I really do commend you on this, Johanna. And I’ve given my response to you a lot of thought, too. Look, I have an idea of what kind of woman I feel is best to be, but I have right no imply what kind of woman is right for you to be. I’m projecting and defensive. Be well, and don’t let the mother fuckers get you down. (Wow. I really like that word. Mother fuckers.)
Thanks for your apology. Consider ignorance fought.
For the record, I am not transgender, transsexual, or trans- anything at all in my public life. I’m just a woman, same as any other woman.
Well, I can’t say I expected that…
I agree with ywtf, but will point out that having an “official” reporting on board, so to speak, has not served as an adequate excuse here for not confronting the perpetrator right away. The point that you are only stopping this perp from bothering you, not other women, with face to face confrontation is also not approved.
I used the word flak and probably should have gone for a less loaded word. I still think that this thread shows how difficult it is for anyone (male or female) to report such behavior. The male nurse I referred to did NOT confront the female nurse after she pantsed him in the nurse’s station*–he expressed his anger (as in, “what are you doing” Stop that!") and then went straight to HR. She thought they were just joking around and that no didn’t mean no.
Here’s is what I take from this thread:
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Sexual harassment is alive and well in the work world.
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SH can inhabit a gray area that is debated amongst genders and all people.
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The victim can (and does) face a lose/lose scenario: call the perp out then and there and “make a scene” or a name for oneself OR don’t say anything at all and put up with it and be condemned for condoning such behavior OR go to HR and be criticized for not calling the perp out. There is no face saving choice for the victim.
(Even on a message board, a victim of this does not get support. Her veracity is called into question [repeatedly], the behavior she describes is fine combed [did everyone conveniently forget the hair stroking?] and found “iffy”, and her lack of follow through is subject to condemnation. Would that we were all so courageous and righteous in RL as we are here.
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The perp only has to deny, make the victim look foolish or dismiss the claims as fantasy, “misunderstanding” or [insert favorite excuse here].
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Some workplaces some people take SH seriously, some don’t. Hope that your workplace and the people in your life do, if you’re the victim. Depend on inertia and dislike of making waves on the part of most people if you’re the perp.
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It is possible to “talk” about this for 6 pages and still talk past one another.
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Men don’t know what it’s like to be women and women don’t know what it’s like to be men. In other news, Pope found to be Catholic.
*this was by far the most extreme example I have heard of, especially involving female to male misconduct. Frankly, I think she got off too easy.
True, and men sometimes spread rumors about how “easy” a female is, which is almost as bad. Rumors are a bad thing. Reporting is the right thing. Now sure, in a perfect world, it’d be nice to discuss it with him and tell him how it make you feel, see if he stops there. But I understand that step is a hard one.
My apologies for coming in late and not having read every post in depth and choosing Malacandra’s in particular since it’s really addressed to a lot more people, I’m just using it as an example, but…
To you and to all others who keep mentioning this-
WHY THE FUCK IS JOHANNA’S PAST RELEVANT?
Is it just fun to mention? Let me check…
Attention, attention…
Hey- for those who didn’t know, Johanna’s a MTF transgendered person–
This means that
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She was “socialized as a boy” (whatever the fuck that means… evidently when she was a kid that put her into a kennel with a bunch of other boys like some weird cross of Dog Whisperer and Lord of the Flies to let her run wild and get other people’s scents).
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Because of this, she really has no right to complain about sexual harassment because… for those who don’t know it,
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At some point she woke up one morning, walked downstairs to the palace hall, looked in the mirror and lo and behold she’d turned into a naked Tilda Swinton, because
For those who didn’t know, Johanna’s a MTF transgendered person–
And of course there’s prejudice against Johanna on behalf of who she is, because if there’s one thing that many people in this thread can’t stand and find a freakish thing indeed it’s a person who’s true to themselves, doesn’t feel the need to hide, doesn’t give a fuck if somebody knows who they are and what they are, and isn’t too cowardly and pathetic to need complete anonymity when it comes to things that may offend others. So she’s asking for it.
