[DoreenMichele]

As a man, I'm clueless on how to help.

The single most powerful thing you can do is engage women as serious professionals.

My biggest frustration is not with the guys who want to talk to me to hit on me. It is with the countless others who will not engage me in a substantive manner for fear of it being misconstrued. They de facto leave me alone with the creeps, trolls and assholes and are, on some level, equally guilty of treating me as nothing but a vagina. It gives far too much weight to my gender and far too little to my education, skills, competence, interests and character.

Whether a man is talking to me solely in hopes of a hookup or avoiding me for fear of offending or something, he is equally guilty of treating me like the single most important thing about me, the thing that drives all social decisions, is what bits are between my legs. This is the essence of sexism.

[msie]

Whether a man is talking to me solely in hopes of a hookup or avoiding me for fear of offending or something, he is equally guilty

I have a problem with that statement.

[matte_black]

Agreed, there is no way the guilt there is equal.

[DoreenMichele]

Your statement and the one above are part of the problem, not part of the solution. My mind boggles that you are fine with arguing that your guilt is lesser, thus somehow apparently okay in your mind.

This is exactly why progress is so painfully slow. For every one man pushing a woman into the river to intentionally drown her, a thousand more stand idly by and say "Not my problem" and then worry vastly more about defending their right to do nothing than about the injustice they witness daily.

[matte_black]

If a woman wants to come talk to me as a professional, I’m all for it. I love it when women take initiative to come talk to me, and not in some creep way like people may think, but rather because it instantly makes me a lot less anxious. I can’t be readily accused of hitting on her if she came to me first.

However, I can probably count on one hand the number of times a woman has come up to me in my professional career to talk to me about anything of professional significance.

Every time I approach a woman first however, there’s always an anxiety that I’ll be perceived as a creep, trying to play a really long game of hooking up with her. I know women must think this, because I constantly hear their stories about the various ways men hit on them in nearly any situation, and there always seems to be a bit of an awkwardness that isn’t there when they approach me first.

And if the woman I approach happens to be attractive and younger than me? It looks real bad. Indeed, if someone could have any reasonable doubt that my professional conversation with a woman is anything more than platonic, I would be uncomfortable in that conversation. Men would look at this and think “Yea he’s probably trying to get with her”.

I do not get the same anxiety when talking to a woman with her husband or boyfriend, or a woman who is much older than me, or homosexual women.

The thing about standing by and saying this is “not my problem” is that it really isn’t my problem. My problem is completely different from yours, even though it’s in the same domain, and nobody helps me with it either. As a basic straight white male, I’m a dime a dozen and if I voice any kind of problem the response is to go fuck myself.

This has nothing to do with you being a woman, there are also men with problems that I do nothing for. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.

[shorttime]

Yeah, that's what I already do-do but your suggestion doesn't help with any of the situations mentioned in the linked post. The post describes interactions that are non-work related between people.

Work-wise, I have my "go-to" people when I need something done. I don't care what their gender is, I just know they've performed well in the past and get it done in time to help me make my deliverable date. Once a person demonstrates reliable performance of getting the right answer, I don't need to go to others. How does that help solve the problems mentioned in the post? Not really clear to me.

[DoreenMichele]

How does that help solve the problems mentioned in the post?

It sets an example. Examples are far more powerful than most people recognize.

Currently, if a man is talking to a woman, he is probably hitting on her. This becomes self reinforcing behavior. Women assume that men talking to them are hitting on them. Observers assume it is a personal relationship, not a professional one. Men avoid talking to women unless they are hitting on them because they don't want a problematic misunderstanding. This helps entrench sexism.

Meaty engagement as a professional breaks that expectation. If enough men will do it, good will crowd out bad.

Currently, women are overly vulnerable because they are professionally isolated. They get insufficient legitimate interest. This leaves them in a needy position. They can't easily afford to turn away the creeps if the only people talking to them are the creeps. They hold out hope that maybe this time it will be different.

