Androphobia: Fear of Men
Some years ago a study came out that encapsulated society today.
Nearly half of men would be too scared to help a child in need because they fear being branded a paedophile, a survey has found.
Forty-four per cent would be wary of coming to the aid of youngsters in their neighbourhood in case they were suspected of attempting to abduct them.
Count me among that sad group.
The fear that any and all men are predators is not just real, it's a battle that has already been fought and won in our society. We've taught our children to fear half of the population, and there is no going back.
Men know it, and if they are smart will eliminate all children that aren't blood relations from their life. I know I have.
I'm not bitter about this. Just depressed.
I know that it doesn't have to be this way.
When I was serving in the Peace Corps people would just hand you babies. Neighborhood kids would wander into your house at all times of day or night and want you to feed and entertain them.
This is how people in a nation not named the United States live today.
I love kids. They are awesome. I miss them. This is reality in America today.
Now it's time for a new fear of men to be taught.
A new book claims that male office workers are now so afraid of being on the receiving end of a sexual harassment case, they are reluctant to mentor, assist, befriend and even hold open doors for female colleagues.
... The book’s author, Kim Elsesser, a research scholar at the University of California, argues that a “sex partition” has sprung up, which impedes women from building the vital network of contacts both within the workplace and socially.
And the author should know about tough working environments: she’s a former equities trader at Morgan Stanley.
Ludicrously, Elsesser cites examples of men who have been dragged in by their HR departments for simply opening a door for a female colleague or complimenting her on a new suit. “Stories like these spread around workplaces, instilling a fear that innocent remarks will be misinterpreted,” she says.
I once had a female lawyer explain sexual harassment to me.
It isn't just unwanted touching and/or propositions. Staring is sexual harassment. All comments about a women's appearance is sexual harassment. Looking too often. Not looking at a women. Saying anything that can be taken as offensive. Not talking to a woman.
No, I'm not making that up, and that woman lawyer was explaining this to me in a deadly serious way.
Basically, if the woman feels uncomfortable then it is sexual harassment. What the man actually does or intends is irrelevant.
That's not to say that plenty of asshole men aren't sexually harassing women. That's a given.
What it means is that if you are a man, you would be taking a huge risk by say anything to a woman in the workplace that isn't specifically work-related. And if the woman is young, then it's best to avoid her if possible.
I know that's my approach, and I'm far from alone.
‘I always leave my door open when female students are in my office.”
That’s what a professor at a prestigious liberal-arts college told me a few years ago. And since then, I’ve heard similar sentiments from numerous male academics.
...According to a National Journal survey, a lot of politicians are worried about the consequences of being alone with female staffers. An article on the Web site last week revealed: “Several female aides . . . have been barred from staffing their male bosses at evening events, driving alone with their congressman or senator, or even sitting down one-on-one in his office for fear that others would get the wrong impression.”
...Surely there are plenty of male bosses guilty of boorish behavior. But there are also plenty of women who believe that a sexist joke or even a compliment on one’s outfit is enough to create a “hostile work environment.”
And so rather than engaging in a “he-said, she-said” deposition, many bosses would rather make sure they have witnesses to every interaction.
Of course the implications of this mutual fear is a segregated workplace.
This too is reality today.
It doesn't have to be this way. We've decided that this is what we want.
Vice-President Mike Pence, who said he doesn't ever meet alone or have dinner alone with female colleagues in order to avoid any perception of impropriety, is sadly right.
Men are to be feared. That's how society wants it, and the world is colder because of it.
Maybe I am a little bitter, but I've also accepted the world as it is because I can't change it.
I am scary and not to be trusted. That I haven't done anything is irrelevant. That I have shared a little of how I feel makes me a monster.
Comments
Feminism was started by the CIA
initially to subvert the suffragge movement, which was very successful, but then to divide us and isolate us.
It is no coincidence the hate men mania has sprung up from the feminist movement. It's really a shame that women's rights has been turned into hatred and vilification of all males.
My children intend to flee this nation. I am glad for them. I am beginning to fucking hate this country.
