Glad that you're bringing in more perspectives.

Are we really saying that we don't think it's helpful for women from varied industries to discuss how emotions play out in their workplaces? People have commented on here with their own experiences in varied careers—are they not permitted to share those? The article that started this conversation was about women in…

I think a lot of women's frustration with other women crying in workplaces is that those tears frequently play into stereotypes that damage all women's access to opportunity.

She says:

This is a great point. The context is key here. But I question whether public emotional outbursts—however understandable and difficult to restrain they may be—is the most effective way to communicate to others that women in tech are the competent, no-nonsense bad-asses that they are.

I think as we speak anecdotally about our own workplaces, I'm struck with times where someone cried in a meeting when they could have very easily excused themselves prior to that point. (In the situation described in this article, I think a deep breath, a "I need to compose myself before we continue. I'm going to step…

I'm not encouraging or supporting the boss's behavior; I think he was way out of line and I'm glad she's going public about the ways that she was mistreated. I'm just saying that I think she could have scored a victory here had she remained calm and confident in the moment, capably responded to his inappropriate…

I think that, by and large, the patriarchy tends to repress men's capacity for expressing emotion, not enable it. Women are expected to be sensitive and in tune with their emotions; men aren't. This means that people of both genders are treated poorly when they express emotions at work: women, because it reinforces…

Yes, because me saying that I wish she had responded differently was also me saying that I think her boss was totally in the right.

I agree that she was treated unprofessionally and totally agree that her outburst was understandable. (As I expressed elsewhere, my reaction of "I wish she hadn't cried" was more because I knew that her tears validated at lot of her boss's messed up views of women and made him come across as the rational adult in the…

You're right that there are different types of tears in the workplace, and teaching is a great workplace to see that. I've seen teachers cry because one of their students was expelled. I've seen teachers cry because one of their students said they thought they were stupid and seemed to believe it. In those cases,…

Yeah, I get that it's pretty much an involuntary response. But I just wish she had managed to keep tears at bay (challenging though that might be), coolly and confidently responded to his harassment, and reported it later with a clear head.

I felt like my response is in keeping with that:

You're right. The discussion throughout this thread has moved beyond Horvath's specific situation to discuss varied experiences with crying in our own workplaces. (It's created some interesting dialogue (to me, at least): people are talking about how tears have played into experiences they've had in meetings,…

Yeah, I'd argue that this is because men are very comfortable with viewing women as intrinsically sensitive, emotional, and struggling to remain dispassionate. Seeing a female coworker crying in the workplace is almost reassuring, because it plays into stereotypical gender roles.

I think we're on the same page? Having a birthday and crying are both actions that require others to step outside of their work and focus on a coworker's emotional wellbeing. (One person is demanding the distraction: the person having the birthday or the person crying. Other people have to accommodate that…

Yeah, the conversation has kind of moved from talking about this one situation to discussing times we've experienced tears or other emotional outbursts in our own workplaces.

I'm a teacher. In my first year teaching, when classes were really tough and I could tell I was about to lose it, I'd usually direct kids to work independently, go next door to ask a colleague to keep an eye on my kids, and quickly compose myself in the bathroom. Not ideal, but better than crying in front of my…

I'm a teacher, too, and I have a coworker that does almost exactly this! The ones that really get me, though, are the ones who cry or yell in front of their kids when classes aren't doing what they're supposed to. Those kinds of emotional reactions, however understandable they might be, are so profoundly damaging to…

I know exactly what you mean, and it's the worst feeling; I hate that differences in hormones and anatomy make this something that far more women experience.