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Comment by rplnt | Hacker News Reader

I'm starting to think that I am (or we, men, are) blind to this. If it happens as much as is reported (I don not work in SV, but I'd guess Eastern-ish Europe would be worse), then it must happen before out eyes, or even worse, we are the ones doing it. I honestly can't think of such incident, but this suggest that there were many that I simply ignored, didn't see them as such.

edit: To make it clear, I definitely didn't witness incidents like kissing and lap sitting.. but more subtle ones might come under my radar.

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The main thing to remember is that much of it is done by men who are smart enough not to be easily caught. The rest of us don't see things happening because they're careful not to have witnesses, or try to have some plausible excuse.

That leads to the other side of how toxic this is: if you're harassed, how do you know who's safe to tell? It's probably safer not to tell other men if you don't want to risk finding out that they're part of the problem or just unsympathetic without unrealistic levels of proof.

> I'm starting to think that I am (or we, men, are) blind to this.

Nobody's blind to that. Most of the time it's just that nobody wants to get involved in cases like that. For all one knows ones could be accused of doing nothing about it. So people prefer "not to see" and "not to know", just like in blatant cases of racism at work. So it's not blindness , it's just individualism.

> but I'd guess Eastern-ish Europe would be worse

Why just Eastern Europe ? I'm French and sexual harassment is an endemic issue. Same in Italy. We might have stronger laws against it but good luck when it comes to proving it happened in a court of law.

It's not really useful to single out Eastern Europe. The problem is everywhere; its manifestations are just different.

Eastern Europe for example has much less of a glass ceiling problem but gender roles are stricter and but racism and homophobia are orders of magnitude worse.

In the Dutch workplace (where I'm from) homophobia is for example much less of an issue; but racism is still pretty ingrained and while there are less strict divisions in gender roles but the glass ceiling for women is much stronger.

but I'd guess Eastern-ish Europe would be worse

You don't have to go to Eastern-ish Europe for that. I've spent some time in offices around London over the last couple of years and I've found that it's much more likely to witness sexually-charged conversation in the IT workplace than here in the US.

It does happen and I've seen it, I had to take my own manager to one side when I was team leader and explain to him his behaviour was unacceptable and he'd likely end up with an HR complaint.

In that case it was jokes that I don't think had any malice but would definitely look bad in front of HR.

I think this is one of the most useful things a male team member can do to create a positive atmosphere and fight back against this nonsense.

Speak up! Diffuse situations in the moment when you can, provide private feedback when needed, make corporate complaints when necessary.

He was a good manager, he also had a really twisted and dark sense of humour which was fine with me since I did as well but you have to remember that what's funny to you might not be to someone else sometimes.

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