On FB I was responding to a friends #metoo post about her being pressured, then fired, by a married boss. This in a legal aid office. I said we need to stigmatize the culprits to the extent we've vanquished use of the N word. Then I think, "so what sexual harasser have you ever outed?" Then and there, I named a professor who'd vanished mid-semester for harassment.

Considering the intensity of discussion going on about Weinstein, etc. right now, there needs to be a thread. Boys are the problem, so we need to confront it.

IDk where you think this thread will go other than choir singing. Unless some 'new poster' comes with some hot takes you'll get a lot of people voicing similar opinions about the need for cultural / norm changes.

I'm not a new poster, but I got a take that's at least warm.

I was fired from my engineering job for harassing a woman. My harassment amounted to hinting in a non crude way that I was attracted to her and looking at her computer screen which contained an IM conversation with her boyfriend. They were also unwilling to give me a reference, thus that was the end of my career.

My take from this is that, at least among the plebes, the mid level corporate types do take this seriously. One cannot reasonably express any kind of interest in coworkers unless she feels the same way. So basically, the norms don't need to change much and Weinstein getting away with it for a while is an exception, not the rule.

The epilogue to this story is that afterward, if I was interested in a woman, I had to weigh the low chance she would reciprocate against the high chance she would be offended and tweet #MeToo. This sucked for me.

For every overreaction, there are a hundred authentic horror stories from women. It is striking how relentless and day-to-day the harassment is. All women get pestered by pricks, serious harassment is common, and assaults are not uncommon. And the vast majority remains hidden because there is not a culture of speaking out -- which is something guys could help with. If you are not calling out bad behavior, you're a wuss.

Having had to sit and read the #metoo post from my sister, detailing at first the usual crap about cat calls and passing remarks, segueing into how she was physically assaulted in a public place by a stranger who wouldn't take no for an answer, I've had this on my mind too. Largely, the typical thoughts about if only I'd been giving her a lift home that day, if I'd arrived on the scene and seen what was going on, exactly how I'd have dealt with the situation.

But I have another distinct memory in my head. It was back at university, when we were living off campus in our first house in the city, were walking out to go for some drinks, already a bit aled up, and three of us walked through an underpass on the way. As we get to the other end, stood on the steps up are a man and woman, young, probably our age, and as we get closer he looks at us and steps away from her suddenly. As we walk past it's one of those situations where something feels off. Neither of them look happy, but she isn't crying, or screaming, and neither of them say anything that we heard.

Your first thought is it's a lover's quarrel, don't get involved, none of our business. None of us really reacted, and when we got to the top of the stairs, we looked over our shoulder and he'd moved back close to her. The whole thing felt wrong. Anyway, we're about fifty yards from a police station, and we had a quick word about whether to go back to check on her, but I decided better to go forward and find an officer. Being a Friday night there were two leaving as we got close, a male and female officer, obviously out on the beat, and I (slightly drunk and smelling of weed) nervously approached them to explain my concern.

I said we hadn't heard anything, but she looked distressed, and they asked what I wanted from them. I said just head over and check it out. See if she's alright, and the officers looked at me, one said "Okay", and they walked off in the opposite direction to where I'd asked.

We had a quick chat among ourselves. Maybe they hadn't taken me seriously because I wasn't sober. Maybe we really were just paranoid because we're in a new place, and the weed. It could still have just been an argument between friends, or boyfriend and girlfriend. And if a woman police officer didn't think it was a real issue, then it probably wasn't, right?

And so we moved on. We left that girl stranded. It could've been nothing, it really could have, but all I've had in my head for two days is that, at that moment, we were like every man and woman that left my sister stranded. That made the same excuses, no doubt. That could've just asked if she were okay. I could've been more assertive with the officers, or I could've taken matters in to my own hand instead of simply being relieved to pass the buck.

I guess what I'm wondering, by putting this story in this thread, is if there are any other men on here that want to say "me too"?

This isn't evidence that companies take sexual harassment seriously, it's evidence that they take lawsuits seriously.

Are you comfortable providing some more detail on the interactions that got you in trouble? Based on my experience, it's definitely not true that someone can't express non-reciprocal interest in a coworker without getting in trouble, but I'm interested in hearing about your experiences.

"In this country, first you have to get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women." -- Tony Montana

I expect women to hold up their end of the social contract. All my life movies and television have told me that if I work hard and acquire wealth then women above my league will want to have sex with me. Now If I were to suddenly find out I had work hard my whole life for nothing, well I am going to be very angry. And if I can't get what I was promised from the social contract, then I will gladly violate the social contract as well and simply take what I want. There are no games to be played here, the one thing a culture cannot do is fu*k with a man's libidinal energies.

