The thing is, the world is full of people who are abusive or terrible when in private or one-on-one, yet adhere to social norms when in a group. Every woman I know who has reported her rapist or her harasser has had this said to her in some variation--it couldn't happen here, because we're not like that. It doesn't work that way.

I've had conversations with male friends about this that eventually boiled down to, "well, I just don't want to think the people I know and like could be capable of that." Yeah, imagine how much we hate it.

Obviously not, and that is a reading in such bad faith that it veers into trolling. For anyone reading who is not trolling: the point is that like most other people who break the social rules in some way, abusers, harassers, and yes, rapists, are often very good at publicly performing adherence to social norms while deviating from them in private. Nor do they personally identify as abusers, harassers, rapists--even if they might acknowledge the behavior that defines them as such. This isn't a new phenomenon.

Would you grant us access to all your personal email, social networks, and websearch history so that we may verify that you have not broken any social rules?

That is, most of us, in some way, behave differently in our private lives vs our professional lives.

Alas, you don't know what will happen until it does happen.

It could be as simple as "Wow, Joe reported Bob for sexual harassment, but Bob didn't do anything wrong - I was there. Now I have to be extra-careful around Joe to avoid getting reported myself!"

And there you go - Joe is now suffering from "retaliation" and being treated special for speaking up.

That is already happening in many professional contexts though - and without Joe ever having to speak up about anything.

Male professors avoid being alone with female students. Male colleagues refuse to work with or to a lesser extent, refuse to be friendly on any sort of casual level with female colleagues entirely just because of the small risk that an accusation could cost them their job/career. This fear actively harms both genders.

It is. I even did it briefly a few times when claims were brought against me until things were sorted out. In one example, an attractive and persuasive woman sent a shit-storm of rumors and claims my way through various parties that I quickly traced to her. Fortunately, the people (including women) who knew me were able to spot that they were bogus since the good and bad of my style is well-known. Genuineness occasionally pays off I guess. And the claims didn't fit it.

Further investigation confirmed my counter-claims that she wanted my job and the next promotion after it. Instead of outperforming me, she decided to simultaneously create situations where I looked unfit and sexist with rumors and a clique of buddies backing it up. They'd benefit if she was promoted. She never got fired like the guys do in similar situations in that company but did back-off and quit after upward-movement was cut off.

I agree it harms both genders. Work was never fun during any of these situations as people started practicing self-censorship. Not just me or the men. It's why I fight such non-sense and Codes of Conduct that facilitate it, too. Fortunately, each event was taken care of, people became themselves again, and work went back to productive and fun. Cuz real people are more interesting than fake ones. :)

As a professional educator (at many different levels -- a college TA, a museum educator with K-12 programs, and working in an elementary school) the expectation I was given was to never be alone in a place that isn't publicly visible with any student under the age of 18, of any gender, ever. With students over the age of 18, there was still a strong expectation to keep student-teacher interactions semi-public. (I am male, but female instructors were given the same expectation at every stage.)

It's a smart move given what I've seen. The sad thing is that some of the best innovators started with one-on-one instruction from teachers that recognized their potential. Many people are also private or in a situation where their social circumstances might make them be more private about the research/project than usual.

So, such policies reduce liability but probably have a cost to society. I thought about surveillance cameras as a solution. Then, a headline popped into mind: "voyeuristic professor discovered to have..." Just can't win when the threat is peoples' imagination and desire to find a negative. :)

and you know why that is? nothing on the OPs post reveals a clear infringement or harassment IMO.

MILF is borderline a bad way to talk to someone, yet, everyone here is saying: FIRE HIM or FIRE THEM.

It would be harassment if he continued after she said stop, it would be harassment if he groped her, it would be harassment if he talked clearly obscenely about her, MILF is borderline, and yet, everyone is saying, FIRE HIM.

Guys, just give the benefit of the doubt, make it a clear statement that you on the workplace are clearly against any kind of advance that might happen between employees, and that's it.

Asking someone on a date that isn't interested in you is harassment. Calling someone a MILF is definitely harassment. Do you seriously think telling someone in a professional setting that they're a mother you'd like to f--- is not harassment? When asking someone on a date that isn't interested in you is?

Read your HR policies - if you don't, I suspect you'll be in trouble like this someday, based on your attitude towards this.

> Asking someone on a date that isn't interested in you is harassment.