Wow! I'm gonna need a [good] cite on that claim
That is fascinating if true.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
uh ... women got the vote about 20 years before the
precursor to the CIA -- the OSS -- was created.
feminism was "created" by women who thought they ought to have some control over their own lives -- their bodies, their minds, and their activities. its modern roots go back at least to Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley). as Zinn documents, it emerged organically in many different social contexts, including, for example, the civil rights movement and the labor movement.
i have little patience with people -- especially youngish professional women -- who assert themselves to be "not feminist". what a luxury, to be so very far removed from such recent history -- to not realize that Hillary Clinton (ugh, but still) was ineligible, by virtue of her ovaries, to obtain an undergraduate degree from Yale College.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Not the CIA
It was not the CIA. It was the Russians. Yep, back in the early 1900s, at the same time as the Russian oligarchy was dealing with those pesky revolting peasants**, they also had Russian agents in America attempting to foment trouble by inciting the women's suffrage movement.
It was an interesting thought, though. "If it weren't for the CIA and its brainwashing psy-ops, women would have been happy to remain barefoot, pregnant, and the property of their husbands with no rights of their own."
**Hat tip to Mel Brooks
Edited to add: /sarcasm
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
gjohnsit, can you please not give a damn
about these hyperactive female androphobes, who abuse their sexist powers and make you feel scared?
That is all bullshit and it destroys the best feelings men and women should have about themselves.
Have a hug from me, I am no androphobe, actually mostly I am an androphil, just when my instincts warn me, I might go to the other side of the street ... so to speak.
This is one of the saddest essays I have read here in a long time.
Peace and Love between the genders, please.
Sure you can ignore it.
And then you can end up in jail or banded a pedophile and shunned socially or losing your job or whatnot.
That's the thing. The stakes are simply too high to ignore. If I was talking to a woman who was proposing to walk though that classic bad neighborhood in the middle of night with the streetlights out, I might council her to "Simply ignore all the men hanging around and/or approaching her." I'd be an idiot to do so. The much better advice is "Find a different way to get home."
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I got away with it - *once*.
Wouldn't want to repeat the experience, ever, but I was getting out of a bad situation at a "friend's" apartment (I don't propose to give any details thank you) and found I was safer walking home through said questionable neighborhood at 3 am than...where I was.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Exactly
I once had a woman at work ask me on a date. She said it was because I was flirting with her.
I wasn't and hadn't been flirting. It hadn't even occurred to me.
This was a best-case scenario. What if she was afraid of men? I'd be in HR or worse.
quite honestly I don't see the relation of your comment
[grammar edit]
to what I said. May be my imagination of what I read played fuzzy with me, but I considered the story gjohnsit wrote, an admission that he is scared of women, who are so androphobe that they could cause him a lot of trouble. I didn't mean to say, he should ignore, what he feels, sees and what his instincts tell him. I meant to say to not to be scared. There is a difference in ignoring it or not being really anxious and scared about it.
Other than that, I may just not "get" the intensity of the problem, because I never worked in an American employer/employee situation and am therefore culturally more ignorant than most of you here.
But I do believe that most people, be it men or women, in a cross-gender or same-sex-gender situation that represent emotional abuse, a harrassment or a potentially violent rape situation, have an inner instinct in which kind of situation they might be in and react to it carefully to protect themselves. I would never blame anyone for "not coming out", "not fighting it" or "being silent" about it for years. I think most people know when to do what to save themselves. And their own safety comes first.
But I also think, that you can fight an attempt of harrassment or assault based on your gender identity (indepdentent if it's an assault between same gender or between female/male gender) without bringing it "out to the media". At least that's my experience. I was able to fight my own boss of a political think tank (not for sexual harrassment though but other criminal behavior) by keeping it for one and a half years to myself, gathering all the evidence, NOT bringing it out in the open and therefore avoiding it to become a scandal in the media, but finally presenting the bosses of the boss in another continent the evidence without anyone of my co-workers knowing anything about it. I also offered my resignation before I presented the proofs to the uber-bosses. I kept my job, the person in question, lost his. For all the right reasons. And it was dealt with outside of a media spectacle.
So, I think, it's the media, who jump on this and make a mess out of it so badly, that nobody can trust anyone's statements anymore face value, when there are no proofs available that are beyond questionable.
