We Still Let Harassers Participate in Our Community
kovalc.in
kovalc.in
In the writer's own words, she did not respond honestly to his advances as she hoped to advance her career through his acquaintance:
> While I tried to politely decline his advances, he was in a position of power over me in this industry. He said he knew my bosses, he knew where I worked, and he promised he’d help advance my career. I felt it best to stay in his “good graces” and not be flat out rude.
She did finally realize her mistake:
> I now understand how wrong this dynamic is.
And responded as she should have first. With the result that he stopped pestering her:
> We haven’t spoken for over a year, as the last time I saw him I finally had the courage and support system to be direct, cold, and tell him to leave me alone.
In my book, the guy's a bit of a thickie and a more than a little creepy. Eww. But she, by her explicit admission, did not let him know his advances were unwanted in a "direct, cold" way because SHE HOPED TO GAIN FINANCIALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY BY DOING SO.
In a nutshell: He clumsily tried to get laid and she strung him along for what she could get out of him.
Eww.
Running book on how long that post stays up before she edits it.
As long there are "wanted advances" in workplaces, there will be "unwanted advances" also. To eliminate "unwanted advances", you must eliminate "advances" in general. For example: if she found him hot, we wouldn't be reading this post.
As long as "advances" are still permitted in the workplace, there needs to be social education in the corporate environment so that "brush-offs" aren't interpreted as "try harder".
You don't know that. It is an unreasonable and unfair assumption, and reflects the expectation of your own immaturity as a gold standard.
The fact that we need to suggest social education to educate professionals in the workplace about when a person is not interested in them is kind of shocking. It should be considered basic communication skills.
I have had crushes on various females since primary and secondary school. The first one or two instances you could almost say I too had harassed someone. It wasn't until I had more experience "advancing" I finally got when girls want you to continue and when they don't. Not everyone is lucky they pick this skill up early, even as I wish I got the hang of it earlier than I did.
And this isn't a case of not knowing how to act socially, it's actual aggression and harassing behaviour when he doesn't get what he wants.
On a side note, there are formal communication skills courses in education. My university had a course called "Communication Skills for Engineering" or something like that. It was a mandatory short course for anyone in engineering, maths and computer science.
You don't learn that in engineering communication courses.
The way the man acted is like a child throwing a temper tantrum, because that is exactly where his skill level in managing his emotions is when dealing with women!
You have no solution besides shaming and locking up men who are harassing women. Is it working? Women are getting harassed and men are getting shamed. If that's your ideal of male-female relations then I suggest it is you who has a problem with not wanting to find out the root cause of societal issues, and enjoying the shaming and denigrating socially inept men as a hobby at the cost of other women who are getting harassed. Revenge is fun, I get it, and helping other women who are harassed can feel good too, yes. That doesn't mean solutions to reduce the propensity for men to harass women shouldn't be explored.
We could focus on the women and you'd complain it's men who needs to change. Focus on the ways to change men and you're complaining we aren't focusing on the women.
I hereby put my hands up and give up caring about women I don't know being harassed. They can solve their own problems and me caring about it only gets me attacked personally, no matter what ideas I offer. Seems like the only behaviour you'd suggest is to have a negative outlook towards men and that not something I'd agree with. I have a pretty good guess a lot of harassment comes from a man not knowing how to deal with women, because it's something that happened to me. Instead of willing to consider this viewpoint you dismiss the idea completely and go after me and my logic. You have a strong track record and you don't need people like me to tell you what's happening.
It will be for the best.
Literally. Ask how many people's husbands or wives turned each other down a first, and din't have to ask a few times, and even do some stupid things (down to a serenade on a case I know, but there are far more involved cases), to earn each other's love. Or read 100 or 1000 biographies and note down how often this happens.
It might sound difficult for litigation and PC-heavy us protestants to hear, where everyone is a victim, everything should be regulated and people should only approach each other with laywers or gloves and full body armors, but it's the way of the world.
Except if you think that every relationship starts as "love at first sight".
Now, if she had turned him down "firmly" that's another thing. But a simple turndown that might sound like it might be overcome might not be enough.
Given the above section, does this situation sound "PC-heavy" to you? The guy literally texted abuse at a person because they didn't respond to his advances. The fact that this person was scared or didn't want to cut professional ties is evidence that something is wrong here with the situation, and not the person themselves. How do we live in a society where people fear saying no to a harasser, and people still seem to come in to bat for those harassers?
No, such strong language + repeatedly declining to answer I think carries the message perfectly accurately. He should have got it.
P.S. Although, I can see how "fuck you" can be seen as a double-message by the guy (only joking).
https://twitter.com/katiekovalcin/status/630751505117659136
What's missing is her response stating, "I'm not interested in you that way, please don't text me anything romantic. See you at the conference!"
