[ruthburr]

That's true, women do, but not having been on the receiving end it's harder for me to speak on that, and it's not what the post is about. I think that we can discuss the behaviors of one group of people without the implied assumption that they're the only ones who behave in that way or that every other group is inherently blameless.

[tonyarkles]

It frustrates me to no end that people can't sit and talk about "things men do that make women uncomfortable" without diverging off into talking about double standards, fairness, etc.

In the 5 years that I hung around the university, I can remember exactly once when a woman made an unwanted advance towards me. I told her that I wasn't interested, she looked a little hurt and backed off, and things were fine. In no way did I feel threatened.

Looking at it from the other side, I know I definitely made more than one woman uncomfortable with unwanted advances (I was pretty awkward back then and didn't even know what I was doing). And I definitely observed (and sometimes stopped) very obviously uncomfortable situations where male classmates were being wildly inappropriate and either oblivious to that or just not caring.

So yes, there's the possibility that there could be negative female-male interactions at conferences, but that's not the discussion we're having. And it's not really a problem that is facing our industry to anywhere near the same scale as "men doing things that make women feel uncomfortable".

Thanks Ruth for having the patience to throw your hat in the ring. Hopefully, eventually, people will get it :)