sexism. workplace. clueless coworkers

[velomont]

@Anaamika

It amazes me and disgusts me how long we’ve spent putting women in the corner. That is half the world’s brains! How many amazing things did we miss out on because women’s brains weren’t trained, weren’t educated? We literally just looked at half the population and said, “You have a vagina, you sit on this pedestal over here, unless we knock you down, in which case it’s your fault anyway, but don’t ever think!”

Ugh.

So in Canada, there’s been a lot of news lately about sexual harassment in our armed forces, peaking with two spectacularly stupid things. One was the Chief of Defence Staff’s (CDS) response to a report with a series of recommendation (I believe that there were ten of them). His response was, at best, mild, though I think “vapid” is better. He didn’t even agree with the recommendation that a reporting process, outside of the chain of command, be created until the Defence Minister stepped on him.

And then, (and this is just jim-dandy) there was a young, civilian, female facilitator of a sexual harassment seminar brought in to conduct said seminar to the young cadets (our future leaders). What did the audiences do? They heckled her and made inappropriate remarks of a sexual nature. This made it to the news, after which she got more remarks and threats, from RMC students, via social media.

I must be naive as hell. I was an RMC cadet at the time the first women joined RMC in the '80/'81 academic year. From my point of view we acted colossally stupidly and immature to our new colleagues, which obviously was not appropriate. I was also in the navy when our ships were still male-only. Over my 32 year career, however, I saw the wholesale integration of women into our military and I always thought it was a good thing for a whole variety of reasons. But stupidly, I really believed that we had progressed well beyond what’s being displayed now; in fact it actually seems worse now than it did 30 years ago. WTF is wrong with us?

[bashere]

@velomont

And then, (and this is just jim-dandy) there was a young, civilian, female facilitator of a sexual harassment seminar brought in to conduct said seminar to the young cadets (our future leaders). What did the audiences do? They heckled her and made inappropriate remarks of a sexual nature. This made it to the news, after which she got more remarks and threats, from RMC students, via social media.

Out of curiousity, is the facilitator you are referring to Julie Lalonde?

(She is a public figure, so I don’t think identifying her is any sort of board violation)

[velomont]

Yes it is Julie Lalonde. Back in the day (mid '90s) the CF had what I presume to be the same basic seminar, then called "SHARP (Sexual Harassment and Racism Prevention (I think)) training. On my SHARP course we had probably seven or eight participants and a young, attractive woman facilitating. The lowest point was that some of us just asked questions about attitudes and policy but nothing directed at the facilitator. The session ended on a positive note for all concerned.

That military personnel would verbally abuse a contracted professional (or anyone else, for that matter), though, is appalling and something I never would have imagined.