Oh, what's that? Did she decide not to do that?
Women, if you want the right to say, literally this - I am not making it up:
Then you have to say, "I'm not interested in you, please don't ask me again."
The people who express this sentiment in the current thread are completely correct, and if she didn't reply that way then that women is in the wrong.
Ladies, you LITERALLY cannot have it both ways. You CANNOT say you want a guy to text you, you want a guy to ask you out, if you are not willing to say no to them.
Where's that part of the screenshot?
Oh, that's right: nowhere. She expressed the same level of interest in him as I do in all the women I'd be interested in dating if I were a little less busy in life. It takes exceptional bravery and flaunting of gender roles for any of them to ask me out though - the ball is literally completely in my court. Why? Because "I want a guy to ask me out."
A person doesn't "have" to say anything if they are not interested. That's pretty much a great way to show you are not interested: don't respond. Ignore the text. It lets both parties move on without some explicit and awkward rejection.
You are blaming all women for the fact that some men can't take a hint.
And that screenshot of Google search predictions (seriously, what the hell). Why would you think that has any bearing on how anyone should think and act? Why would you think that defines all women? Do you hold your own self to the standard of what a Google search prediction tells you to do?
I sincerely hope you are just an angry teenager who has time to grow up and not a professional man working with others.
Was the message missed? Or possibly they were busy at the time and forgot to respond later?
If the few people I keep in contact with didn't try multiple times to reach me - I'd never talk to anyone. I'm hard to reach because the few methods of contact I have, I largely ignore.
I have a phone in my pocket that, without looking at it, I am willing to bet has 3+ missed calls and at least 4 people waiting over a week for a response to a text message and a sister who probably thinks I am dead because the last time I replied to one of her messages was over a year ago.
The fact that people like me exist runs entirely contrary to your claim and is why an explicit response should be socially necessary. If someone interested in dating me didn't try repeatedly, even if I was "ignoring them", they'd never get anywhere. Because chances are I saw their message, cleared the notification, and forgot to respond.
There are polite ways to see whether someone got your message (e.g. a simple "did you get my message?") when you see them in person.
I don't think your example really accounts for the myriad of ways this man could have gracefully handled being turned down.
Doesn't really matter whether some people are bad at responding to messages. It's not an excuse for this behaviour nor should it be a "social requirement" for people to have to turn down unwanted advances explicitly (that's ridiculous).
People get all up in arms about bullying and namecalling or racism against strangers - but psychological abuse is perfectly acceptable.
I feel bad for not responding - but she knew me before my transition and I don't feel comfortable telling a coworker who was romantically interested in me (and made it known to me) that I've transitioned. Especially since I'm still stealth and especially because they know other people I'm still in contact with.
>I don't think your example really accounts for the myriad of ways this man could have gracefully handled being turned down.
Being ignored is not being turned down.
>nor should it be a "social requirement" for people to have to turn down unwanted advances explicitly (that's ridiculous).
Until people have telepathy and can tell when an advance is unwanted without cue, I disagree. Implicitly to you doesn't mean implicitly to everyone. What you might think is giving off one message could be picked up as an entirely different message by someone else. Non-direct communication has the whole problem of not being direct. Here, have an example:
A girl I knew in high school used to avoid me in the halls going between classes. I've made some attempts at speaking to her, but she's never responded and always ran off. Knowing only this implicit information, which of the following is true:
a) she was afraid of me and trying to avoid me
b) she had a crush on me and got embarrassed when I was around
With the information I've given you - it could be either one. Couldn't it? I'll give you the answer though: it was B and we later ended up dating. But it was only because I made the effort to "keep bothering her" because I was picking up "B" as her implicit message. What if she actually felt like "A"? How different would that have been for her?
What if my advances were unwanted attention and were making her feel more uncomfortable? I'd have no way of knowing. (And you'd think of me as some pushy asshole for it, thanks.)
Thinking she has a crush on me, I might be a bit more pushy and outgoing with my advances because I think she likes me. Which would make her feel even more uncomfortable.
If I was interpreting her "A" message as a "B" message, she's making things much harder on herself than if she was explicit about her "A" feelings.
If I picked up on "B" messages but she meant "A" that makes me an asshole in your book.
If she meant "B", and my actions would have been the same if she meant "A" due to the implicit message, I should still be considered an asshole. Since my actions were the same!
Finally, if I assume "A" even though it's "B" would I be an insensitive asshole?
I don't see any way in that scenario where I wouldn't be an asshole. I have to take a chance and hope she means "B" like I think she does for a "mutually beneficial result" to happen (though I'm still an asshole).