If there are people they can reliably access who are taking them seriously, it gets vastly easier to walk away from the creeps. It also can help signal to the creeps (or the non creepy clueless) "This is how you talk to a female colleague."

[shorttime]

> Currently, women are overly vulnerable because they are professionally isolated. They get insufficient legitimate interest.

What do you mean by that?

[DoreenMichele]

I have enormous difficulty establishing professional connections. I have been on HN 8.5 years. I have zero strong professional ties. There are about 3 people who email occasionally.

Networking was one of the things I hoped to get here. There are men who network via HN. It has not worked for me.

I was homeless for 5.7 years. I remain dirt poor. My attempts to point out that my gender is a barrier to making strong professional connections is a root cause of my poverty have largely fallen on deaf ears for years and what minimal headway I have made is extremely recent.

One outcome related to that: I let some young punk talk to me for some weeks who was pretending to be my friend because he was basically the only person talking to me and I desperately need professional connections. Ultimately, he let me know he needed a shoulder to cry on because his marriage was falling apart.

I did the decent thing and was supportive for a time. Then he resumed sleeping with his wife, repeating things to her that I had told him in confidence and talking at me as if we were lovers, a thing I told him was absolutely a non starter.

The relationship made me uncomfortable from the start. There were a lot of weird issues with it that suddenly made sense after I learned he was married and hiding it from me.

I took a no harm, no foul position on it initially. The more I think about it, the more I feel I was used, deceived and set up. He had no plans to ever take me seriously. He withheld his age and marital status knowing he could not get close to me romantically if I did know those things.

All the uncomfortable red flag stuff got ignored by me because I have literally zero strong professional connections to anyone at all. I simply don't know what that looks like. Further, I am dirt poor. I am in very desperate need of connections and opportunities and cannot get that.

If I had plenty of professional connections, I would have never let this guy string me along and set me up to be his shoulder to cry on.

[shorttime]

Can't say I have many professional connections either, not a big fan of "networking" in general. However, the people I do consider connections are those from college and those from former groups at previous jobs. Maybe someone from another group, but it's rare. My career jobs have lasted a few years (4-6) so that has provided time to develop these relationships. I suppose it would be much more difficult in the gig economy to establish these relationships. I try to offer value or different perspectives at my jobs that nobody else can. Work hard, deliver, and if I can't... let them know ahead of time and what help is needed. I try to let my work network for me rather than being active about it. Do you have any projects you've worked on? Might be a good source of networking connections, keep up with former coworkers, coffee, lunch, referrals, etc.

[DoreenMichele]

To try to put it in a nutshell: However many professional connections you have, you are probably confident they are, in fact, professional connections and not just giving lip service to the idea until they can spring it on you that what they were really hoping for is romance.

Anyway, thanking you for engaging with me. It's been a good exchange.

Best.

[mpweiher]

> I have enormous difficulty establishing professional connections.

> I have been on HN 8.5 years.

I think I can solve that conundrum for you: HN is not the right place for looking for professional connections.

So maybe your problem with getting professional connections is looking for same where none are to be had.

Look elsewhere.

Nothing to do with gender.

[DoreenMichele]

For someone who claims to want nothing to do with me, you are talking to me an awful lot and those remarks are not exactly kind.

[mpweiher]

Maybe people don't want to interact with you because of your behavior?

If, as a man, I am basically an asshole to you, then maybe I don't want to interact with you, period.

And let's be clear: I don't know you, I don't know whether you are a robot or whatever, I just know what you wrote here. And what you wrote here makes me hope not to have to interact with you in real life.

[DoreenMichele]

Maybe people don't want to interact with you because of your behavior?

I appear to be the only woman to have ever made the leaderboard of HN (under a different handle). As far as I can tell, other women are not generally being more warmly welcomed with open arms by the community than I am.

I do everything in my power to examine my behavior and correct any defects I can find. This only goes so far because there are, in fact, larger societal forces at work.

If all women are incapable of getting the results they need, it is disingenuous to blame them as individuals and deny that society has some problem.