I still don’t understand the relevance though. If a Doper pitted being mugged and losing $20 and someone else said “Well, IIRC you also survived uterine cancer, so you really shouldn’t get upset by losing $23 in a mugging because fuck, cancer is MUCH WORSE than a mugging!”, it would seem somewhere between fucking stupid, fucking clueless, and fucking insane. (This particular analogy of course involves a hypothetical Doper surviving uterine cancer, and that Doper would not be Johanna of course because
Hey- for those who didn’t know, Johanna’s a MTF transgendered person–
(Everybody clear on the above, incidentally? PM me for explication if you’re not sure what that means.)
Of course the same comment could be made about every single post in the pit.
“The U.S. economy (and thus much of the world economy) is in the shitter, we’re fighting a war in Iraq that we can’t win and one in Afghanistan that we could but probably never will, foreclosures are on damned near every street, people are being laid off by the tens of thousands everyday, and to all this add the usual problems of healthcare/immigration/poor education/etc., and we’re fucking complaining about Billy Bob Thornton on a Canadian radio show/Ed Zotti’s new rules/getting shortchanged at the drivethrough/whatever”. It’s a detached self righteousness that’s not only just as relevant as bringing up Johanna’s past but actually a lot more defensible. But…just as I can be interested in both Billy Bob Thornton and Afghanistan I’m pretty sure Johanna can be both aggravated by sexual harassment and have a unique past and the two aren’t necessarily connected.
Now what the redtype stuff has to do with being sexually harassed I’m not sure, but it’s sure as frigging hell been brought up enough in this thread that apparently it must be relevant. (That “seeing eye dog” comment of Vinyl Turnip’s was classic! Gotta put that one on a sticky link… wow, you could slice off a penis with that sharp a wit.)
Which means of course that nothing else should be worth complaining about.
And of course, most people when being sexually harassed are completely 100% calm and rational, it’s just a fact. Most people will generally, when encountering sexual harassment, do what I do- consult their wallet sized “HOW TO IDENTIFY AND RESPOND TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT” flowchart, but Johanna evidently left hers at home that day and, combined with the fact she was socialized as a boy (and very clearly it was a wonderful and effective socialization since she evidently psychically identified completely as a male until that day she became Tilda Swinton involuntarily and instantly and thus signed away any right to complain).
Hmm. I’m on Johanna’s side in this… does that make me a Sister Clucker or a Brother Clucker? Let’s see… as a child I socialized… sporadically. So I guess that makes me a spor-clucker.
Well, read the fucking thread then, Sampiro, and you’ll learn that Johanna is not transgendered - she is a woman, she always has been a woman, purely and simply a woman. And I made no reference, oblique or otherwise, to Jo’s transition - but I do recall that she was seriously sexually assaulted as an adolescent, which to me makes it all the more puzzling that the kind of fleeting contact that she has to think over for several hours should even register on the nastiness scale.
But thanks for the TLDR post. It’s good to know you can be relied upon.
A slight correction to this. Johanna says in public she’s just a woman. I would imagine that as saying she doesn’t make an issue of it. And as far as the thread is concerned, it has no relevance.
I think we’re digressing from the thread.
IMO, you should have said something at the time to him, not even make a scene, just ask him to stop what he was doing.
“Could you please stop that? It’s making me uncomfortable”.
It wouldn’t be too hard to say, especially if you were expecting him to do it.
If you don’t understand that having that in her past makes the SH she experienced at work difficult to confront, you need to go back to human school. Ye gods–are you truly that dense or do you just want to score a point against your wife and all women here?
You’re so smart and so savvy when it comes to male/female relations, you figured it all out. Women are designed to make you miserable,** Mal**–that’s it. You got us pegged, baby. Good call. You attitude throughout this thread has been dismissive and contemptuous of “claims” re SH.
Jesus freaking god–I had no clue (until Johanna’s post) that she was transgendered in the slightest. I also had no knowledge of any previous sexual abuse. But knowing those things explains her behavior much better than snark on “girls supporting girls and dissing men” or whatever snide snipe you posted earlier. I’m not about to go back and find it; I have to go to work.
