[sverige]

Accusations of sexual harassment are commonplace at many work places. False accusations are disturbingly common. Don't ask me if you don't believe me -- it's obvious already that you don't anyway.

Rather, go make friends with someone who works in HR at a large company that employs lots of men and women. For this experiment, best not to try to befriend someone at your workplace. They may be hesitant to speak freely, since it could come back on them. HR people are nothing if not close-mouthed. At least the ones who last long enough to have good stories.

But lest you accuse me of dodging the question, I'll say that my personal favorite story is the woman who accused me of sexual harassment because I refused to remove a bad quality score from her record. (This was a call center, quality scores were only removed in very narrow circumstances.) She was three levels below me on the org chart.

I spoke to her exactly twice, in public, with several witnesses. She asked me to remove the score. I went back to my office, reviewed the call, and went back to let her know the score would not be removed. I was the final authority in any appeal of quality scores.

A week later I was informed by HR that she had accused me of sexual harassment. It turns out that she also contacted the FBI about me. Not even kidding.

But you might think that was a good idea. Hell, I might be a Russian bot sowing discord to affect the midterm elections and hasten the decline of America. I mean, I don't meet alone with women! Clearly that's un-American!

[harryh]

If you are intentionally treating men and women differently in a way that "probably hindered the careers of some of the women who were my direct and indirect reports" then it's not only un-American but it's also illegal discrimination.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

[dang]

Please don't perpetuate flamewars.

[tptacek]

I get that we're smushed pretty far into the right margin on this thread (I didn't realize that before, since I got here by following Rayiner comments), and I get that there's a distinction between "you should be ashamed of yourself" and "here's what's problematic about what you said", but this is not a random pointless thread; I can give you links to multiple other times people on HN have implied that men shouldn't meet privately with women, or even that they should avoid hiring them because they won't be able to meet privately with them, and the people saying that should be ashamed of themselves (and should also probably talk to an employment lawyer).

I'll back off just like everyone else will now that you've stepped in, but there aren't really two sides to this issue; someone said something problematic, and other people responded, perhaps heatedly but not unexpectedly or gratuitously so.

[dang]

It's true; I've seen those threads as well. And I don't disagree on the fundamentals. But people can and need to respond to problematic comments without getting aggressive—for the sake of the community, if not for the person being attacked. Otherwise we end up with a cage match. I know you know this, but perhaps the explanation is helpful to others.

Fortunately most of the responses did just that (i.e. responded cogently without being aggressive) and were the more effective for it.

[sverige]

I treated the men exactly the same way. It's not illegal discrimination to manage people without having 1:1s with them. It's not illegal discrimination to manage people in such a way as to eliminate any suggestion that you might have sexually harassed them. And it is not illegal discrimination if managing that way has a side effect of possibly not providing every opportunity to develop an individual.

That is what I was hoping to discuss: how some of the side effects of MeToo might actually be detrimental to actual working women, and what strategies might be used to change that outcome.

Instead, that comment only opened the door for a bunch of posturing and virtue signaling so that the wider audience knows without a doubt that those who reply are nothing at all like this sexist commenter.

I've explained further what I meant in another comment in this thread and it would be very tiresome to repeat it.

It is worth repeating, however, that your default response is to attempt to shame me, like other commenters here. Why can none of you provide a substantive response to my original comment? Do you really think all women are virtuous all the time, and all men are weak slaves to their sexual impulses so it must be true if they're accused?

Nowhere have I defended anyone who sexually harasses employees. (We haven't even touched the possibility that men can be victims of sexual harassment, but I don't have any faith that would be productive in this forum.)

No, I merely shared a strategy that was successful and legal, but I have been treated as if I were hitting on the women who worked for me and using them for my personal pleasure. I'm embarrassed for you, but I need to point out that that is the exact opposite of what I have done at work for the past thirty years. I have almost certainly furthered the careers of more women than all my detractors in this thread combined. Yet I stand accused, and that is enough to convict.

So which is it? Are all managers legally obligated to do everything in their power to ensure that women receive not just the same exact management that the men on the team receive, but also additional coaching that could be interpreted by certain unthinking people as sexual harassment if a woman makes an accusation? Because men have all the power and deserve to be brought down a peg or two, evidence and due process be damned? And besides no woman would ever ever ever make a false accusations, because they're not even able to do so if they wanted to, which they never would because they're all pure as the driven snow and anyway none of them would ever do such a thing, why are you blaming the victim anyway, you probably harass them all day and all of the night, you sexist pig?

Or could it be that I'm not the only one who has devised a strategy to avoid being torpedoed by a sexual harassment claim, but in the only one foolish enough to talk about it? Ah well, better to sweep any discussion like that under the rug, everyone else is at least as virtuous as the other loud public proclaimers of the correct philosophy. Move along, nothing to see here, sure hope China catches up to us in this category of virtuous living, hope this guys company fails, he's obviously a creep, I would never do anything like that nor do I know anyone who would, can't believe this guy discriminates, hope he gets sued and dies penniless, glad I'm not him.

You should be ashamed of yourselves for lacking the ability to reason without resorting to emotional name-calling and useless shaming tactics.

[dang]

This discussion stopped being viable a long time ago and you've done the most to drag the thread down. Please stop now.