If this article ever hits the front of HN, which I would hope it does as it highlights some toxic behaviours that we should know better than to ignore and let flourish in a professional or personal environment, there are predictably going to be a number of comments that go something like this:<p>"You didn't need to play the game," or "you should have fought back in kind," or "why didn't you leave sooner," or "women can be just as meant to each-other," or "maybe the author was just a difficult person to work with," or "that doesn't sound like sexism to me," or "that's just what happens in a male-dominated industry," or some combination of the above.<p>What each of these comments are is "victim blaming," and dismiss the experience of the victims in lieu of your own personal experience. When we face a reality that we do not agree with or we do not want to acknowledge exists we instinctively try and explain it away, but I'd ask you to trust for a moment that the author's experiences were real and be empathetic to what that experience was like. Then imagine that experience affecting more than half of all women in the workforce, women you work with or women you know. Then imagine that you are commenting on a HN article post and blaming the woman for not doing more. What benefit, if any, does that have for our society?
><i>What exactly do you do in this situation? These two guys, along with the producer, were about the only people in the office that bothered to talk to me. If I stopped associating with them, I’d be completely alone in the place. If I asked them to stop, then I’d have shown weakness and they’d just have one more thing to dogpile on me for. If I put my foot down, I’d lose my Cool Girl status.</i><p>And why do you care about the "Cool Girl Status" anyway?<p>Either you really like those things you mentioned describing the "cool girl", in which case it's not some status, those things are indeed what you are and like, or you don't, in which case you shouldn't care about losing some BS title.<p>Besides, who said putting your foot down makes you uncool? It might make you even cooler.<p>The issue is seeing it as two camps (collective entities), males and females, and some kind of cultural war between them.<p>What is really is is a few guys being jerks.<p>I also think it usually is not like they are "sexist" as some special attribute -- they mention stuff related to a colleague being a woman just because those are attributes they can use (to make fun, gossip about, etc). If a male colleague was bad at sports, goofy, bald, big-nosed, some minority ethinicity, or whatever, they'd make fun of that too at some point or another.<p>And you know what? Women working at an office would too -- at another male collegue, but easily at another woman too. Women can also be (and are, as often as men) jerks to men colleagues and women colleages alike.<p>Just because we have a separate word at it as "sexism" we tend to think it's something extra special. But it's mostly another way of being a jerk (and/or being social/bonding/having fun in an aggressive way -- as men and women alike seldom think twice about it when they do it to others).
This was never what being a "cool girl" meant to me and my friends. Where I am from, the term is used to describe someone who doesn't flip out and act psychotic or text her boyfriend constantly if he's having a guys night out.
"In 2014, 83% of the 6,862 sexual harassment complaints made to the EEOC were from women."<p>And how many complains came from men that were ignored? Because you know, women don't harass? But who cares about that. What I care is standard - "women experience this more so they should be helped, men experience this more so women should be helped (work related deths, violent crimes, homelessnes...)". Why progresives can't help everyone or at least by how much someone is afected rather than "we first fix all problems of A while ignoring B, and then we might help B"?<p>" And yet, more than half of women have experienced harassment at work, according to one of the biggest-ever studies of women in the workplace."<p>If it's self report then to the trash it goes. If it has no strict definition of harasement - to the trash it goes. (Remember self report that lead to 1 in 4 women get raped in universities?) Seriuosly, personal anecdote, knew woman who claimed man A is sexist because he doesn't say hello to her (he didn't say hello to anyone) and man B was sexist because he was saying hello in maner she felt to be "sexist".