If we’re talking about this just as people trying not to be assholes, this is actually pretty easy. if you’re on a date with a girl and you touch her in a nonsexual way, that’s fine until she says to get your hands off her. Sexual contact requires consent beforehand. Easy stuff.
Where it gets tough is figuring out what will get you in actual trouble. it’s actually pretty easy to screw up in the workplace and say things you wish you hadn’t. I’ve committed many “microaggressions” out of ignorance in the workplace, and in some environments that’s suffiicent to get your ass fired. Then there’s misunderstandings. At school a girl once accused me of copping a feel when I bumped into her in the hallway. No administrative action, but I was pretty shocked, as I was at an age that it hadn’t yet even occurred to me that I’d want to touch a girl. Ew.
So there are situations where you can have all the best intentions and still get yourself into trouble. I’m also seeing some discussion here about issues of consent that are not clear cut. For example, lying to get sex. Consent when both parties are drunk. Then there’s purely transactional sex where both parties are willing but the woman still feels like she’s being taken advantage of even if she initiated the deal. Although that’s a good reason to simply refuse offers of sex for things like letting her backstage to see the band.
All of this would be pretty easy to navigate if it didn’t involve official sanctions from your workplace or the government or if your career is public. Just TALK to each other and explain yourselves. We have language and vocal chords for this purpose, but sometimes I think we’re just apes jabbering at each other for all the good it does sometimes.
Well, tru dat, but earlier you were a bit more expansive about what you felt you couldn’t do anymore (bolding mine):
No eye contact? While you’re discussing something with a female colleague, if you’re not looking at her face, where are you looking?
*Never smile at a female co-worker? * What’s up with this? I don’t know about you, but I smile at fellow human beings that I have a good relationship with, regardless of gender, even if that good relationship is strictly professional.
And I don’t know about your job, but mine involves interaction with other human beings, which generally involves looking at them when that contact is in meatspace, which a fair amount of it still is. So looking at them is part of my job, yes.
See, and this is why I don’t like the concept of “mansplaining” or “womansplaining”. She assumes that if men just treated women the same way they treat men, everything would be just fine.
As men, we know this would go very badly. The last thing most women want is to be treated the way we treat our male co-workers. You do not slap women on the back, you do not even put a hand on their shoulders ideally. Most women don’t like it when men get supercompetitive with them at work, although there are of course exceptions. But all men put up with competitive behavior at work from other men, whether they are super competitive themselves or not. Women tend to get angry about it. You do not make fun of women the way you make fun of your fellow men. For men, this is something we enjoy as part of a bonding experience. Most women don’t like that, although as always there are exceptions.
But in general, treating women like the Rock is a quick road to the unemployment line.
Okay, I misunderstood a little. It’s true that if you treat all women like the Rock you won’t get in trouble for harassment. You will, however, be hated by almost all women in your workplace.
As for physical touching, I don’t see it much in an office environment, but in warehousing and food service it was pretty common for male supervisors to touch male workers. Part of this was that warehouses and food service can be noisy, so getting in close is often necessary and it just seems natural to put your hand on a shoulder or something when doing it, and maybe ending the conversation with a light pat of encouragement on the shoulder or back. Plus in such “unprofessional” environments, wrestling matches, friendly curse out conversations, and open discussions about one’s love life in mixed company was common. Offices are a different environment, so everyone is usually ultra professional. But things can be more of a free for all when it’s minimum wage employment.
The problem is, obviously, that “common sense” for (presumably) me and you is not universally “common sense.”
I would bet that a large portion of the people in the news at the moment (and of those, famous and not, who are not in the news), thought that they were just doing something that was sort-of-kind-of ok. In their heads there was consent, and/or the infraction wasn’t the sort where ‘consent’ even mattered, because it was “just a joke,” “not a big deal,” or something like that.
Consent is hard because common sense is hard. It’s like saying, “saving for retirement isn’t hard; it’s easy. Just use some common sense!” Not everyone is equipped/trained with the same tools to understand or apply common sense.
If common sense were easy, or truly common, fewer women would be assaulted/harassed.
Some men hate it but go along because they want to fit in/get ahead, and some men resent the aggressive, assertive dicks who get to drive the social dynamic by virtue of being the most selfish and loud.
“We” don’t enjoy it. It is not a universal bonding experience. It’s a dominance play, and it only feels good to the winners (or those who convince themselves they are winners, or those who are sycophants).
Your understanding about all men and all women is narrow and wildly inaccurate.
I think just being polite will cover most of the issues. That said I think there are a lot of mixed messages in society for men. On one hand, society wants men to be sexless autometons, forever helpful and non-threatening. On the other, if men aren’t assertive and dominating, then they are weak and ineffectual. Certainly, sexual abuse as predominantly conducted by men is a big problem and it is good that the #Metoo movement is saying enough is enough. But if we don’t talk about the double standards for men, we are only solving half of a problem.
Probably. I’ve never been terribly social, so my observations of behavior might not be seeing the whole picture. I do enjoy competing with people, when they’ve established that there is a competition. Of course, one can be a dick about it and it seems like every workplace has that guy. But I do know that men accept that competitiveness is part of the professional experience and women are more likely to resent this openly than men are. Most men who aren’t dicks understand this. When you finish first in productivity one week you don’t basically say, “In your face!” to the woman sitting next to you, but you and your male co-worker might have a little more fun with it.
Anyway, my point was simply that most women do not want to be treated like men in the workplace. Most people want their identities, whether racial, religious, or gender, to be acknowledged and respected, not ignored. Ignoring these tends to get you in trouble.
Well, I finally understand. The goal is to have a segregated society where each person should be treated differently based on their social identity. And here I was wasting my time trying to treat all people equally.
Part of the reason the thinking on that has changed in many quarters is because it’s impossible to treat people the same. Unconscious bias is a real thing and it’s most observable in how men interact with women. We do not interact with women the same as we do with men and most women wouldn’t want us to.
That’s true. I don’t like physical contact myself. I also don’t hang out after work much. But I do think that both men and women are more accepting of the unspoken rules of intragender relations than intergender relations. As men, we know how men are and we accept that it’s just how it is. If we rebel, we choose our battles. But women just think we’re idiots and don’t mind saying so. Same goes for men’s observations of how women interact. Women accept their own social norms and we make fun of it just like they make fun of ours.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that we necessarily like those social norms, so point taken.
I strongly disagree, and I resent the idea that I have to become a racist, or sexist, or bigot, or homophobe in order to get along with people at work. I will continue to treat everyone the same.
Strange. I interact with men and women in my workplace the exact same way. Guess I’m weird like that. I don’t know if the women here want that, but none of them have told me “Stop treating me equally!”
Seriously though, the whole point is that we don’t actually treat people the same in practice. When a man walks by you carrying a heavy box of printer paper, is your reaction exactly the same as when it’s a woman doing it? When you and a female co-worker get lunch, do you pay for only your own meal? Are you more careful of what you say in mixed company than just around other guys?
Much like being colorblind, this is something most of us say we do, but don’t actually do. That’s why being colorblind is now considered racism.
Not that I don’t feel where you’re coming from. The only reason I’m even talking about this is because I do try to treat men and women exactly the same and I’ve been lectured on how rude that is by women.
Then a different thread about that would be most enlightening. I’ll actually be rooting for your viewpoint. I think this idea that we can’t be colorblind or genderblind so we shouldn’t even try is toxic. We can recognize that we’ll never meet our own high standards, but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the idea just because we’ll fall prey to unconscious bias sometimes.
