The irony is, such delusional behaviour does nothing but foster more doubt and double standards. If I were Hank, I would react exactly as he wrote:
> I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life?
> “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”
Then enough people get cautious like that, and eventually we have people complaining about discrimination because groups of guys will suddenly get quiet when a woman enters earshot, and they act somewhat uncomfortable. "Why can't they just treat us like equals?"
I'm starting to believe that you can't really please everybody's sense of what is fair and equality in cases like this.
Such abuses do not foster equality, they validate discrimination. When you make a lot of people afraid of your group, they won't suddenly start being nice to you. They will start to hate you.
It was visible in case of the wave of antisemitism in Europe. People weren't hating Jews because the Jews went around demanding equality and talking about "misoabrachamism". They were hating Jews because overarching narrative was that they're the cause of evil, they're out there to get you economically, to take over the world, etc. etd. Being afrad breeds hate.
> I asked Hank if he found himself behaving differently since the incident. Had it altered how he lived his life?
> “I distance myself from female developers a little bit now,” he replied. “I’m not as friendly. There’s humour, but it’s very mundane. You just don’t know. I can’t afford another Donglegate.”