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Re:The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis: The Coddling of the... by s1artibartfast on Friday March 10, 2023 @08:49PM (#35104229)
I agree it is a tough problem, specifically because the intention or causality is uncertain. It isn't sensible or desirable to punish good healthy behavior simply because it can not be readily discerned from bad behavior.

What are we to do with your example of the "good boss" who randomly selects a women to have coffee? Never have coffee with women, or all employees because only doing so with men could also be taken as harmful behavior?

At some point, trying to police every behavior on a probabilistic basis has more collateral damage than it is worth. At some point the problem can no longer be productively addressed by punishing behaviors and we have to use other mechanisms for harm reduction.

Re:The Myth of the Campus Coddle Crisis: The Coddling of the... by jfengel on Saturday March 11, 2023 @11:57AM (#35110166)
Slight clarification that doesn't alter anything about your reply: in the "get coffee" scenario I meant it as "go fetch coffee for the meeting". That's a stereotyped role in which women were assumed to be mothers/caretakers to the office in addition to all of their other duties, but which men would think was their primary duty.

He could ask somebody to get coffee without intending to bring up a whole history of chauvinism that you weren't even aware of, but it's also kinda his fault for not thinking it through.

That's just to clarify what I said above, not really a reply to any of the points you bring up. You're right that in the end this is inherently fuzzy. But I do think it's useful for everybody to say "I'm going to do more than just the bare justifiable minimum, because there are real issues out there, deliberate and otherwise."

That's not an injunction; it couldn't be. But it's something to think about, and the people who say "I'm not going to think about it because it's not my problem" are almost certainly the problem.