The long-term cost of sexual harassment
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Especially considering he was elected by the United States of America AFTER those comments were made public?
Control your expectations about the world people. It's only a nice place as depicted in media. Many, many, terms and conditions sadly apply :-(
The optimist in me looks at the other half of Americans who still have their good sense intact, and even those who chose not to vote. But as Robert Reich and Dan Rather have said repeatedly: these are dangerous times for our democracy.
My assumption is this noticeable size difference contributed to how strongly this incident impacted her.
Any man who doesn't realize that if he has a substantial size advantage, it will be inherently intimidating, is a troglodyte. And he probably wasn't oblivious. He probably happily used that to his advantage as an intimidation tactic.
Men tend to be physically stronger than women, even when their size is pretty comparable. Add a height advantage and things rapidly get ugly.
Which, you know, could just be because I have pathetic eyesight. But I honestly do not see a clear and unequivocal indicator to that effect.
Here are the excerpts from the article.
> I realized she was taking a photo. Later, when I asked her why she had done that, she said she didn’t get what was going on. Being photographed in that situation by someone I kept hoping would help me felt terrible.
> I saved the photo my friend took, even though I hated knowing it was in my storage.
That may seem pedantic to you, but I have had a couple of law classes and I worked in insurance for over 5 years. Those are environments in which such distinctions matter.
I am inferring that it is the photo and you apparently agree that it is, but I still don't believe there is a clear and unequivocal statement in the article to that effect.
At that point an approach was made and met with a clear response. That was when things should have stopped. That is how potential relationship escalation should work: an offer is made in some way and based on the response the proposer gets an idea on how to proceed (in this case - bugger off).
It is absolutely unacceptable that anyone should be assaulted.
This is actually someone threatening rape (imo). Unfortunately it's something our President has said.
We need to stop this behavior where people think they are entitled to someone else. We also need to have our Law enforcement act more appropriately to handle this; ensure Rape Kits are tested promptly.
Educating our children and adults reminding them what is and what isn't acceptable. It isn't acceptable to touch someone on the shoulder if they asked you to remove it.
Lastly we need to call sexual harassment what it is. It's harassment; it's something as a society we have ignored for far too long.
It's worse than that. For various reasons, some men are actively more interested if you reject them. It is a little bit like the principle that running from a bear will incite its chase instinct.
Obviously if she says no and leans away, you stop and don't try it.
But I still hear LOTS of people say this and it's exactly what I'm talking about. Everyone keeps saying men need to be aggressive and I really do think that's what causes a lot of the sexual harassment.
I'm pretty picky about consent. There are men who know how to delicately signal their interest and invite me to signal back whether or not I am amenable. I have the general impression that such tactics get men a lot more action than tactics that intentionally step on a woman's boundaries as a matter of course.
But there are also many women, in my experience, that for whatever reason, don't or can't signal their interest or intentions. In that case I ASK them. It sounds very awkward to say it, but if done in private (i.e. you don't shout it out) I've actually noticed it creates a lot of comfort in the women. e.g. once I asked a girl I was on a date with, and she said she wasn't comfortable with PDA (we were inside a bar). I didn't push it, but after we left the bar and nobody was in sight outside, we did make out. I like to think if I had just "gone for it" in the bar, she would have been uncomfortable, I would feel rejected, and generally bad things all around...
Which part of the argument could not have been made without ruining a reputation through TC reach? How far are those accusations confirmed?
I've no stake in any of those people and I am not particularly opinionated about the current cultural matters surrounding harassment, but this is not a very civil approach and I am not sure it does a favor for the cause of greater awareness on the issue.
She states that she was inspired to share her experience (with photographic evidence) base on accounts of other women coming forward in a similiar manner.
Being inspired to skip the trial and personally decide to put somebody in the pillory is an understandable, but deeply flawed motivation.
The author can, of course, make every accusation. The publication however should not make the crime appear to be a secured fact. Breaching the journalistic objectivity might be a current trend but is intellectually dishonest and no service to the cause.
This looks more like vigilantism than a serious conversation.
There will always be disparity while this change takes place, if it does. There will be both men and women who abuse the system and get away with it with no repercussions. But you can't use that as justification for acting the way they do.
But you don't have to be a person with a lot of power to make this choice. When enough people make this choice, then the predators are far less free to do whatever the fuck they so choose because more people will call them on it earlier, before it turns to assault.
Catherine Shu (author of this piece) was in a public setting and there were other people there who knew her. One took a photo of the incident without realizing the incident was basically assault. The same person had earlier sent mixed signals to Pollock, on the one hand saying Catherine was unavailable because she was married, on the other saying she liked white men because she was married to a white man.
So Pollock's predatory behavior was enabled by other people who not only failed to be supportive of Catherine, but even to some extent cooperated with his plans to get laid, and propriety be damned. I think it is completely gross and disgusting that her friend said she likes white men, she is marred to one.
When ordinary people stop doing things like that, then predators have a lot less latitude for pursuing their ugly goals. When you reduce their latitude enough, you may find that in order to get laid at all, they need to behave something like decent human beings instead of overentitled rapey bastards.
People get away with this shit because everyone either averts their eyes and refuses to see what is happening right in front of them or actively supports some powerful man's ugly agenda because he has power and they desire to curry favor. That is a choice. You can decide that you aren't willing to curry favor at that price.
> on: The long-term cost of sexual harassment