There are very specific definitions of sexual harassment. Asking a coworker out once when neither of you is in the other's chain of command isn't anywhere near

There are very specific definitions of sexual harassment. Asking a coworker out once when neither of you is in the other's chain of command isn't anywhere near that. If you believe that the word no means 'try again tomorrow', feel like part of asking out is to mention that there will be negative consequences for saying no, or work-related advantages for saying yes, and ignore others when they tell you your behavior is making them uncomfortable, then you are going in the road towards harassment. Let's be realistic about harassment: While seeing something like this triggers fear that suddenly innocent behavior will lead to harassment calls, in practice, your typical male engineer will get away with habitual misbehavior: An employer will only get involved if the behavior at least comes close to qualify as harassment and is well documented. One has to be quite clueless to get anywhere near that level accidentally. We can be afraid, but that doesn't make the fear well founded. The cases that we see in the media involve systemic, repeated misbehavior from people in situations of power, not a random IC that asks a woman engineer out politely when she isn't interested. Asking your coworkers out is fine. A good antidote to the fears is to just listen to women talk about what they deal with. There's plenty of articles out there, and heck, even tweet storms form well known women engineers, explaining the kind of shitty behavior they are exposed to every day. It will show you how there's an abyss between what you think is OK and what they have to put up with.