@feelinferrety That is to your praise. Although given your comment starts with the phrase "as a woman", I find it hard to believe you would have broken your silence to scold a female professor for the same reason. I guess we will never know.

@electrique I felt it was worth mentioning my gender seeing as it is relevant to the issue, and that arguably it may not come across with as much weight otherwise. In fact, one of the very first things I said was that I DO have an issue with your singling out a specific sex, but thought to address my position as a member of the group in question first and foremost. I could just as easily take up the same issue with a person of any gender.

I would have a similar issue if it was a woman concerned specifically with male students, or a man saying he feared interacting with gay male students or et cetera. There are other secondary issues with each of those as well. In any case, it is a matter of treating students in a professional setting differently based on their physiology, expression, and/or lifestyle. This is, by definition, discrimination, which I would condemn period.

I figured on disclosing for the sake of understanding my stance, i.e. not only that I find it offensive but that I would feel personally offended as a primary audience to the altered behavior.

@feelinferrety Thanks for clarifying. Nevertheless, I stand my ground. If you read my question, I mentioned explicitly that I would not consider any measures that discriminate. It is something I have never done and never will. I never said I feared to interact with anyone. What I said was, in the off chance that one of my students is malevolent and tries to hurt me through false accusations, are there any standard measures to minimise the risk?

@feelinferrety I explicitly mentioned women students because A) I have never heard of a male professor being accused by a male student for harassment and B) because of past experience of a friend who was male and falsely accused by a female student. I never said or implied that I would treat any student differently. Growing up in a developing country and immigrating abroad, I was on the receiving end of discrimination a few times and wouldn't want that to happen to anyone.

@electrique Noted. Since it's already been brought up, might I respectfully suggest you check your own bias as well? Just because you haven't heard of something doesn't mean it hasn't happened. And on the flip side, just because you are close to a one-off event doesn't mean it's an issue running rampant. I don't believe you need to take any more drastic measures than maintaining an open-door policy.

For the record, I'm sure you'd find most women would feel very inhospitable toward anyone making such accusations under false pretense. Even the smallest number of patently untrue cases do irreparable damage to those vast majority who HAVE experienced some form of harassment. These few bold-faced liars increase the burden of proof on real victims and only maintain the status quo of systemic sexism.

Your best bet, aside from the typical, standard measures is to actively seek out building a rapport with your students (within reason and propriety-focused). On the off chance you get that one bad egg, you would be far better served with a deluge of character references than you would with a history of being standoffish and unapproachable.