a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned?
Why do you need a "male reader" to confirm this to you? Your question reads thus: 'I can't believe this if I only hear it from a woman-- is there a man in the audience who can confirm this?'
To turn it around a bit, why do you find these stories unbelievable & why do you need a man to confirm their veracity?
I don't find the story unbelievable. I like to believe that whom I choose to keep as my friends and colleagues is a reflection of myself, and I aspire not to be sexist or bigoted towards any minorities. Those of my friends I've spoken to about this who are women engineers haven't experienced anything to the degree I hear about in the articles (but they still acknowledge biases against them or annoyances in the conduct of their peers).
But this is an endemic problem. Are the male colleagues I have part of the problem and I am simply failing to realize it? Have I done a good job of choosing colleagues who don't behave that way? How can I know?
The phrasing was very poor. A "Could men here share their own observations?" would have been very different, but as phrased, it's asking if male witnesses of sexist behavior even exist.
Whether intentional or not, it's a dismissal of the female point of view.
Perhaps the question is more along the lines of "Men are being called upon to act against this discrimination, but I as a man have never seen it. Other men, what about you?"
In which case the gender of the audience is important to the question. For example, while women might see it all the time, if there are no men present other than the offender, the "ordinary" men would never see it and never have the opportunity to act.
Personally I can say it can be frustrating when you are damned (as a group) for not acting, when you as an individual have never to your knowledge witnessed the event.
Why you appear not to believe them (I can't know your beliefs I can only guess based off the text of your comment):
1. Has any man here "heard of, or come into contact with any of" any of this behavior?
2. Personally, "I have never seen it anywhere I worked, or heard of that sort of thing through word of mouth..."*
These statements suggest strong skepticism. Analogy: "Has anyone here actually experienced or come into contact with Climate Change? Personally I have not, nor have I ever heard of anyone having experienced it..." <-- this suggests the speaker doesn't believe climate change is real. This is what your comment suggests about the issues described in TFA.
*Yes I know you mentioned the "terrible sample set" but that doesn't un-ring the "I'm skeptical" bell.
It's not actually about skepticism, I think. It's more like this: some companies have so few women that there's no visible sexism! The kinds of incidents described in the OP don't happen because there are no women for them to happen to. The GP imagines that, if there were more women in his workplace, everything would continue as it is now except there would be more women. This is not an absurd expectation. But if we take the OP at face value (which I do) then we have to conclude that lots of women are facing harassment or other problems. We need to figure out if we're not seeing it because it's not there, or we're not seeing it because we have a blind spot somewhere.
The GP is asking other men how they feel that their workplaces handle these things - does it happen there, how frequent is it, what do people do about it? If you've never actually dealt with this kind of situation personally, it can be quite hard to imagine it happening - it is the sort of thing that any decent person should find abhorrent, and yet it does happen.
My perspective is kinda similar to the GP's - I've worked in male-dominated environments, I have never seen any harassment (although I have seen some obnoxious men) but this is because there are no women on my team to begin with! I have in the past pushed for specific outreach to female user/developer communities and have been disappointed by the lack of results this has produced.
I definitely have encountered men who hold overtly sexist attitudes - not many, almost certainly a minority of men I've worked with. As my career has progressed and my influence has increased, I've had to use it to counteract those opinions at times. It's just really difficult to work out how much of the problem is something I can directly control, and I think that's why the GP is asking the kinds of questions that he is.
Why do you need a "male reader" to confirm this to you? Your question reads thus: 'I can't believe this if I only hear it from a woman-- is there a man in the audience who can confirm this?'
To turn it around a bit, why do you find these stories unbelievable & why do you need a man to confirm their veracity?