Comment by throwaway1726 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway1726 | Hacker News Reader

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> One thing that jumps out at me is you seem to be saying what holds women back is that men don't trust them

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

As a man, I’m rather skeptical about trusting women in business. I will never have a one-on-one meeting with a woman (especially somebody under my management), and I will especially never interact with with woman I work with outside of the office. I will generally try to keep discussions with women in the office strictly about business and professional. I am incredibly cautious about mentoring a woman.

The risk of being accused of something untoward is just not worth taking. There’s little risk of my male colleagues taking some extreme level of offence at banter or any of the other normal interactions of friendship. None of my male colleagues are going to file a complaint against me just to spite me, or to further their career objectives. However this is a non-trivial risk with women. I know women who openly talk about having done this, and I know men who it has happened to. I don’t like it, but that’s simply the reality of the current political climate.

I know some men have this attitude but I still find it astounding.

Are you really so unable to determine appropriate behaviours that you think women are making extreme overreactions to normal “banter”? Or that the risk of a false/inflated accusation is so high that you think freezing out all women is a reasonable and rational approach?

Women finally begin talking publicly about the endemic sexism they face, which many men just don’t see, and your conclusion from that is that women can’t be trusted.

I mean, sure, some woman might maliciously make some accusation against you. That’s certainly possible. It’s also possible that a man makes a false bullying accusation. Or accuses you of sexual advances. There are malicious people everywhere and gender doesn’t really come into it.

I don’t have any concern about the appropriateness of my behaviour. I care a lot about the people I work with, I want them all to succeed, and I want them all to feel good about coming to work. The problem is that it’s very easy to paint personal discussions as being inappropriate. Take an example of a discussion related to family. This could be a perfectly ordinary personal topic for two colleagues to discuss. But you don’t have to think very hard to come up with a reason that family could be a taboo topic of discussions with female colleagues. Why is he talking to me about family? Does he want to know what my plans are? Is that why I didn’t get that promotion?...

> I mean, sure, some woman might maliciously make some accusation against you. That’s certainly possible. It’s also possible that a man makes a false bullying accusation.

It sure is. But if I catch the ire of a malicious man at work, it’s much more likely to just amount to the regular office politics nonsense. Even if a man were to make a more outrageous accusation against me, I’d expect to be treated to some reasonable form of due process. With the same accusation from I woman, I absolutely would not have such an expectation. I would also expect that such an accusation could follow me around for perhaps the rest of my life.

Now, I’ve worked with some very talented women, and I’ve done what I can to support them. But sadly I don’t feel as though I can do as much as I would like. You’re free to criticize me for that, but from my perspective it’s a perfectly rational risk avoidance strategy. It’s motivated by cultural factors that are entirely beyond my control, and it’s a perspective that I would guess is shared to some extent by a non-trivial amount of people.

I’ve heard the same in a lot of places. After #metoo got rolling and “guilty until ... fuck it, accused means guilty, #believesurvivors” became the norm, I heard a lot of guys in higher positions say they wouldn’t work closely with / mentor a woman if they could in any way avoid it. If they were accused, their career and possibly marriage would just be over. As you say, just not worth it.

I don’t share this feeling, but then, I may live to regret it. It only takes one bad actor.

Thank you for speaking up.

I don't know how to constructively engage your points, but I appreciate that you posted.

Given how rampant this issue seems to be, I'm somewhat appalled that there isn't a more supportive response to the comment. It suggests an awful lot of men think they absolutely don't do this when observation suggests to me that it is more or less the norm.

Really well put and so true. I have know careers ruined because of falsehoods believed without question.

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