Fair enough.

When I think of you I think of bull so Taurus. (Hey, it could be worse; at least I didn't say Cancer). ;)

Good point. We should probably get back to that.

As a simple reductio, if it were, babies would have a culture in the womb. They certainly have a race (if you believe in race at all). The culture is potentially anything.

And culture is an aspect of race. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's no necessary connection between culture and race. Haven't you noticed that people of the same race can have completely different cultures or different races the same one?

Thinking of foreigners as degenerate is xenophobic and prejudiced, which is bad enough, but not necessarily racist unless the reason has something to do with racial differences.

It's not always a bad thing to jump on a bandwagon when the alternative is to sit in the gutter. If you're looking for something thoughtful to read on this issue, I'd recommend @TimeLine and @schopenhauer1 rather than The Sun.

There are, which implies it functions but not that it works. Even bullshit can serve a use though it very often just makes walking through a field less pleasant.

Well, the OP example was about breasts though the specific word "tits" wasn't used :

Blimey, anyone order a bouncy castle? — Jane Moore, The Sun

Then came Tiff's example about pussy which we've discussed. That's the type of thing I find objectionable not comments about dresses and so on.

How are men and women supposed to assess their co-workers romantic potential if they can not engage in the normal female/female. male/male, or male/female interaction that spawns friendship, romance, and marriage? — Bitter Crank

They can as far as I'm concerned. But what's that got to do with commenting on their tits and pussies?

The preliminaries to asking someone out involve flirting, touching (and I'm not talking about running a hand up a woman's thigh, or down a man's trousers, here), banter, and so on. I consider it meet, right, and salutary that people should pursue personal goals like friendship and romance at work. — Bitter Crank

There's banter and banter. I've engaged in banter at work but again not gone the tits or pussies route. That wouldn't have worked with any woman I've ever been interested in.

You already know that I have no understanding of millennial women (so strange a species, unlike any generation before) so you will understand why I don't quite understand how they are ever going to get laid by anybody--male or female, let alone find a husband and have children (Gawd, what a pathetic patronizing patriarchal thing to say--total insensitivity!!! Get married and have children? What cave did he crawl out of???) if they can't find a way to interact more enthusiastically with men. Look, you know as well as I do that this discourse applies to on-campus and post-campus socializing as well. It doesn't apply ONLY to the work place. — Bitter Crank

Again, I don't know if we're talking about the same thing. Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention to the discussion but the examples given (apart from Benkei's) weren't anything to do with flirtation they were obnoxious comments about tits and pussies. What am I missing here?

How could it work? — Banno

Ha, how did the Big Bang work smartie pants? Something just appeared out of nothing, eh? Bet you believe that cock and bull story. Anyway, if you must know it works the same way staring at chicken entrails can tell you who you should marry. The arrangement of random patterns takes on a non-random and statistically predictable effect when you bypass certain neuronal connections responsible for logic and common sense. It's more or less the same reason I wash my hands 1327 times a day. And I'm a better man for it. Prove me wrong. And then prove something came from nothing, ha!

*Washes chicken entrails from hands. Heads to jewellery shop to buy engagement ring.*

The short answer: yes. All values must be judged by reason, and to accept one over another simply because it is of the culture that one has sprung from, is unreasonable prejudice. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it's not racist. Even if it were "unreasonable prejudice", unreasonable prejudice is not racism. Racism is about races not values. It's the belief that race, which is biological in so far as it exists at all, has some effect in and of itself on determining morality or other desirable personality traits. It's just a category error to say that if you think one set of values superior to another set that necessarily makes you racist. That doesn't mean racists won't denigrate others' values for racist reasons (or that people aren't irrationally prejudiced towards their own culture), it just means that the word "racist" has a meaning that's widely abused.

Now, the people to the far east of Europe are entitled to think their own cultures (China, SE Asia, Japan, Korea, Tibet, etc) are very fine too, world class, and second to none. Africans and Amerindians are going to think their cultures are very fine as well. — Bitter Crank

Or alternatively, Europeans may prefer Eastern cultures and vice versa. I agree it need have nothing to do with race and if we go down that route we trivialize racism and make ourselves as irrational as racists who are also guilty of a category error in confusing biology and character.

Benkei's experience of being reprimanded for complimenting Ms. Dutch on her dress illustrates where these finicky rules about behavior end up. — Bitter Crank

I don't think Benkei should have been reprimanded for that. But it's a far cry from any of the examples we've been discussing so far.

Remember too, we're talking about the workplace and that's somewhere that can't be escaped very easily. It's not like being down the pub where you can just walk away. It can make the environment poisonous and turn into a form of bullying like having a boss who constantly belittles you. And I want to emphasize again that there's an asymmetry here between the sexes. Women are far more threatened sexually by men than men are by women, and tend to react accordingly. So, it's much more likely to feel like humiliation and bullying to a woman than a man. And that's not something you can brush off by telling people to stop being so PC. Besides, there are plenty of other places you can get your rocks off on sexual innuendo (like here in the Shout box for example...), it's no great loss not to have it in the workplace.