Then I need to clarify
I am NOT "scared of women".
I live with two women who are close and long-time friends.
I am afraid of women AT WORK who live in fear of men. Where an unfounded accusation can ruin my life.
But my essay was about more than just that.
I'm surprised that no one but me sees the connection between teaching children to fear men a generation ago, to today's fear of men as sexual predators.
I need to clarify as well
I didn't mean to say you "fear women" in general and was in my mind relating my words only to women you encounter at the workplace, who could have the power to bring you in trouble.
And regarding this:
I didn't know that this was taught. Can't even envision how that was done. OMG. In schools? That would been a totally fucked up thing to have happened. May be I didn't read carefully enough.
I am sorry for my lack of lived experiences and knowledge about American cultural, sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies. I watched it on TV, read about it, but never encountered it in my personal life. May be that explains my insensitivity.
Sorry for not being clear.
Stranger Danger
videos like this made me give up my plans for my retirement
to produce videos.
Sigh. Sorry. Got it.
Count me among those
that get it. Totally agree.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
To me the ultimate price tag
For that decision is that we have told fully one half of our population that they are inherently bad.
I just don't foresee that ending well in a myriad of ways... most of the quite subtle yet devastating.
On an only slightly related note, here in Victoria Canada things are different. I was out for a walk one day and was cutting across a path when I noted it ran through a school yard. Children were out. In the states I would have found a different path to walk. Here in Canada, I walked through the school and nobody gave a thought about it. It was a breath of fresh air to not be a predator simply due to my gender.
I think in the broader picture Americans have been fed such a steady diet of fear that it that point they fear anything and everything. I'm sure it's quite useful in keeping them under control.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
It may be too late already
link
That was BEFORE this recent scare.
I'm much more concerned about the more subtle effects
We are raising a generation of young men and telling them they are awful in a variety of ways.
It's actually an argument I had with my mother. I am utterly suck and tired of the notion that as a male I cannot feed or cloth myself. I'm tired of being told I'm emotionally hollow and sexually perverse. And we are raising a generation of young men steeped in that toxic brew.
I do not predict a positive outcome from that experiment.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I have a problem
with women who wait for years (not children).
First, this is behavior that should have been nipped in the bud. Had the woman brought it up, men could have at least had a chance to improve their behavior.
Now, they have had no chance to improve (or realize what behavior is offensive) - they just get wacked from their job.
Second, if a man has been doing this for years, he has obviously gotten something out of it. In other words, I would like to know how many women did what Weinstein or Matt Lauer wanted in the hopes of advancing their careers. Or how many women put the make on powerful men, just for fun, like Monica Lewinsky, or to advance themselves some how.
I've seen plenty of aggressive women in action, and women do brag about using their sexuality to manipulate men at work.
dfarrah
pretty much true, though.
If not dead nuts.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
A very sad state of affairs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I hear you saying is that you and many other men no longer have any faith and confidence in the fairness and good judgement of females, children and anyone in a position to decide whether or not sexual assault or harassment has indeed occurred. As you people watch, or watch TV and movies, think honestly about whether or not you have the ability to judge between a human to human interaction and a sexual aggression in the events you are watching. And then ask yourself if its fair on your part to decide that a significant portion of your fellow human beings don't have this same capacity. Yes, there are always dangerous people out there but, like terrorists, are we going to allow them to make the rest of us live in constant fear?
Betty Clermont
So then... "not all women" right?
That argument is about as strong as "not all men". Yes, I get it that the vast majority of women have no interest in abusing the obvious problems in these laws and social mores. But it only takes one to do irreparable damage to my entire life. It's a lot like rapists in that regard with stakes that are similar. Sure, most men are not rapists. But you only need one man to be a rapist at the right place and time and so you take precautions.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I'm not going to pretend to know
what is going on in other people's heads.
I'd be a fool to claim otherwise.
This goes double for my understanding of women.
