In my personal life I have girl friends that I am not dating with but that are part of my friends group and that I hang out with. Also in 1 on 1 settings.
The fact that the 'risk' you talk about is even part of your daily routine baffles me. Truly baffles me. I have never heard any story (aside from Reddit) like this where a guy loses his work, friends, family and life because a woman simply accused him after being alone with someone.
No offense, maybe i'm wrong. I'm not American after all, but I have met Americans and none have opinion even close to the opinion you have on women. It's bizarre to me.
With utmost respect to your personal situation, about which I know only what you've said above, I would imagine you'll find it changes as you get older.
Dating in your mid-twenties is not the same as even in your mid-thirties. It's not that unexpected for young guys to have big friend groups that include single women, and for people to hang out fairly often and fluidly. As those groups settle down, go their own way and generally dwindle it gets harder to just "hang out" one-on-one with members of the opposite sex if you have a serious girlfriend. Jealousy and insecurity are considered normal and entirely acceptable by women, as are things like banning boyfriends from seeing former friends, rummaging through private messages (including business messages) to try and spot interactions with females, and generally treating any kind of interaction with females that they don't personally know about/condone as if it were actually cheating.
Mike Pence is an old married guy. His "never eat alone with a woman" rule may seem baffling to you now, but it doesn't surprise me one bit.
On the flip side, as a woman I could say being alone with a man, he's stronger than me so he could kill or rape me whenever he wanted, so never be alone with a man?
The default outcome in he-said-she-said, no other proof is no action from HR.
On the other hand, if it's he-said-she-said-she-also-said-she-also-said-she-also-said...
Or if it's he-said-she-said-and-also-has-texts-and-emails...
People involved in the latter two... Do love to claim that it was just he-said-she-said. Until the counterparty brings undisputable evidence to the table.
There needs to be more justification to this statement. What happens in HR is basically a black box to most people.
See - practically every single instance of rape/harassment/abuse that has hit the public eye. The consistent pattern in all of them is how many victims had to come forward, how many complaints were filed against HR, how many people had to tell the same fucking story until someone took them seriously.
If you are an actual harasser, the deck is incredibly stacked in your favour. The odds that you'll be punished are low. If you also have actual innocence on your side, and lack of any proof on theirs, the odds are even lower.
Do you have any evidence?
Show me the pressure society has placed on rape victims that come forward.
Show me the bias of the courts - Accusations without evidence are treated much more seriously than they would be for other crimes.
Show me the corporations who protect the normal man. When I was being bullied by my female boss I would have loved a corporate culture on my side.
Etc etc.
> If you are an actual harasser, the deck is incredibly stacked in your favour
Yes. Because the average woman will not report you for minor sexual harassment.
Not because of society, our corporate culture, or our justice system.
And it doesn't help the innocent man who has been falsely accused.
Also goodluck convincing anyone that I sexually assaulted someone. People wouldn't be able to take you seriously after a claim like that.
Is it an irrational fear? As far as probability goes I would say yes. But if you consider the stakes (your career + reputation) plus the cost of countermeasure (having someone with you) it makes sense.
That is, statistically speaking without breaking it down by industry, close to half of women at your workplace are getting harassed and could report the perpetrator.
For comparison, lighting kills 0.000017% of the population per year.
[1] http://endviolence.un.org/pdf/pressmaterials/unite_the_situa...
That is a good point! Were I a perpetrator I too would be worried about that..
Seriously though, what are you trying to say here? Because half of women have been harassed at work you're worried about being alone in the room with one because, you're afraid you'll harass one? Or because you think those reports are false and you'll be accused as well?
Talking to women, ~50% seems like a conservative figure for % who have been (legitimately[1]) harassed at work
[1] Based on their side of the story, I am not a lawyer, police detective, truth detector or omnipresent inter-dimensional being
Different people find different things offensive. Some have a very low tolerance. Some joke to build camaraderie. On the other hand, there is always a way to interpret almost any joke as offensive. Getting the gender wrong by accident is another big one.
Luckily, I haven't ever worked with anyone who might consider reporting someone for an "innocent" from my PoV mistake, but I have met a lot of people like that outside of work.
What if!
I'm guessing there is a cultural issue here, since you've jumped onto firing, which I didn't even realise was something we were talking about . It sounds like in your (US-based) experience people can be trigger fired based on an honest miscommunication (e.g. a joke that unintentionally offended someone).
This is not anything I have ever experienced.
I guess this comes down again to why I found the statistics to be so surprising. Taking those stats by themselves, the US appears to be incredibly paranoid and puritanical about "the other sex", to the point where you're scared to be in the same room as one of them.
In my non-US experience if you make a shitty joke you are called on it, but you're not going to be insta-fired.
If you physically assault someone, or continue to be a misogynistic shit-heel, that is another story..
Yes this can easily happen here. There are almost no employee protections in the US. For the vast majority of employees an employer can fire you at any time with no notice for nearly any reason.
If there's a he said she said situation, it's generally worth it to fire any low level employee rather than risk the slightest chance of a lawsuit or bad PR even if they know they'll likely win.
People aren't malicious in my experience unless you give them cause to be.
Some people - not many, but enough to be a concern - are simply toxic. They're not reactively toxic. They're as toxic as they can get away with being with as many people as possible.
They don't respond to deterrents or analyse career or personal risks rationally because they just can't help themselves.
Oh to be young and in a growth industry....
I've seen so much backstabbing and malicious behaviour from men and women in the workplace. All it takes is bad economic times.
I know there is a bill called C-16 in Canada. That is if you get the gender of someone wrong 2x, you may be in a world of trouble. Since gender is such a big part of the English language, for me it's easy to get it wrong by accident especially with someone you just met. This is just one in a million things that one might get wrong.
I doubt that. It seems that without witnesses or physical evidence the accusation will go nowhere.