4 ms·

How hard is it to not make inappropriate comments about someone or their body? It's -exceedingly- easy to not be a creepy dick to one's coworkers and fellow hum

How hard is it to not make inappropriate comments about someone or their body? It's -exceedingly- easy to not be a creepy dick to one's coworkers and fellow human beings. One only has to act like a robot if they have zero social awareness or tact.

fleddr 5y ago
I would agree that this is easy, but I did run into a weird edge case. First to be clear, I would never comment on anybody's body or clothes, especially not in the workplace. This is not to comply with some rule, I wouldn't have the urge to do that in the first place. It's weird and unneeded. Anyway, the edge case. My female coworker is very passionate about making custom dresses. One day, on the day before our country's Queen's Day, she comes to work in an absolute master piece of a custom dress, dedicated to the festivities to come. The quality of that dress, the attention to detail, was out of this world. All custom made. She walks over to a group of devs (five men, one is me) and basically presents the dress, yet without saying a word. And now comes the awful thing. By chance, all of us had one of those mandatory "ethical workplace" trainings the day before. And this literal example, some guy commenting on a dress was used as an example of an absolute no-go. Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display. But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated. I know, it's a very uncommon situation, but the dynamic is interesting. In the gray zone area, most people would prefer to better be safe than sorry. Which almost every time is best anyway, but not this time. I'll end with an aspect much more common. Feedback, as in professional feedback. Recently a study showed that VCs are far less critical towards female founders compared to male ones. Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it. Supposedly, out of fear. It shows hyper tensions, paranoia. If that gets out of hand, women and other minorities will be treated as radio-active objects, which is in nobody's interest. The way I see it, really bad men (subject of article), cause this distrustful relation between perfectly good people.
- void_mint 5y ago
  I think one of the main tenants of allyship (I'm comfortable having weirdos call me "woke" for using the word allyship) is being accepting when told you did something wrong, and working to cultivate relationships in which a person is able to _simply_ say "I didn't like that", to which that feedback is taken seriously and responsibly. I mostly think the argument "Well men will just start treating women and minorities will start being treated like radio active objects" is cultivated and pushed forward by men that aren't willing to hear they did something wrong. Binary thinking is _the problem_. If you make a comment with good intent, but it was taken poorly, the fear is you'll be labeled as a bad person/sexist/whatever. In reality, if your intent is good, and your response to being told you did something wrong was "I'm sorry, I won't do that again", nothing else really has to happen.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    "I mostly think the argument "Well men will just start treating women and minorities will start being treated like radio active objects" is cultivated and pushed forward by men that aren't willing to hear they did something wrong." I agree. It's a narrative from the "bad" men, yet it can instill paranoia on the good ones, where they become too careful. Is this "walking on eggshells" thinking justified? No, I think in most interactions good intent would be detected, and occasionally a minor "correction" follows if not. None of this should be even in the domain of HR reports, job loss, the like. Like you said. But still, despite that, I do see minor paranoia on the rise. As in the example I gave regarding the dress. My heart was screaming to say the nice thing, the compliment she deserved so much, but I picked the safer option. Likewise, code reviews. With a male engineer, I would simply say this: there's a mistake in your code. It's over here. Here's why it's a mistake, and what its impact would be if left unsolved. A fairly clinical and dry transfer of information. With a female engineer, although I don't want to, I find myself to be far more careful. I aim to remove any trace or shred of a doubt of the message, or the tone of the message, coming across as in any way being dismissive, oppressive, "mansplaining", name any possible negative feeling one can have about critical feedback. It takes me 3 times as long, and I don't know if it helps at all. But it's another example of minor paranoia straining work relations. It's an odd thing to realize that the men concerned in the article specifically treat women in a bad way, yet at the same time normal (say, good men) might treat women too carefully. I don't have a solution, these are just observations.
pmarreck 5y ago
> One only has to act like a robot if they have zero social awareness or tact. Just noting here that the vast majority of people do not have 100% perfect social awareness or tact, and making this the bar for harsh judgment of human behavior is arguably inhumane.
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  Not to mention it basically makes the workplace extremely hostile to somebody who isn't neurotypical.
  - pmarreck 5y ago
    That is an excellent point

