That should read “if the legal standard isn’t sufficient for the lawyer, tough.”
Still, no. My opinion isn’t more substantial than a legal precedent. It will serve as the answer to your hypothetical just fine.
So, I have to cross yet another doper off my list of “People on Message Boards Who May Be Antonin Scalia.”
Oooh, oooh, am I on that list?
For comparison and contrast, perhaps one or more of you ladies could describe some scenarios where you were asked out at work and said yes.
I’m probably neither of those things, and most importantly definitely not the second; I’d probably do nothing more than pull away, but that’s for various reasons of socialization and gender politics. Depending on context I might have a sexual harassment case if it were a co-worker, for all I’m unlikely to pursue it.
“Reasonable woman” is just the common-law reasonable person standard in a tort in which the typical plaintiff is a woman. I suspect the term gained traction first among humorous persons who reached the same conclusion as the judge in Fardell v Potts.
Unless the scenario involves a friend or a coworker, I think that would depart too much from the thread. If you really want to know, perhaps another thread would be best.
He asked a coworker to find out if I was single and interesed in dating. I told her no. But he sat nearby and was very funny, jokingly called me “Boss” (my boss was aggressive, grumpy tyrant at least 3 times my size. I smile all the time and IRL I’m pretty agreeable. Pretending to confuse with an intimidating, muscular roller derby queen was funny.) He was just generally quick, funny and light hearted at a stress-filled workplace. After a few weeks of observing his general good attitude and grin, I asked him to lunch. We were together 11 years.
When I was in a fellowship program three years ago, a colleague in my program asked me out to drinks. I just thought he wanted to be friends with me because he gave me no flirty signals. Usually I have an idea when a guy is attracted to me, but this guy was friendly and socialable with everybody. So I honestly thought he was just working on building his professional network when he asked me out. Also, it didn’t seem like a date because we met up with other friends.
It wasn’t until four “dates” later that I realized he wasn’t just trying to be my friend. (It’s embarrassing now to think how slow I was.) When I realized that, I also realized he wasn’t a bad looking guy and the idea of a relationship with him didn’t send me screaming into the woods. So we went from there.
What did he do to make me see he wanted more than my friendship? We were at a bar listening to a live blues band and to see the performance, I was standing up on a bench behind him. Leaning against me so I could hold on to his shoulders for balance, he let his hands squeeze my legs. He’d never touched me before then. That was the clue I needed to know what his intentions were.
Looking back, it was only luck that things turned out this way. He asked me out even though he didn’t know me well enough to know if I’d be open to him. It took him more than a month to show that he was interested in me romantically, even though we went out together several times. According to the rules of the Friend Zone, his actions should have disqualified him from having a chance with me. But somehow that is not what happened.
His slowness and ambiguity actually worked to his advantage. If he’d announced his intentions straight out of the gates, I probably would have rejected him due to overthinking things and worrying about workplace gossip. Being allowed a chance to get to know him without feeling pressured into a relationship was exactly what I needed at that time in my life.
Take home message: there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to starting relationships. Sometimes friends become lovers, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it works best for a lover to first be a friend, and sometimes it doesn’t. Such is life.
And that’s a big bucket of “I don’t really give a damn,” on my part.
My primary goals are not to get raped, stalked, or put in some kind of “you have to have sex with me to keep your job” situation. These things do happen, actually quite often, and it’s absolutely my right not to have them in my life. I stay late in my office, I travel on business with my coworkers, and I need to be able to do these things without having to constantly worry about being sexually assaulted.
If protecting people from getting raped, stalked, or having their livelihood threatened from sex means that the extremely socially awkward lose some chances to hit on women that are out of their league, that’s unfortunate but it is what it is. Nobody has a right to use their workplace to troll for sex. If you can’t tell the difference between “This move could get me laid” and “This move could get me a prison sentence”, you need to find some way to figure that out before you join the sexual arena. Because that is YOUR problem, and you have no right to make it the problem of every female human being that happens to catch your eye.
Again, it all boils down to “Thinking someone is hot incurs no obligation to you on their part,” which is the primary thing that Nice Guys everywhere seem to miss.
Ugh, this thread has veered from friendzone talk to workplace sexual harassment :rolleyes:
But back to friendzone stuff…The guys who complain about this aren’t interested in a woman enough to be their friend. The way I see it, would they be willing to be friends with a woman they don’t find sexually attractive? Something tells me the guys wouldn’t be willing to do the ‘lets be friends’ thing when its them rejecting someone they aren’t interested in.
