Gist/summary(in case the article is behind a paywall): The #MeToo movement has lead to a backlash that now is hurting women in the workplace because it makes employers reluctant to hire women, men reluctant to mentor women or help women up the corporate ladder, a lot of men simply shy away from women, etc.
The “Pence Rule,” or some spinoff of it, is being de facto adopted in many workplaces and in many instances, the casualties are collateral damage: #MeToo has made a lot of innocent men fearful of being falsely accused of harassment or a sexual offense (who have no realistic need to be fearful) and it has dampened career opportunities for a lot of women who would never make a false accusation against a man. The article notes that this fear/paranoia makes it all the harder for women to advance up the company ranks into higher positions at a time when women are/were already underrepresented.
Suppose we could backtrack a few years, before #MeToo took off. The need for something like #MeToo was/is obvious; something had to be done to put an end to sexual harassment. At the same time, though, the backlash is harming a great deal of women in the workplace, whether they were involved in #MeToo or not. Is there a way this could have been done differently so as to end sexual harassment while also not leading to fear or overreaction paranoia?
I read that yesterday. I note that it is light on numbers.
I will say, however, that I think that we do have a problem in our society in that we are rejecting the current method for men and women to date, but no one is suggesting an alternative. We don’t have a new standard, and most people are still using the old one because, even though it has its annoying downsides, who is to decide the new way? And it’s a bit silly to say things like “Don’t objectify the women you meet” at the same time as we are saying “We encourage you to go to a location where you can’t hear people talk, so that you have no reason to approach someone of the other sex except looks, get slightly sloshed, and start grinding on one another under strobing lights.” Everything about how dating is done today is basically completely counter to logic or pleasant experiences for women, except through luck of the draw. (And, notably, love marriages have about the same success rate as arranged marriages - strongly implying that our results are just random.)
We should probably start to teach dating in schools, with a specific set of steps outlined, that allows for proper consent, no mixed signals, and starts from the position of shared world outlook and interests rather than physical appearance and “chemistry” (aka, the mutual desire to start boning). Once that standard is set, I would expect it to migrate up into the adult world.
Forgive me, but is the argument that it’s the Me Too movement that is hurting women, and NOT the male dominated culture that has supported sexual harassment since forever and continues because it doesn’t want to deal internally with harassers and would rather do away with the women?
I think what your question boils down to is “Is there a way that the long-entrenched social toleration of sexual harassment could be replaced by condemnation and rejection of sexual harassment, without upsetting and alarming a lot of people who have been socially conditioned to regard sexual harassment as no big deal?”
It shouldn’t be a surprise that male-dominated institutions will continue to harm women and use something like #MeToo as an excuse. And that’s all it is – an excuse. It’s not a real reason – there’s no reason to believe that being respectful and decent towards women in the workplace can cause one to have a high likelihood of being falsely accused of assault or harassment.
Any “backlash” is bullshit, to the extent of any legitimate fear. Sure, some people are pissed off and fearful about #MeToo, but those people are assholes who probably should retire and stop harming others with their dinosaurian and misogynistic behavior.
I think the idea is that many men in the workplace think that a substantial number of #MeToo accusations are false and hence feel the need to protect themselves from false accusations by eliminating situations where false accusations could arise. If a man thinks that as long as he doesn’t harass women, he won’t be accused of harassment, then he wouldn’t feel the need to go far out of his way to avoid women - he’d just continue interacting with them, non-harassingly, as before. But if a man thinks he could be accused even if he’s done nothing wrong, then he will feel the need to take far-reaching precautions.
Men who believe this are delusional and so indoctrinated by the patriarchal bent of society at large (and especially the most powerful and wealthy institutions and organizations) that they are incapable of seeing such things accurately.
The implications aren’t surprising nor should they be unexpected. On balance, I think the #metoo movement is a tremendous net gain for society as a whole. But it shouldn’t be surprising that in some instances it is a negative for certain people at certain times.
Pretend that you’re a hiring manager, and a statistical analysis shows that you perform better at choosing candidates than all of your peers. Say, 70% turn out to be good hires and 30% need to be terminated. If there are two equal candidates, except A is easy to terminate if you have to, and B is difficult to terminate if you have to, doesn’t it make sense to favor candidate A? Your all in costs are lower with A.
This calculus applies to all protected classes actually. From a social justice point of view it shouldn’t make a difference, but from a purely dollars and cents point of view, it does.
You may be surprised to learn that many villains do not see themselves as villains.
