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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

I seem to be the only person in the comments that agrees with the article. But I'm not American.

I will absolutely not be alone with a female as a male if I can help it.

One accusation of ill-doing on my part and my life is essentially over.

Conversely; as a male a female is quite likely weaker than I am, thus the risk to them is that I cause them injury or force them to do something. Which is a horrendous thought and of course I would never do such a thing; but from a certain perspective it _could_ happen. The same way I could potentially say something deeply uncomfortable to them.

So I would understand why females would not desire to be alone with males.

Just my 2c

EDIT: downvotes? Really?

Remind me never to air my concerns in public again.

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> EDIT: downvotes? Really? Remind me never to air my concerns in public again.

The HN guidelines explicitly ask you not to post downvote complaints, so please don't. It's tedious.

A reasonable thing to do when you get downvoted is to reflect on why your comment might have merited that. If you don't want to do that work, fine; but please don't channel that unwillingness into off-topic commentary.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough. But isn't brigading against the rules? All my comments on other articles are also being downvoted despite being inactive for a while.

>> One accusation of ill-doing on my part and my life is essentially over.

Not sure why the downvotes either. I have personally witnessed a man in the office be fired for "sexual harassment" shortly after escalating an accounting audit issue. It is the easiest corporate weapon to use, and the default assumption is you are guilty. Even easier against awkward men who people love to hate.

I didn't downvote you, but your post is hyperbolic and creates barriers for women out of unrealized, unrealistic fear. In particular:

> One accusation of ill-doing on my part and my life is essentially over.

This flies in the face of of...well, just about everything, in most industrialized countries. Serial sexual harassers get away with it for a long time and men who out-and-out assault women do to; somewhere almost certainly north of 50% (NARAL says 90%) of rapes go unreported and of those something like a quarter are ever brought to trial. Being fired--maybe--doesn't make your life "essentially over", and (in the US and the parts of Europe I'm familiar with) there's nothing that can be disclosed to a future employer to say "hey, that dude's a creep" without opening the former employer up to potential danger.

And to be crystal clear, everything I just said is a bug, not a feature. Sexual predators in the workplace, most of whom are male, by and large get away with it. It's why the last couple weeks of dudes not getting away with it are so notable. Fearing the same is temporarily-embarrassed-millionaire silliness projected into a new realm, nothing more.

I get what you're saying. There are many examples of people doing shitty things and getting away with it; at the same time I work in Sweden; a country that has quite some sensitivity regarding what constitutes rape (strongly suggestive comments are legally rape).

It _might_ slide off me if someone accused me of something. But I really wouldn't put that to the test; at the same time. If you can mitigate the risk then why wouldn't you?

And again, the female perspective (that I could be abusive, hurtful or a rapist) is certainly enough to dissuade "alone time" for them, _especially_ if I, as a man, were able to get away with things like you were suggesting.

> And again, the female perspective (that I could be abusive, hurtful or a rapist) is certainly enough to dissuade "alone time" for them

On this, I think you and I are in agreement. I've never managed women (had women managers, though), and thinking through how to square that circle is something that I'd probably want to talk to my director about. Not because of fear of consequences for me, but to provide the best environment for my coworkers.

Maybe the feminists will realize how much indirect damage this policy of fear creates. Making women so self conscious and class-struggle conscious is affecting good men and making them change their attitude in a way. Suspecting all men of being potential rapists is not a good way to build communication and work/learn together.

Would you please stop posting ideological battle comments to HN? This is not the kind of discussion we want here.

> not the kind of discussion we want here

Apparently you are an admin here. Sorry, I didn't realize you were representing me as well. I'll make sure to avoid the topic from now on, it doesn't rime with PC. I'll make sure to only debate in agreement.

It's not about choosing $ideology1 over $ideology2, it's about trying to avoid the entire genre of internet flamewar. Trying and failing, but perhaps we can fail better.

Yep. I took some time and cooled off. Incidentally I saw you defending me from a flaming comment just one day before, while inspecting my history. So I guess it's fair because it applies to everyone. Keep up the good work and you won't have to worry from me any more.

