You do not know me and you are wrong to question my authenticity. This is exactly what I am talking about in those who cannot hear a different viewpoint without going postal (or condescending in this case.) We need to get to a place where we can treat each other as humans first. If I am required to treat female colleagues differently from male colleagues on the basis of their plumbing, we have a problem. It is not a normal human interaction to be formal, cold and professional at all times with people that you are around more than your family. If I am to avoid casual interactions with females, it follows that I must also avoid casual interactions with men. Before you ask, I have never been accused or questioned about harassment, to the best of my knowledge, I have never harassed anyone. I know some who have, and they were known to be creeps and were called out by others (including men) in my workplace. While “witch hunt” is the wrong term, conflating a Weinstein rapist/harasser with the guy who smiles a little to broadly is a path to lost credibility. You seem to think I am defending creeps and lechers. I am not. I choose to treat males and female colleagues the same. I think we should all strive to do so.
Treating women the same as men is exactly what we are asking for, except in cases where dirty jokes and sexual talk are seen as casual social bonding or where hazing is normalized. In those cases work should get a little more formal for everyone. Those environments are also uncomfortable for many men.
Avoiding women is sexist and creates a hostile work place. This is not what is advocated by anyone serious about equality. If anyone is telling you that in harassment training be then they are wrong and are not expressing typical accepted views on harassment.
Treating women differently is not the current push so your arguments are being treated as straw men. You seem to be projecting your views of what these people have supposedly told you on to people here saying something very different.
Can you point out where I’ve done that?
I’ve not condescended or gone postal. My response to what I believed were sincere questions was polite.
You on the other hand, are really butthurt about something. Much of what you’ve written tells me that either you didn’t read my post, or you have an axe to grind. Maybe both.
My entire post implored you to treat women in the same way as men.
I never said it was.
Good thing I never did that!
Nope, never thought or said that.
If you believe that collegues should be treated the same regardless of sex, if you’ve never been a harasser, you should be cool with this policy. If you are more afraid of being mistaken for a harasser than you are on board with stopping actual harassment, then maybe marinate on that for a minute and find out why.
I dunno, I was rather surprised by it because of the quality. South Africa sort of seems it would cater more to gritty and utilitarian to me. I’d expected this to be more top hatty English, “By her majesty’s command” and was surprised when I click on the “about me”.
It is old school craftsmanship with the custom metal work you can get done on the cane handles. I saw one that had the Zelda symbol (on Link’s shield).
And what if the woman is in a position (say, due to the job they do), which does not allow that? Or what if they don’t want to? Are we supposed to suffer just so we don’t get raped, harassed, or cat called? Again, this is going back to it being all our fault for just fucking existing, as if WE’RE the cause of a misogynistic culture! You know better than that.
It’s also blatant sexist discrimination to ask us to wear what someone else deem appropriate for self-defense in a world that doesn’t respect us.
No one argued that women shouldn’t wear such things, or carry guns, or take martial arts, or whatever. But MEN have the choice to do those things or not. We have much less of a choice, in your scenario, because we are more likely to have to deal with these problems.
And we’re not talking about the attacker jumping out from behind the bushes scenario, but about going about our daily lives, and getting harassed, propositioned, held back in our jobs, being held to different standards, and sometimes even assaulted by men that we work with, not some surprise attacker that we can just fight off. If we do all the things that you suggest, and then punch a dude at work for making a pass, a rude comment, or for not giving us a promotion, because we won’t fuck him, do you honestly think that punching the dudes lights out with the judo we took is going to not cause us to be arrested for assault?
You know I like and respect you, man, but I don’t think you’re thinking this all the way through. Yes, part of the problem is the rapist in the bushes scenario… but sexual harassment in the work place ain’t that. It’s the part of the problem that is much less hard to deal with and negotiate, because it often comes down to he said-she said, and that often means we don’t get believed.
Check this one out, then… I had my students read the 3rd chapter (about Rosa Parks) and they really dug it:
https://www.amazon.com/At-Dark-End-Street-Resistance/dp/0307389243
Well, maybe there are some men that need to do that, and instead of arguing with women about it, you should maybe talk to men you know and get them to start treating women like people instead of warm holes to stick their dicks in.
If you’d offered that comment in a thread on protective clothing, or practical workwear, or idiosyncratic fashion choices, you wouldn’t be drawing any flak.
But you didn’t; you said it in a discussion that is specifically focused on sexual assault and victim-blaming.
At best, it looks clueless. At worst, victim-blaming. In between, derailment.
Despite our political differences, I actually think that you’re a decent bloke. So, I’m going with option #1.
This is so important. Also it’s prudent and I hope it meets with the approval of those here who don’t think women take enough initiative in protecting themselves.
For a long time I worked at a well-respected law firm that did plaintiff’s employment litigation, including sexual harassment actions (IANAL). Men in these threads (I’m pretty sure they are all men) keep crying for due process blah blah blah. There is a sadly erroneous idea that sexual harassment claims are easy for a woman to bring and win. This is just bunkum.
Why do women have to do this? Why do they have to operate a shadow intelligence service about males in their vicinity? Because in the past they haven’t had access to due process. Because women know if they used the hr resources supposedly there for their benefit, they could expect brutal bureaucratic retaliation up to and including firing and the smearing of their names in whatever field they work. They know they will generally not be believed. They know if they make it to the EEOC and the courts, they’ve just entered even lower levels of hell. Assuming a fighting woman wins, she finishes exhausted and hurt.
I hope there has been a turn.
I will, thank you.
This sounds right up my alley.
0_o
Um… it’s the internet, dude; no one “knows” anyone else, that’s exactly why a person should question the “authenticity” of any claim presented.