The limits of my control of the situation end at my fingertips.
the problem is, it only takes one bad actor
to fuck you up forever, because that bad actor will be supported by the full weight of the various relevant social and political institutions -- and bear in mind, i'm not even saying the bad actor is malicious; the poisonous modern rhetoric of what constitutes harassment or abuse (noted above in the essayists anecdote about advice from a lawyer) will lead many individuals to honestly, sincerely, and in good faith believe they have been wronged. Indeed, they may even suffer some of the emotional trauma from having been wronged, because they have been socially preconditioned to view such incidents as abusive exploitation
read Garrison Keillor's version of the events that have led to his being purged, and you may understand just how fraught the situation is for ordinary men.
Your remarks represent the logical go-round of the entire situation. not only are men at risk in every social (and especially, workplace) encounter with women, but attempting to mitigate that risk by avoiding such encounters, or trying to control them by such measures as insisting that other people be always present, is also a violation of men's obligations. Catch-22? This is Catches 23, 29 and 31.
I'm about a hundred to a thousand times more likely to have my life ruined by an angry co-worker than by a foreign terrorist, and i'm well aware of it. what's funny is that nowadays, so many of the women are unaware of it -- they're surprised when i explicitly draw a very clear line. They'll say, for example, "Oh, it's no big deal, we're not at work right now," as if that would save my job when I'm sitting across the desk from the pissed-off HR manager.
The old line goes, "Men are afraid women will laugh at them; women are afraid men will kill them." It's an illuminating framing, but it has always been a half-truth. What men have always been afraid of is that women will "make" them do stupid things (or even evil things -- ref. Lady Macbeth). Now, however, men are afraid that women will destroy them, socially. What an extraordinary development.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
@UntimelyRippdYour remarks represent
This falls into a risk/reward matrix.
The cost of being accused of avoiding women at work (i.e. misogyny) is significant, but tolerable compared to accusations of sexual harassment.
That's something I forgot to bring up.
It isn't just the workplace. It's anyone from work as well.
I'd advise hope but for one thing
I too have watched this thing wax and wane over the years.
Hi, for those of you who don't recognize or remember me, I joined this site shortly after its inception - came here from another place we all knew. I've been gone for a long time, but now I've decided to return. All that is another story though, and maybe I'll cover it another time.
I've watched this thing with "empowering women" through speaking up about harassment over the years. It can be a good thing. People should stand up when they're being abused, manipulated, or having to live and work around an obnoxious superior/co-worker. But this Me Too movement, while maybe advanced in good faith, has run totally off the rails and become a lynch mob for any guy who even looks at a woman sideways. I don't know, maybe that was the goal - hey nothing would surprise me these days.
I began to suspect it with the accusations, flimsy as they are, against Franken, and persisted even after his attempts to observe standard procedure. I knew it when, at another forum, I tried to interject a word of reason and a reminder of the rule of law and due process, and was called a misogynist.
For the record, the gender neutral user name aside, I'm a woman. I'm an elder woman who endured sexual abuse from the age of six until my late twenties, and countless harassment episodes until as recently as four years ago. I know the subject matter quite well. But I was called a misogynist because I didn't fall in line to "believe the woman" every time, without question, without a moment's hesitation.
The ragged end came for me three days ago when two things happened. First was an ultimatum by the Boss of Bosses at another site - believe the women immediately, never question, never cite the woman's motives or past, never ask about glaring inconsistencies in the story. Doing so will cause banishment from the community.
I can't do that - especially not until all the facts are in. I'm old enough and experienced enough to know that women will sometimes lie about this matter. They have various reasons, revenge, money, self-promotion, dare I say political retribution, but the motive doesn't matter. What matters is, they can and do lie about this.
The second thing was the announcement that Garrison Keillor had been fired from Minnesota Public Radio for "Improper Conduct." No details, no hint as to the "allegations" or who filed them, official statements from the station that grow more confusing and suspicious by the day, yet he was ruthlessly tossed out.
Here we have a man who created and has worked on a hugely popular radio program for 50 plus years. Unlike so many of these other men, there has never been any complaint of this sort against him in all that time. Never. He's now had a single, un-detailed, "allegation" filed against him, which apparently he hasn't even seen. The reaction is - he is unceremoniously booted out the door, his previous work will no longer be distributed (apparently by any NPR station), his current endeavors will not be given air time, his products will not be given space, his current concert tour venues have all cancelled, and the Washington Post will no longer publish his columns.
