[Mythanar]

What you think is harassing might quite well disagree with target female view of what harassing is, complicated by the fact that HR department might disagree with you both. And should that whole thing become public, you'll be judged by the entire office, with the entire spectrum of views on what harassment is.

Personally, as a male, you have absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to lose. The most rational thing is to not engage at all.

[lilactown]

> as a male, you have absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to lose.

Having friendly, healthy relationships with your colleagues isn't valuable? Or just with the ones who are women?

Some of my best friendships/allies/contacts have been women who I worked with. I'm very thankful for the opportunities they have provided me and the value they add to my life.

The fact that you see /zero/ value in having genuine connections with women has me even more worried than the fact that the OP was afraid of harassing someone accidentally.

[xcvbxzas]

I think you are seeing a more extreme position than they were taking.

It's not that there isn't value in having friendly relationships with your colleagues no matter their gender. The issue comes up in comparing the value of a specific relationship with the potential costs of it (or attempting to create it).

Right or wrong, befriending a male colleague has virtually zero risk. The chances of anything happening to severely damage your career or social standing are essentially nil. Even in a severe situation, there isn't much you can do to cause a problem without acting in a pretty horrible way that's also documented. There just isn't much you can do there to really provoke a highly emotional reaction or scare HR.

The same cannot be said of attempting a relationship with a woman. People are very sensitive about sexual harassment and HR wants absolutely nothing to do with it. The exact lines for sexual harassment are necessarily a bit blurry. Even if they existed, continually just barely not crossing them would seem like harassment to me.

Is the friendly relationship with a woman coworker so much more valuable than a man that it is worth taking on additional risk? I don't think so.

I don't intend to have a particularly strong relationship with all my coworkers and I imagine most people are the same. This means I get to be choosy about which ones I engage in this way. The risk-reward ratio just doesn't seem favorable to engaging women in this way.

Now, personally speaking I have slightly more female friends than male friends, unless we're counting people I might talk to once every few years. My oldest friend, by far, is female. I would never suggest men should not be friends with women. That's insane. I'm just not sure what the incentives are for me to try to specifically befriend female coworkers.

[godshatter]

Not the OP, but is the value in having a genuine connection with a female coworker worth the potential downside? I've got 29 years in. I'm not going to bet that on reasonableness in a world like the one we live in.

[Mythanar]

> Having friendly, healthy relationships with your colleagues isn't valuable? Or just with the ones who are women?

Just with the ones who are women (from a male perspective). This specific point is because of #MeToo - this movement normalized the fact that "friendliness" and "healthiness" of a relationship is judged post-factum, sometimes years and decades post-factum, and the male perspective is rarely taken into account.

Think about it this way, even if one follows OP advice, and builds what he considers very healthy and friendly relationship, he exposes himself to (based on recent news stories, very real) risk of the relationship being second-guessed by the female, at any point in time in future, with the severe penalties resulting from mere accusations, not convictions, even if not true.