So, have you ever worked in a modern mixed workplace?
You bloody well treat women differently. Hands off matey, nothing "inappropriate". Like I said, they are a protected class, ignore this to your great sorrow.
I know I sound cynical in these comments, but I'm not really. I'm just pissed off at commentors like Mz, who want to have their cake and eat it too. Most (highly intelligent) female friends of mine are well aware of the balance of power in our society, and tweak their behaviour accordingly, as do I.
Yeah yeah, you are such a professional. Never touching a colleague. Never making a joke. Never presuming to try to start a friendship. Never making a comment on personal appearance. Etc, etc, etc.
I suppose you'll never experience any female trouble either, at work or anywhere else.
Why shouldn't they? Because one woman protests? Tons of other women protest if you DO treat them differently. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation.
Try treating women exactly like men and see how far you will go...
The problem is that you're making a decision about someone based on a single obviously visible facet of them, rather than based on _them_.
If you treat "men" one way and "women" a different way, then that is a problem, because you're treating them like a homogenous block, rather than individuals.
I don't want to be snarky, but can you please not insult our intelligence?
Of course we want to behave towards individuals based solely on their individual merits. We cannot, for various reasons, some of which are alluded to in the previous posts.
I'm sorry, you've questioned my experience, sworn at me, and used patronising language, but now I'm insulting your intelligence because I didn't assume you had good intentions?
It's great to know you want to treat women as individuals, but it's not actually clear what's stopping you, except for the fact that you have to keep your "hands off" and aren't allowed to act inappropriately.
"""The problem is that you're making a decision about someone based on a single obviously visible facet of them, rather than based on _them_."""
And the problem is, again?
Until I get to know _them_ (and that is something I rarely get to do, regarding the random people I respond to on HN comment threads) I can only make the decision based on whatever obviously visible facet of them I have.
"""If you treat "men" one way and "women" a different way, then that is a problem, because you're treating them like a homogenous block, rather than individuals."""
I don't treat people I don't know as individuals.
It's an evolutionary thing, we progressed by matching patterns and assigning things to GENERAL categories. Treating things individually comes much later. Here's how Nietchze puts it in his"JOYFUL WISDOM" book:
= = = = =
Where has logic originated in men's heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally lave been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we!
Whoever, for example, could not discern the " like " often enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality.
The preponderating inclination, however, to deal with the similar as if the equal — an illogical inclination, for there is nothing equal in itself — first created the whole basis of logic. It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to
be overlooked, and remain unperceived ; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux."
Previous problem: Women are prejudiced against because they are not men
<< begin 40-year positive discrimination campaign >>
New problem: Women are treated with kid gloves in any "men's forum" they deign to enter
I say again, which problem? Identify away because I am not seeing anything other than the natural outcome of a deliberate policy.