Having had all that in her past, her “failure” to confront makes MORE sense. But it doesn’t change the fact that most people do not react calmly, assertively and effectively when sexually harassed. If they did, it wouldn’t exist as much as it does and HR wouldn’t have to dedicate a lot of its time to dealing with this shit.
I wish I had thought to respond directly to this unwelcome advance when it occurred, but instead I think I’ll just have to report you to the mods today! 
(I would be very happy to stand you to the beverage of your choice should you ever find yourself passing through Chicago.)
And it’s always a pleasure to read your snark. I know how hard it is for you not to do it in cowardly anonymity so it’s flattering you’re doing it here. Baby steps.
Well, I think we’ve all learned something here today. I know I have. Group hug?
**eleanorigby ** said:
I’ll certainly take that out of this thread. That, and Sampiro needs a sedative.
said:
Well, I thought I had given two examples of my own where I did something “ambiguous” that was cleared up by conversation with me.
Look, these situations are individual situations. It is difficult to spell out a hard line list of “report this, not that”. In the case of Johanna and this situation, I fully back reporting it to HR.
Look, if you think the appropriate action is to take it straight to HR and let them sort it out, that’s your opinion. Fine, do that. But can you not see how this creates a feeling of a “lawsuit culture”, where men are mad at women working in the office because they take the smallest comment or accidental bump and turn it into an HR investigation and a note in your file? Sometimes things are not a creep trying to surruptitiously get his jollies, sometimes they are just an accident. But reporting those to HR every time just increases office tension and makes working together harder - not just between the two parties involved, but for everyone.
In my mind, Johanna’s situation crossed the bounds of an accident to something creepy. I’ve said that.
But consider this: if every woman the guy ran into confronted him on the first occurrence, he would realize he can’t get away with it and would likely cease doing it, even without HR being aware.
Okay, let’s examine this situation. He bumps you lightly on the leg three times with a bag - just that. You do NOT suspect anything untoward, but you don’t enjoy him bumping your leg. Do you take that to HR, or do you turn to him and ask him to pay more attention to what he’s doing with his bag?
DrDeth said:
You know, I have never experienced this - in or out of the workplace. The most I have experienced is men commenting to each other (mostly out of earshot of women) about how attractive a woman is, something along the lines of “I’d hit that!” And that only occurs between men who know each other, not usually between strangers.
**eleanorigby ** said:
I also was unaware. I can see how this might affect her response.
I don’t think so. I think that he’d just move on to the next woman, trying that shit again and again. Because let’s face it, not every woman will confront him or people like him. In a perfect world, yes, they would. But in a perfect world, he wouldn’t even think of trying this shit in the first place.
I still maintain, by the way, that if a statement is true, and it’s firsthand, it’s not a rumor. A statement like “This guy kept touching me while we were sitting together” is NOT a rumor, if that actually happened. It’s gossip, perhaps, but not a rumor. Rumors are vague, and have no distinct origin. Rumor - definition of rumor by The Free Dictionary Rumor Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster http://www.yourdictionary.com/rumor Rumor Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com If Johanna had said, on a break where other members of the group were with her, that Young Woman had said that Creepy Guy was touching her during the meeting, that would be spreading a something of a rumor. I say “something of a rumor” because she was stating what she’d heard and who she’d heard it from. Someone in the break group, upon telling the same thing, would be in fact spreading a rumor.
If it’s one woman telling another about a guy’s roaming hands, from personal experience, that’s not just NOT rumormongering. It’s a woman warning another woman, or asking for support, or asking for sympathy, or asking for advice, and possibly all of the above.
I tried to come up with an equivalent for the men, but everything I think of is either too dramatic or too trivial. Sorry, guys, I can’t empathize with you that much, but I did try.
irishman–I see your point, but what I don’t understand is your contention that this behavior is anything like being bumped on the leg with a bag. He was touching her on her side, just under her breast. He was stroking the other woman’s hair. This is not an accidental collision of body parts. There is a difference and women and men know that difference.