Should I eschew my lifelong interest in fashion because some man will think it’s analogous to asking to be assaulted?
If our culture is approving of that, we should probably try to educate the men instead of trying to eliminate fashion.
If I’m going out into the woods, I wear my Docs with long heavy pants tucked into them, not a fluttering silk dress. But since it pleases me to wear fluttering silk dresses, I’ll wear them on the street. If someone likes the dress, or finds me attractive in it, I don’t mind a look, a smile, a civil comment; why shouldn’t I wear what pleases me, and be happy that other people might be pleased? It’s really unfortunate that I can’t wear what pleases me anywhere and any time, because it seems I’ll either be “asking for it” because I’m wearing something attractive, or being faulted because I’m not wearing body armor or a burka.
Men generally can wear whatever they please, with little blowback. Unless it’s a dress; then they get the kind of treatment women in a dress get. Double standards need to disappear, not fashion.
What I’m hearing is y’all defending a pervasive system that disempowers women, and advocating restrictions on women’s rights to choose how they clothe themselves and behave.
I hear you advocating against positive change in the workplace, and condemning speech that challenges restrictions on women’s choices.
That is what your words communicate to me. But since y’all are clearly not hearing what I am intending to say, perhaps what I am hearing is not what you meant to say. It happens.
@Lilyth, if you would like me to remove all my posts from this thread I will do so.
How? By advocating that predators are held accountable?
By forcing women to wear armor in public instead of what they’d like? No one said women couldn’t, you’re saying that women SHOULD change how they dress based on the actions of other human beings. You’re arguing that because there are people who are predators, that women should have LESS freedom in their lives by dressing ways that they might not want to because of those predators.
I’m having a hard time seeing how you’re getting these arguments from what me, @Lilyth, @Magdalene, @marence, etc are actually saying. We’re saying that we want the freedom to dress as we want, whether that’s in lovely frocks, boots and jeans, suits and ties, whatever we’d like to wear as opposed to having to dress for the behavior of others.
Perhaps you need to look at what you wrote and try to clarify for us then.
I for one don’t want that. I want you to clarify your points, why you seem to think that the solution to these problems is for women (or victims of sexual assault, etc) are the ones who are responsible for the behavior of others. If that’s not what you mean, say it plain, man and tell us what you mean to say.
I used to date a young woman who wore Docs with sundresses.
sigh I miss the 90s sometimes.
I haven’t the skills to be plainer than this. I have attempted to directly reply to criticism but my words are disregarded. I have nothing more to add.
If it is impossible for me to communicate my ideas, then I would rather be silent than have other people be offended by their reading of my words. That is why I have offered to remove my posts. I only want to distress and offend certain people who I think need that, and none of them are in this thread.
And a vanishing small number of rapes could have been prevented by wearing clothes easier to run in. Most rapes happen in familiar locations by trusted or at least familiar people. Women are trapped before they realize it, very few get the chance to break and run only to be foiled by clothing.
This is not a real factor.
I think a paralell could be drawn here to the burka or hijab.
There’s been a lot of heated discussion about what part they play in oppression and whether they should be banned. Everyone here, (including you iirc) , agreed that it was more oppressive to mandate what individual women should wear, and that if women are to abandon them, it has to be their choice. No one should abuse or oppress women who adhere to the norms they were raised in.
All western women have been socialized into “fashion” to some degree. So for a lot of women it’s familiar and bound up in identity to them in the same way that a burka or hijab is to other women, and it’s generally what the rest of society expects to see.
So even though I’m a feminist who had to rethink some of my footwear at some point, I’m also a make up artist who wears a lot of make up and impratical fashiony things when it suits me, and highly technical practical outdoors gear and no make up when that suits me. I think all women and men should have the freedom to wear whatever they want along that spectrum. For some women and men dressing is a pleasure and an artistic form of expression, and I think that’s one of the joys of being human.
The fashion horse is long gone from the barn. So as @marence said, lets kill the double standards and bad behavior and leave people’s choice of dress out of it, because discussing it at all in the context of assault and harassment gives predators an out.
Okay. Your point is that dress codes are work are bad, yes? I don’t disagree.
But you’re ignoring that women want to wear what they want to wear and we shouldn’t have to be forced to wear particular clothing that we don’t want to, period. Dress codes are different from being forced to change our clothing taste in fear of assault or whatever. It’s not just about corpotate dress codes, but how our culture places blame on women for supposedly dressing in ways that “provoke” men to harass us.
If you think that women should be able to always dress as they decide and that the responsibility lies with the harasser, then there is no problem. But you SEEM to be saying that women SHOULD change how they dress to ward of harassment or rape. That still means that we have to dress in ways that we might not want to. No one thinks that women shouldn’t wear clothes that can be defensive. But we don’t want to HAVE to do that. Men often don’t have to do that, so why should we? Why are we subjected to a different standard, where we have to alter our behavior because other people can’t see us as fellow human beings worthy of respect.
I think I understand your position. Speaking only for myself, I know how to be prepared - the kids refer to my purse as the zombie apocalypse preparedness bag.
Also speaking only for myself, I think you’re naive about the position of fashion as cultural signifier; status, class, and social strata are all identified by the way people - especially women - dress and present themselves. Over the 20th century, fashion became more than an affectation for the rich, because the lower classes were able to afford more than one everyday and one Sunday outfit. They could dress in a way that signified who they were or wanted to be. You’re doing the same thing - dressing in a way* to signify that you’re ready to participate in any fight of arms and probably come out on top. That’s fashion, too.
*from what you’ve described in previous posts.
