A precise label eludes me. On the one hand, you've got TV talent with remote door locks, pervy doctors, and film directors or producers who have taken the "casting couch" cliche to boggling extremes; on the other, you have doddering, clumsy or juvenile types who sometimes put their hands where they oughtn't.
Both are bad but surely there are different levels of badness, and different appropriate responses? Often there is a drastic power imbalance inhibiting the right response to low-level creepering -- if your boss or a county judge pats your bottom, you're a lot less likely to give them hell (cold stare, shocked comment, a good slap) for it that you would a random guy in line at the five-and-dime; and once they've gotten away with the low-level stuff, some of them don't stop there.
In all the denouncing and firing, I notice a few who might've have been shoved towards proper decorum if they'd been backhanded by their chosen victims early and often; others seem, at least in hindsight, to have been utterly predatory, as set on their path as a shark. Many of the latter appear to have exercised a predator's judgment in their choice of prey, going after the weakest.
Some kind of tipping-point has been passed; a series of high-profile arrests (Jerry Sandusky, Larry Nasser, Jared Fogle) may have been the earliest signs, followed by accusations against Bill Cosby and the UK's Jimmy Saville. Or maybe we just passed some kind of "critical mass" of women in management -- nothing personal, guys, but I have been on the receiving end of too many "I'm sure he didn't mean it/he's just a diamond in the rough/think of the team" chats with managerial higher-ups, men who simply can't (or won't) conceive that such misbehavior was seriously meant.
Things have changed. It's too early to tell if this first big shift points to greater concern for such things in workplaces generally, or if it will trail off in tabloid-headline trivia. I'd like to think the good old-fashioned withering glare, stern comment and stinging slap will stage a comeback in response to creepy comments, worrying situations and wandering hands.
You're right about the different levels. I put a guy who maybe hugs a little too eagerly, or who maybe asks for a date one more time than I regard as really proper after I've clearly said "no, never" in a very different camp from the guy who would lock me in his office and order me to unbutton my shirt.
ReplyDeleteI guess part of my feeling is people in the first camp are maybe more clueless/awkward than anything, and maybe they can learn to be less uncomfortable-making, whereas people in the second camp SHOULD know very well that making it so a person cannot get away from their advances, cannot easily say "No" without suffering some kind of harm (though if it came down to having undesired sex with a skeevy guy or losing my job, I'd start reading the want-ads) and they are the ones we really need to be concerned about.
Though I suspect what will actually happen? All of the underlings, including the decent men and the women, will be required to attend increasingly more workshops and Powerpoints and what not on "what is sexual abuse and how not to do it" while the people at the top with the remote office-locks and similar kind of get off scot-free. Because that's how most bureaucracies work.
Hat pins. Time to bring back hat pins.
ReplyDeleteAnd it wasn't that long ago that we were laughing at Mike Pence for wanting to avoid even the appearance of impropriety...
ReplyDeleteAgree that there's a difference between the socially clueless and the predatory.
For the clueless, a combination of reprimand, education, and peer pressure can work. Nice, well-meaning folks get "does he/she like me that way?" wrong all the time, so one shouldn't be demonized for a single mistake. If it becomes a pattern sterner measures are required.
The predators need a forceful demonstration that their behavior is intolerable.
Bruce H:
ReplyDelete"There are sharp and shining sabres, there are Viking axes bright,
There are bodice-knives and hatpins, there is poison in the night"
(I'm not sure if those words are by Leslie Fish or Joe Bethancourt.)
On the subject of remote door locks: I'm wondering whether that's being misreported. A lock, remote or otherwise, to keep people in the office seems not just creepy but surely downright illegal, under building and fire codes if nothing else. On the other hand, an emergency lock button to keep people out of the office could well make sense... just so long as it doesn't prevent the door being opened from the inside.
