I think there are several problems in how things are framed and the language we use. This is important because conflict resolution depends on it.
1) "creating a hostile work environment" means different things to different people which makes it hard to pin down.
2) Person Y claims "Person X made them feel unsafe", which can't be proven since there are no outside witnesses to how people "feel". Maybe I just disliked the person for other reasons and this gave me an opportunity to get at them.
3) People will get offended easily for billions of reasons depending on what their believes are (especially in a heavily polarized society).
4) Solidarity: my friend/coworker who I like claims X makes them feel unsafe so I believe them and stand in solidarity with them because I know them better than I know X. This can easily be turned into "I don't feel safe" in order to get back at them because the moment you have an additional "witness" it will get harder to question the event with every person who says they also feel this way. It becomes safer to just stand with them or to say you weren't there but very risky to stand up for the (alleged) perpetrator.
There is a saying "I can't change what people say, but I can change my reaction and how I feel about them, and whether I allow it to affect me".
If the framing/language requires me to trust that the other party is truthful (but which I don't) then solving the resolving the conflict is impossible.
Personally I dislike the woke movement because I come from a different time where we were told to settle things by ourselves and the person screaming or appealing to the higher authority was not applauded for doing so but considered a coward. This had also many problems but they were not better or worse than what we do today.
When I see my friends bring up their children and protecting them not only from physical harm but also insulating them from the feeling of offense, telling them it's their right never to have a feeling that they don't like and blame the other party the moment they do, so they never experience outrage and how to deal with it - then it becomes clear (to me) why so many kids have turned into idiots. If we then give these people virtual/digital technology and rob them of any real type of social connections and a chance to resolve conflict IRL it's a recipe for exactly this kind of disaster.
1) "creating a hostile work environment" means different things to different people which makes it hard to pin down.
2) Person Y claims "Person X made them feel unsafe", which can't be proven since there are no outside witnesses to how people "feel". Maybe I just disliked the person for other reasons and this gave me an opportunity to get at them.
3) People will get offended easily for billions of reasons depending on what their believes are (especially in a heavily polarized society).
4) Solidarity: my friend/coworker who I like claims X makes them feel unsafe so I believe them and stand in solidarity with them because I know them better than I know X. This can easily be turned into "I don't feel safe" in order to get back at them because the moment you have an additional "witness" it will get harder to question the event with every person who says they also feel this way. It becomes safer to just stand with them or to say you weren't there but very risky to stand up for the (alleged) perpetrator.
There is a saying "I can't change what people say, but I can change my reaction and how I feel about them, and whether I allow it to affect me".
If the framing/language requires me to trust that the other party is truthful (but which I don't) then solving the resolving the conflict is impossible.
Personally I dislike the woke movement because I come from a different time where we were told to settle things by ourselves and the person screaming or appealing to the higher authority was not applauded for doing so but considered a coward. This had also many problems but they were not better or worse than what we do today.
When I see my friends bring up their children and protecting them not only from physical harm but also insulating them from the feeling of offense, telling them it's their right never to have a feeling that they don't like and blame the other party the moment they do, so they never experience outrage and how to deal with it - then it becomes clear (to me) why so many kids have turned into idiots. If we then give these people virtual/digital technology and rob them of any real type of social connections and a chance to resolve conflict IRL it's a recipe for exactly this kind of disaster.