Guys who complain about being friendzoned often develop infatuations with specific women. They linger far longer than they should, thinking time, persistence, etc will change how the woman feels. They hold themselves back by passing up other opportunities or chances to learn and grow up.
I know a mutual female friend who had a whole troupe of guys that got ‘friendzoned’ by her. She was a huge drama queen who loved attention, was really insecure, etc. She liked having guys interested in her because she always had people to tell her she was pretty/smart/cool. All these guys ended up being single for years because they were so busy swooning over her, complaining about being single, convinced they would ‘win her over’ eventually, and prop up her ego. I’ll admit I was one of these guys for some time, but lucky for me I came to my senses and snapped out of it.
I’m not single anymore, but if I was, I wouldn’t be hung up on a woman that only wanted to be friends with me. If I wanted to be friends, I would be friends…and continue dating other women. But I wouldn’t hold off on everything else just hoping she would change her mind.
Yup, pretty well, though I’d phrase it differently - that is, “would you, the guy, still want this friendship if sex is no longer an option (for example, because you are in a happy monogamous relationship with someone else)?”
If the answer is “yes” than there is no problem. If the answer is “no” then better question your motives, fellow. It isn’t fair to anyone to be “friends” with them just because you want something from them, be it sex or anything else - if all you are after is some-thing, you aren’t really being a “friend”, are you?
It’s all part of treating people as subjects in their own right and not as objects for your gratification. Not that your gratification is irrelevant, everyone expects stuff out of a friendship - but real friendship is a two-way street. Of course the same goes for someone stringing along a guy and getting what she can out of him knowing full well he’s smitten - but she’s not making the guy string along.
Now, that’s not to say a relationship can’t change from one thing to another. My own best friend of more than 25 years (I know, I’m old now! when did that happen) I was heavily into when we first met (it was a sexually-charged meeting - it was halloween and she asked me to paint her costume on … we spent much of that night partying together, but no sex), but she was not into me after that first night. That was cool. We had so much in common (maybe too much to ever go out) that we both ended up dating lots of other people, but always kept our friendship up - we are both married to other people now. I never felt I was “friendzoned” though I sometimes got flack for hanging out with a hott chick. I never felt “friendzoned” because I really valued her friendship, and I believe she did mine - and we have stick by each other through thick and thin. Sometimes it’s been difficult as not everyone one dates appreciates someone having a best buddy of the opposite sex.
I think you’re right. Sorry, baby, I’m married, but we can still be friends.
Hijack a thread with thinly-veiled lawyering to prove a point.
I think you’re right - guys won’t lift a finger for a woman they aren’t sexually interested in.
It wasn’t veiled. I quite explicitly made it about the legal concept of sexual harassment after someone provided a botched definition of it.
I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences with men and the only ones you’ve met would only lift a finger for a woman if they’re sexually interested in her. I’ve lifted fingers for men and women I had no sexual interest in and I’ve had both men and women lift fingers for me when they were not sexually interested in me.
Ha, I can’t even work up the give-a-fuck to do anything but laugh about it now. You are dead set against pretending I was trying to lay down some binding legal definition of sexual harassment no matter how many times it’s explained otherwise.
Another fun thing is that much earlier in the thread you sort of decided to moderate by discouraging discussion you considered to be hijacking regarding an old thread. Then you picked up on an opportunity to do some lawyering for us all when you really thought I was trying to define sexual harassment (something that takes PAGES of words for any HR department) by using 3 words. You were happy to ride that hijack train as far as you can (still are!) but then when Vinyl Turnip asked for examples of non-sexual harassment flirting you’re pulling out your “NO HIJACKING MY HIJACK” card. Hijacks only when you say so? Got it.
If you’re unable to bring yourself to that after seeing me type it out a couple of times here and you don’t get that **Cat Whisperer **was being sarcastic in her last sentence above then I am damn sure you’re not going to be able to detect body language, social cues, and subtle flirting from the opposite sex. I thought you were playing a part in your previous threads about simple human interactions, I stand corrected. Ok, so I.M. Android, Esquire it is!
Have fun.
Butterflies,
At post 137, I thought you tried to give a definition of sexual harassment. At post 155, you clarified that you weren’t trying to give a complete definition of it. After that point, I no longer argued the point with you since, as you said, you weren’t trying to give a binding legal definition of it. I did say it was a botched definition but since you weren’t trying to give a complete definition, that’s ok.
