Some men are choosing to keep at arms length with women at work to avoid allegations of being reported. Me, being a woman, have experienced this myself, and I’m honestly the very laid, lenient type and I’m not that type that goes around and reports what people say…how do you deal? It is hindering career growth.
There are scenarios where men would say sexual comments to woman, woman tells him to stop, he ignores her like a brick wall. Doesn’t offer help. A solid form of discrimination.
Sounds like the Pence rule.
But I agree that this seems almost passive-aggressive. The fear may be legit, but it’s tantamount to saying that because bad men aren’t allowed to be bad, that good men aren’t allowed to be good.
Mike Pence is an idiot. Avoiding women in fear of being reported is equivalent to saying to avoid people of a certain color because you fear that they’ll shoot you.
Mainly, what I avoid at work is other people’s bullshit games. Sexual entrapment is among them, but in my experience it’s to the right of the decimal point percentile.
I don’t avoid women at work, but I’m very careful not to bring up or respond to sexual stuff. I do avoid interacting with kids. I’d use fear of being seen as a pedo as an excuse for my behavior, but the honest truth is I don’t want to interact with kids I haven’t fathered.
As well they should.
If someone won’t give you the time of day because they are a sexist asshole, this falls into the category of how do you deal with assholes/jerks in the workplace in general, besides avoid them as much as possible, it’s not like you are going to join them for drinks after work. But there should be regulations against actual sex or gender discrimination where you are?
There are pretty severe consequences for committing murder, are they taking precautions due to that?
No? Why is that? Could it be because they know they’ve NEVER crossed that line and never will, so they aren’t concerned?
In my opinion, men who are overly ‘concerned’, it’s because they have in the past crossed where the line is now. But since they still don’t think THEY did anything wrong, of course everything seems murky and dangerous to them now.
I don’t understand. How am I supposed to conduct business if I can’t make sexual comments to my female coworkers, talk about my penis, or take clients out to strip clubs?
Over the past 25 years I’ve know two men at my workplace who were falsely accused of sexual harassment at work. And I say “falsely” because in each case the investigation determined that, not only was there no evidence for it, but that it simply didn’t happen. They were ultimately exonerated, but their lives were turned upside-down over the course of many months. They were presumed guilty until proven innocent.
I am now very, very careful when interacting with women at work, and will even limit my interactions with them. A false allegation could destroy my career.
And why should they.
I go to work and some random dude goes up to me and asks if I make porn videos. Seriously?
Why should they what?.. Keep their hands to themselves and not otherwise harass women in the workplace?
I haven’t changed the way I interact with women at work – I did not discuss anything remotely related to sex or physical appearance before #MeToo, and I still don’t. If some men are afraid to interact with women, they are either inclined to behave inappropriately, or they’re totally ignorant about what constitutes sexual harassment.
Do you work in the porn industry? If not, that’s inappropriate.
It’s not only physical aspects but verbal harassment as well. And on Teams. I have witnessed this personally.
Do you think we’re in some sort of disagreement here?..
It depends on which woman we’re talking about. The vast majority of women wouldn’t falsely accuse someone. But to give one example - in my social circle (not a workplace context, I know, but still) - there is a woman (let’s call her Susan) who has a long pattern of misrepresenting or distorting other people’s words or actions, or even fabricating stuff. If you were the male boss or coworker of Susan, would you not take precautions about what you say or do around her, and if you were to have Susan in your office for a meeting, for instance, wouldn’t you want there to be a 3rd-party witness in attendance?
Finally someone gets it. It’s not hard to not say ‘Hey do you want to come chill and Netflex’ or ‘Hey what would you wear if you went on OnlyFans’ or ‘that skirt looks cute on your thighs’ (versus ‘that skirt looks cute.’)
I think most women very well know the difference whether a guy is being friendly or is just being a creep. Women’s initiative sense are strong, and yes we know the difference.
From my standpoint I am suffering this this myself and it’s hindering my growth in the workplace because men continue to avoid me (and women), and I have NO intentions to go around and police what men are saying, never had. And when they do talk to me, it’s “oh what would you wear on OnlyFans.” -__-
In the highly testosterone-saturated world of Wall Street, some men don’t know how to think of women as anything other than sex objects, and so the only way to avoid being accused of harassment is to avoid women altogether. For others, the idea that women might be allowed to compete with them threatens their male egos, so they will take any excuse not to work with them. In both cases, they are probably annoyed at women for not letting them continue to do whatever they want, and so if they can get back at them by returning to the days of sexual segregation, so much the better.
For such men (and this does not mean all men) the idea of actually working with women, treating them as fellow human beings and colleagues, is either incomprehensible, impossible or emasculating.
But since sexual discrimination is illegal, we can only hope this overreaction will balance itself out.