Still wrong. The onus is on the person with more authority, power, or privilege. There is a responsibility to educate yourself if you are in such a position (and most men are, in some way or another, in the tech industry). It's 2017, there's no excuse for being ignorant any more. If you're a "flirty" person, for example, that's fine, but you need to go the extra mile to make people feel safe. Be on the lookout for non-verbal forms of discomfort. Reign in your behavior if you are making missteps. Be vocal yourself in providing some outs or opening up a free communication channel for people to raise their concerns. If people are feeling uncomfortable but not speaking up it's not because they are bad at life, it's not because they want to feel uncomfortable, it's because they feel pressured to not speak up. You should think on that, there's a lot of depth worth exploring there.

The fact is we live in a society that is still in an extended hangover from a multi-centuries long binge of incomparable misogyny. There is a burden on those who still hold positions of privilege from that legacy to make everyone in society feel safe, wanted, and free. Do the work or it's not going to get done.

You know, the tech industry has a lot of people on the autism spectrum, and not everyone has hardware-accelerated mind modules to identify non-verbal forms of discomfort in realtime. Nor do I think that should be a hard job requirement for writing computer programs.

If people are feeling uncomfortable but not speaking up, they are going to have to come to terms with the fact that a large segment of the programmer community is going to be incapable of identifying their discomfort when interacting with them. Getting them to speak up might be a more tractable problem than trying to teach everyone to identify non-verbal subtext.

(I agree with your comment insofar as it applies to people who are capable of doing it, and I aspire to being able to interact with people so fluently.)

First, people have come to terms with this reality; in fact, only a small percentage of discomfort ever get reported regardless of reasons for the man's behavior. Normally, something rather extreme has to happen for there to be any complaint.

Second, those who find it harder to read social cues may just need to follow the rules more carefully. For example, don't try to make romantic or sexual advances towards someone who is in some way (directly or indirectly) subordinate to you.

> It's 2017, there's no excuse for being ignorant any more.

Implicit in this statement is that your view on this issue is the truth, and anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant. If you want to have a genuine discussion with people, that attitude does not invite dialogue. You're not going to change anyone's mind.

I don't agree with the sentiment that a privileged person has to do more and not equally. Yes, a privileged person has a easier job making changes, but I don't think that means a privileged person "has" to be doing more than others. It's a good deed, but not a theoretical necessity.

It took me a second read not to disagree with you. Yes, one should do all those things to the best of their ability; if you like, lump it under the "a leader is responsible for team morale".

I (and I think everyone else) is strongly disagreeing with you that your unvoiced emotions are my responsibility.

But, you're right, in that it's a chicken-and-the-egg style scenario; how do you voice the emotion that you're not comfortable voicing your emotions? And, how does anyone (including yourself) tell if that discomfort is all in your head, or real?