Have you ever had sexual harassment training?
If it makes you feel uncomfortable, then yes. That is exactly what you are supposed to do. Is this really that difficult to understand?
From my experience it’s been the men.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=836077
The problem is, saying something “for show” also inherently carries the idea that the person does not believe what they are saying. That’s why people disapprove of it. No one has a problem with people looking good for genuinely believing good things.
Virtue signalling, as used by the right, is pejorative. So it must be making a claim that the person is doing something wrong. But if the person isn’t lying or misleading people, then what is wrong? Why is it wrong to let people know that you believe the same thing they do? Is it wrong when you share your genuine beliefs, too?
Without the element of deception, there’s nothing wrong with the situation you describe in the rest of your post. There is nothing wrong with saying on your Tumblr profile that the gay rights issue is so important to you that it is a significant part of your identity. You can show you are an LGBT ally and activist. That you still think that this is important.
Your example also is just completely out of touch with what’s actually going on in the world. No, gay rights are not remotely a settled issue. The right wing in America is usually not supportive of gay rights. Christians still argue that it’s their right to discriminate against gay people, that gay marriage is wrong. There is still no federal anti-discrimination law for gay people, and most states don’t have one either. Instead, states suddenly thought their religion was under attack and had to pass freedom of religion acts, or pass laws saying that cities couldn’t pass their own anti-discrimination legislation.
At least people who think racism is over could at least be forgiven for thinking that all legal hurdles have been removed. But believing homophobia is over? That everyone support gay people now? Not remotely.
Maybe it’s better in the part of France where you live. But Tumblr is predominantly American. And I know that France still has its bigots, so it wouldn’t be wrong there.
But, even if it was the accepted belief, it’s still not wrong to profess it. The majority of people support the troops in the US. That doesn’t make it wrong to say “I support the troops.”
There is no rule saying that I cannot say anything unless a significant number of people will disagree with me.
What a surprise! Good find.
:eek:
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:mad:
Hey Urbanredneck, in case you’re wondering why most people think your assertion that everyone’s going to get accused of sexual assault is so bizarre: this is part of why. Most people don’t get accused of sexual harassment, because most people don’t sexually harass people. Meanwhile, you’re the kind of person who sees nothing wrong with saying “Just picturing the 2 of you naked” to two female doctors currently helping you. It is absolutely a “you” problem. It’s not just that you don’t know where the line is; you aren’t even in the same zip code. Your “friendly joke” is about a step up from asking a female doctor to check out your cock, and then when she asks why, answering “because it gets hard every time I’m near you”. What you’re doing is not just inappropriate, it’s the kind of thing that would be grounds for termination and possible legal action in almost any professional environment had you done it to a coworker. I’m being entirely serious when I say that depending on where you live, if you had made this comment to a coworker, you could go to jail.
I’m not just saying this to drag you, but because if you’re legitimately concerned about being the target of sexual harassment allegations (which, at this point, you absolutely should be), the first step to avoiding them is learning what is and is not sexual harassment. And that? That was sexual harassment. You do not, as you insisted when almost everyone else in the thread called you out on it, “know when to not cross the line”, because that’s so far across the line that the line has passed below the horizon and is no longer visible due to the curvature of the earth.
Seriously, for your own sake, visit a sexual harassment seminar. Listen. Observe. Don’t tell the instructor “that’s not sexual harassment”, just pay attention and take their advice. Because I have your word for it that you’ve committed at least one case of sexual harassment, and knowing your posting history, I would seriously, seriously doubt that that’s the only time. :mad:
On a side note, this is indicative of a certain pattern. If someone’s response to #MeToo or the univeral pervasiveness of sexual harassment is to argue that it’s mostly overblown, or that we should worry first and foremost about false accusations, it very often says something about them. They identify more with the perpetrators than the victims. Ask yourself why that is.
Step one of getting out of the hole: stop digging.
Let me tell you a story from a field I hold dear: the erotic hypnosis community.
There’s this guy in the community. Real eager beaver. He means well, he’s fun to be around, he’s scrupulous to a fault. But he keeps on accidentally hurting people. He hits them too hard when spanking them. He forgets limits and hits psychological triggers that he wasn’t supposed to hit. He doesn’t always do a clear enough job deliniating between a one-time session and a real relationship. He lacks certain social graces and you often have to explain things to him that you shouldn’t need to explain to people (like “no, mapping out all of the polycules in our community is a bad idea that would just cause strife”). This is probably all because he’s a little autistic and a little ADHD. But he really does mean well, and he loves what he does, and it hurts him deeply every time he fucks up.
But the fact that he is trying his best does not change the fact that, because of his own blind spots and mental issues, he is hurting people. And if he doesn’t change, if he doesn’t fix his shit, he will need to be shunned from that community. Because if he isn’t, he’s going to keep hurting people, and at that point it doesn’t matter if he means well - that’s gotta stop.