And for what? Who knows?
That isn't justice. That's not empowering women or anybody else. That's Mob Rule. That flies in the face of every right guaranteed to us in the Constitution - due process, innocent until proven guilty, the right to face one's accuser and their charges. But to say so, to even advance the idea that judgment should be left to the judges after all the evidence is reviewed, is misogynistic and not to be tolerated.
No, I don't blame you one bit gjohnsit. Back in the eighties I knew of grandfathers who hesitated watching their own grandchildren for an afternoon for fear of being accused of something. I spoke to a man who resisted dusting the dirt off his granddaughter's bottom because he didn't want to be thought a pedophile.
I don't know why this country has to run either broiling hot or sub-zero cold on things, nor why it's so unnaturally obsessed with sex, but it does and it is. This particular aspect waxed and waned over the decades, but the Internet has empowered it like nothing ever before. And now, absolutely no one is safe from the accusation that can destroy your life in a minute.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
Thank you for saying that
I am of the opinion that when a potential victim speaks, we should always, always listen -- enough to get a real investigation going. But the actual outcome should depend on verifiable facts as produced by that investigation not the claims which started the investigation.
In the past our error was that we would not investigate and simply ignored the victims. Now are error is that we will not investigate and are ignoring the accused.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Keillor has said a little about the encounter that
is, he presumes, the origin of the complaint. If accurate, he's a poster person for the argument being made in this essay.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Have a link?
I would like to read whatever he has to say.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
There’s a bunch
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/362389-garrison-keillor-on-firing-i-pu...
I was looking for the one where he pointed out that he is known for being almost morbidly afraid of being touched, but this one has lots or irony too.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
He doesn't have much
On the subject of the allegation itself because the last I heard, he hasn't seen the allegation. His initial comment when he broke the story was based on what he thought it might refer to - at least that was the impression I got.
WaPo, who just cancelled his column, did an admirable job of covering the story here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/12/01...
But there was another one about the backlash from fans that was covered in the Chicago Trib. I made special note of it because of the weirdness. There have been mentions made that there was more than one complaint... and again this initially came from Keillor. Then MPR got involved and... well that's when their changing story started getting stranger. I quote:
This kind of bookended their original statement wherein this Andresen speaks of all the steps they've taken, including hiring a lawyer to do an investigation - which is still ongoing - before detailing how all associations with him are ended effective immediately.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
A sad read
I don't think you are "scary" but American culture is and increasingly so. ~ Gender peace ~
A couple of points
1. We in the western world seem to be transiting to a new understanding of sexuality and appropriate behavior for both men and women. (Some) men are used to harassing women--kid the girls, it used to be called--and (some) women are used to using their sexual power to get what they want. Eventually I think a new code of conduct will emerge, which will probably confine sexual invitations to designated times and places which those who are not interested need not frequent. I do think that both men and women need to understand that any member of the opposite (or same) sex who does not happen to be partnered should not automatically be regarded as available.
2. The writer Charles Hugh Smith, www.oftwominds.com makes a really interesting point about the recent cad of the day revelations, that the losing side in the latest spat between factions of the 1% has all of a sudden lost its privileges and is no longer enabled and protected.
3. I do agree that it is outrageous to fire someone over unsubstantiated accusations while at the same time, cops who have killed unarmed people are merely put on administrative leave. I also think that elections should not be overturned because of such allegations. Wisconsin, for example, famously has a procedure for recalling elected officials. Let the women who have recently decided they hate the WS senator agitate for recall.
4. I do think that eventually, part of the new code of conduct is going to have to include some sort of informal equivalent of a statute of limitations. The time to accuse someone of a crime is within a reasonable time after it has occurred and the proper place is the police station or DA's office, not the media ten years later.
Mary Bennett
I hope you are right
I hope that society will find a reasonable middle-ground, but I don't see any evidence of that happening at all.
Just look at the "all men are child predators" fear. That's been going on for at least two generations, with no efforts at all to change. Those children are now adults, trained to fear men.
It must be very confusing for a boy, to one day go from victim to predator when he comes of age.
