[mindcrime]

> Men, can you imagine how hard it would be if all the women were constantly, and openly, talking about tampons, cramps, yeast infections, cheating, being cheated on, Trichomoniasis, faking-it, etc? I don't know about you, but It would make me feel out of place.

I've been the only male in a female dominated IT department before, and you know what... it does feel a bit awkward being a minority. It's not fun, and you always feel like something of an outsider in a sense, even when the other people are friendly and accept you. But at the end of the day, being offended is a choice... you can choose to take offense, or not take offense. And there's a huge gap between something that's merely offensive and actual "abuse" or "sexual harassment". When I worked with all those women, I just went in, did my thing, treated them like equals and did my work. We weren't ever really "friends" and I never hung out with any of them outside of work or anything, but that never mattered. The money they paid me to work there spent just as well, regardless of any of that shit, why should I worry about getting worked up over gender differences and the occasional joke about premature ejaculation or penis size.

[mgkimsal]

Not in an IT dept, but when I was going to school, I worked in a restaurant where I was the only male most of the time. Well, I was a shift manager, and all the shift managers and store manager were females except me (4-5 others). I got the crap shifts, had my schedule changed on a whim by others, and was often given crap tasks - moving/unloading stuff "because you're the man - I can't lift that!" It was funny for about a week, but never got any better. Regional manager gave me no support - he didn't want to be seen as disciplining any of the female staff for fear of some sexism/discrimination lawsuit. Eventually I left, but not soon enough.

[numo16]

Funny you mention this, as I was told by the hiring manager at a wendy's that I worked at that she was hiring me to "do the man work", which meant unloading and putting away truck, working grill,taking out the trash, etc... Never really thought about that until now...

[mgkimsal]

Things never change, do they. :)

IIRC, the issue started because one of the shift managers was pregnant, and couldn't do some things - fair enough - it doesn't last forever, and I'm fine with helping out now and then, but not being taken advantage of. And really, most of this stuff really wasn't heavy - boxes of up to 25 pounds on occasion, but rarely ever more than that, and there was trollies and carts and stuff to move heavy stuff around (and usually delivery drivers would unload stuff to a fridge or freezer for you anyway. Give them a nice cup of coffee and they'd handle some of the shifting in the freezer too :)