Yes it's an exception but it's a possible life/career wrecking exception. If you look at it objectively, this entire scenario is only possible with a man to woman interaction.

If the woman had said the exact same thing to a man, he could never file a sexual harassment complaint against her. In fact he'd probably be laughed at if he tried. The same situation would happen if both were men. Logically speaking, why take the risk?

I don't know how we tackle this though.

In fact, it's much riskier for me to reach out to them than for them to reach out to me. If they're too stupid to realize that, I'm not interested in being their friend. And if they're perceptive of my risk and they still expect me to submit myself to it for their convenience or whatever then I'm not interested in being their friend.

How should men who go on a literal killing spree because they believe they are owed sex be classified? That sounds like pretty psychopathic behavior (or would it be sociopathic? I get those confused).

1. Making friends isn't even remotely close to a line. The line is way out in workplace romance and sexual power politics land. The very basic mitigation strategy you have is simply not to go there. If you can't not go there, then you have other problems to deal with first, and the sooner you go about that the better!

2. If making friends isn't crossing a line, it's therefore not sticking your neck out at all.

3. There is no more liability than any other workplace friendship, and just as much potential for gain as any other workplace friendship. Plus, if you are socially awkward as you claim, you know darn well that the potential for gain is ginormous. If it's hard for you to make friends, you need all the good friends you can get!

4. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with nursing, but it's silly to hide behind that as an excuse. You need to get on with your life.

5. The less you put women on some weird fetishized platform of unobtanium, and the more you just treat them as fellow humans and geeks, the less likely you are to cross a line. At least, that's my conviction, and it seems to work pretty well.

a) My comment about nursing meant that the workplace barriers within opposite-gender mentoring exist on both sides of the spectrum...not acting as an excuse. Your reaction is just like telling the author to "get on with [her] life."

b) Who said anything about "weird fetishized platform of unobtanium"? I was just pointing out the legal realities that exist within the workplace.

c) The line is not in "workplace romance and sexual power politics land", the line is the HR department. Who may share your sense of humor and attitude. Or not.

I say you are letting your fear of sensationalized stories, and/or general fear of the Other, lead you astray.

As it stands now, this line is very easily "shifted" by spin and outright lying.

Sheesh.

Men talk about how aggrieved they are in this new world of transparency and accusation. This transparency has come about because many women have been subject to some really, truly awful stuff. Yet reactions like this this are unbelievably unfair to women too. It's almost like it's _women_ who are in a lose-lose situation here, not men!

What on earth will it take to get men to simply treat women as reasonable, decent people?

From what I have seen, it happens fairly often.

Would you really cast out all women from your professional circles because of it?

What!? Strawman much? Put words into another's mouth much? Sheesh!

Let me tell you this. I was pretty much a butthead (lowercase b) in my 20's. The older I get, the stupider 20-somethings seem, and the wiser my parents seem. Heck, I was still plenty stupid in my 30's. Younger people have a lot of good things going for them, but there are going to be overreactions and, let's say, "deficits in experience." This is entirely an equal opportunity phenomenon, too, across genders, races, orientations, religions, heights, etc. So no, no probably one gets cast out. Human beings need checks and balances, and groups of humans working together sometimes need the check and balance of experience and another's point of view.

Men talk about how aggrieved they are in this new world of transparency and accusation. This transparency has come about because many women have been subject to some really, truly awful stuff.

At a fundamental level, this isn't about men vs. women. It's about transparency, fairness, and due process. I know firsthand about how really, truly awful stuff can happen under the surface of things. I know because those things were done to me. Both in the fashion of racial bashing and sexual abuse. I could probably talk for hours about the things done to me by white males. Still you can't abandon principles just because something was so very bad. Those principles are what separates good people from the brutal vengeance of purely tribal thinking. You can't have true justice without those principles, because power corrupts and human nature will pollute what happens. "An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind."

"Listen and believe," is okay as a first step, but taken as a substitute for due process, or as an excuse to throw it away, it's morally bankrupt and it denies human nature. There are reasons why we have things like courts and the 5th amendment. It's very, very easy for people to fall into groupthink and for lives to be ruined for absolutely no reason. This is something which is cognitively difficult to understand, but which is a hard won lesson of our society. It's also something which I've seen firsthand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMQYB2Coufg

Women are human beings too. And human beings have the capacity to and sometimes lie. They have lapses in judgement. They get corrupted by power. They sometimes lack the experience or haven't processed their experiences. If "listen and believe" is the full extent of how you would treat with women, well, that's about the most dehumanizing and belittling thing toward women I've heard someone suggest today.

You say this isn't about men vs. women. But specifically, all of this is in response to (what I assume is) a man refusing to make friends with a woman, because of whatever politics they think currently govern _that_ specific dynamic in the workplace. It _is_ what this is about, fundaments be damned.

Don't strawman me again. I never said that it's too risky to make friends with women in the workplace, and that men should never do this. My actual position is this: Right now, in many different contexts, it's a bit too easy for a woman to make a fabricated accusation against a man. There's an imbalance here, both socially/culturally and institutionally.

But specifically, all of this is in response to (what I assume is) a man refusing to make friends with a woman, because of whatever politics they think currently govern _that_ specific dynamic in the workplace.

So what? He's free to associate as he wishes. It's not what I would want, however. It's not how most men behave in most contexts, from what I have seen. Furthermore, there have been adjustments and readjustments of the politics and the balance of power in the workplace, between workers and bosses, between men and women, etc. It's an unlikely one sided fallacy to suppose that justice means that all of the power should flow to one side, only. In our history, an important inflection point was when we realized that due process was required, to prevent the abuse of power by authorities and the powerful.

It _is_ what this is about, fundaments be damned.

Men and women are of the same species. Groups of men and women have been cooperating productively since time immemorial. Again, it is you who are coming out with the idea that anyone should be cast out. No one need be cast out, so long as we are honest about everyone's humanity -- both the good and the bad sides of that.

I was a part of an organization in college that naturally maintained a 50-50 male female ratio. There was no system of quotas or any attempt at adjusting populations. Women who were a part of it, years after graduating, talk glowingly (sometimes longingly) of the equality they experienced in that environment. If men and women -- really people in general -- are to get along, people need to do four things: 1) Be tough. 2) Be kind. 3) Respect. 4) Trust. It also seems to work in culturally Chinese companies in SF. (One good thing about a lot of Communists, is that many of them really are sincere about the equality of men and women.) It's the organizations where people act like they're in Mad Men and the organizations where people have bought into Social Justice where all the drama seems to happen.

"Fundaments be damned?" When you abandon principles, you get chaos. That's precisely when you get injustice.

I have a hard time simply coping with people being behind me, much less attempting to interact with me without first entering my forward field of view.

To avoid anyone else misunderstanding: That's "remind by looks, posture, etc", rather than "assaulted by looks, posture, etc".