[wild_preference]

My older brother settled down in the suburbs and picks up work as a substitute teacher in a school with female-dominated staff. He’s a handsome guy. Every time I see him, he tells me the latest story of a teacher or fellow staffmember making a crude sexual joke or coming on to him. All of these being mostly middle-aged women. We have a chuckle.

It’s interesting how men generally don’t “whistleblow” on those sorts of scenarios. Yet only men ever get nailed with “ugh, pigs!” as if women never have open sexual thoughts.

[trowawee]

It's almost like...there's some sort of gendered power imbalance in society? That might make men comfortable disregarding this? But that might not afford women the same privilege?

[zimablue]

There are a million power imbalances in society and gender isn't close to the most important, it's just the most discussed. The real wage gap when you control for time worked and job choice is tiny.

Ask yourself this - would you consider your child more lucky to be an ugly, short boy or a pretty girl? Or a boy and you have 20k a year to bring him up vs a girl and you have 50? Walking around furious as a good looking middle class woman that you're incredibly disadvantaged is basically a religious status. But instead of being offended by very specific insults or assumptions you're offended by everything.

[danShumway]

> "A senior staff member proceeded to repeatedly call me sexist for not being willing to room with a man I’d never met before. At first, I thought he was kidding, but he continued to make arguments to his point. I explained why I would be more comfortable sharing a room with another woman, and told him I wasn’t enjoying the conversation and would leave if I was continued to be called sexist. The conversation continued, with him eventually saying that my unwillingness to room with a man was the same as not hiring a woman due to her gender."

You're not arguing in good faith right now. The above scenario isn't a joke - it's harassment. No matter who it was done to; any gender in any context, it would be harassment.

You're phrasing this like it was a few offhand comments; as a man, if any of the stuff in this article had happened to me, regardless of whether it had been a male or female doing it, I would have been appalled. I would be having the exact same reaction.

To talk about experiences like this as if they just boil down to political correctness requires a kind of willful ignorance.

[zimablue]

I think you have to look at the quote in the context of the situation, she'd already antagonized the whole company in her first 6 months by throwing probably the most explosive political grenade that you can. Her manager clearly wasn't trying to make her room with him, he's trying to hit her with what he sees as "her own philosophy" given that he thinks she's a SJW. I don't really agree with his point but you can see the argument, a lot of modern feminism starts from the assumption that there are zero differences between men and women, you can draw a line from that to "you should room with anyone we're all identical any discrimination/segregation is bad". I don't agree with it but it's just a stupid political argument he's having with her, it's not in any form sexual harassment. If he'd booked himself into a room with her, that would be sexual harassment.

If you have a low level ongoing argument with your manager it's going to get rough at some point. My whole point was that the article is very thin on specific bad experiences and mostly about her own reaction to third party conversations within earshot.

[dragonwriter]

> she'd already antagonized the whole company in her first 6 months by throwing probably the most explosive political grenade that you can.

Questioning the lack of diversity of body types for female avatars compared to make avatars is “throwing probably the most explosive political grenade that you can.”?

I don't see it. Or, I sure see how the blatantly sexist response [0] could be viewed as politically explosive, but I don't think she anticipated or reasonably should have that that would be the response.

[0] which either outright claimed or implicitly relied on each of these: (1) that avatars of a particular gender matter only to players of that gender, (2) that female players are concerned only with the attractiveness of their avatar, while men have more varied interests, (3) that only a single female body type is attractive.

> a lot of modern feminism starts from the assumption that there are zero differences between men and women

No, it doesn't, though a lot of sexist rants about feminism start with the claim that it does.

> I don't agree with it but it's just a stupid political argument he's having with her, it's not in any form sexual harassment.

Alone, it's maybe not extreme enough to constitute sexual harassment as a single event, though it's quite easily the kind of thing that with a bunch of other stuff reported in the story could easily qualify as part of a pattern constituting sexual harassment by creation of a hostile workplace.

[danShumway]

> a lot of modern feminism starts from the assumption that there are zero differences between men and women

No, very little of modern feminism starts from this perspective. And even if it did, this is a strawman.

Regardless of the manager's goal, it is vastly inappropriate. It would have been inappropriate even if the genders in the story were reversed. Arguing that the manager was so immature that they engaged in petty political bickering to make a point at the expense of a team member's emotional well being doesn't make me feel like they were any more justified.

That's not something that should happen in a professional environment.

> My whole point was that the article is very thin on specific bad experiences

From the article: "While on a team outing, the same senior staff member messaged a new employee’s girlfriend on Facebook asking if she was “DTF” - shorthand for “down to f-ck”. He thought it was a funny joke. The new staffer didn’t feel comfortable challenging him, even though his girlfriend was very uncomfortable and called to ask why she was being harassed by his boss."

But I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why it's appropriate for a manager to abuse a power structure to hit on an employee's girlfriend that he's never met.

Seriously, the entire article is example after example after example. Employees asking personal questions about her sex life. Abusing fans - a female just got fired for being short with fans on Twitter, but sure, forcing a cosplayer to tears is just boys being boys. Trying to run blackface in a cosplay parade. Physical advances and professional retaliation against female employees.

This isn't a conversation at this point. You're mischaracterizing her story to throw doubt on her claims. You're not arguing in good faith, you're just gaslighting.

[dragonwriter]

> There are a million power imbalances in society and gender isn't close to the most important, it's just the most discussed.

I dunno, I think race is discussed at least as much, and economic class even more.

[AndyNemmity]

I've been at the table when middle aged women objectified men, discussing package size, etc in a work environment.

It wasn't a big deal. I wasn't offended.

I don't think that's prescriptive for anyone else. I'm older, and I tend to just believe I don't/can't understand what makes one thing right and another wrong. I have enough of my own problems to police the actions of others.

It does seem strange everyone else seems so sure of how everyone else should be. That sort of confidence I only have towards technical topics.