I'm a man an being recently made more aware of how some females friend perceive some so called "un-harmful cheesy jokes" I often advocate to my boss or college that they shouldn't make such jokes because you can never now how they are perceived.
However to escalate the problem up to the HR you need at least some ground. At some point she said than HR asked here to explain what she found was offensive. And she suggest that asking what was offensive was itself offensive. This is pretty meta.
I don't see how HR acted badly they needed to known exactly what happened in order to act. I mean you cannot pretend to be a whistleblower but kept being shy or vague about words used. And you can't say it was edited by the press, it's a blog.
So if OP is here please be clear did the manager say something like:
"Guys please don't be to hard on my sweet little girl, you know she can't handle it"
And then colleges could have gone "Hey here come the boss's bitch!"
This I can understand, not vague and redacted sentences. Because unless you are precise (and sometimes graphic) sincere skeptical people will always wonder if it was your colleagues attitude or you perception that was flawed.
Nope but you just have to be aware of the repercussions. My boss is really a nice guy, but for wathever reasons, he and some colleagues started a gimmick about one of my female coworker that she was "forbiden" to make a fourth kid because we needed her too much at work.
While initially fun (because she clearly stated that she wanted only 3 kids as a personal choice) this joke had become cheesy and hurtful for her. She was actually starting to feel guilty because they were so insistant.
And this situation sucked because she's a great coworker, a great mum and she didn't deserve to feel guilty. Especially since no-one really cared in truth, it was just "a joke". So I told my boss and he stoped quickly and now everybody involved feel better. He was just sincerely unaware of the impact of theses recurring jokes.
So yes of course you can make joke but it's just critical to be aware that you can sometime unwillingly hurt people. And when that happen you should just stop this joke and maybe even apologize (depending on how far you went before you realize your joke wasn't funny).
I'm a man an being recently made more aware of how some females friend perceive some so called "un-harmful cheesy jokes" I often advocate to my boss or college that they shouldn't make such jokes because you can never now how they are perceived.
However to escalate the problem up to the HR you need at least some ground. At some point she said than HR asked here to explain what she found was offensive. And she suggest that asking what was offensive was itself offensive. This is pretty meta.
I don't see how HR acted badly they needed to known exactly what happened in order to act. I mean you cannot pretend to be a whistleblower but kept being shy or vague about words used. And you can't say it was edited by the press, it's a blog.
So if OP is here please be clear did the manager say something like: "Guys please don't be to hard on my sweet little girl, you know she can't handle it"
And then colleges could have gone "Hey here come the boss's bitch!"
This I can understand, not vague and redacted sentences. Because unless you are precise (and sometimes graphic) sincere skeptical people will always wonder if it was your colleagues attitude or you perception that was flawed.