Then excessive avoidance gets reinterpreted as snobbishness, sexism, not wanting to be inclusive, and so on. "Men actively avoid me and sit father away during meetings, they don't invite me for beers after works, it is a hostile environment". Anyway it is a fine line. And one can interpret a lot of behaviors as stemming from sexism or misogynism even if they are not.

If anyone -- attractive man, unattractive man, attractive woman, unattractive woman -- started hula-hooping in the middle of the office I would expect people to stare. Not because it's sexual, but because it's peculiar. The gap between "stare" and "ogle" is hardly objective, let alone a "chasm."

Anyway, another account of the incident paints a very different picture of the scene:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

claiming that the gawking in question was undertaken by all present and not limited to men

The hard part here is defining "lecherous" but it would seem to imply that he is watching in a way that signals sexual intent. It's worth noting that women are generally much better at interpreting body language than men are, so it's possible that a guy is watching the woman dance and getting some sort of erotic enjoyment from it, tries his best to hide it but some subconscious subtle clue gives him away.

Having said that, hoop dancing would seem like an inappropriate thing to do in most offices to begin with but I would say the same thing about nerf gun fights.

That's not to say that I don't admire people that I find attractive. I just do it subtly to avoid making people feel uncomfortable.

For the record, I routinely hold open doors for people that I know are behind me and are leaving/entering a building. It surprised me to know end to get yelled at for it.

Exactly why I do it.

I've resigned myself to the fact that some people are just assholes. It's a trait that's not gender specific.

She was pretty unhappy about that as well, incidentally.

I know it's shocking if something like the door thing happens to you, but I wouldn't assume it reflects the general attitude of women.

"I do not offer my seat because you are a lady, but because I was taught to be a gentleman" - works for doors too.

My Dad would have had a fit if I didn't hold the door open for a group. He expected his children to be polite.

Nothing too bad, but people have glared at me, asked what I was doing or if they knew me, etc.

I was astonished; it's just something that everybody does where I live so it was weird to have people react like I was doing something outrageous.

I know you mean well, but your sadness to me belies some ignorance about what it's like to be a woman working in a male dominated field. You'd like to live in a world where you can casually watch beautiful people doing beautiful things. I don't begrudge you that, and I wouldn't accuse you of sexism.

That said, I have zero interest in watching women hula hoop at work. None. Not because I am incapable of enjoying a show like that, but because I desire so deeply to work in an environment where woman can just kick ass at their jobs without having to deal with sexual politics. We're nowhere near that point as a culture, but that's where I want to be.

So I'm not sad that I can't watch women hula hoop at work. I'm really excited to have positive, professional interactions with women at work about their actual jobs.

At my work, there is a woman who brings hula hoops to company events. When there's music, she likes to dance and do tricks with them and she obviously practices a lot. When she's doing it, people (including me) stare. But, at least for me, it has nothing to do with any sexual aspect of what she's doing...I'm watching it because I like appreciating the skill and practice that's gone into her performance. And similar things happen at other company functions. For example, we have an employee who majored in music and is an amazing pianist. There's a bar we go to with a piano that he's played a few times. Guess what...everyone stares at him while he's playing. Hell, we've even got a couple of people who are amazing beer pong players that gather a crowd whenever the ping pong balls come out at events with a keg.

So when does staring and admiring a skill cross the line to ogling? That depends entirely on the person making the determination and often says more about them and their perspective/past experiences than it does about the people doing the staring.

The bottom line is that for those of us who weren't there, nothing in the account we've been provided gives us any information to judge the appropriateness of what went on. We have only one fact: the author of the account, who, rightly or wrongly, has an axe to grind with the company, felt that it crossed some line. It's bad PR, but it's not proof that anything untoward happened.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408466

it was at a party, with many non-Githubbers in attendance, and the onlookers were not only guys.

So basically the article's description may be totally inaccurate.

Gawking and looking are not the same thing. There are also times where even the most socially incompetent will realise that some girls doing things that might be nice to look at is not an invitation to check them out doing it (this is, of course, excepting people who go the reductionist route of thinking that feminists invent their own problems).

They're not animals at the zoo, they're people.

Then why do any of those things in a non-private setting with reasonable expectation of gawkers being present?

Where does this nonsense end? If (almost) all my co-workers are staring at me as I adjust my belt, standing in the middle of the lunch room, I will do that activity in the confines of a men's room next time. If the same thing happens as I stretch my leg muscles before a run, I will do that activity outside. Why is it my co-workers' fault if they stare at me if I do something that is not the norm?

If being merely 'looked at' troubles you, then you need to look at yourself before closing others' eyes.

"Why are you uncomfortable?", should not be that hard a question to answer, clearly and succinctly, for something that evokes such a strong response from you.

Impossible. You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you cannot, however, pick your friends' nose.

"What a hostile environment that coworkers tell me to not hula hoop in the office!"

You can't win with some people or environments.

That is not a typical example of office decorum. If they were spinning plates they'd probably gather a few looks as well.

I get it, you find someone attractive and you want to gawk at them, cool. I learned to control that impulse when when I was hitting puberty. Seriously, there really isn't an excuse and it's inappropriate in most situations.

It's not really as clear cut as "staring makes you an asshole." I've found that in a workplace people will have wildly variable interpretations of the same event. The only solution is to work with mature adults who can assume good faith and work out their own issues. This almost never happens, so instead companies create hyper-sanitized environments where everything is against the rules.

While personally I think its creepy to just hang out and leer at them, it's not really against societal norms in any way.

It's not like these guys broke into the girls bathroom to watch this or something.

But I think it's impossible to really judge this situation without the context. Did other people decide to participate or was it really just two girls hula hooping the whole time? It boils down to was the mentality from the males perspective "oh hey, cool, people are hula hooping!" or "oh hey, the two attractive girls are hula hooping and I want to gawk at them!" The first one is fine, the second one is not.

The majority of your judgemental and passive/aggressive posts in this thread suggest otherwise.

I wonder what do you think about people who don't speak English or who don't eat their food with a forks but with other ustensils.

What on earth are you talking about?