Would it be better if everyone spoke up when this type of thing occurred? Of course–I’m all for that. (I’d still like to horsewhip the assholes who do this shit, though). But we are dealing with RL and real people.
I really don’t see this as “poor put upon, defenseless woman” vs “nasty beast of a man”–that’s too black and white, it’s too cartoonish. But IMO, decent guys would 1. not do it and 2. if it happened they’d be apologizing for it and not doing it again and 3. having received the apology, women should then give the guy the benefit of the doubt. (but all this belies the fact that these men–not all men, not even lots of men–do this stuff on purpose. They intend to do exactly what is done.) You cannot stroke someone’s hair by accident or repeatedly touch a modern business woman near her breast, under her arm and have it be accidental.
Certainly the world needs more assertive women–but it also needs fewer entitled men.
Get with the times, honey…horsewhips are SOOOOO two centuries ago. We have tasers now!
I retired from federal service several years ago but then it was always a big deal if these accusations were made. I went through one investigation in San Francisco District with IRS. I worked in a satellite office about 100 miles north. The guy would tell off-color (not grossly sexual) jokes with women present. When he did it in our office I just attributed it to his age because he was older and frankly didn’t know any better. I figured if I didn’t like it I could tell him to shut up. But, in the branch office he did this in front of three younger employees and that was his downfall. They were’t about to listen to this stuff from an old coot, so they made a harassment complaint. I had to go down to the branch and, along with all employees, have an individual interview with the branch chief. Then, we all had to go to San Francisco and do a formal written deposition. Of course it was a foregone conclusion that guy would never be promoted again and it was in his file. So, if you want to make a complaint make sure of your facts and realize it’s not just a small matter and affects people’s lives. If she never said anything then it could be construed she encouraged the behavior. She could become the one with the problem. She needs to begin at the beginning. Say something to him if it continues and don’t go from zero to sixty without witnesses and/or other 'victims".
Of course not. I’d only suspect something untoward if he kept finding a way to do this past a point that it would be reasonably accidental…which is what I’ve been talking about since that’s the behavior being described by the OP. A one-time incident would not raise my suspicions unless it was an ass grab or something obvious. Non-obvious touches only become questionable when they occur in a questionable pattern.
And if I sensed that this pattern was occuring, with or without my verbally telling him to stop, there’s a case to be made for taking it straight to HR, or least seek out on an objective 3rd person to see what they think about the incident. I mean, after the 5th or 6th time the guy bumps my leg, even after I’ve shifted myself several times so he would have to go out of his way to do so, I’d probably say some choice words to him. But the weird inappropriateness of his actions don’t cease to exist just because he complies with my demand to stop.
That’s why all this focus on Johanna’s failure to tell the guy off irks me. (And yes, I do now see that you feel it’s okay that she report him to HR…I didn’t before, though.) Imagine if instead of sexual harrassment, the guy had been accused of telling sexist jokes during a meeting that Johanna and her coworker found to be offensive. Would we really be having a six page conversation about how wrong it was that they failed to tell the guy to shut up? Would we really be talking about how they set back feminism by 30 years because they didn’t point out how inappropriate he’s being? No, I doubt we would. For some reason, we’re expecting something different in the OP’s scenario, and rationally, I don’t see why we should.
If he’s that old, then he remembers a time when guys didn’t tell off-color jokes AT ALL when there were women present. If he’s younger, then he knows that this sort of thing is considered sexual harassment. However old he is, he was probably doing it to get a rise out of the women. So, he got a reaction from the women. ::shrug:: Just not the kind of reaction that he expected. He knew, or should have known, that this sort of behavior is inappropriate for the workplace, and is offensive to some people. He wasn’t innocent, and neither was his behavior.
A woman might reasonably assume that one joke is just one joke. However, if the guy is doing it constantly, he needs to be put on notice. Maybe he’d stop if someone asks him. Or maybe he’d make a point of telling really juicy tales to and about her.