"There are sharp and shining sabres, there are Viking axes bright,
ReplyDeleteThere are bodice-knives and hatpins, there is poison in the night"
Any tool to get the job done, I say. ;)
This looks nice, with an appropriate gold neck chain will make a dainty, yet quite dandy bosom blade to dissuade all but the most insistent touchy-feeley suitor :
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-25-G10-Fixed-Blade-Necklace-Knife-Spear-Finger-Hole-Neck-Tactical-Combat/291503905392?epid=518500763&hash=item43defc9a70:g:T3IAAOSw8HBZN2bQ
BTW - Is your station under the Cumulus umbrella? Their announcement makes sense considering the drastic cost-cutting you have mentioned over the past few years...
If you want something that doesn't look like a knife but will still cut when raked across the face of the rake, there is this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mantisknives.com/Product%20Zoom/MK14%20Vicious%20Circle/MK14ViciousCircle.html
Anon 7:09: I cannot and will not discuss that kind of specific, but the last time I checked, Cumulus was pretty much all radio, and my work is not.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of tools with which to say NO, personally, I'm good with the .380 and avoiding closed-door meetings without known backup.
On the remote door lock: a guy making $25M a year can get pretty much any custom thing he wants installed in his office, and who's to notice? Especially if it pays to not notice....
...I might want to be more diligent about carrying my social occasions pepper spray, too.
ReplyDeleteI have some real misgivings about all this. The obvious one is that men are getting railed on mere accusations. About things that allegedly happened decades past. That isn’t right, and it isn’t right when women make false accusations and face no consequences for it.
ReplyDeleteNo it isn’t right that creeps make prostitution a term and condition of employment or advancement; but if women accept that and comply with it... and many of them will - it becomes a matter of pimps and whores just doing business and can probably even be protected under that favourite libertarian refrain of “what two consenting adults do in private is nobody else’s business...”. THAT is the bulk of what is going on here, not rape or assault.
For me, I am cackling with laughter. The modern liberal woman made a shrew and a slut of herself back in the 70’s and 80’s. They started divorcing their husbands in droves for cash and prizes in court and today they emasculate their men at every opportunity. They in turn became contemptible homosexuals, pansexuals,transsexuals and other freak shows as a result. Or - they became feral predators out to bang younger gullible liberal hotties rather than dealing with the fat ugly shrews of their own generation - who are looking at spending their golden years bitter and lonely with only cats for company. If they tear their hypocritical men to shreds and put them to death - I will want to watch! I am okay with random rapists getting shot and killed too.
This will not go away either. Whenever you put men, power, money and women together you will get low men who who will use it to take advantage of women, and low women that will use sex to take advantage of men. Unless, of course, liberals and libertarians come up with some kind of moral compass to help them control themselves.
Well, that was cheap and easy.
ReplyDeleteCheap, easy, and pointless. My parents are gone now, for 3 and 4 years. But I would still not dare to treat any woman with disrespect by unwanted touches or looks, in fear of disappointing them, not to mention the fact that I am happily married and have been for 25 years now. The same goes for my wife, I would never disrespect her by paying that kind of attention to another woman.
ReplyDeleteAnd the previous comment about Mike Pence is not all that far off the mark. I have always made sure to avoid situations which could involve my being alone with a woman not my wife. Not because I don't trust myself or the other woman, but simply because I respect my marriage and my wife. I get that most don't understand that and that's ok. The thing is, even though times have changed, as well as people have changed, wrong and right never change.
Oh, look. The pseudonymous cowardly moron "Glen Filthie" has screwed his little face up and grunted out a steamer in comments.
ReplyDelete(This is the dude who wants everyone to know what a hard, uncensored edgelord he is, and then spells feces as "C-H-I-T". It's an "S", Captain Milquetoast.)
Cleanup on aisle three.
Tam, I have learned much from your writings, and from just watching you deal with people. The same as Ms.X. This person Glen, seems to act in the light the way a decent person would not act in the dark. You ladies both caught him, and quickly. Touche`
ReplyDelete