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by camgunz 4128 days ago
Encouraging women to come forward and supporting them when they do is one thing. Arguing implicitly (not that you're doing this, but grandparents are) that women bear any responsibility for workplace harassment because they're not vocal enough is victim blaming.

It's also not strictly necessary for women to report harassment in order to fight against it. Men can create a culture where harassment is unacceptable. Instead of joking about how hot Sasha Grey is, or how you want to fork a repo with a big dongle, we can talk about how fucked up it is that women are constantly groped and belittled. We can look for patterns of violent, misogynistic behavior in our peers and call them out on it. If we ourselves see harassment or sexism happening, we can step in appropriately. We can take women seriously when they do report it (something like 1% of rape accusations are false, for example). Harassment occurs because men have the power in society, and it's therefore incumbent on us to use that power to stop it.

Many men are good at this, but many more deny that there's even a problem. This thread is great evidence. Take a look at which comments are grey and which ones are still black; it's pretty clear how SV thinks about these issues. If you need more proof, find an Ellen Pao thread, same story there.