“Just tell them you have a boyfriend”
medium.com
medium.com
So I clicked on the linked article, and - sure enough - this suggestion is made, but it's also only 1 of 6 bullet points on the topic. The rest being :
Don’t assume people are hitting on you.
Make friends with the men.
Make friends with the women.
Leave before the party takes that turn.
Recruit help.
Be compassionate: just because your experience is different, it doesn’t mean the experiences of others are less valid or not real.
Be compassionate: tactics that work for you may not work for everybody.
Be compassionate: don’t blame the victims or those reporting negative behavior.
> Way to put all of the responsibility back on the people reporting the harassment.
This is the key point. Notice that the six bullets above are all demanding preventative measures from the victim. We do not need to provide victims with
> advice that targets the world as it actually is
but instead we need to provide all members of the community advice that targets how they can (and should) be preventing transgressions against others.
Unless I'm mistaken, you're literally saying that people who are harassed should just wait for the harasser to do something else.
It's not a requirement, or a demand, or blaming the victim, it's just sensible to protect the self first, then make the environment better.
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you, this is nothing short of delusional. We absolutely need to provide victims - and potential victims - with the tools to handle (or avoid) unpleasant and dangerous situations.
> but instead we need to provide all members of the community advice that targets how they can (and should) be preventing transgressions against others.
As others have mentioned, these aren't mutually exclusive options. Social norms can - and have - changed for the better, but it's more than a little ridiculous to expect victims to wait a generation or two in the hope that society will become more self aware. What's so evil about advice that is intended to improve their quality of life now?
The victim-blaming reaction to advising caution is something I've never understood, and, unfortunately, too often people are colored into one of two bins: You're either an ally or some kind of rapist sympathizer.
The fact of the matter is that a rapist (or, to be less severe, someone who puts on continued, unwanted advances or cat calls) isn't reading pieces on Medium or HN, and they're probably not particularly receptive to being told that their behavior is wrong. The people capable of decency already know not to do it in the first place. So why is it so bad to suggest taking control of the situation yourself through risk mitigation? Of course, you shouldn't have to change your behavior, but as it stands it's the only thing you really can, directly, control.
Now she is quoting Stormy from an article "Events are not cesspools of harassment" [1]. Stormy makes 6 points which have helped her to enjoy conferences as a woman in technology. The first point is "Make your intentions clear." She then goes on to explain that when she is talking to people at conferences and she feels the need, she will explain she is in a relationship. To quote: "So for the past decade and a half I’ve made it clear that I’m happily in a relationship." She also makes this following caveat to this advise: "If you don’t have a partner or kids, you’ll have to work on a strategy that works for you but it’s still possible to make your intentions clear."
I think the most upsetting part about the parent article is that the author, Cecy Correa, seems to mis-represent what Stormy has written. Stormy never says "Just tell them you have a boyfriend." Nor is there any wording in her article which says "Just make it clear you’re in a relationship." She does say "Make your intentions clear."
Now, maybe this still leads to the same conclusion, if you have to make your intentions clean, this is victim blaming. Maybe it does not. But if you are going to quote, please actually quote.
[1] Stormy's original article - "Events are not cesspools of harassment" - https://medium.com/@storming/events-are-not-cesspools-of-har...
I guess my point is I think making the assumption that guys realize they're harassing and not being a try-hard may be where the err is. But I haven't seen that kinda thing in person myself, so I may be way off.
Tech conferences are a little different than the average workplace, too - it's not as if you have the time to get to know a person, or usually live anywhere near each other to be able to form a relationship.
We already put all the onus on the offender not to do it by making it illegal!
Having a solution for _now_ doesn't preclude you from working on a long term solution.
Sure it is "victim blaming." But sitting on our hands for the perfect solution isn't progress either.
I am being downvoted simply because its an unpopular opinion and not because it doesn't add to the discussion.
Whining about how unfair it is that "Nice guys like myself get lumped in with all those jerks" is disrespectful and uncompassionate. It's not about you! You know that thing where other not-nice guys have conditioned women to be cautious? The next moves in that game are insults, name-calling, public humiliation, physical assault/rape, stalking, doxing, etc. Every woman - every woman - has experienced these behaviors themselves, or knows women who have experienced them. Every man knows women who've experienced them too, although many men don't realize it.