At least 50% of your list are right-wing racists. Katie refugees-are-cockroaches Hopkins and her ilk are the lowest of the media low. They sell an ideology of ignorance to the worst elements of society to which for some unknown reason you've decided to tether your rope. If you think a significant proportion of women would laugh along with you as you mock them sexually or guffaw about their "broken pussies", you're seriously misguided. Try it in the real world and see how you get on. There may be some argument for dialling back PC in some of its guises but you seem to be saying little more than you should have the right to verbally trample on whomever you so wish because it amuses you.

*Shrug* I liked Foundation, especially the fourth one (I think, it was). For sex, I went James Herbert.

? Obviously she was as is everyone I presume. That's the point. Your cat / Your genitalia. Har har. But not har har for her or most women or just purely on funny factor for anyone who's heard a million of those jokes already.

My today's horoscope:

"Although you generally like to think of yourself as being rational and scientific, today you might surprise yourself. You could suddenly find yourself picking up intuitively on the thoughts and feelings of others, particularly those closest to you. You might find yourself answering their questions before they even ask them. Don't freak. This is just as scientific as anything else. We just don't have the why of it yet. Accept it and go with the flow."

Jesus, it just gets creepier by the minute.

This is my sun sign apparently. Definitely something in this. Tell me more.

I'd suggest jumping in the deep end. If there was one.

Et moi. Maybe it all makes sense.

Something fishy about that answer.

Maybe, although I doubt there was ever a time, po-mo or no, when most women appreciated jokes about their "broken pussies". My guess is the only thing that's changed now is that they are more likely to speak up about their displeasure.

I take it you're a Capricorn?

I may as well tell you now by the way, this will never make it to the 100. You can quote me on that.

Absolutely there is.

In pretty much every area except sex I would agree with you. I curse in the workplace and if someone complained I'd think they were being petty and oppressive. Viva the bastard files! I think we do have to recognize though that men and women in general react very differently to sexual talk. I may even be accused of sexism by saying this but I think it's an unavoidable reality.

I'm not saying you should. It depends on the context of each situation. But I relish the swarm and the fact that rapists like HW may actually be brought to justice now. And you can't have it both ways. If you want to see that happen, there has to be some kind of a "swarm" to create an environment in which women feel comfortable in speaking out. What everyone should be mostly concerned with here is that they haven't for so long not the fact that suddenly they have but a few minor transgressors or innocents have been caught up in it. It's a simple matter of moral priorities as far as I'm concerned.

It's still much more likely the case that innocent victims won't report and the guilty get away with it or they do report and are ignored (e.g. with Trump's victims) so I'm all for more swarm and sweeping up the scum. HW got way with it for years, for example. How many women were raped due to lack of swarm? And is that less important than a few false accusations?

(I accept regulation should have its limits by the way. I'm all for allowing cussing in the workplace :-* ).

Anyway to bring it back on topic, you're wrong about regulations concerning sexual harassment because you don't understand how regulation works or why it's necessary, Bitter's wrong because he thinks everyone else should have the same relationship to their genitalia that he has. That's never going to happen.

So without any government, in a state of anarchy over the past few centuries, we'd still have everything we have now in terms of social infrastructure and technology? Is that really your considered analysis?

So silly. Without successive governments, you'd be hanging out in a cave. Yes, governments have their faults but you owe everything you have to their cumulative efforts over centuries. That's not socialism, that's perspective. And common sense. All this BS about you and your business when you are sitting on the shoulders of the very forces you claim are dragging you down. I mean government was instrumental in inventing the internet the very thing you rely on for your business. If they really could do nothing, you wouldn't be able to spout nonsense about them here or earn one red cent from your business.

How can that be justice...did Carl Sargent get his just desserts? — Cavacava

That someone committed suicide doesn't suddenly make them the victim of an injustice. Nobody knows for sure why Carl Sargent made that decision and probably nobody could have predicted it. It's a personal tragedy for him and his family but it doesn't necessarily mean anyone involved in investigating the allegations against him did anything wrong (although that itself should be investigated).

Uh, because your business would be nothing without the infrastructure the government provides like roads, education for your workforce etc. Therefore the government has a right to tell you what to do in terms of certain things. If you don't want to be regulated, go set up an acorn selling business in the woods.

Bollocks. Offices and other places of work should not be places that effectively exclude women (or the majority of them). And no, as I said before, you don't get to tell women how they should feel about sexism. It would be like telling Bitter Crank not to act like a dinosaur who still thinks it's the 1950s. Totally pointless and counterproductive. ;)

It's like you take pleasure in being completely ignorant in terms of what women feel about this kind of thing. Odd to watch. Have you ever spoken to a woman of the modern age? Let me fill you in, for most women strangers joking about their "pussies" makes them feel very uncomfortable, and possibly humiliated.

If I had a rooster with a broken leg, and somebody said I had a busted cock, I would not be offended — Bitter Crank

Well bully for you. You're a real tough guy and I'd feel the same. But who gives a toss? The discussion is about women and what should constitute sexual harassment not about your comfortable relationship with your cock (albeit which you and your cock are very welcome to).

See. Worked out beautifully. ;)

Lol.

I even deleted my last lol just to spite you.

I know that means you expect me to respond to this with lol. But I won't just to piss you off.