As a man, is there anything I can do or avoid doing in the workplace to make it easier for coworkers like you? Let's assume I don't know and don't suspect anything specific about my coworkers. I just want to know if there's anything that would be pretty easy to implement, that would make a difference.

Mike Pence rule. Don't ever be alone with a vulnerable person without a neutral third party being present, it wreaks havoc on the threat-detection instinct. As the saying goes, "you're not paranoid if someone really is out to get you."

He asked how to make things easier for his vulnerable coworkers, not how to cover his ass.

Honestly, my suggestion would be to be open about your own experiences and the impact they've had on you. (Not necessarily abuse, but just offhand comments like 'oh, it's silly but I can't stand yelling because my dad yelled a lot' or 'I don't drink because my family's had issues with it', etc.) Be open and clear that a.) you don't judge people for being 'weird' and b.) you accept things other people need even if you don't need them.

Don't be overly emotional about it. Just accept their human needs in the same way you would if a coworker had a disability. Oh, that person needs more space between us? Alright. Not any different than a hard of hearing coworker who needs me to speak up a bit, or a visually impaired coworker who uses zoom on their computer.

My saying, "Hey, I have a bit of anxiety so I'm going to gather myself for a moment; do you think you could step back and give me some space and we could try to pitch this conversation a bit quieter?" shouldn't be much different than my needing a stepstool. I'm short. It happens.

If you treat the people around you as individuals, then people understand they can ask you for what they need.

> Honestly, my suggestion would be to be open about your own experiences and the impact they've had on you.

I'd imagine that many people would disagree with this. Dwelling on people's supposed 'weirdness' is not a healthy attitude (least of all when the 'weirdness' is our own) and would not be seen as "open" or "accepting" by many, but more of a signal of entitlement. If you think that the other person would benefit from something, just behave accordingly without dwelling on it, and people will hopefully realize that they can ask you for these things with no fuss.

Billy Graham was the originator of the concept in his ministry [0].

Not only does it help prevent things from happening that could be a problem later, it helps prevent even accusations of such, if it's well known that the person involved holds to this rule and expects others to hold them to it as well. Say what you will about Pence, love him or hate him, nobody is accusing him of sexual misconduct - and that's the point of the rule.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_rule

It's much much much older than that, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yichud

It doesn't prevent abuse by a close family member though.

Interesting, I'd assumed there was history before Graham (it's an obvious enough thing), but wasn't aware of the details. Thanks!

This can disadvantage those people in other ways though. Just trying to get work done, it helps to be able to drop into someone's office without arranging for a chaperone. Or stopping by somewhere without checking the number and gender of people who will be there ahead of time.

> it helps to be able to drop into someone's office without arranging for a chaperone.

You can leave the door to the office open at all times. Or use a glass wall or door so people can see in, but maybe not overhear.

One principled solution would be to apply the rule to everyone you interact with.

In practice that's likely quite difficult.

Shocking that this is getting upvotes.

The only way to treat this as gospel is to never be present with another woman alone.

That the tech industry is so inept with opposite gender interactions that they have adopted tactics from religious zealot evangelicals is APALLING.

Treat people as humans. Regardless of gender or sexuality.

The whole premise of the workplace is to not treat people as humans, but as coworkers.

Sex is one of the most essentially human things. "Professional" behaviour excludes sex.

So "treat people as humans" is decisively not clear advice for cases like this.

That's a very dehumanizing statement to me. I would never want to work at a place that doesn't treat its employees as humans. That doesn't mean I condone sex at the workplace, but I would not accept to be treated as less than a full human being.

Humans are not automata, and I don't aspire to be one, not even for "just" 8 hours a day.

The way you are expected to interact with humans in the VAST MAJORITY of situations is closer to how you are expected to interact with coworkers in a professional setting, than to a speed dating event or a crowded bar after midnight.

We're not having orgies in the street. In modern society you are expected to treat humans in the vast majority of situations without "sex" being relevant to the topic of discussion, whether it's on the street, in the grocery store, on the tram, or in the library.

Acting like this is not clear feels like an exercise in pedantic loophole seeking to justify sexual harassment. ("How are people even supposed to meet each other if I'm not allowed to <blank> to women in <blank>?")

False dichotomies galore.

First of all, the "VAST MAJORITY" of human interactions are irrelevant (cashier, bank clerk, passing people on the street). Given how much time you spend with coworkers, they'd qualify as friends, or acquaintances at least.

Also, there's a large gap between "professional behaviour" and "orgies in the street" or "sexual harassment". For example, I don't mind talking about menstruation or condoms with friends (who I'm not having sex with, nor have/would I ever try) but I don't think those would be appropriate topics for most workplace situations.

Your life must be quite different from mine. My casual conversations with my friend group - who are 20s and 30s liberals, mixed gender - are not office appropriate. I would certainly not bring any of the regular political debates into work either.

The amount of sex related conversation in my friend group is, from my perspective, normal but entirely inappropriate for work. Even my female barber talks about her sex life during haircuts.

At work I keep my sarcasm set to near zero, avoid politics, religion, and sex, and generally keep a narrow focus. Work is an artificial environment, but my coworkers don't get to choose me. It is on me to behave in a way that is beyond reproach.