I know it's not polite to ask about downvotes on HN but I'm also unsure why you where so quickly downvoted. I personally don't feel the same way you do, but I also don't think you said anything rude or outlandish.

As a small counter to your post though, I've read some articles recently talking about the importance of general social networking and one on one mentoring in some professions with the point being made that if men in power in these professions adopt a stance of not being alone with women, this could impact women's ability to progress professionally compared to their male peers. I think it's important that if you adopt such a stance, and are in a position of power, that you find ways to mitigate the unintended effect it may have on women.

I actually have a male friend who was accused of harassment by a female subordinate that was later decided in his favor. Being gay, happily married, and from what I know of him a very good employee and boss, surely helped his case. After this incident he stopped all outside of work one on one meetings, but he did so with both men and women so no one is adversely impacted by his choice.

Good response; I'm glad it worked out for your friend.

I would agree that it might be a disadvantage for women, but conversely I would just make an effort to ensure there was _someone_ else with us, male or female. So instead of drinks 1:1 outside work, or a 1:1 meeting, It would instead be three people which mitigates both parties liability.

I am a senior engineer, not a manager, but if I were a manager one on ones would be necessary, I would attempt to have HR in each 1:1 as an ass-saving measure anyway.

But then again, I believe I would be a poor manager so I don't wish it on anybody.

I think a policy of having more than one person present in these kinds of meetings, especially if they are off site or after working hours, is certainly a good way to mitigate any risk as well as ensure everyone is still receiving the support or mentorship they need.

As an aside, it's always nice to hear someone who recognizes they aren't a good fit to be a manager. I'm not sure I would be good at it either but it seems that even people who very obviously don't have the personality for it tend to jump at the opportunity.

What if both parties collude against you? Then you're in even more trouble. I don't get this paranoia against mixed gender one on one meetings at work. You're truly paranoid. I hope this is only a problem in the US. I have never heard of it in Germany or Europe. Do you really have an Anstandswauwau (chaperon) standing by? I would feel very weird participating only because a man and a woman cannot be trusted to behave professionally in a work environment.

Much less damage scope. Individuals can be vindictive sometimes. especially if they feel slighted, and have easy opportunity. It's generally curbed if they know they won't get away with petty revenge.

I speak from experience from being around vindictive people.

"I am a senior engineer, not a manager, but if I were a manager one on ones would be necessary, I would attempt to have HR in each 1:1 as an ass-saving measure anyway."

That doesn't sound realistic, for a couple of reasons:

1. 1:1 meetings between a manager and their staff happen on a regular basis, e.g., weekly. If HR had to attend each of these meetings, they'd never get their own work done. (HR's job is to cover the company's ass, not yours.)

2. If your employee walks into your office for a 1:1 meeting and finds someone from HR there, they'll freak out because they'll think they're about to be fired. (That's a typical situation where managers call HR for backup.)

chilling effect: completed.

> Remind me never to air my concerns in public again.

If losing a couple of imaginary internet points is all it takes to retract your comments... how strongly do you hold those opinions in the first place?

Downvotes just mean disagreement. If more people disagree than agree with you, well, welcome to the ghosted text. But so what? It just means that your opinion is a minority opinion amongst the people who cared enough to click one way or the other.

I use downvotes to signify that content was off-topic or against the site guidelines. I am guilty of upvoting due to agreement or if someone put a lot of effort into a articulate response.

But. While I might be a minority with these beliefs, shouldn't people be offering me counter-arguments instead of downvoting? It feels bad to not have a dialog. "You're wrong imo" is not a very useful reply; and that's all you get with downvotes.

Flagging is for when things are against site guidelines. Downvotes just mean disagreement; it's been that way since forever, and pg has stated that downvotes-for-disagreeing is fine on HN. They're just imaginary internet points anyway.

The stupid thing is that it just takes one person disagreeing in order to grey out your text - that's an HN fault, not a human fault.

> shouldn't people be offering me counter-arguments instead of downvoting?

Probably, but there's a lot of things people should be doing which they don't do.

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