> What scares me is the absolutes with which they are spoken about, in that the accusation of having committed a microaggression or act of bias always means the

> What scares me is the absolutes with which they are spoken about, in that the accusation of having committed a microaggression or act of bias always means the accused is guilty. Can you handle a little guilt, though? It sounds like you can -- you're saying, I know I'm not perfect, I know I can be better. I think that is, to a first approximation, the standard applied to employees at Google. > On the other hand, this can lead to the infliction of the "perpetrator" status in situations that, to my honest attempt to calmly and thoughtfully analyze the circumstances, grant too much power to the accuser. In the story you relate, does the accuser actually have any real power? They told their story, and...that's the end, right? I think you're assuming somehow that every time someone says "someone did this shitty thing to me," they want HR to fire that person. I know from talking to people who have had shitty things done to them that that's not true. People -- victims, HR -- have a sense of proportionality. And I'm sure someone here can come up with an anecdote that shows someone acting without proportionality. But the fact that the system isn't perfect doesn't mean it's wrong as a rule, and consider that for every one accused who is acted upon disproportionately, there are surely many more victims who never seek or see justice. So if the system seems more imperfect to you lately, perhaps what is actually happening is that the imperfections are being felt more equitably. If Google fired every white man who referred to a group of people men+women as "guys", there would be very few of us left. I don't mean to say that stuff like that isn't important and that we shouldn't change our language, just that degree of harm and intent are important. I have never heard anyone from HR suggest otherwise. If I can make a guess as to where this fear might be coming from: A friend at another company related a story to me about how she tried to gently correct a coworker's microaggression. He blew up at her, angry that she was making a big thing out of a little thing. Which she wasn't, objectively or in intent. But then she took the blowup to HR. So that's what happened, but I have to imagine his story is going to be, I made this innocent comment, and then I got taken to task with HR over it. I'm sure many people have stories like that, where they completely miss the point about what they're actually talking to HR about. And then maybe these stories make their way to you, and you conclude, "gosh, I'm terrified of stepping out of line, look at the awful thing that happened to person X for doing basically nothing. And this other thing in YAG, I did that myself recently. I am terrified." But I suggest there's a different way to look at the same data that paints a quite different picture.