Remember the context: OP literally advocated for never being alone with a woman without a third party present.

Yes, I have conversation with friends that are not work-appropriate.

And I also have conversations with coworkers that are casual and work-appropriate. Yet they can be friendly and reference current events (which are inherently political), religion (e.g. acknowledging ramadan fasting), sexuality (gender of partner), or the existence of sex (parenting). OK that last one is a stretch.

But still, you can do all this without needing to firewall your entire personality.

Ironically, the tech industry has provided an alternative solution - cameras recording everything everywhere. Dash cams to provide proof of what happened in collisions, workplace cameras to reduce liability for employers and also helps protect employees, home cameras also for liability reduction as well as protection against police lying about what happened…etc.

Costs vs. benefits and all. It's hardly unreasonable if you're risk-averse.

As much as it sounds like an overreacting CYA tactic, it does at least have the side effect of creating safe spaces.

I might find the intentions dubious, but I can't argue with the results.

Ensure that there is more than one woman around in your company. Ensure your workplace policies are friendly and flexible for people who need mental health days, address family time, get pregnant, need sanitary equipment, parent children or other dependents, etc. Ensure all the women at your company have opportunities to work with and have women co workers, or women friendly gatherings like lunches, and be open to feedback to change policy accordingly once you have enough women coming together during their talks that they can suggest changes collectively.

Being the sole woman in a company of men when means your superiors are men, your peers are men, and the only recourse you may have if any of them act inappropriately towards you is to report it to another man.

Edit: respect boundaries and consistently remind that if they have a boundary they are free to enforce and you will respect that. Boundaries come in the form of more than “please don’t x”. They are also “I prefer x” or “can we y”.

> consistently remind that if they have a boundary they are free to enforce and you will respect that.

The clearest and most effective way of doing this is to proactively establish and propose safe boundaries for the other person's benefit. This is the underlying dynamic behind many rules-of-thumb of ordinary courtesy and politeness (often wrongly dismissed as some sort of useless, obsolete 'traditionalism'). Not everyone is so assertive and comfortable with themselves that they should be expected to verbalize their boundaries to you, or even to understand them proactively.

Fellow man, here, but I think I have something of value to add:

Learning to be open and friendly, and developing a sense for when someone doesn't want to talk to me has been an important part of growing up. I try to identify signals that a person wants to end their interaction with me, and respect their wishes immediately and in a friendly way.

Being "open and friendly" is no good when someone literally has shell shock(!) (aka PTSD) from interacting with people like you. You'll need to behave in such a way as to demonstrate to them that they can intuitively and securely trust you not to be an immediate physical threat, nor to pose any in the foreseeable future.

The quick rule-of-thumb is to be courteous and respectful but also establish very firm physical boundaries, even erring towards being less friendly as opposed to more. You also need to proactively signal that you will stop interacting with them at the slightest sign of their discomfort; keeping interactions short and to the point is an obvious way to do this, even though this outwardly looks "rude" and "unfriendly"!

Developmentally caused PTSD and shell-shock/war/later event PTSD have some differences.

For instance, those of us with developmentally-caused trauma often view every person as a threat, because we were abused by our caregivers. (In my case, my mother.) This is because we need our abusers to survive, so we're used to abuse being a necessary part of life and something that can happen at any time/during mundane interactions. We don't feel like anyone is safe. The only person my nervous system trusts is my baby sister. Trying to get me to recognize you as safe isn't going to work, because nobody is safe to me.

I realize that not everybody is a danger and my feelings are the result of my failing the parental lottery and not a commentary on every person I meet, which means it's my responsibility/job to retrain/calibrate my 'who is safe' sensors. It just takes practice and some patience sometimes.

People refusing to interact with me because they have different genitals than me isn't going to help, especially when most of my hobbies are male-dominated. It just conveys 'Ha, you're not a proper girl, so you don't deserve friends. Go learn to like clothes and boys if you want to hang out with people'.

Now, if you've been burned in the past by people using their mental illnesses to blame you for not understanding social cues, or had that used against you in the past, and you don't feel comfortable in mixed-sex interactions, that's fine, but that's a need of YOURS, not the women.

> Trying to get me to recognize you as safe isn't going to work, because nobody is safe to me.

This makes plenty of sense, but then I'm not sure why you're expecting others to be physically friendly with you. Having a "friendly" interaction with someone generally presupposes some degree of physical quasi-intimacy that would seem to be quite incompatible with "not feeling like anyone is safe" to be around. This doesn't mean you can't be friendly in many other ways of course, but these interactions will nonetheless be quite different from what folks might otherwise expect.

This is very interesting to me because this might be a huge sex socialization difference: I'm friendly, including physically, with people I would rather not be at least occasionally.

There's a couple of reasons for this:

1.) If you're a young, small, female, people will be in your space whether you want them there or not. Keeping it "friendly" makes sure that it doesn't turn violent. (Note: This isn't just from men: My go to example of a person disrespecting my space was a woman in undergrad who, upon meeting me for the first time, picked me up because I was so small and 'cute' to her.) Luckily, I'm over 30 and an old hag now! 10/10 do recommend. V. helpful!

