Wow, calm down. Did you forget to take your pills this morning?
It may very well be worth the tradeoff to clean up the atmosphere where people "have on occasion made off-color jokes and commented on one another’s lives outside of work, including their dating lives" in order not to discourage women. But a tradeoff it is. A sterile environment where people make no jokes is also going to discourage some people.This is insane.
(a) You've either drawn an equivalence between sexual harassment and a sterile work environment in your tradeoff -- which makes you a horrible person -- or you rightly think sexual harassment is worse than a sterile work environment which makes your entire post irrelevant.
(b) Sexual harassment isn't exclusive to economics, and concerns around harassment are not disproportionate to concerns elsewhere, meaning a sterile environment will discourage unfunny people like you everywhere. You're conflating societal trends with field-specific effects.
(c) Your "sterile environment" comment implies that in the absence of sexualized jokes, there are no funny jokes left. You sound unfunny.