Back in the day when woman fist started complaining about sexual harassment. I saw a program (Donahue, maybe) where a a man in the audience was lamenting that he now couldn’t compliment on how woman looked good that day, that he couldn’t kiss her on the cheek or hug her or rub her shoulders fearing that he might get accused of sexual harassment.
He did not see that all of this behavior was sexual in nature.
Now, if you are saying now that it is not sexual at all, just polite interaction…I would ask you…would you give this kiss on the cheek, this hug, this shoulder rub to Frank the facilities guy? No?Would you like it Frank did this to you? Why not? Because it be weird and creepy?
That’s right. It is weird are creepy. You are initiating contact that is way too familiar and intimate and IS sexual and flirty. Guys do it because they think the workplace situation gives them cover to do it.
Men who make the decision to exclude women for fear that they might be accused are actually harassers.
Suppose a business decided to “protect” itself by refusing to hire any men. After all, if there are no men in the workplace then none of the women who work there can accuse any man of sexually harassing them. So the business would just be taking reasonable steps to avoid all potential accusations of sexual harassment.
The question is, why would a man think that? He’d have to believe that making accusations of sexual harassment is somehow significantly beneficial to women, to the extent that women would be significantly motivated to make such accusations falsely.
Any man who believes that has not been paying attention to, say, the venomous attacks on Christine Blasey Ford or Anita Hill. There is really no reliable payoff for women in claiming that men have harassed or assaulted them, even in situations where the claims are definitely 100% true.
Sure, some men may be plagued by fears of some kind of Scheming Villainess scenario, where a woman cold-bloodedly plots to destroy a completely innocent and inoffensive man by concocting complete fabrications about his behavior, which somehow manage to convince everybody without any valid evidentiary support and result in his downfall. And I’m not trying to argue that such a scenario can absolutely never happen. But anybody who believes that it’s typical or likely has got a seriously delusional mindset.
[QUOTE=Velocity]
and hence feel the need to protect themselves from false accusations by eliminating situations where false accusations could arise.
[/QUOTE]
Must be nice to have that kind of institutionalized power, I guess?
“Whoa, some unscrupulous members of this historically disadvantaged group might possibly do us significant harm by making up false accusations against us? Must protect ourselves from that extremely unlikely outcome by relentlessly discriminating against all members of that group and discrediting all such accusations whether false or true! Fortunately our historically privileged position enables us to implement this strategy effectively! High five, dudes!”
Has he done nothing wrong, or does he think (or claim) that he did nothing wrong.
Let’s consider Les Moonves, that poor victim. :rolleyes: Among the many accusations, apparently verified by the law firms CBS hired, was that a subordinate regularly performed oral sex on him. He claims this was consensual. Given the other verified charges, it seems unlikely that he didn’t initiate this. Would he be correct in thinking that a #Me Too accusation from this woman was false?
We men have grown up thinking unacceptable and harassing behavior is acceptable. It is not surprising that when men are called on it they think they are innocent and being accused unfairly. That could happen - but I suspect it’s not common. Asking someone out five times, and being refused each time, is not being persistent. It is being harassing. And obnoxious.
The circumstances don’t even have to be reasonable in order for your brush to be too broad. They just have to be attributable to something besides misogyny or assholishness—like paranoia, or naivety, or misunderstanding what’s going on.
If I understand correctly, the point of the OP and its linked article is that a significant number of men are reluctant to hire, mentor, or work closely with women, because they are afraid of being accused of sexual harassment.
Your claim, if I understand it correctly, is that the only men who would think that way are the assholes—those who actually do or would engage in skeevy behavior, and/or those who are looking for excuses not to work with women anyway.
I suspect that that applies to some of the men in question, but not all of them. There is a real, small but nonzero, chance that an innocent man who works closely with a woman would be accused of sexual harassment, out of malice or opportunism or delusion or misinterpretation of innocent gestures. And, since humans are notoriously bad at intuitive risk assessment, I can easily believe that an innocent man might overestimate the chance of such a thing happening to him and become fearful of working with women.
Even falsely accused men should realize that their cases are extremely rare and do not reflect upon the broader movement. I’ll amend my statement that extremely ignorant men could also be fearful of #MeToo, but such an extreme level of ignorance (which may still be relatively common, of course) would render them morally unqualified to be in any position of power whatsoever – even the lowliest supervisor. Now sure, we should want to educate the ignorant, but that doesn’t mean when trying to objectively analyze the situation (such as in a thread like this) we need to be reticent to accurately characterize them.