That stranger asking a woman for her name, where she's from, trying to make social links online, etc... how is she to know that stranger won't be cyberstalking her and showing up at her home later? Because women have good reason to fear that.
Of course, I might be minimizing and, in fact, the molester might not be a rapist but still a fully fledged harasser.
Isn't there any security service around at these conferences? Is it absurd to hope they are trained to deal with such situations if need be?
Courting is what humans do. Flirting is what humans do. Being polite shows interest to most people. Be rude. Be absolutely disinterested. Tell them to fuck off. They aren't going to magically read your mind and know you aren't interested if you are either signalling that you are interested or they aren't picking up the (usually weak, when I read stories like this one) signal that you aren't interested. If you send a strong signal of your disinterest or communicate clearly (not trying to "signal") there are only two types of people who keep pushing on:
1) Actual harassers (far and few between)
2) People who think you're playing hard to get (which is an actual thing that people actually do) unfortunately this is equivalent to (1) for some portion of society
I've mistakenly sent that "I'm interested" signal to others while trying to be polite. When Ender's Game came out I was speaking with a coworker and seeing as we were both interested in the book, she had asked if I wanted to see the movie when it came out. Not wanting to be rude, I said OK. It turns out she thought I had accepted a date. She was quite dressed up when we met up, while I was in extremely casual attire. And guess what? That was my fault not hers. I had accidentally communicated interest in some way, although unintentionally. She wasn't a harasser, it wasn't "her fault". She couldn't read my mind and know I wasn't interested.
Almost every story I see about these scenarios (which often boil down to "unwanted flirting") I think of the above and I pity the person being made out to be a harasser when, in almost every scenario I've read, they were only "misreading the signals" if there were any signals at all.
Her perspective: "He's obviously flirting and I'm just trying to be polite, I wish he would stop."
His perspective: "I'm flirting and she's obviously playing along or she wouldn't be so polite! This is going well."
"Don't blame the other person for your failure to communicate." is my advice taken as a sound byte. Not just to women, but to everyone. Never blame someone else because you suck at communicating something.
ps. I love how you took two words out of my entire reply and ran with those - ignoring the rest. For example, the first sentence telling them to be honest and communicate their disinterest (mentioning nothing about tone). Their weak signalling obviously isn't being communicated to or read properly by the other party. And yes, there are people who are bad with social cues or even "stronger signalling" and need actual words to be said to them.
It implies that a woman only deserves to have respect and boundaries when another man has already claimed her. It tells the woman, "You'll never get respect on your own, so pretend there's a man demanding that you get respect."
It implies you are in a committed relationship. You seem to have taken it to the level of ownership, which is not healthy in a relationship period.
they'd respect a females 'claim' as well. its just that they don't accept "no" if the person in question isn't in a relationship. This is not sexist. nonetheless still annoying to the pursued person, but thats a different story
2) I love it when people call others "retarted". If you're going to attack someone's intelligence, you should at least spell the word correctly.
I believe you. But did you have to say it in order to be taken seriously at work? Did you have to say it to feel safe?
There are women who wear fake engagement or wedding rings in order to be left alone when in public. How many men would consider that?
The key part of the issue is not, "Does this happen to someone at all?" It does happen to both men and women. The real problem is how frequently it happens (and whether it happens at work).
You can't just invert every woman's issue and say, "This isn't a woman's issue because at least one man suffers from it."
Even if you're the most attractive man alive and get harassed all the time, your experience isn't typical of men. Men are typically not sexually harassed at work or walking down the street. Women are.
Here's an interesting look at this from the perspective of people who were women and transitioned into men: http://time.com/transgender-men-sexism/
> You seem to have taken it to the level of ownership, which is not healthy in a relationship period.
I agree that ownership in a relationship isn't healthy, but it's still a common mindset. Monogamous relationships were literally a form of ownership by law, and they are still widely viewed as a form of ownership.
Up to 28% of Americans think the Bible should be taken literally[1], and the Bible describes marriage as mutual ownership[2]. In 2008, that number was 40%. The Texas attorney general recently used language implying that men own women[3].
You can also think about the general language used when talking about significant others: "s/he's mine" for example. Most love songs about cheating are attacks not on the significant other, but on the person who "stole" the significant other.
1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/170834/three-four-bible-word-god....
