a good rule of thumb if you’re a dude in games: if there’s a guy you work with that a bunch of your nb/women coworkers appear to avoid hanging around and you think to yourself “i get the sense they don’t like him but he’s always been cool to me personally” he’s probs a creep!!

can’t even count the number or genuinely nice non-weird guys I have worked with who make themselves unavailable as allies simply because they read the room enough to piece together the office creep but not enough to do anything about it

if you’re in this situation and you want to actually make yourself a source of safety again, you can reach out to the women around you the next time you see (or ideally, intervene in) something weird. “hey [x]’s behavior in that meeting felt inappropriate to me, are you ok?”

this isn’t a call to immediately jump on and accuse anyone who is just socially avoided by others. this is a call to not remain indifferent. the most hurtful experiences i’ve had were going to people i thought were allies, only for them to go “hmm idk he’s always been nice to me”

there have been times too where i was so conditioned to accept certain bad behavior as normal that it didn’t even occur to me i was treated inappropriately UNTIL another guy asked “hey are you ok?” then it caused me to reflect and realize: no, i’m not ok. i just was numb to it.