> That this is not what happened in Hank's case. This was a private conversation that was overheard. Have you honestly never cracked a sexist joke with a friend in a bar? A racist joke? You sure you never laughed a bit too hard at that picture about Irish yoga? Alcoholism is no joke!Sexist and racist jokes? No, I don't, and I don't associate with people who use them. Now, and this is important: I didn't call Hank's joke "sexist", I called it "sexualized", because I think intent does matter. I don't think Hank's intent was sexist. But Hank needs to understand that a joke like this with a sexual context, in the absence of mitigating factors, does contribute to that just-us-guys, implicitly-othering culture that doesn't need to outright say "no girls allowed" to make it feel that way. That culture is not only kind of deleterious in general, but just wholly inappropriate in professional a setting. It's a crap joke, and one that I can easily understand being hurtful and exclusionary. In a managerial position, I wouldn't fire Hank for it, but I'd probably have given him a ration of shit for poor judgment.
It's important for me to stress that this is not to say that you cannot joke about sex or race. But it's not funny when you punch downward. Louis CK is a wonderful example of this. His jokes reference women and minorities all the time--but the jokes aren't about them, they're about him and his reactions to them based on his own personal context. He's asking us to laugh at him, not to laugh at the person who is, by and large, probably getting a way worse deal in life than he is. Lots of his fans don't get that, and this is also why Dave Chappelle walked away from Chappelle's Show: it's hard to do that kind of comedy when your audience doesn't get the joke.
> We don't indulge many other symptoms of emotional immaturity. This shouldn't get special treatment.
When it's the result of four hundred years (and more, really, but let's just be geographic here) of concerted activity on the part of society to constrain and hurt the people we consider less privileged today, I think it's not unreasonable to expect understanding and respect on the part of the people who've profited from it. Even setting aside the personal context described in the article, there is a metric shit-ton of cultural context in both tech and in America as a whole that means that somebody like me is starting at third base when somebody else isn't even getting out of the batter's box and it's neither just nor fair for me to use that against them when they react accordingly.
I am a straight, white male. I have it really good in the United States. I recognize that others do not. It is not my obligation to cape for other people, but it is my obligation, and Hank's, to not be an asshole. And that's a really low bar to hurdle.