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Certainly was the case for me. I was completely blown away at how often women around me were harassed. I didn't see a reason for #metoo to be as
by screye 8y ago
Certainly was the case for me.
I was completely blown away at how often women around me were harassed.
I didn't see a reason for #metoo to be as loud as it was, until these stories started coming out.
My assumptions about most men having respect for women's basic rights was really misplaced.
- DenisM 8y ago> My assumptions about most men having respect for women's basic rights was really misplaced Are you saying that from most women having been harassed it follows that most men have been harassing women?
- AnarchoYeasty 8y agoWhile that statement isn't necessarily true, I would argue that most men do act inappropriately towards women. The problem is most men don't see what they are doing as wrong. What they consider flirting is often harassment. So most men aren't rapists, most men most likely do act inappropriately towards women.
- TomVDB 8y agoNow that’s a claim for which I would like to see more proof. Because if most men would do this (and most implies: a majority of them), then even the current deluge of reports would be nothing compared to what you’d expect it to be. I’ve have asked female colleagues about this and while they did complain about sexism, it was always isolated cases. Not most men.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoThe current volume of reports is almost certainly a small fraction of the actual occcurrences.
- TomVDB 8y agoWould the volume be much higher than the numbers that are reported by surveys like this one, in which women are asked about it explicitly? If so, why? Of all the respondents, 20% report sexual harassment of some sort. That’s a very high number. There is no reason to doubt its veracity. But if 50%+ of all men were like that, you’d expect this number to be way higher.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoStudies show that something like 50% of men are like that when they know they won’t be caught. And the number goes way up for men who have consumed alcohol.
- TomVDB 8y agoThat's a start. I'd be most interested to see a reference to one of those studies. Google is letting me down on that.
- bigbluedots 8y agoThis is an extraordinary claim to make without any extraordinary evidence being provided. How do you know?
- screye 8y ago> most women having been harassed This one. Most men are great people. But, the amount of damage that the minority can cause is what astounded me. Also noticed that some perfectly normal people, have a couple of very weird ideas about romance, sex and women that cause them to act in a way that to a 3rd person and the woman herself to rightly consider it harassment. Personally, I feel the rules around acceptable behavior when drunk/high need to be taught in school and a few solid lines need to drawn to let in most cases men and in a few cases women, know what constitutes consent.
- UncleMeat 8y agoThe biggest one for me was when I realized that it isn't just that it happens to lots of women. It happens to lots of women a lot of times. I know people who have been harassed by professionals (teachers, doctors, etc) a dozen times.
- chongli 8y agoI'd be careful about assumptions. Just because most women may have experienced harassment or otherwise unwelcome advances doesn't mean most men are harassers. It only takes one abusive man to make every woman in an office miserable. If he also happens to be the boss, then what is anyone, man or woman, to do to stop him?
- phlakaton 8y agoI'd be careful about assumptions. Just because it only takes one abusive man to make every woman in an office miserable doesn't mean that the problem is always so easy to confine. Consider how that person got hired or promoted. Consider which men might have known about this behavior but done/said nothing to fix it. Perhaps more salient to this particular discussion, consider how social mores in the entrepreneurial community, where power relations are generally not as formalized as they are in a workplace, might stop or permit such behavior.
- chongli 8y agoOh I agree, I just think it's absurd to cast a pall over all men. As if to say that all men are equally guilty and all men need to take equal responsibility for solving the problem. It doesn't work that way. Some men have far more power than others. Some men do far more harm than others. It's just as difficult for a man to stand up and oppose his boss as it is for a woman. More so, in fact, if he only heard about the harassment but never witnessed it. When people's jobs are on the line, it's not hard to see why we have a culture of silence.
- village-idiot 8y agoTo be fair, for every egregious abuser there are usually quite a few people helping cover it up.
- rtpg 8y agoIf you are in a relatively high position of power/OK with potentially losing your job, publicly calling someone out, even your boss, for something like this is risky but the right thing to do. Even small stuff like calling BS on the sort of comments that happen when only guys are around (we've all heard them). The implicit consent of everyone around these kinds of people is what lets this stuff continue (along with everything else of course).
- rmc 8y agoEven if 90% of men never do it, it's possible for 10% of the men to harass (say) 80% of women. So "not all men", but "yes, all women" is accurate. That's just how statistics work.