Asking someone on a date when it is apparent that they aren't interested is harassment.

"Asking someone on a date when it is apparent that they aren't interested is harassment."

> Having autism is harassment.

Well, yeah. If you don't fit the standard of "reasonable person", you're going to violate normal standards, and going to be judged harshly for it unless you put a lot of effort in.

> Asking someone on a date that isn't interested in you is harassment.

How would you know if you don't ask?

>Asking someone on a date that isn't interested in you is harassment.

Wow. No, it's not. Not for normal people, anyway.

Normal person A: "Hey, what do you say you and I have dinner one of these nights."

Normal person B: "Thanks, but no." [TOTALLY OPTIONAL: "I don't think my girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband/... would like that."/"I have a strict no-relationships-with-coworkers/vendors/customers/people-I-meet-in-the-gym/... policy."/"That's very kind of you but I'm afraid I'm not interested."/"Please don't ask again and we shall never speak of this."]

Normal person A: "No problem! So, about that [situation-appropriate topic of discussion..]"

A asked B on a date. B was not interested. No harassment was involved.

To be very clear, the above dialogue could have gone (and unfortunately all too often does go) differently. Had A persisted after a clear refusal, that could very easily veer into the territory of harassment. Furthermore (and I know this will be more controversial), B could have messed the above dialogue up too, for example by failing to give a clear and unambiguous "no." Does this place a certain burden on B merely as a consequence of A's unrequited interest? Yes, but part of being an adult is being able to say "no" to reasonable requests from other adults.

Strive be a normal person like A and B and it should be possible to ask someone on a date, or be asked on a date, regardless of context without fear or discomfiture. (Note: situations of extreme power imbalance, e.g. professor/student, boss/subordinate, need to be navigated with extreme care. Normal people refrain entirely, in such situations, from romantic overtures unless and until the mutual interest (it does happen sometimes) is blindingly obvious, and they then scrupulously avoid even the appearance of impropriety, e.g. by waiting until the end of the term, or transferring to a different department, or something.)

>Calling someone a MILF is definitely harassment.

I'm not going to argue there. It's extremely offensive, at the very least. Normal people don't address other normal people, with whom they don't have an intimate relationship, using sexual terms.

For what it's worth, it sounds to me like the female employee in this case was a model Normal Person ("sure as friends in work context" is about as unambiguous as you can get!). If the sum total of the communication had been

A: Could we hang out? B: Sure, as friends in a work context A: May I tell you a secret? B: No, sorry.

I would regard A as a Normal Person as well, and the dialogue as innocuous. But I'm assuming A was inappropriately persistent/insistent (not to mention the MILF part, which is inappropriate in itself) and the dialogue, no doubt, goes on from there. So, yes, fire his ass.

Finally somebody has said it.

I already don't talk to women in tech conferences. Ok I'll use a different axis. The side effect of working hard on promoting women in tech and tracking harassement is prejudices on the innocent men. As a bystander I want to be given the confidence that men who are fired are guilty. I have seen 2 cases of termination of males, I'm the opposite of convinced. I've also seen more women being promoted than men. I've also seen the upgrade of codes of conduct in conferences from "the law" to "the law + we'll beat harassement". There is a lot of prejudice that men are violent, less smart and worse at communication than women. So of course companies and conferences must act on both harassement and increasing women-in-tech; but as a society we must also find a way to prove to males that innocent good-will ones are safe.

As for me, for the moment I'm bitter against the promotion game, I've founded my own company and I'm voting against any progress of women.

> I've founded my own company and I'm voting against any progress of women.

I'm not sure you're going to establish a moral high ground by explicitly opposing the progress of equality... I understand you have concerns and you may feel you've been wronged by "gender aware" policies/attitudes, but I don't think it's very controversial to say that women are historically disadvantaged and we need to work that out in some way, however that may be.

That's the opposite of what we want to happen? It's important to prove males that they aren't discriminated when we act on women's problems.

why do you think that it is an inappropriate advance? what is a proper one? I have no info to sustain it being inappropriate other than the OP saying that he was upset by it. And he could be upset by a number of reasons.

Inappropriate would be groping, or very obscene talk, and especially those or continue hitting on someone after she said stop. MILF is borderline.

OP might be upset for other reasons as well.. OP, just consider that.

By calling her a MILF he just said he wanted to have sex with her.

That's obscene and thats's harrassment.