2. http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/7-4.htm
3. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/29/1521428/-Texas-AG-Da...
The article is about reporting sexual harassment at work and being told to deflect it by pretending to have a boyfriend.
Sexual harassment is very obviously not asking about someone's netbook. If a woman reported that as sexual harassment, I doubt her boss would tell her to pretend to have a boyfriend. S/he'd probably say that it seemed like an innocent conversation.
Unwanted attention is not sexual harassment. My female friends and coworkers have complained about both: unwanted friendliness (s/he always wants to talk to me about stupid stuff) and sexual advances (repeated requests to get a drink, comments about body/attractiveness, etc.)
The original article is assuming that it's truly sexual harassment and asking for a reasonable response.
The advice will have no help in a genuine harassment situation as the harasser isn't going to give a crap but the assumption is that misunderstandings are more prevalent than actual harassment. If that's not the case then, yes, it's bad advice as it won't work.
It has nothing to with respect or lack of it. It's intended as a signal. If someone has so little self respect that they can't say this without feeling diminished then, yes again, it's bad advice.
However, I have a feeling that the original author of the advice was aiming it at the many young, smart, confident women who attend tech meet ups and want to avoid awkward situations. As such it strikes me as sensible, practical advice for said audience. But sure, maybe not for everyone in every situation.
It makes me crabby even thinking that a woman needs a brother to become a dick in order to keep a some random dude half way civil.
>https://medium.com/***code-like-a-girl***/...
Weird to pull gender into the application of logic to solve problems. I wonder if there's a narrative that the author wants to sell.
>Thank god I recently got engaged, otherwise all I’d have to look forward to is harassment at tech events.
Oh neat, another inflammatory article about invented sexism and harassment!
>Compassion is what lets me understand that even though I have never been harassed at a tech event, it doesn’t mean it is not a very real problem women face.
The author doesn't even make it 50 words before showing that she's hungry to be offended:
>"Thank god I recently got engaged, otherwise all I’d have to look forward to is harassment at tech events...even though I have never been harassed at a tech event"
Never been harassed at a tech event, or expectation of harassment at tech events because it's omnipresent? Which one?
> A woman recalls an attempt by a man to try to get her number during a Lyft Line ride in NYC:
Are Lyft Line rides tech events? No. They're not. Quit it.
---
This kind of hungry-to-be-offended garbage is detrimental.
Yep, that statement reaks of compassion.
---ooops, missed the part about him asking for her number...sorry.
-miss read the original article.
Because compassion is not a transaction. If you give someone compassion only when you get it in return, you're basically asking them to pay you for it, and it's not genuine.
Wanting everything to "go both ways" is a recipe for having a lot of negative interactions.
Second, I fail to understand how the speaker was not being compassionate. Do you think she was not being compassionate to her harasser, or to the third party? I think she was being very compassionate to her harasser by answering questions politely.
-- didn't see that part about him asking for her number. I agree that's not cool.
I'm talking to women all the time and only the one I hit on really assume I'm hitting on them. And I wouldn't call myself a rather introverted person, I think.
The driver said he'd done it about 25 times in his car. Regardless of the false premise and manufactured spontaneity being somewhat sleazy, some of the interactions may have been mutually pleasant. But, we also know that at least one of them was not at all.
It shouldn't take so much imagination to remember how unpleasant it has been to be trapped in conversations you did not want to be in. It sounds like she was just being a nice person who was not interested in scoring points against someone by rejecting him. Expressing a lack of interest through neutral responses isn't a lack of compassion. It sounds like her "mixed signals" were an unwillingness to be openly mean to someone who was overly insistent. If he had been more compassionate he would have recognized that he was putting her in an uncomfortable position.
Correction: The guy told the driver he'd been successful with this method 25 times. The woman's encounter was the driver's first as well (or first where he'd had an ongoing conversation with the guy). Your version makes the driver complicit much more than he actually was.
> “So, that guy literally uses this as a dating app,” our driver explained. He clearly could not wait to spill the beans. “That girl you saw before he got in your ride — she was from another Lyft ride. He said he’s gotten with 25 girls through Lyft Line so far.”
...
> “Yeah, so he told me all about it, he’ll specifically order rides that are really far — ”
On a second reading, it seems possible that it is heavily influenced by the guy trying to portray himself as a really clever pickup artist to the driver.