You don’t seem to recognize that you are sexually harassing people. You “mean well”. But that doesn’t change the fact that when you interact with women in that way, they are left creeped the fuck out because of things you say and do, and that your actions definitely and unquestionably have risen to the level of sexual harassment in at least one case. And this isn’t just a matter of “thrown out of a niche interest community”, this is a matter of “fired and possibly imprisoned”.
you need to stop. You need to shut down interactions that become more personal. You need to tread extremely carefully. You need to keep your interactions to things that are clearly acceptable - work, cars, sports, the weather, things like that. You need to avoid “bad” topics, because regardless if they’re okay for others to talk about, you are clearly missing some critical nuance or skill required to do so without crossing the line - probably because you don’t have the foggiest clue where the line is.
(Indeed, you’re a step or two behind the guy I mentioned above, because when you explain to him that he fucked up, his response isn’t to arrogantly assert, “I know when not the cross the line”, it’s to realize that he fucked up and try to make amends! He puts down the shovel, at least for a moment. You won’t even go that far - when you’re informed that, by your own account, you unambiguously sexually harassed two medical professionals, you scoff and insist that everyone else is wrong and you’re right. Then you come into a thread about sexual harassment allegations and say that everyone should expect to be the victim of false allegations. Stop digging. Please, for the love of god, stop digging.)
The reason that the word “female” is problematic is that it is an adjective. An adjective is a word that describes or modifies a noun. Adjectives are not meant to be used alone, they are meant to define an attribute, like ‘brown’, ‘large’, or ‘soft’. When used alone, ‘female’ sounds like the only thing that is seen is the attribute, not the humanity.
For most of the large companies I’ve worked with, it was exactly as important as the appearance of the people loading trucks or inspecting product.
Using “female” as an adjective remains fine (“I have several female co-workers”). The problem is when, as he was, you use it as a noun (“I work with a bunch of females”) which at the very least makes you sound like a brain-damaged Ferengi (“Many of my best friends are HYOOMON FEMALES”).
“Woman” also remains fine as long as you’re not using it as a substitute for someone’s name (“Woman, bring me the Bilberg account file!”), that one John Lennon song notwithstanding.
Except there was a push a few years ago to use “woman” as an adjective rather than “female” as a hypercompensation for the use of female as a noun. Thankfully that bit of linguistic silliness has faded somewhat, but once in awhile I would hear weird sentences like “there are far fewer woman directors on the scene than males” 
:smack: Furthermore, nouns as adjectives tend to be just as essentializing as adjectives as nouns to me, for instance “Democrat politicians” makes it seem like their membership in the Democratic party is the only thing that is important about them rather than simply being a characteristic, so I’m reminded of people who use nouns as adjectives as sloppy slurs whenever I hear of a “woman x”.
On the other hand, there are times – most of the time – when an adjective is not essential at all, so usually when given the choice between saying “woman doctor” or “female doctor” most of the time you should say “doctor”.
Dang, you really have alot of time on your hands to go research all the things I write. Go get a life. BTW, that was un-work related.
Please stop digging. 
Not for the women involved, it wasn’t.
I hope this can be a learning moment for you, Urbanredneck. What you said to those nurses likely make them feel very uncomfortable and possibly scared for their safety. There was no pressing need to say what you did. The look they gave each other was probably a look of “uh oh, are we in a bad situation with this guy?”. If you were alone with a single nurse and said that, she’d probably be very worried about what you were going to do next. If you care at all about the feelings of others, you should refrain from this kind of behavior entirely. Not just the sex talk, but any comment about appearance in general.
Imagine that a male nurse who was large enough to overpower you was helping you and was staring at you funny. When you asked him why he was looking like that, he said he was imagining what you’d look like naked in his bed. I would guess that you’d feel very uncomfortable and wonder if he was going to try something with you. How you might feel in that moment is likely how those nurses felt.
I like how this has not been responded to.
nm
I’ve never had any problems with women in a professional setting, however it’s POSSIBLY come at cost. I guess I don’t know how to flirt.
If I’m interested, I simply say something like “you’re looking particularly nice today.” I don’t know how to talk in the same type of language I’ve seen men and women use on each other to indicate their attration to one another, sadly.
Anyway… When you talk in that language with double entendres, you have to be very careful. You have to get a feel of your audience first. I just never learned.
I wouldn’t take it as having proven anything. It’s far more likely that you’ve simply chased away any will for conversation. Shutting down conversation then patting yourself on the back is great for tumblr. Not so much for debate.
You can’t at the same time “believe women” and not “not believe men”. Your statement (and it’s not like you’re the only one) is plainly nonsensical. If a woman says “he groped me” and the man says “I didn’t”, if you believe the woman then you necessarily don’t believe the man, since the first statement being true necessarily makes the second false. Pretending the contrary is a “1984” level of politically correct absurdity.
It scares me that you (and others) have such a contempt and dismissal for basic logic. And I’m serious.
Maybe what you mean by “believing women” is giving a sympathetic ear without it having any real world consequence for anybody, because you then act as if you didn’t in fact believe them. This isn’t “believing women”. If you’re doing that, you’re just clamoring to believe them for show, and it’s a pretty good example of “virtue signaling”.