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Comment by MarkTee | Hacker News Reader

He specifically mentions "no subtle sexism via public debate" but then he goes on to do just that near the end of the article.

> women usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because men aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection.

Not sure I agree that males are likely to act negatively; anecdotally I'd say it's about equal.

> Men, plus women, plus alcohol is a great recipe for college. [...] But as a safe work environment for women? Not so much.

Both sexes are taken advantage of and subject to unsafe environments while drinking.

I think that the actual recommendations he's made (no dating/drinking at work) have merit, but they could have been supported better.

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You're right. Part of the problem here is that the only people really talking about fairness, office conduct or working conditions in the industry are people coming from a feminist perspective, which leads people to think that these are "women's issues" rather than more general ones. Plenty of men in the industry are taken advantage of, but we haven't worked out how to talk about this properly yet. Likewise, most of the recommendations about treating people decently and standing up against abuse of power would benefit men too. How many men want to work in toxic environments? I'd imagine it's very few.

For my part I'd rather see a bit more discussion about what good workplaces look like, and what might be best practices, and a bit less cod psychology and gender mysticism.

I think in general, if reversing the comparison makes you feel uneasy, it's probably inappropriate both ways and best left unsaid.

"Men usually get the rough end of this deal [office breakups], too, because women aren't good at handling the inevitable rejection."

You couldn't pay me enough to tweet that.

The problem is that (in anecdotal experience) men and women simply handle it differently - men might get angry, offensive, even aggressive, while women might cry, gossip and manipulate. Different people might evaluate the negative effect of different behaviours differently, but that doesn't mean that any sex is handling rejection any better.

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