No offense, but if some new guy started using “aggressive even-handed niceness” in order to make me more friendly, I would be creeped out. And I’m a guy.
No, you can speak for yourself, and you’re probably someone who doesn’t signal that way. Not everyone does. If you value desk neatness, and your desk is suddenly a mess, that might be worth an observation.
You are overthinking all of this.
Simple rule: respect other humans.
If you are having a hard time understanding the rule, it’s not the rule’s fault.
Actually, the article summarized is:
“Men are upset that they can’t act any way they want in the office, so they are passively-aggressively punishing women for not thinking their crudeness is endearing.”
Uh-huh? Business people are banning conversations about weather?
All I can say is, if figuring out exaggeration for emphasis may be used in a written article is too difficult for you, I would suggest avoiding most written media.
Like everything socially, it’s all about style and presentation.
There’s the coworker who likes to talk about their kids but is divorced. There’s the cranky guy that no-one listens to that just wants someone to engage with their ideas. There’s the no-nonsense guy who generally doesn’t mention his personal life often, but mentions he’s getting married again in six months, and when he leaves on vacation will jump then smile when the last thing you say to him is “Oh, and congratulations, by the way” and otherwise go along with pretending he is an automaton with no interests outside work. There’s the woman who is very career-oriented and hot on her career who is very down on anything she sees as personal but is very down for a hair-down, joint-project presentation, “do we really want to phrase this this way” discussion of what the various execs personally prefer.
One person’s respect is another’s unwanted intimacy. Not providing that intimacy is a third person’s disrespect.
You are deliberately oversimplifying to make grand declamatory statements. Since these are particular situations in varied environments, there is actually a lot of room for error.
Again with trying to imply that I don’t understand. Clumsy to do it so close together.
Business people are eliminating casual interaction opportunities, per the initial article. I think the equivalency is fair for the purposes of discussion.
Ah yes, each coworker is an individual person that should be treated with respect. And the way that respect is shown is different depending on them individually.
Notice I didn’t mention she, him, her, he, male female.
Try to think of a way to behave toward your coworkers that doesn’t depend on which pronoun describes them and you are on your way.
There is quite an easy fix to avoid all these errors: Don’t talk about non-work stuff at work.
Well, under these circumstances, for one example.
It’s a very long thread but you participated in it so I’m sure you’re familiar with the content. I think it’s fair to say that Hardwick being immediately terminated was indicative of the networks and various media taking his accuser seriously, and Hardwick being fully reinstated following an investigation can reasonably be taken as indicative of his innocence (not that he’s perfect, but that the seriousness of some of the allegations was not supported by the evidence). So the conclusion appears to be that in this case, his accuser was being unfairly vindictive – a fact that remains a fact even if in her own mind she was being forthright. And these accusations were given tremendous weight in the public perception by #MeToo – a weight that is independent of their truthfulness. Also in that thread is an anecdote about a false accusation that I happen to know about, again strengthened by #MeToo.
One of the problems, as I think was indicated in that thread, is that #MeToo started as a movement for women who were victimized by real and serious sexual abuse, and has been morphing into a movement that supports women who bring forward a vast range of relatively benign complaints dressed up as “sexual abuse”.
I understand that the problems #MeToo is addressing are real, deeply entrenched, and deeply serious. I’m just saying that there are two sides to this, and we’re seeing some of the downsides of it. The same sort of thing happened with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) which was formed to deal with an equally serious problem, and whose impetus largely came from those who had lost loved ones to drunk drivers – certainly a group one can empathize with. But over time, as with any bureaucracy, it has started to morph into an intransigent advocacy empire – for example, pushing for increasingly draconian penalties that have been shown to less effective than education and training for normal people and completely ineffective for chronic alcoholics, and, incredibly, at one point suggesting that all new cars – all of them – should be equipped with mandatory breathalyzer interlocks! There is nothing inconsistent with saying “I strongly oppose drunk driving” and at the same time, “in some areas MADD has lost its way and gone around the bend”. It’s potentially the same with #MeToo.
Pushing a narrative interpretation over the article.
Let’s remove the office for the moment, and take a look at the dating scene: Men aren’t trying to be Weinstein, they’re afraid of being Aziz Ansari (who had no idea he’d stepped over the line, even going for affirmative consent).
False equivalency to say the only things any individual person finds offensive are always unquestionably over the line to all people all the time in that situation. Sensitivity is one thing, enshrining the lowest common denominator is another. The essential solution is to have a reasonable standard or room for someone to not realize what they have said or done is offensive, instead of claiming men are either saints or wang-slapping every woman in the office.
No I’m not doing that at all. I have never seemed to have any issues treating every coworker with respect in every work situation I’ve ever been in. In fact I don’t even have to really think about it. It seems like you almost get paralyzed with overthinking about this stuff.
Maybe it will assuage your irritation to recall the fact that the default for many millennia has been a decided absence of “even-handedness”, in which women’s physical appearance was automatically prioritized and judged by men in ways that other men’s appearance was not.
How’s that for “a disservice to humanity”? Why don’t you spend some time thinking about how shitty that situation was for women, and how it still carries over into so many aspects of women’s lives, before going into your sulk about what a terrible burden it is for you to have to worry about possible unintended microaggressions?
We’ve spent thousands of years where microaggression (and macroaggression) denigrating women’s competence and sexually objectifying women was the automatic default, and damn near universal. And then as soon as the social pendulum swings even slightly in the direction of equality and non-gendered “even-handed” respect, some men start whining how unfair it is not to immediately give them the benefit of the doubt that when they follow traditionally sexist gendered behavior patterns they don’t really mean anything sexist by it. Sheesh, talk about perpetuating male privilege and fragility.
Read my posts. I do that, and it has to be highly individually customized. If you were at all a courteous human being, as you are claiming to be, in sincerity you would have read with that consideration. Since you haven’t, here’s a hint: THIS IS THE POSITION I’M ADVOCATING IS NECESSARY
So why are you having such a hard time with it then?
Per you. Your coworkers may have a different opinion.
And it’s an effect of being a mature adult that one is aware of things. There’s no need to think about it much, just be aware.
I don’t. But I understand people who do, because I consider them with respect to their individuality. Which is why I frankly can no longer believe, based on your comments in this thread, that all your coworkers feel you have always treated them with respect. You frankly have shown a tendency to rush to judgment to secure a moral high ground. Plenty of people, myself included, find that highly disrespectful.
I could comment on this, but he’d only get upset. Typical man.
Which is probably a good thing in many respects and has been strongly advocated as a social improvement by a number of people, such as the etiquette advice columnist Miss Manners, for decades before #MeToo was ever born or thought of.