It’s true that so far I’ve lost two friends over this (colleague and chair, though not sure he realizes that yet), my satisfaction in my own workplace (my department, not my university, but being happy in my department meant the university was mostly bearable), plus all the feelings about being discriminated against. But the working environment could get so much worse. I have tenure, so losing my job is not the issue. I’m talking about quiet firing, getting a bad reputation of a complainer (it doesn’t matter that I didn’t report it, everyone will assume I did), getting the story blown out of proportion—because I can’t imagine my colleague is going to take this lying down, higher ups and colleagues taking sides for or against, and so on.

I can certainly share concerns, but the kinds of repercussions I’m worried about are very hard to document and just increase the cycle I mentioned above.