2.) As a female, I'm expected/allowed to offer comfort to people, and that includes physically, so I'll do things like hug my friends when they're sad if they like hugs because I still want to support them even if I have PTSD. Or I hug and take care of my little sister because I know touch is important for her mental health and I value that. I also occasionally offer childcare/ have nieces and nephews or am in gatherings with children, and they touch.

I generally let people, and people know that I/Aunt Mezzie needs some quiet sometimes.

I also have MS and malfunctioning nerves; I view them similarly. "Wow, my brain has a lesion and now I can't feel my feet what." and "Wow, I'm traumatized and now I can't relax around people I like what."

> If you're a young, small, female, people will be in your space whether you want them there or not.

It's precisely when you're "young, small" etc. that this is not OK. These people are not being "friendly" to you, they should know better. And you're quite free to remove yourself physically from the interaction if they keep invading your boundaries.

> so I'll do things like hug my friends when they're sad

At least then you're initiating and thus controlling the interaction, with an acquaintance who's OK with it. It's not anything that you should be forced to do, but having one's boundaries be actively transgressed upon would likely be more stressful.

I'm also a woman in my 30s, and you're not the only one.

My PTSD isn't sexually related (I was neglected + emotionally/physically abused, but not sexually), but working was so difficult for me until I got my current, WFH job. I didn't realize how much being in a state of constant physical distress was taking a toll on my wellbeing. It's exhausting, and I wish you all the best.

I was drugged unconscious by a gay man in my early 20s, and "thankfully" I became conscious at the beginning of whatever he had planned; it took me months to even realize something had happened due to whatever drug he dosed me with fucked up my memory.

I had used MDMA recreationally years later and I knew that had helped my PTSD some, but it was only when I did a session years later in a therapeutic setting, just myself and the facilitator, was I able to fully connect to, sit with, and process what happened to me; literally the stimuli of what I would/should have felt then was able to process - as if it was stuck, once processed allowing my body to no longer think it was in that situation (so heightened stress state, heightened baseline stress reduced greatly).

MAPS.org (Multi-Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies) relatively recently did clinical trials with 100 treatment resistant participants, to treat veterans with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. They had an average of 17.5 years of treatment resistant PTSD. After 1 year, 80% of the placebo group had no improvement, 20% had some. With just 2-3 sessions where MDMA was given, after just 1 year, 80% of participants no longer qualified for PTSD diagnoses - and 20% had some or none - a complete reversal. From my experience it's true - it just allows you to connect to overwhelming/overriding stress that short-circuits your system, allows it to flow and essentially melt away - though it can take talking about it to put the experience into words, to process it, to help by breathing through it, etc.

All this to say that even if you have ever done MDMA recreationally, e.g. gone out dancing with a partner or friends, I'd recommend anyone who hasn't done it in a different context, a "safer" or quieter/therapeutic environment, where you're not using music and other people to distract from yourself - then I'd recommend people look into doing it; there will slowly be legal clinics opening up, though I've not kept track of who's leading that at the moment or where the progress is. E.g. there may be more depth to the experiences that you'll be able to process with the help of MDMA causing more serotonin to release at once than it can on its own, and the only way to know is to try.

I just listened to a podcast where they were talking about this. And that's pretty much what they said.

Basically MDMA and/or psilocybin allow you to essentially disassociate from the the emotions of the event. You're able to talk about and work through the events without also being overwhelmed by the emotions of the event.

But yeah, it's not just popping shrooms or pills and you're magically healed. It's about being in that setting with someone who can therapeutically work you through the trauma. You still need to do the work, but MDMA and/or psilocybin can greatly facilitate the process.

I love that this got a few downvotes.

Hey just wanted to say thanks for sharing your story. Not that you owe it to anyone, but I hope the public presence of people working through these issues will help the next generation of survivors to have a more easily found path forward.

Thanks for sharing. It really does make a difference.

Most people's guess as to the rate of occurrence of this kind of abuse would be off by an order of magnitude or more.

In the past 5 years I've become privy to so many dark experiences of close female friends and family. What used to be an outlier experience is now almost.. common? More than one woman I've dated has had to preface intimacy with a harrowing experience. It's been hard for me to deal with this knowledge about people I love, but nevertheless is the truth and must be told.

Take care. I hope the remote work world has helped.

The Body Keeps the Score is honestly a must-read, but it can be deeply challenging. Reading that book helped me uncover even more childhood trauma that I wasn't really actively processing or recognizing as abuse until then. So it was an extra challenge on top of the trauma I was already dealing with.

And for what it's worth, I also am a SWE, and I also struggle working around men. 90% of the time, the men I work with are awesome, supportive, nice, etc. But the trauma informs that 10% where I feel invalid, not seen, objectified... all that fun stuff. It's challenging and I don't think trauma has ever been brought up as a challenge in the workplace when there's no trauma directly in the workplace, if that makes sense. I certainly haven't directly connected it before this.

A former colleague and lover of mine was abused at home as a teen, and got married quite young in order to escape the situation. She did manage to have a quite successful career, ending in the C-suite at a major company.