This entirely depends on what you mean by "keep bothering her." If you mean, to reference the article, asking to see her naked? Then you shouldn't do it.
If you mean trying to be friendly and spend time with her, then what's the problem?
I've only ever responded to and explicitly contested this point out of context of whatever the article is about.
A person does have to say something in many scenarios. Like the one I gave. Or the result can be very wrong.
>If you mean trying to be friendly and spend time with her, then what's the problem?
If I was making her very uncomfortable and she felt unsafe around me because she was afraid of me if it was "A" and not "B" - regardless if I was acting friendly and trying to spend time with her - I could see a lot of problems with that for her. Of course, I'd be blissfully unaware of them because she wasn't explicit that she wasn't interested.
Rejecting unwanted advances can take the form of silence. Especially over text message. It's a pretty common way to reject someone without creating an awkward situation. If one party can't take the hint then they are more likely being wilfully ignorant (don't want to accept rejection). And even if they aren't, it's not an excuse to harass.
> If I was making her very uncomfortable and she felt unsafe around me because she was afraid of me [...]
Women do not make a binary choice between either "being afraid of you" or "being attracted to you." If you are a friendly and reasonable person then you shouldn't have a problem.
If you ask someone out and they say "I'm busy" a few too many times, maybe you just take the hint and move on, no?
The argument that "I'm too ignorant to know when women don't want my attention" is nonsense.
Fuck off with this "not an excuse to harass" bullshit. I've already said it's not an excuse and harassment is never OK. I've already stated, twice now and this is a third time that I'm not taking the actions of the article into consideration so harassment is not the issue here. Do you understand? I want to make sure I'm being very explicit with my communication that this has nothing to do with harassment. I am talking about a scenario of undesired continued communication that does not have the intentions of harassing (sexual or otherwise).
>Women do not make a binary choice between either "being afraid of you" or "being attracted to you." If you are a friendly and reasonable person then you shouldn't have a problem.
You're now taking it out of the scenario. She was avoiding me. There's two reasons I can think of for actively avoiding someone. One of those is fear. The other is embarrassment. If you'd like to open my mind and give me more motives for avoiding someone for this context, feel free. But it seems very binary to me in this scenario.
>If you ask someone out and they say "I'm busy" a few too many times, maybe you just take the hint and move on, no?
And if they are legitimately busy? I'm finding it funny your chosen examples have all happened to me and all of them resulted in relationships. Do you have another example?
>The argument that "I'm too ignorant to know when women don't want my attention" is nonsense
I don't see why you keep making this gendered. I've already provided an example with the genders swapped. It works both ways and has nothing to do with ignorance. It has to do with a failure of communication (which is an important part of getting along and living among other human beings). Please respond to the tldr, this is a test to ensure you're actually reading my responses. When I entered this conversation and until this point it's always been about implicit messages being poor (and harmful) for communication.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim you do not understand how communication works. Communication requires the meaning of the message to be understood and agreed upon. When a message is ambiguous in meaning (non-direct, implicit) the meaning of the message can be received in a manner not intended by the person giving the message.
The best example of this is cultural differences in the meaning of an action. Even small things like putting soy sauce on your rice can have an entirely different meaning in Japan than in America. In Japan it can be considered rude while people in America wouldn't even give it a second thought. If I wanted to offend you, I could drown your rice in soy sauce. Now depending on your cultural background - I've either offended you, or you're unaware that my message was meant as an offense. Because this implicit meaning behind a physical mention is interpreted differently in different cultures.
Implicit messages are terrible for communication. The ability for the meaning to be misunderstood or improperly conveyed is astounding. If you want someone to leave you alone it is important to be explicit. Especially when your implicit messages are ambiguous.
TL;DR
At best you can hope that when you mean "A" they assume "A" instead of "B" when "A" and "B" are ambiguous. But there is nothing wrong with assuming "B" and it is your fault for failing to communicate if that occurs because your implicit message was too ambiguous. You failed to communicate your intentions of "A" and that failure is on you.
ps.
America has a culture where people play "hard to get" on purpose. Every example you can think of that is intended to say "stop contacting me I'm not interested" is also used by these same people as a means of "try harder, I'm interested but want to make sure you're serious".
Your situations are ridiculous and not as black-and-White as you make them out to be.
She responded correctly at the beginning: she politely declined his advances. He didn't get the point. He didn't stop bothering her. That's not on her, and it's not something we blame her for.
> because SHE HOPED TO GAIN FINANCIALLY AND PROFESSIONALLY BY DOING SO.
You shout the last bit as if you're angry that this woman didn't want to destroy her professional career over putting up with her harasser. That's disgusting. She should never have been put in that situation to begin with.
