sexual harassment is being taken more seriously and legal departments have come to realize that a zero tolerance policy is the only way for a business to safely govern itself — ProbablyTrue
sexual harassment is being taken more seriously and legal departments have come to realize that a zero tolerance policy is the only way for a business to safely govern itself — ProbablyTrue
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. — Baden
Ha ha.
Fuck you, darling.
Ha ha. — unenlightened
I worked for a US company for awhile with a US manager and once complimented his secretary (Dutch) on her dress. He called me over and said I couldn't say that to a woman. — Benkei
Benkei's experience of being reprimanded for complimenting Ms. Dutch on her dress illustrates where these finicky rules about behavior end up. — Bitter Crank
Benkei's experience of being reprimanded for complimenting Ms. Dutch on her dress illustrates where these finicky rules about behavior end up. — Bitter Crank
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
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
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
obnoxious comments about tits and pussies — Baden
Blimey, anyone order a bouncy castle? — Jane Moore, The Sun
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. — Baden
Neither the lady with the injured...pussycat nor I would be injured in any way, shape, manner, or form by going along with jokes like this -- or even more raucous, guffaw-inducing jokes.
My guess is that leaking radiation from the warehouse probably fried her sense of humor. — Bitter Crank
I worked for a US company for awhile with a US manager and once complimented his secretary (Dutch) on her dress. He called me over and said I couldn't say that to a woman. Since I was one of the three in-house attorneys I naturally lied about the standards in the Netherlands being medieval with regard to sexual harassment and avoided getting fired. — Benkei
The sexual harrassment rules would be spelled out in the HR manual and, if it were like where I worked, every employee would have to take an online test every year, which would include helpful videos of various scenarios as part of mandatory compliance protocol. That along with videos about proper document retention, protecting corporate assets (you can't bring the company chair home apparently no matter how well it matches your other furniture), proper sharing of customer information, workplace violence (you can't wrestle a co-worker, sexual wrestling violates two rules), and I'm sure some others make up your annual compliance training. At some point after taking these tests you actually do your job, which probably entails checking a bunch of other boxes, and then you go home when hear the loud prison release buzzer go off.Too many men that are too oblivious about basic etiquette? — Benkei
Yes, I suppose it could in some situations. But, to go back to the example, what business is it of a few twenty-somethings, who were not even there, who have read the anecdote and recoiled in horror at what they see as a roomful of old dinosaurs being “inappropriate” towards their “victim”, to be directing their outrage at those on the inside, who were, as they saw it, just having a laugh? — Sapientia
A toxic culture? What about the testimony of someone who was actually there, and therefore knows the culture better than you do? Why must this culture change, rather than those women who can't hack it? Clearly some women are more than capable. They'd be better suited for the job. Working for The Sun isn't for everyone. — Sapientia
I'm not sure I agree with this attitude that the world around me must change to my liking, rather than adapting myself to better suit my environment. — Sapientia
Just because Sue is engaging in the same obnoxious behaviour does not suddenly make her equal or the vulgarity justifiable. It just makes her adaptable to a toxic environment. That completely rejects talent, intelligence, capacity because of aggressive men who rise up the ranks not because they are talented, intelligent and capable but because they bully their way up. — TimeLine
How is this conversation still going? How many hundreds of years were comments like these, directed at women, commonplace but also less lighthearted in nature? A way for men to steer the conversation towards the sexual all while under the guise that it's either a joke or a compliment.
Now we're at a time where sexual harassment is being taken more seriously and legal departments have come to realize that a zero tolerance policy is the only way for a business to safely govern itself because of the aforementioned nuances and multiple interpretations.
Is this a great loss to society? Should we mourn the loss of crude sexual jokes at work? Would any of you even make the same jokes in a boardroom setting? Call me a prude, but I wouldn't feel comfortable commenting on a female coworkers body.
If this is a great loss for some of you and you're looking for a utopia of unrestricted language, I would recommend you get a job in construction. — ProbablyTrue
The problem wasn't probably that you were sexist, that was merely a pretext to get back at you for daring to do something that could be flirty with HIS secretary. This is exactly what I mean with regards to this political correctness. It is just a weapon, and nothing else....once complimented his secretary (Dutch) on her dress. — Benkei
I first heard the phrase "politically correct" in the late 1940s and early 1950s in reference to the political debates between Socialists and members of the United States Communist Party (CP). These debates were an everyday occurrence in my neighborhood in the Bronx until the McCarthy committee and HUAC silenced political talk on the streets. Members of the CP talked about current party doctrine as the "correct" line for the moment. During World War II, the Hitler-Stalin pact caused many CP members considerable pain and often disgrace on my block, which was all Jewish and mostly Socialist. The "correct" position on Stalin's alliance with Hitler was considered to be ridiculous, a betrayal of European Jewry as well as Socialist ideas. The term "politically correct" was used disparagingly to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in equalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.
Given that history, it was surprising to hear right-wing intellectuals in the 1990s using the phrase "politically correct" to disparage students and professors who advocate multiculturalism and are willing to confront racism, sexism, or homophobia at the university. Yet it is not uncommon, for example, for right-wing critics to accuse students (or other professors) who insist that women's voices or the voices of people of color be included in the curriculum of making rigid, oppressive demands that infringe upon academic freedom. The implication of these accusations is that people calling for compliance with antisexist and antiracist education today are similar to the Communist party hard-liners who insisted on compliance with the "correct" line on the Hitler-Stalin pact. It is a clever ploy on the part of neoconservatives, a number of whom were former CP members and know how the phrase "politically correct" was used in the past, to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox, and Communist-influenced when they oppose the right of people [End Page 1] to be racist, sexist, and homophobic. The accusation of being "politically correct" is a weapon used by right-wing professors, and publicized by conservative media critics, to protect themselves against criticisms of their own biases by students or other, usually younger, professors. It is a way of diverting the issue of bias within the university to issues of freedom of speech without acknowledging that the right to question professorial authority is also a free speech matter. — Herbert Kohl,On Political Correctness, Core Curriculum and Democracy in Education
I think work "banter" that is based on commenting on people's sexual attractiveness is unacceptable. That's just for the record.
What I'd like to ask is what do posters feel about "battle of the sexes" banter - joking about stereotypes like men are no good at such 'n such; women are no good at this 'n that. Is that acceptable? For the record I think it probably is, though not always scintillating. But I am open to dissuasion... — Jake Tarragon
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. — Baden
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. — Baden
But had Sue been a young intern, nervously bringing coffee into a room of senior men who then chose to belittle her with a sexual comment, knowing full well that she would not have the power or the confidence to even dare to answer them back?
Well, that would be a matter that needed further investigation.
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. — Baden
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