The reaction of any given man when told that another man sexually harassed or assaulted a woman is, very often, going to be disbelief. I’m not sure why - it just is. Maybe they identify with the perpetrator rather than the victim. Maybe they’re naive about how common sexual assault is. Maybe the high-profile nature of cases like the Duke Lacrosse case blew the issue of false allegations way out of proportion. Maybe they were taught to respond that way by high-profile cases that implicated people they idolized. Maybe they’re just misogynistic pricks.
But look at the responses to basically any case. There are always people denying it. People didn’t believe Bill Cosby was a rapist until dozens of women came forward. There were recent allegations against Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and before even hearing his side of the story or basically any details, there were tons of people who categorically denied that he did anything wrong. Bring up the accusations of sexual assault against Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Brett Kavanaugh, and you’ll have half the country (maybe less than half in Clinton’s case) rejecting the accusers categorically. Even in cases where the accused immediately copped to it, you have countless people arguing that it “wasn’t that bad”, like with Louis CK, and concern trolling about “HAS #METOO GONE TOO FAR?!!1”. And of course, online discourse is flooded with anti-SJW assholes who push a complementary narrative about feminist “professional victims” (and don’t get me started on how awful those fuckers are).
Now consider that 81% of women have experienced sexual harassment.
81%.
Someone’s doing all that harassing. A lot of someones. That’s a lot of someones with a strong, personal vested interest in painting #MeToo as being as hysterical and insane as possible. A lot of someones who have a personal stake in both believing and spreading the above views. A lot of someones who want to see themselves as good people, and thus want to believe that what they’ve done is no big deal.
We’re dealing with a major cultural upheaval. For the first time, sexual harassment is being taken seriously. People in positions of power and authority who were heard and often trusted by default are no longer getting away with doing whatever they wanted. And given how culture looks, this was always going to end up looking kind of ugly. There was always going to be a shitty, misogynistic, self-serving backlash. Let’s be clear here - if you hear that someone is accused of sexual harassment or assault and your default sympathies are with the accused rather than the accuser, well, that you’re really bad at statistics is probably one of the nicer things that can be said about you.
The solution here is to push even harder. Men who support the Pence Rule deserve to be fired. Full stop. If your response to “people accused of sexual assault have to face the music” is to shut women out of your company, get the fuck out. Their misogynistic fearmongering is baseless and hurting those around them. Every single one of the 30 executives Bloomberg interviewed deserves to be named and shamed and fired. They should not get to keep their jobs, because their shitty, toxic attitudes are legitimately harmful, and their own small-minded idiocy is leading to them, at the very least, making fucking terrible HR decisions. Stephen Zweig has got it in one:
“If men avoid working or traveling with women alone, or stop mentoring women for fear of being accused of sexual harassment,” he said, “those men are going to back out of a sexual harassment complaint and right into a sex discrimination complaint.”
Yeah! Good! Because the correct response to “sexual assault victims are being heard” is not “gosh, I’d better never be around women in private any more”, it’s “gosh, I’d better not sexually harass women”! :mad:
Try turning that around with regard to sexual harassment itself, though, rather than accusation of sexual harassment, and see how it sounds:
“There is a real, small but nonzero, chance that an innocent woman who works closely with a man would be subjected to sexual harassment, out of malice or opportunism or delusion or misinterpretation of innocent gestures. And, since humans are notoriously bad at intuitive risk assessment, I can easily believe that an innocent woman might overestimate the chance of such a thing happening to her and become fearful of working with men.”
Would anyone seriously argue that the “fearful” woman in this case should, or realistically could, “protect herself” from such a chance by means of broad-based discrimination against men as a group?
And of course, the chance that a woman actually will be sexually harassed is vastly greater than the chance that a man will be falsely accused of harassment.
This is why the notion of women being somehow responsible for an anti-woman “backlash” from #MeToo sounds to so many people like a bunch of butthurt bullshit. Women routinely put up with, and are routinely expected to put up with, a realistically significant risk of career damage and personal distress due to bad behavior from men. This overall injustice has essentially zero real-world negative consequences for men as a group.
Yet when men become aware that they might have to endure a far slighter risk of career damage and personal distress due to bad behavior from women, they’re supposed to be able to throw conniption fits of sexist discrimination all over the workplace? And women as a group are supposed to take responsibility for having inspired “fear” in men, and the subsequent sexist discrimination that the poor fwightened men have perpetrated in order to protect their privileged asses from this comparatively minuscule threat?
I think you probably can see why that attitude might be generating a fair bit of anger and scorn.