Appreciative Note to Reviewer Appropriate?

[Puget]

The one thing I'm worried about...if you are senior and male, reviewer is junior and female.

Ruralguy, I'm sure you mean well, but this comment is really problematic. You are essentially saying that a senior male academic should not have a normal, collegial interaction with another academic just because that person happens to be junior and female*. It's that sort of assessment that can deny junior women access to the sorts of informal networks that play a big role in advancing careers. Please reconsider this attitude.

*We'll leave aside for now the fact that it also assumes heterosexuality.

I read this to mean that 'if OP is senior and male, reviewer is junior and female' then OP would need to be careful and thoughtful, not OP should not write a note. And, in my field at least, this would be good advice, especially because of "the sorts of informal networks that play a big role in advancing careers", to which women are often denied access, and also because of other pervasive inequalities that leave women playing a supporting role.

Good if true (and Ruralguy can speak for himself and clarify), but that wasn't stated-- the first part was "I suppose a brief thank you note is in order" so the quoted line suggests that sending this would, however, by worrying if the OP was senior and male and the reviewer junior and female.

I'm trying to imagine how this would possibly make a brief thank you note inappropriate? For it to be so, you'd have to assume some combination of (a) senior men are incapable of having professional relationships with junior women unless they take extreme care to keep them appropriate, or (b) junior women are incapable of receiving a brief thank you note from a senior male colleague without misconstruing the colleague's intent.

I don't think either is broadly true, and find it highly problematic that someone might hesitate to have a normal professional interaction because they do.