fleddr 5y ago

I would agree that this is easy, but I did run into a weird edge case. First to be clear, I would never comment on anybody's body or clothes, especially not in the workplace. This is not to comply with some rule, I wouldn't have the urge to do that in the first place. It's weird and unneeded. Anyway, the edge case. My female coworker is very passionate about making custom dresses. One day, on the day before our country's Queen's Day, she comes to work in an absolute master piece of a custom dress, dedicated to the festivities to come. The quality of that dress, the attention to detail, was out of this world. All custom made. She walks over to a group of devs (five men, one is me) and basically presents the dress, yet without saying a word. And now comes the awful thing. By chance, all of us had one of those mandatory "ethical workplace" trainings the day before. And this literal example, some guy commenting on a dress was used as an example of an absolute no-go. Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display. But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated. I know, it's a very uncommon situation, but the dynamic is interesting. In the gray zone area, most people would prefer to better be safe than sorry. Which almost every time is best anyway, but not this time. I'll end with an aspect much more common. Feedback, as in professional feedback. Recently a study showed that VCs are far less critical towards female founders compared to male ones. Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it. Supposedly, out of fear. It shows hyper tensions, paranoia. If that gets out of hand, women and other minorities will be treated as radio-active objects, which is in nobody's interest. The way I see it, really bad men (subject of article), cause this distrustful relation between perfectly good people.

void_mint 5y ago
I think one of the main tenants of allyship (I'm comfortable having weirdos call me "woke" for using the word allyship) is being accepting when told you did something wrong, and working to cultivate relationships in which a person is able to _simply_ say "I didn't like that", to which that feedback is taken seriously and responsibly. I mostly think the argument "Well men will just start treating women and minorities will start being treated like radio active objects" is cultivated and pushed forward by men that aren't willing to hear they did something wrong. Binary thinking is _the problem_. If you make a comment with good intent, but it was taken poorly, the fear is you'll be labeled as a bad person/sexist/whatever. In reality, if your intent is good, and your response to being told you did something wrong was "I'm sorry, I won't do that again", nothing else really has to happen.
- fleddr 5y ago
  "I mostly think the argument "Well men will just start treating women and minorities will start being treated like radio active objects" is cultivated and pushed forward by men that aren't willing to hear they did something wrong." I agree. It's a narrative from the "bad" men, yet it can instill paranoia on the good ones, where they become too careful. Is this "walking on eggshells" thinking justified? No, I think in most interactions good intent would be detected, and occasionally a minor "correction" follows if not. None of this should be even in the domain of HR reports, job loss, the like. Like you said. But still, despite that, I do see minor paranoia on the rise. As in the example I gave regarding the dress. My heart was screaming to say the nice thing, the compliment she deserved so much, but I picked the safer option. Likewise, code reviews. With a male engineer, I would simply say this: there's a mistake in your code. It's over here. Here's why it's a mistake, and what its impact would be if left unsolved. A fairly clinical and dry transfer of information. With a female engineer, although I don't want to, I find myself to be far more careful. I aim to remove any trace or shred of a doubt of the message, or the tone of the message, coming across as in any way being dismissive, oppressive, "mansplaining", name any possible negative feeling one can have about critical feedback. It takes me 3 times as long, and I don't know if it helps at all. But it's another example of minor paranoia straining work relations. It's an odd thing to realize that the men concerned in the article specifically treat women in a bad way, yet at the same time normal (say, good men) might treat women too carefully. I don't have a solution, these are just observations.

pmarreck 5y ago

> One only has to act like a robot if they have zero social awareness or tact. Just noting here that the vast majority of people do not have 100% perfect social awareness or tact, and making this the bar for harsh judgment of human behavior is arguably inhumane.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
Not to mention it basically makes the workplace extremely hostile to somebody who isn't neurotypical.
- pmarreck 5y ago
  That is an excellent point