Instead of sanity, I see the next big scare to be race.
White people will begin avoiding black people to avoid being called racist (which ironically, will be proof of their racism).
Directly traceable?
Anyone remember the McMartin preschool debacle back in the eighties? All manner of wild accusations of satanic worship, ritual abuse, witches, underground tunnels and the list went on and on. The original accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987. The trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. Total cost $15 million. All because of a chronic alcoholic mother who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. But these kinds of stories still circulate today.
Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons - For thou art crunchy and good with ketchup
I can sympathise with all your points
but, OTOH, I have known women who supported families be fired from their jobs because some male co-worker or male customer thought they were not "perky" enough. Not even refusing advances, but not being willing to kid along with the guys. Doesn't have the personality for the job is the accepted euphemism.
Now, your lawyer friend is an egotistical asshole, it seems to me, and bad news. I hope she isn't your boss. Nobody ever said women in power were going to be any more virtuous or less corrupt than men.
Mary Bennett
She was my boss a very long time ago
and not a good one. I didn't stay there long.
However, that doesn't make her wrong.
We may end up
having to bring back the discarded notion of propriety, not to keep the lower orders, or beings, in their places but to guard the innocent of both genders against opportunistic accusations.
Mary Bennett
Redefining single male/female relationships
It does seem that single male/female relationships are becoming more legally prescribed. One pundit called it the chaperone culture.
So what will be the unintended consequences?
Seems just a law of sociology that every movement has unintended consequences, even if the movement is positive. If I see a child who may be in distress, my reaction is to hope that some female sees the child. I think we see the dark side of this in ultra conservative societies like Saudi Arabia. One reason women are covered up? The female body arouses male sexual desired which apparently can't be controlled if they see a woman's ankles. Which is a first cousin to the idea that all men can be a rapist or sexual predator so physical contact must be restricted between adult males and any child. Will this even start effecting how fathers interact with their daughters?
Yah, I can easily see one consequence is more gender segregation within workplaces where men find it more comfortable working only with men. One the female side, maybe a greater sense of workplace alienation as male co-workers retreat even from the most simple of interactions.
This IS affecting how fathers interact with their daughters.
I promise.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
What I think might happen
is that non intimate interactions might become much more formal. I always insisted that my kids call adults by last name preceeded by the appropriate title, in order to create a social distance between adult and child.
Mary Bennett
I started to compliment
a male co-worker the other day on his shirt, but then I thought I better not.
I used to frequently compliment men on their ties and shirts, but I'm going to refrain now. Not that men complain about receiving compliments from women, but it's bound to happen when the men decide to turn the tables on the women.
dfarrah
Doesn't even need to be a complaint... just a public statement
of apology is enough to get you blacklisted.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3817135/chris-craddock/
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I work in retail where we come in contact with the public
Everyday. When I first started working at our store, there was one employee that stood out above the rest. He was the one who was always laughing and singing and all the customers liked him. He was also the most popular employee with the children who come into the store to seek him out. He takes interests in their lives, in their hobbies, and is always very engaging with them. I once complimented him on his ability to interact with children and his reaction was not what I expected. He flat out denied that he enjoyed interacting with children in the store and seemed annoyed that I had brought it up. I didn't know how to read the interplay between us and chalked it up to a misunderstanding.
Then there were other things. What I assumed at first was the occasional sexual joke he made here and there, over time it became obvious that the sexual remarks and innuendos he made found their way into almost every conversation he has with fellow employees, female and male. His constant remarks about young women being "new", along with his remarks about being old as sexually "ugly", were not only completely inappropriate for work, but bordered on hyper-sexual.
A conversation I had with a friend at work about films included the word cinephile. Again this employee interjected in the conversation and said, "oh, I thought you said you grew up with a pedophile".
He has recently befriended a new female employee with 4 children. She is widowed and seems to have taken his concern for her children as comforting.
