[burkaman]

I wrote this in another comment somewhere, but do you think her coworkers were only like this in casual conversations and social situations, and treated her as a complete equal professionally? Or do you think their attitudes might have affected how they viewed her work, what she was assigned, her opportunities for advancement, etc.

It doesn't matter how "fun" you are when people who have power over you are doing this. It's not about being offended, it's about being unequal.

[tickthokk]

Obviously if her work was being assigned differently, or having her work heavily scrutinized because of it, then they're in the wrong.

The unequal thing is interesting though.

Do you think it's the first time any of them made a joke about their junk to co-workers? Or jokingly asked about call girls to each other?

Changing their behavior, for one person, would be special treatment. And not only that, pandering. By speaking that way, they _were_ treating her as equal.

I think that point is lost in this.

[burkaman]

It doesn't matter if they make these jokes to their coworkers. Here's a very contrived analogy: Imagine I'm 6 feet tall, standing in front of someone 4 feet tall, and I punch the air in front of me for some reason. No harm done, the guy's short so I don't hit him. Now imagine I'm standing in front of my new 6 feet tall coworker, and I do the same thing, but I hit him in the face because he's my height.

Should I have changed my behavior just for this guy? Isn't that pandering, shouldn't he have to adjust to my behavior if everyone else is ok with it?

No, I should have taken into account the obvious fact that my actions would hurt him, even though nobody else minds. Not caring about that makes me an asshole.

In the case of the blog post, it should be abundantly obvious that someone who posts an article about sexism in the work place will not think "we don't give a fuck" and "just get over yourself" is funny. Not caring about that makes them assholes, and the fact that they didn't respect her at all in this scenario means they probably don't respect her in general.

And while "Move over, I need room for my big dick" is dumb in any context, it is common sense that it might be received especially poorly by a woman you don't know in an overwhelmingly male-dominated environment, and not caring about that is grossly disrespectful.

Treating people equally is not the same as treating them as equals. And treating people equally is not something to aspire to; it's trivially easy to come up with scenarios where equal treatment produces unequal results.