Ask HN: Non-Sexist Behaviour Guidelines?

1. Attractive male opens door for female. Female blushes, there is no problem.

2. Unattractive male opens door for female. Female reports unwanted behavior.

("attractive" does not have to mean "physically attractive", it could be another quality)

And I'm not being smug here with the above. No matter what, life is a popularity contest.

Outside of that example, with grey zones, it's all on a case-by-case bases, as far as what appropriate behavior is.

But if you need an actionable answer, then realizes that right now we are living in a time where victimhood is the predominant social "virtue"... People are seeking it, promoting it, and pretending to be outraged over it (e.g., social justice) - and will do anything to get attention.

So if you are a male, it's best not to have any type of non-work contact and non-work dialog with opposite sex co-workers, unless you want to be the subject of another world-trending tweet and/or 1000 point + 500 reply HN post.

As anything from a simple compliment, to a obvious joke, will be interpreted in the worst of ways.

I once had a coworker that said a lot of gross things: racist stuff, creepy sexual stuff, etc. Went on for a while. I told my manager, without naming the other coworker.

My manager sent a memo to the department reminding them about the fact that there were often guests in our area and that we needed to be careful about jokes and language.

It worked. The coworker didn't feel personally blamed or as if somebody ratted him out, and he did cease with the gross stuff. Everybody won, basically. Or at least nobody lost.

Now obviously that kind of oblique approach won't always work and people may need to be dealt with. The next step would have been for my manager or I to speak to him privately.

You could try something like that. Maybe get an outside speaker to talk to the team, just to give some reminders about specific things to avoid such as staring at womens' chests?

To have diversity we have to have more than the white-knight (that takes all accusations made by females at face value).

I've often glanced and looked downwards when talking to someone (or standing close to someone) for a few seconds at a time - just like 100% of us that don't continually stare people in the eyes like a crazy person.

I'm sure that a "lady" that reports that people are always stating at her breasts is either misinterpreting that downward looking action for something it's really not, or is dressing specifically to show off her goods - which will meet with the other person's eyes inadvertently for a second or two.

  It is unfortunate that when talking to females, this 
  puts your eyes in the region of their chest, and there
  have been instances where I've found myself with my eyes
  locked on someone's chest and it's really not the intent.

But there are objects in the room besides her eyes and her breasts. Make eye contact, look at something else, eye contact, etc.

Honestly, if all else fails, watch how other people do it. Find a guy who has found a happy medium between "intense and unbroken constant eye contact" and "staring at breasts" and just copy that. I'm not even being sarcastic.

For many engineers this stuff doesn't always come naturally but on the flip side it's all pretty learnable.

if you put your hand in fire, you are the victim, but its still your fault when you get burned. the fire isn't going to go cold whatever your intent behind putting your hand in it.

in the same way men will look at exposed cleavage no matter why you are wearing the low cut top. that's just nature, and blaming men for their natural behaviour is no better than blaming the fire for being hot.

the best defence is to not even go there, don't put your hand in fires and don't show your cleavage... i shouldn't have to disregard such straightforward logic because the person i am talking to is a woman. imo that is demeaning to women...

its a dangerous position to take, but for all of the wrong reasons.

(and of course, men can train themselves to not look, and especially not to stare at boobs - the fire can not train itself to be cold)