Honestly, suppose he was taking money from her desk or purse. Is she obliged to tell him to quit it? Or should she just go to HR in the first place, and let them know that he has boundary issues and sticky fingers?
That goes both ways. If someone is sexually harassing a co-worker, he’s making her life miserable, to the point where she might not even want to come into work, and is not able to work to her capacity when she’s there. And it might be several someones.
In the case of the OP, the creep was certainly distracting his female trainees, almost certainly to the point where they couldn’t concentrate on the training. So yes, HR needed to know of a problem, because if he works with any other women, he’ll probably try to get all touchy feely on them, and they won’t be able to do their jobs properly when they’re fending off his fingers.
Yes, and supposing he’s hitting her over the head with a big stick with a nail in it. Does she scream for Security, or try reasoning with him first about how she doesn’t happen to like what he’s doing? :rolleyes:
Seriously, I don’t think too many people disagree on what is and isn’t theft, so how about we keep these hypotheticals somewhere near applicable?
Time to declare an interest: As a crass 21-year-old I was a little short on manners. I did not, however, touch female co-workers where they ought not to be touched, nor back them into corners and demand sexual favours, nor offer them the keys to my Ferrari in exchange for same. (As a matter of fact, I did not then own a Ferrari, nor have I at any time since. But I digress.) However, evidently what I did do was enough to cause my boss’s boss to invite me into his office one day for a short embarrassed talk about how certain women had complained about my conduct. No names, dates, times, places, specifics, or any interest in anything I might have to say on the subject, and really about the only crumb of comfort I had after making a suitably abject apology was his assurance that the subject was now closed.
Which made it all the more surprising when a couple of months later, having finished basic training as a Civil Service computer programmer and being assigned to a section, my new boss’s boss called me in for a short embarrassed talk about how he’d heard about my goings-on and he wasn’t going to put up with anything of that sort under his leadership, and once again he was quite uninterested in anything I might have to say on the subject, up to and including the supposed assurance I’d earlier received that the subject was now closed.
Fortunately the team I was joining was wise, enlightened and sympathetic to the newest, youngest and greenest member of staff in the building, and they took me to their bosom from the word “go”. Actually, no, wait, what they did was pretty much freeze me out of everything right down to the coffee club based on what they’d heard about me - though I didn’t realize this until a couple of years later when another co-worker (female, as it happened, so I obviously didn’t offend everyone) expressed sympathy over SP73 never giving me a chance, and mentioning why. It’s probably an exaggeration to say that this cast a shadow over the whole of my time with the Civil Service, but it sure didn’t help get it off on the right foot.
So it’s possibly true to say that I have a few toys in the attic over this, dating from the good old days when sexual harassment was the latest cause du jour, and that while I fully approve and embrace the ideal behind it I have the odd qualm or two over how it works out in practice. I will cheer to the echo the principle that no woman should have to give it up to the boss on pain of sacking, or put up with being treated like a common prostitute by a customer the company wants to brown-nose, or be subjected to a barrage of offensive humour by misogynistic co-workers. It’s just that the system is open to abuse and can result in disproportionate retribution being kangaroo-courted out to someone who may be considerably less able to defend themselves than the presumed victim.
More later, maybe.
**Lynn Bodoni ** said:
Thank you for making my point.
eleanorigby said:
I wasn’t trying to equate them, I was specifically looking for something that no one would feel was sexual harrassment. Something to put a context to “He was bothering me. It wasn’t sexual harrassment, it was just annoying.” Is your response in that situation to run to HR immediately, say something directly, turn and deck him? What?
you with the face said:
Doesn’t answer the question - how would you react? Not if there was a pattern that “raised your suspicions”, just to the actions described.
Interesting. So you would go to a third party to ask them if they saw it and what they thought about it rather than turn to him and say, “Excuse me, are you aware you’re bumping my leg?”
You’re changing the circumstances. I didn’t say he did so 5 or 6 times even after you shifted over.
So is your first response to shift over to avoid the problem? And then second and third and fourth response as well?