Imagine, just for a moment that it was your boss harassing you. They have the power to fire you, or make your life hell.

Now imagine that they are physically stronger than you. There is a high likelihood of them being able to over-power you.

Now imagine you live in a culture where rape cases are rarely prosecuted and, when they are, rarely successful.

Now imagine that you also live in a culture which refuses to condemn the few men which are convicted.

Now imagine that, even if your physically stronger boss is successfully convicted of raping you - there will still be a section of people who think that you were, somehow, asking for it.

Wouldn't you take that seriously?

If all those things were true, an HR department might not be able to help you in any case. An HR department doesn't make you physically stronger. They do not have control over the culture in general, and do not prosecute rape cases. They do not control the minds of people that may think you were asking for it.

The stereotypes associated with being a woman in tech trend towards the negative. That means that having other people signal that they see you primarily as a woman first instead of an engineer can be uncomfortable in a professional environment, even when the other person isn't bringing up those negative stereotypes themselves and may even in fact be complimenting your qualities as a woman. Those negative stereotypes exist and people are aware of them, so being signaled that your colleagues are seeing you as a woman first instead of an engineer feels like people are perceiving you in certain ways before they even get to know you and your work.

Basically, if on Day One of a new job your boss says, "I am viewing you as a woman rather than an engineer," given the negative stereotypes about women in tech, it adds a lot more discomfort, anxiety, and frustration about how others are perceiving you in the workplace than an awkward proposition would in a non-professional context.

That said, I think your question implies this is a male/female thing when really it's probably more of a you/me thing. Plenty of guys would also not be okay with being propositioned for sex on the first day by a female manager that they directly report to and who is responsible for their performance reviews.

It _is_ a personality trait that you are talking about alright --- your personality trait, that is. So, thanks for sharing your views, patricius.

Your comment pretty much sums up the prevailing misogynist attitude that gives rise to the kind of workplace culture Susan Fowler is describing.

> if that didn't help, I might contact her husband as a retaliation

I honestly can't believe you wrote that. If it was an exact replica of the scenario with the genders reversed, the husband probably wouldn't mind anyway (well, maybe would be bothered by the inappropriateness of it, but open relationships are open relationships and you can't assume the husband would think that it was a bad thing because you don't know what his idea of relationship ethics is), but your response to workplace harrassment would be to harrass their spouse instead? Not to go through HR? On a purely practical level, can you imagine working on that person's team after you'd done something like that?

> Is it a female-thing to take these sort of situations so seriously, or maybe a personality trait?

Okay. Imagine that you turn up somewhere to work. You've got your tech skills and your experience and you're all ready to go. Then your manager's initial interactions with you makes it quite clear that she views you as a prospective sexual partner. She's not got to know you first, you've not had time to demonstrate your professional capabilities to her, she's just propositioning you out of the blue. Would you really not find this problematic?

Please bear in mind, being female in US and British culture can be pretty unpleasant at times, with a continued attitude held by a lot of men that it's perfectly okay to proposition strangers in the street in loud voices, or shout suggestive comments at them, or demand "just a smile, love" or a conversation like it's their right to have a conversation with you, or that you _owe_ them a conversation. Imagine you're a woman in the tech industry, where women are chronically under-represented.

For you or me, as men, we might find such an incident as this slightly novel and interesting. If we've spent our _entire lives_ dealing with unwanted and unsolicited sexual advances and comments and innuendo, with media representations of our gender as little more than objects of male desire, and then we get such comments, can't you imagine that we might just feel a _little bit fed up_?

FTR I'm a gay white cisgender male living in England, so I'm still doing this on 'easy mode'. I've encountered almost zero homophobic behaviour in the workplace, for which I'm very grateful. But I've also always worked in companies which made explicit statements about supporting equality and diversity, and in a country in which it was made illegal before I started my professional life to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality. I've not had to test that legislation, but at least it is there, and we also don't have at-will employment.

> but your response to workplace harrassment would be to harrass their spouse instead?

Not as a first resort of course. But if you involve HR, you might get the 'harassing' person fired and take away his/her livelihood, even though that person might be very productive and an important asset to the company. Just because a number of people were offended. It wasn't like he was violent towards them or anything according to the story.

> Please bear in mind, being female in US and British culture can be pretty unpleasant at times, with a continued attitude held by a lot of men that it's perfectly okay to proposition strangers in the street in loud voices, or shout suggestive comments at them, or demand "just a smile, love" or a conversation like it's their right to have a conversation with you, or that you _owe_ them a conversation. Imagine you're a woman in the tech industry, where women are chronically under-represented.

Yeah, but what are you going to do about that? Some women and men will be flattered by such remarks by strangers, some won't. We have very different sensibilities.

How will you solve the underrepresentation of women in tech? By forcing more women to take jobs they may not be interested in? By forcing companies to hire more women because 'gender diversity'?

> For you or me, as men, we might find such an incident as this slightly novel and interesting. If we've spent our _entire lives_ dealing with unwanted and unsolicited sexual advances and comments and innuendo, with media representations of our gender as little more than objects of male desire, and then we get such comments, can't you imagine that we might just feel a _little bit fed up_?

But is that really the case? Do media generally portrait women the way you describe? Not in my experience. Do women go through life fighting every day dealing with these advances and comments? Not that I've heard from my female friends.

> How will you solve the underrepresentation of women in tech? By forcing more women to take jobs they may not be interested in? By forcing companies to hire more women because 'gender diversity'?

So...

You're opposed to involving the part of the business tasked with stopping inappropriate behavior because that might result in accountability for the inappropriate behavior.

You're reframing a manager propositioning a new hire for sex as people being "offended".

You're suggesting that because there was no actual violence, management shouldn't be alerted.

And you're only ideas of how to solve the underrepresentation of women in tech is to force women into the jobs or force companies to hire more women.

I suspect you know your suggestions are meant to be straw men, but just in case, the correct answer to your question is to stop harassment of female employees. Stop dismissing the harassment of female employees as them simply being offended. Stop insisting management shouldn't be alerted to harassment because you're worried that they might do something about it.

My small part in solving the underrepresentation of women in tech is going to to be to support accountability for inappropriate sexual advances towards subordinates.

> Do women go through life fighting every day dealing with these advances and comments? Not that I've heard from my female friends.

And you fully intend to disregard all the women saying they do?