The fact that she politely declined this man's advances from the beginning should have been the end of it. It is preposterous that you can blame this woman for not being outright aggressive and cold to her harasser when that is an extremely hard thing to do — especially if it involves souring a professional relationship and hurting your career.
Responding more directly:
> "I tried to politely decline"
> she strung him along
It could be interesting to see the exact conversations, but I don't think she "strung him along" as much as just never told him to stop "forcefully enough". Regardless, even if she had been banging the guy, stop means stop. Besides that, she shouldn't have had to decline anything in the first place... This is why you don't ask out women in professional settings: there is no good way for them to say "no".
If by "stringing him along" you mean declined every single advance made by him.
"No thanks" should be more than enough.
If a woman says no, how can you distinguish "really no" from "I like being chased, more please"? PC people will claim it's always the former, but actual couples often got together in the latter way.
I believe the core issue here is that the bad actor has so much clout he cannot be held accountable by anyone involved. I would expect the problem to generalize to way more than just conferences.
It’s possible the conference organizers are simply unjust or don’t understand, but we should consider why, in this particular example, the conference may have had to be unjust. What if cancelling this speaker would be so detrimental it would stop the conference? As an organizer, what would you do? In a situation like this, especially if some money has been collected and things like that, the organizers may not be allowed to make such a significant change due to competing obligations from the people who paid.
Even if they could evict him, how would the conference describe his removal? Couldn't this description cause the same backlash that's keeping our author from exposing him herself?
One question that’s on my mind is: is there anything criminal in his conduct? Could our author get a restraining order against the guy? Maybe our author can get the restraining order against the man, and then just go to the conference and call the police to remove him. That's my best attempt at a fair solution, but do keep in mind it would involve blind-siding the conference with the loss of a speaker. This might be necessary, as it seems the conference doesn't have the power to stop this guy without their hand being forced in this way. Also, I don't really know enough about law to say this plan is remotely feasible, but it’s the best I can come up with.
On the extremely rare occasions I've heard of men complaining of being raped by women, I don't think I've ever heard anyone dismissing his complaint as she said/he said.
YMMV
Yeah, let's do away with the burden of proof, presumption of innocence, and all those antiquated things.
>On the extremely rare occasions I've heard of men complaining of being raped by women, I don't think I've ever heard anyone dismissing his complaint as she said/he said.
Even if that's was the case (that nobody dismissed his complaint as she said/he said), that's still no argument. They should have dismissed it in both cases, unless proper proof was given.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/12/student-wrongfully-expelle...
I'm simply taking the radical step of actually taking women at their word when they say these things, instead of carrying on with the tradition of assuming the woman's lying or embellishing a story.
So, for starters, err on the side of protecting her and develop good protocols for not disclosing. Reading up on how HIPAA gets handled may help.
Second, when thinking about how to handle it, start with the assumption that bad people will find some way to twist or abuse your rules and cannot be expected to behave just because you have a code of conduct and reminded them of it. If you feel you have real evidence he has harrassed her, come to terms with the fact that excluding him is the only meaningful way to enforce your claimed standard.
In the mean time, up your game on your own behavior. The best antidote is ultimately to set the example of proper behavior.
If organizers don't step up, crucifying them and perps in the media is another way to go. IANAL but in this instance, the victim may persue criminal sexual harassment charges if statue of limitations have not all expired and a permanent restraining order should be sought to end unwanted attention.
Look at your language, you want to crucify people because they didn't destroy somebody's reputation and possibly their entire career when a member of your group asked them to? That's scary.
A great example of the right way to do things is how the BBC kicked out their biggest star, Jeremy Clarkson, due to a single case of assault when the victim didn't even make a complaint. It shows that they don't give license to abuse people to the more valuable employees.
The BBC have said that they expect to see Clarkson on the BBC again. He was booked to appear on a panel show, but chose to pull out after public backlash.
The way the BBC handled Clarkson - a drunk bully - was terrible.
Not at all. I'm saying the only evidence provided from the author is a flirtatious text where the "harasser" was attempting to engage in consentual intercourse with another adult. Was it inappropriate? Apparently, but reaching out for human contact is a normal and healthy part of life.
The person I was responding to was fantasizing about destroying this person's livelihood and the livelihoods of others who refused to take part in this destruction. One person fantasized about a natural and healthy human activity and the other fantasized about crucifiction. There may have been some vague power dynamics in the (alleged) harassment but that doesn't measure up to active and aggressive threats.
The Clarkson sacking was the result of a police investigation and regardless of whether the ass-kicking was deserved or not there was a physical assault with evidence that it happened. Why we would even compare a woman having to say no in a clear and adult way to a man being physically assaulted is beyond me.