At some point, the thread veered into the idea that two men doing the same thing will be treated quite differently and you brought up how sexual harassment is defined at workplaces. The definition (which now you’ve made clear wasn’t meant to be the binding legal definition) did seem to confirm the complaint you were arguing against. Since you didn’t mean for that definition to be taken seriously, fine, let’s forget it. The rest of your point on that topic was quite reasonable.
Saracsm: You have to know that sarcasm doesn’t translate well in a text-only format. I’ve been sarcastic with Troppus in the past and she didn’t pick up on it.
depends on if he’s good looking or not
I thought that the thread had it pretty well resolved before the highjack. What is being commonly termed as “friendzone” is where someone feels an unreciprocated attraction, and in an effort to force attraction begins to simulate intimacy by doing all the things a boyfriend would do short of the intimacy.
Now, YWTF gave an anecdote earlier about a workplace flirtation that did pan out, and possibly as an anecdote of how someone can work themselves out of the friend zone. I’d disagree that it was a true friend-zoning. Technically yes, a friend became a lover, but you did not initially completely write him off as someone impossible to date. Indifference is a whole tier about undateable.
[QUOTE=pancakes3]
Now, YWTF gave an anecdote earlier about a workplace flirtation that did pan out, and possibly as an anecdote of how someone can work themselves out of the friend zone. I’d disagree that it was a true friend-zoning. Technically yes, a friend became a lover, but you did not initially completely write him off as someone impossible to date. Indifference is a whole tier about undateable.
[/QUOTE]
In case it’s not clear, I do not believe in the Friend Zone. Meaning, I don’t believe guys end up thrown in the friend pile simply because they fail to press the right combination of buttons to make the object of their affection fall in like with them. Either the potential for more is there or it isn’t. I don’t think being friends prior changes this potential.
The guy I mentioned didn’t do anything special to work his way out of the “Friend Zone” because he wasn’t in any kind of zone to begin with. I had given little thought to him as a dating prospect (which is weird, I know…usually it doesn’t work this way) up until he made a signal of romantic interest that my oblivious self could pick up on. Once he did, I decided I liked him enough to date him. Honestly it was as simple as that.
I can think of other guys in my program who, if they’d tried the exact same moves, would have been unsuccessful. Their hands on my legs at the bar would have made me uncomfortable, and I would have been reluctant to continue friendship with them. Which shouldn’t be surprising if you understand that individuals are individuals. You can’t just switch one guy out for another and expect the same outcomes. Anyone who really thinks there are rules for this stuff are deluding themselves.
pancake3, whether or not he is good looking (he was) was not a factor. I had no previous interaction with this guy who apparently thought this public grand gesture was going to result in some due reward. He was wrong. I was happy in a long term relationship. He knew absolutely zero about me, but decided I was worthy of romantic pursuit based on nothing at all. No attempt at conversation, not even a hello. Thought he would obligate me to respond, and when I did nothing he told coworkers I was a bitch. Again, based on nothing. My only reaction (which may have shown on my face) was * the fuck is this??* From that point forward, every coworker who delivered a report, an agenda, a sticky note, or handed me a cookie did so with a deep bow. Especially if The Guy was nearby. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought the stunt was lame.
The point being: I don’t owe a guy anything simply because he decides I’m attractive. Or because he gives me a flower. Or makes a goof of himself trying to get my attention. Or does me a favor. Or hangs around for months trying to show me how much better he is for me than my boyfriend. Or helps me move. Whatever. Women are under no obligation to “give a guy a chance”. But the beauty part? Guys aren’t obligated to date women they aren’t into, either. The friend zone is a bullshit phrase some comedian thought up. It’s a myth.
1 - YWTF, Absolutely I think the “friend zone” is a lie and said as much a few pages ago. It’s just a circumstance where attraction is a one-way street. I definitely do not think women go around placing people in zones, or vice versa.
2 - Troppus, I was replying to your anecdote tongue-in-cheek. The rose stunt was awkward and inappropriate. Even if the guy was attractive, you would have a bit of the screeching violins in the back of your head. The stunt was also very well embodies the creepy, entitled nature that many guys who complain about the “friend zone” have regarding courtship. Chances are he went away from the experience moaning about how chivalry is dead and that women who claim they are looking for romance really in fact do not appreciate true romance.