minute, and having the extra information makes you look good. Or your friend gets a job at a better company and then you have inside information and someone to put in a good word for you if you want to do the same thing.
It's a damn shame, too. But the reality for me is that apart from making sure my kids stay alive, my most important commitment in life is remaining faithful to my wife. If that commitment prevents me from personally helping to shatter the glass ceiling or even means I'm unintentionally upholding it, then so be it.
tl;dr
For me, it's a matter of risk tolerance. I have a very low tolerance for the risk of cheating on my wife. So based on my best understanding of the circumstances that tend to increase the likelihood of infidelity, I try hard to avoid those circumstances.
> Doesn't this attitude perpetuate the harmful stereotype that men are not in control of their own sexual urges?
First, "stereotype perpetuation" isn't something that just happens to people. A person has some ability to accept or reject adopting belief in a stereotype. So I'll let other people take responsibility for what they believe regarding this topic.
Secondly, what you're seeing is a male being in control of his sexual urges. My post was simply giving insight into one of the mechanisms by which I do it.
> Shouldn't someone in a committed relationship be able to control themselves better?
Well ideally, yeah. But I didn't design the human condition.
> Do you really not trust yourself?
I try to have an accurate understanding of my strengths and weaknesses, and to plan accordingly.
It’s a little inhumane to make individual men responsible for the weight of western civilization’s treatment of women when they’re trying to do right by their partners. I determined years ago that I’m some combination of unwilling or unable to maintain monogamous relationships, so I stopped making that commitment. Even without that constraint, being romantically engaged with people is at best distracting and at worst destructive, and so structure my life so as to avoid engendering those feelings. When I spend time with members of the sex I find attractive, I inevitably want to escalate.
It’s my unsubstantiated conjecture that this is why traditional societies had separate gender roles. Same sex groups take so much less emotional energy.
People have agency over who they have sex with, you're saying they don't.
So, if you are misogynistic, following this policy saves you from career suicide and harming others, and if you are not misogynistic, then the price is small. Therefore, it's best to follow this "no socialization with subordinates" policy.