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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

Dunno. Who would be interested to work alongside or for someone who abuses his power to harass women? You'd think that many men would prefer politeness and professionalism over a fratboy outfit. You have to establish boundaries with the alpha oaf, at times you feel ashamed for someone else's behaviour or need to apologize and so on. If you frame the issue as a "women's problem" you ignore these aspects, and they shouldn't be ignored.

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It has not at all been my experience, at any point in my career, no matter which group of men that I've worked with, that passively observing a man exhibiting or talking about aggressive sexual behavior has been a dealbreaker.

That's not to say harassment and abuse aren't dealbreakers for the men I've worked with; for most of them, it is. But it has to be spelled out for them. A victim has to speak up about it. It has not been my experience that men surveil each other to ensure that their sexual behavior is appropriate or benign.

I had a similar response to the controversy over the Trump Access Hollywood tapes. Jake Tapper was talking to a Trump surrogate who claimed that the tapes were just "locker room talk". Tapper, aghast, said something to the effect of "not in any locker room I've ever been in". My response (to myself, quietly): Jake Tapper, you are full of shit.

Obviously none of this is good stuff! It's just important that we try to be more self-aware about it.

At a previous company, I worked with someone in a recent highly-public sexism scandal (if I said who or where, I would no longer be a genericpseudo).

I knew that the person was extremely brash and was told that they indulged in "locker-room talk", though I didn't personally observe any harassing behavior. I didn't speak up about what I heard. I wish I had. I wonder, and worry, if anything as bad as what happened at their next company happened at the company I worked at. I'm really uncomfortable with the odds that it did.

There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about.

There's not really any value in having that sort of chat with anyone in a professional context.

I was a robot club nerd so the concept of locker room talk is foreign to me. But now as a grown up, I can't say that I've ever felt unable to connect with another man because I can't make a sexually aggressive comment about a coworker or mutual acquaintance.

Note that the "sexually aggressive comment" can just refer to a plain "sexual comment" (which changes the whole sentence's meaning).

And it's labelled "aggressive" because of several centuries of hardcore religious puritanism leaving their mark on all aspects of US culture. Sex is naughty. Sex talk is aggressive.

Religion strikes again!

You don't have to be a puritan to think that comments that disrespect others' boundaries ("grab them by the pussy!") are aggressive.

Only we didn't speak specifically about such talk here.

The parent said "There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about".

And this was immediately taken to mean "aggressive sexual comment".

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