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>>femfos+(OP)
If you are a woman you can easily counter this behavior by labelling it and saying that you don't have a porcelain skin. Bonuspoints if you laugh about a guy giving you super bad feedback and how this did not bother you.

Putting people at ease around you (especially customers) is a critical entrepreneurial skill.

You can't blame people for being cautious when a lot of people are buying into victim-narratives and convinced to act against their "oppressors".

>>cynusx+Gx
As a woman, I adopted this solution about a year ago. I will literally tell new teammates, "Look, I'm new to this career, I have a TON to learn, and I would love to be critiqued and given advice on how I can improve. I operate under a good-faith policy, so I will always assume you're being helpful and not condescending, unless you're overwhelmingly insulting (ie: telling me women aren't made for leadership roles.)"

I do not exaggerate when I say that the amount of meaningful advice I've been given since I adopted this technique has increased 5x.

Another perk--due to my vocal policy on this, I had an autistic colleague tell me that I'm the only woman he feels comfortable working with. He struggles to read social situations, and he frets that women will interpret his bluntness as him being dismissive or "mansplaining." It made me very sad to think he's missing out on good relationships with so many talented women in our office, just because of this environment of fear. But he's a wonderful friend and colleague, and I am so happy to have his advice and support.

>>paperw+g11
The problem is you can retroactively change this policy at any time and re-interpret past comments.

>>foobie+2t1
This is true, and that's why I also try to bring up examples of times I have had blatantly sexist behavior toward me. (Which luckily, has been extremely rare.) It allows me to talk about my reaction, which has always been: let's have a personal, one-on-one chat about why I'm not okay with this. This conveys two things:

1) My "assume good faith" policy doesn't mean I'm okay with genuine harassment, and I have no problems standing up for myself. 2) I will always TELL colleagues if I'm uncomfortable and give them a chance to change their behavior before I escalate anything to HR.

But ultimately, this is something that comes down to trust. Trust in my colleagues to not take advantage of the "assume good faith" policy, and trust in me to use good sense to interpret my colleagues' behavior.

And, frankly, the modern workplace is a really hard place to cultivate trust in. But I do my best, and thus far, my efforts seem to have paid off.