So my hypothetical question is: Which side does one fall on? And which risk is greater?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Exactly. But, despite the
p.c. stereotype bull$h!t, as a never-married I have Always played with the neighborhood kids. Life is too F'ing short, and I've Never given a flying fuck what people think. I live on what once was a stable street - people lived on it forever becuz it's quintessential Americana. One of THE Best streets a kid from a working class family could ever grow up on! Everyone knew us, no one bothered us. It's now become a more transit street, what with the military nearby and houses more lucrative to rent. So, we get military families and their kids. Good for a 2 or 3 year stint before they move on to another state, country. So, new young kids every 2, 3 years. My "contact" with these hot shots usually amounts to a wave as I get in or out of my car. Pretty much it, usually. But, if one hollers, "hi, Wink!" I'll respond with a "what's up?" just to see what's up. Nothing like a quick convo with a 5 year old to make your day. "yeah... are you from another planet... ?"
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
The beatings will continue...
until more women vote for Hillary.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
I find it really interesting that only 17 people
have thumb-ed up this diary.
dfarrah
Seems to me if you treat women with the respect and
dignity they deserve, you've got nothing to be afraid of.
Really?
So no chance of a misunderstanding? You've never said something that couldn't be taken in a way that you didn't intend?
I was a human resources professional for the fed govt for
30 years, working for four different agencies. In the fed. govt, HR is usually dominated by females. I would say the ratio of females to males I worked with in my career was two to one. I'm 6'5", 220, pretty good looking dude in the day and can be pretty intimidating to some people. I never had one incident, not even close to anything like this because I never asked for it. I have always treated females with respect and have never acted like the jerks we hear about in the news now.
Perhaps the fed government environment had a little to do with it, we were given training on sexual harassment starting back in the eighties, but I never came close to having a problem of this nature.
Then I guess you have superior communication skills
because I've said things that have been taken in ways that I didn't mean.
I wish I never had to worry about being misunderstood.
I wouldn't chalk it up
to communication skills. People who work human resources seem to be a lot nicer than people in other areas (like lawyers tend to be 'go for the jugular' type of people). People in human resources are kind of like nurses - more concerned and caring about people. The women in HR may even be less back-stabbing than they are in other fields.
At one company, we had several different groups for company meetings (due to limited room size), and the ceo would get so frustrated - he said he would try to use the same words at each meeting, but people always managed to hear something other than what he was trying to convey.
I've seen people get mixed up with communication - it is so comical. I can understand what the person tried to say, but I can see how the other person interpreted the words differently. And they typically blame the other, but people just think differently.
dfarrah
Training
related to your comment
Well, using the results of diversity training to
indicate the same for sexual harassment training is a stretch. Some studies have shown that sexual harassment training does help reduce the number of sexual harassment claims. If you're put in a classroom and told these things are forms of harassment, then it's the idiots that aren't learning:
•A supervisor implies to an employee that the employee must sleep with him to keep a job.
•A sales clerk makes demeaning comments about female customers to his coworkers.
•An office manager in a law firm is made uncomfortable by lawyers who regularly tell sexually explicit jokes.
•A cashier at a store pinches and fondles a coworker against her will.
•A secretary's coworkers belittle her and refer to her by sexist or demeaning terms.
•Several employees post sexually explicit jokes on an office intranet bulletin board.
•An employee sends emails to coworkers that contain sexually explicit language and jokes.
Now, complimenting a female on how they're dressed or about their hair? That depends on the context and the situation. But if a dude goes around doing that all the time to females while neglecting to tell his buddies how good their ties look, they're asking for trouble and they should know that. It's a workplace and all people should be respected and not have to deal with personal remarks about appearance.
Thank you, Big Al!
I just finished my 1st week at a new job. Day one, onboarding, touched on the sexual harassment issue, but day two included four hours of training over it - a couple hours also covered diversity in the workplace, and student record confidentiality. This training included multiple different scenarios and contained facts and court citations of actual court cases on which the scenarios were based.
Frankly, not a single sexual harassment scenario in the course included some poor dupe of a great guy (or gal) getting railroaded by some vengeful or overly sensitive snowflake. And, not all the scenarios ended in the accuser "winning" because, despite what we've been fed here in this essay, everything is not sexual harassment. (A fired staffer from the show Friends did not win her case, and based on what I read, the courts got it right.)
Mutual respect goes a long, long way.