… Have you ever considered that your poor luck with women might have to do with you very obviously holding them in contempt?
ETA: Sexual harassment lawsuits happen because women feel sexually harassed and complain about it. Because women are people with agency who want to do their damn job and who seek redress when they experience harassment. You’ve expressed disregard for women in our workplace. You’re unconcerned that they’re there to work. Your personal wants are much more important than their careers, you assert. What a prize! I’m sure they won’t feel at all harassed by such an entitled demanding attitude.
You’re a ticking time bomb in your job. If you’d like to stay hired, I’d suggest you find some outlet for your romantic yearnings. Perhaps try internet dating? I understand that’s a thing that exists that allows you to interact with women who actually are seeking romance.
My big problem with this particular line is that you make it sound like you having “Options” is more important than other people feeling comfortable in their work place. If this is not what you meant, that’s fine, but that’s definitely how it comes off, at least to me.
Thanks. Probably not viable for this thread, either. Kinda sucks that a post about racism is so taken up in the comments with sexism. I’d be okay with that if the discussion was intersectional, but yeah, I’ve learned not to ask for that kind of sophistication about these issues on bbs.
In the Squarespace case and its original post, can we really split the sexism and racism (not that they aren’t separate issues in and of themselves)? They seem to be a package deal in this instance.
Well yeah, we shouldn’t split them (actually here and elsewhere), but apparently “we can,” since I’m not seeing any discussion of sexism here conjoined with discussion of this woman’s race. Did I miss it?
I don’t know. As a white guy, I’ve found if I comment on either without being extremely careful, I get told I’m speaking from privilege, whitewashing, and mansplaining so, frankly, I don’t generally participate beyond a certain level. There are only so many times I’m going to ride in that rodeo in an online forum before learning just to back away and let smarter people discuss the threads.
In fact, I should probably just shut up now. I just didn’t want this to devolve into yet another thread of Shaddack’s misogyny and resentment towards women.
Some corporate cultures can handle anything, including married couples.
I worked at an organization with a married couple, a small arts organization. The couple were both cool people. In fact in this organization, their marriage gave the company a real strong presence in their discipline and I’d say was a good thing for this company. This of course is not the norm.
Celesteh; this is another case of the “social graces” false assumption of “love;” there are some people who really need affection. The psychology metrics of corporate organization always misses the boat until it’s too late.
As Enso asks the question, the answer is yes, most women want to go through their workday without the “needy of affection” genius “oogling” all day.
Completely predictable given the structure of the original essay and its weird, rambling focus on dating. That’s what I was complaining about earlier in the topic…
Consider the lede well and truly buried at this point. I think she should have opened with the racism claims and specifics.
Have you read the rest of this thread? If not, maybe you should – it might show you that others, including me, didn’t find it weird, nor rambling. I can see, though, how it could seem so to a white guy. I can also see how, even if you did read this thread carefully, you might still say the same thing you just said. As if your perspective is some kind of objective norm, and those that others hold are “weird.” Which wouldn’t surprise me. After all, guys encased in the privileged norm do that constantly.
Why, because white guys like you are the ones whom everyone should just assume are the readers they’re writing for?
Consider this, please, even if you’re not willing to read the thread above carefully, thereby listening to perspectives that differ from your own: maybe she didn’t “bury the lede.” Maybe you just missed it.
The one big comment made was definitely a racist statement, but I think a lot of Amelie’s experiences were influenced by sexism as well. I’ve experienced… to a lesser degree some of the treatment she had at squarespace (white female here). Granted, we don’t really have proof for a lot of that stuff so while I personally believe a lot of that background helped with the overall feel of her work situation, I may be biased because I can relate to it on a more personal level.
Does this really help the level of discourse (ha ha ) here?
And, yes, I’m a white male asking this but…I dunno. When I read things like this, I generally close the tab and move on, not actually try to continue to engage in a conversation with the other party. At that point, why bother? I know that runs the obvious risk of tone policing but if your goal is some sort of dialogue, specifically attacking the integrity of the other party based on their own race or gender seems unlikely to accomplish that goal.
I’m not challenging anyone’s integrity based on who they are. I’m pointing out that being a member of the empowered majority tends to affect one’s perspective, in part by making one unaware that one even HAS a particular, group-based and -influenced perspective. Knowing that about normalized men makes me think his response resembles that of many other white men I’ve known who’ve acted that way.
I know the empowered tend to take such an informed observation as an “attack,” but 1) that’s on them, and um, 1a) it’s a response that ALSO tends to be informed by their group-bound positionality, and 2) it’s not an attack, it’s an informed observation.
So, whether offering such observations helps the level of discourse here or not is, I guess, up to him. He’s seemed open to other/othered perspectives at other moments, which decreased my usual hesitancy prior to offering such observation.
ETA: After all that’s been said above after his initial critique of the supposedly rambling, buried-lede post, all that’s shown that for many other (and presumably othered) readers, he came back and said the very same thing. I’m now wondering why you’re blaming ME for writing something unhelpful.
Because by my reading (see how I put that, and how differently he put what he said?), after other people spoke about their different readings of the post in question, he came back and said the same dismissive (and supposedly true) thing he’d said before. As if he hadn’t even heard the different readings that others offered of the post about Squarespace.
So, if he actually hadn’t read those other responses, I suggested he do so. And, since I’ve often seen and heard before ordinary white guys respond the ways he’s been responding to explanations of oppression offered by people with other perspectives informed by their different (because not empowered-majority) experiences, I suggested he think about whether being an ordinary white guy might be shaping his perspective more than he realizes.
I said that because I correctly predicted the future. The article was hard to understand and buried the lede, and as a direct consequence of the article being hard to understand and burying the lede, the discussion diverged into weird / unwanted areas as you yourself noted here:
I think anyone who made the unacceptable comments claimed in that article – about someone being so black they blended into their chair – should at the very least be severely reprimanded with a note that goes on permanent file with HR in their employee record, if not fired outright.
