[mindstab]

Too bad.

Programing or any place in the world isn't some special place for poorly socialized men to hang out and ... what... hide? You know what would be good? Learning social rules and improving. Them maybe his life wouldn't suck and he could get a date. And you know what would help that? Being forced into social situations with women and being slapped when he steps out of line.

If you have a puppy and it pees on the floor, you don't feel sorry for it and lock it in the house so it can pee on the floor forever, you train it not to.

If we "just give up" on these men and leave them alone they will be miserable forever. If they are forced to learn (at a later age, you know what, all the rest of us learned this a long time ago) they maybe they can get on with their lives and not be miserable.

[yelsgib]

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if everyone was just totally psychologically normal? I bet everyone can just fix everything that's wrong with themselves. Everyone has a surplus of love in their life available to help them overcome their problems.

Men are not puppies, asshole.

[eropple]

Most of the time, there are many shades of gray on an issue. To my mind, this is not one. At my employer, our (not small) engineering department is probably around 10% female. I'm trying to think of anyone in the engineering department that would be so catastrophically unaware as to think comments like that to a female co-worker would be even remotely acceptable. I literally-literally can't fathom it, and I can't even conceive of working with such a person.

You're right: men are not puppies. They're human beings who are capable of owning their actions and changing their behavior if it is unacceptable. I would also say that someone so fundamentally damaged as to be unable to restrain sexist or racist behaviors is not a valuable employee regardless of technical skill or contribution--but unable is not the same thing as unwilling, and I have a hunch that those who are actually "unable" are few.

[beedogs]

So you're saying that anyone who makes misogynist remarks at work has some sort of "mental issue", and that because of this we should just let it slide, or at least be sympathetic?

Give me a fucking break.

Calling out negative behavior tends to be very effective.

[burgerbrain]

If you want to treat the symptoms, then by all means villianize the perpetrators.

If however you are interested in treating the cause, then I suggest you listen to what yelsgib has to say.

[yelsgib]

No. I am not saying that.

I'm saying that in this particular case a lot of the "negative behavior" stems from extreme internal pressures.

[eropple]

It's not the author's job to serve as a target for those negative behaviors. The responsibility lies with those whose behavior is unacceptable to find a way to operate, for lack of a better phrase, within expected parameters.

[beedogs]

And it isn't even difficult to do so, most of the time! Everyone has some personality traits they could stand to work on; those that don't will look for any excuse they can find to justify their continued poor behavior.