Not Just Mike Pence. Americans Are Wary of Being Alone with the Opposite Sex

I made one of the cashiers mad by reprimanding her, and she decided to get back at me by claiming that I grabbed her and shook her while we were in the cash office.

I never touched her, and luckily we still had video from the day she claimed it happened. After my manager reviewed the tape with her, it was clear she was lying, so she dropped her claim.

Despite what we might wish, society treats men and women differently, and women are viewed as being particularly vulnerable. If a man had accused me of something similar, no one would have cared. When a woman accused me, without that video, I would have been fired.

It's a complex situation. In many cases, people don't believe women when they really are assaulted, or they're force to share the blame when they're blameless. But in other cases the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction. Like many things it's primarily a function of the relative power of the victim and the accuser.

A powerful man can get away with harassing much less powerful women. But a relatively powerless man will quickly find himself in a world of hurt with just the hint of an allegation. A company doesn't want to fire their CEO without hard proof (or at least a lot of bad press), but they'll drop a low level employee quick just to avoid the slight possibility of looking like they aren't taking sexual harassment seriously.

I'm not going to let that experience keep me from being alone with a women at work--I don't think I'm very likely to run into another women like that again and avoiding being alone with a women in a modern workplace is just too difficult. But I do understand the rationale driving people to be cautious.

I do want to make it clear that I think that the vast majority of times when a women reports assault or harassment, they're telling the truth. But I do think that in some situations where we've started to completely shift the burden of proof to the accused (some employers, certain colleges etc..), we run the risk of creating perverse incentives and punishing an awful lot of innocent people.

That's a lot higher than I was expecting. It makes me wonder why as well. Is it just "inappropriate" (what I imagine Mike Pence thinks)? Does one side think the other side is trying to do something inappropriate or is trying to lead into something?

At least in many jobs I've had, 1:1's were basically required time (though, not usually productive time). It's crazy thinking so many working relationships people might be on edge or think of as inappropriate.

Of course, the source of the data is "registered voters", not people who have jobs.

I don't have a TV. When I catch TV though, the news programs can harp on a minor crime here in Tokyo like a convenience store robbery for a good thiry minutes. These friends watch a lot of TV. I think media narratives drive these paranoias.

Not that I understand why, but it makes some sense if religious people are somehow shy to that, but atheists?

Are people afraid of perception or afraid of misinterpretation or afraid physically, are there that many unhinged people out there?

You can totally make friends with people of the same sex you are generally sexually attracted to and it does not mean or have to end up in a weird uncomfortable moment. Just be people. Think how you made friends pre-puberty. You just went and talked.

>>>>>>>>>

I wanted to write this yesterday, but thankfully I didn't, because Jia Tolentino did a much better job than I would have in the New Yorker.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/mike-pences-m...

What bothers me about Pence's "no meals alone with women who aren't my wife" and "no working late with female aides" rules isn't that he's trying to protect women from himself. He rightly understands that he's a powerful man, and many women have been harmed, sexually or otherwise, by people remarkably like him. Kudos to Mike Pence for getting that, even if he also doesn't get that many men have been harmed in just the same way.

What bothers me is that he (apparently) pays no heed to the question of how to protect women from himself while still ensuring they can have equitable careers. "You go home, honey; Jack will stay and help me" is saying that women and men have different roles to play in Pence's staff, and that's quintessential sexism (and may be illegal). And as the article points out, "no successful woman could ever abide by [Pence's no-meals-alone rule]."

Anyway this article frames the issue really well.

1. General religiously-driven norms, which are shifting in the US (e.g., VP Pence)

2. Concern, or overly-cautious / over-concern over what happened last week with Binary Capital. Clearly there is a middle ground between the frat-house that Binary Capital was and the monastery environment VP Pence might suggest.

There are some obvious reasons for this, like false accusations by the many less-than-stable members, as well as the therapeutic nature of many meetings (rife with possible line-crossing from both sides, psychologically).

Less obvious reasons would include a more fundamental belief in the 'sinful' nature of the flesh. Again, the vast majority of Evangelical leaders I know strongly believe that even the best of people can be tempted into sinful acts, and a pragmatic solution is to avoid the temptation in the first place.

I might be wrong, but I get the impression that society in the USA, on the whole, and even now, leans a bit more toward puritanical and/or Evangeical beliefs, or at the very least they're part of mainstream thought. If true, it could explain how so many Americans are wary of being alone with the opposite sex.

For example, I find that in my Western European surroundings casual hookups seem much more part of the day to day fabric than they seem to be to my American friends. It strikes me as not unreasonable to conclude that if casual sex is more acceptable here than in the USA (publicly, anyways), what constitutes crossing the boundaries of propriety in the USA might not be considered in the same way over here.

Specifically, I've worked in more than one relatively boring, conservative corporations where at the bigger parties various people 'hooked up' with various other people, some of them involving clear power-discrepancies. Nobody batted an eye and the whole thing seemed to be a 'what happens in vegas' type of thing, warranting some juicy gossip at most.

I'm not saying that this is how things should be, to be clear, just that generally my impression is that the USA is generally more uptight (best word I can think of, but I don't mean it disparagingly) about these things.

Saint-Simon, the memorialist descibing life at the court of Louis XIV of France in the late 17th century, tells how, when the King had a meeting with his current mistress, he would leave all doors open so that no one would wonder about what was going on.

The problem was, when the King met with other women (or men) he would have the doors closed, so the fact that the doors were open was a tell! ;-)

or with the threat of eternal damnation, people still had sexual relationships that were deemed illicit.

I doubt our worst punishments will come anywhere close to that which was inflicted in the past, and if punishments and stigma in the past could not control sex, I doubt they will now. The underlying issue is that sex is driven by the limbic brain and is not entirely susceptible to reason. This is a hard problem and one that society will struggle with for a long time.

To a religious conservative, i.e. Pence, these women are just like drug pushers.