This thread is going places. I can feel it.

It's a men's clubhouse. Why did you expect this? Post #3 is iron saying he was fired for harassing a woman, ergo it's not that common. Post #9 is AC_Slater declaring he worked hard and should get all the sex that's coming to him or he's going to take it (I *assume* he's being a little tongue in cheek but who knows). You thought it was going to be a bunch of head nods?

The forum is a bunch of men. This will play out just like all discussions about racism among white people: sure, sexual harassment, sexual predation, rape, whatever, they acknowledge that those are valid things that might happen sometimes but they aren't quite sure they could identify specifically if any case ever really qualifies.

The only reason that this thread might only have 200 posts by the end instead of 1200 is that ikes is gone.

Calling it out and standing up to it are important but there's much more to be done:

• Believing the victim and taking criminal complaints seriously.
  
• Positive discrimination to help change the power balance.
  
• Serious consideration needs to be given to restricting the legality of confidentiality agreements.
  
• Compulsory reporting of criminal allegations to the authorities or an independent victim support service. These complaints must not be dealt with 'in-house'.

Plus other standard stuff such as general workers right.

No, mostly because I can't remember them.
My case qualifies. She wasn't a bad person, if she felt uncomfortable enough to go to HR, I ****ed up.

I regret that my post came off like this.

Sorry that this happened, as it sounds like a pretty bad outcome for you. But as presented there are a few things about this story that need more detail.

A. In what order did these events occur? Were you aware she had a boyfriend before making the hint? Did you make the hint as you were looking at her screen? Did you make the hint then some period of time went by before you looked at her screen?

I mean this is obvious, but if a girl is in any sort of relationship you're definitely both wasting your time and making her uncomfortable with an advance of any sort, and you should therefore seek to ascertain her relationship status before making an advance, particularly if she's at work and it's therefore a much more high stakes situation.

B. Are you concerned about women being offended in general, or only coworkers specifically? Maybe lay off coworkers as a potential source of dates, and simply use tinder or whatever? Or give them the opportunity to unambiguously send signals that they're interested, and if they don't then assume they're not interested?

C. Is this because you're scarred by the previous situation and have extended that very work-specific fear to interactions with all women, or you simply operate with much more pause in office environments? Either way I'm not sure there's a compelling argument to try to shift policies or practices to avoid that outcome. In the first case, it's unfortunate that you feel you can't talk to women, even if it's irrational. Try talking with a therapist. In the second, see my advice in B.

Apart from providing for one's children, getting the opportunity to fu*k women above your physical attractiveness value (PAV) is like the primary motive for working hard, tedious, or even dangerous jobs. Women should be happy with this state of affairs, as it means men are willing to do the dirty necessary jobs that allow basic civilization to function. For all their demands for workplace equality how many women do we see cleaning sewers, drilling for oil, or manufacturing steel? Ladies, are you really telling me having sex with a man below your PAV is worse than having to clean sh*t out of the sewers five days a week, every week, for the rest of your life?



Really ladies, men are so pathetic all you have to do is pleasure their little weiners from time to time and they will provide you with all resources at their disposal for life. And if they stop providing society allows you compensation in divorce court, half his worth will become yours. In their stubborn refusal to sublimate their egos, the modern woman must now subject herself to tedious fields like engineering and accounting. No wonder depression and suicide rates for Western world women are at all time highs. Just submit, let us let you live the good life again. We're begging you to take our money! The only question is, are you woman enough to take it?




Suicide stats:


https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/h...year-high.html


"Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age.

A. I knew she had a boyfriend, don't recall what the order was.
B. Both, more so for coworkers.
C. I have extended that to all women. I'm one of the bottom quartile guys who DVaut joked about past society using as literal cannon fodder because there was nothing better to do with them. Usually it saves everyone a lot of stress if I keep to myself.

I know of a case of a professor at a major US university who was a serial grabber, groper, fondler. After formal complaint number 13 he was given a warning and suspended pay for a few months. After number 14 he was finally forced to resign. He wasn't angry for the reasons you say. He had a great salary, a really nice wife, and was just a total, complete *******.

By the way, in university like institutions these sorts of cases are far more common than most people realize, and always hidden from public view. Such institutions hate bad publicity more than anything.

So wait, people clean **** out of sewers to get laid? I didn't realize how much of a turn on that was considered for women.

is that AC Slater post copypasta from some incel mens rights subreddit?

You are being deliberately obtuse. Men clean sewers because it actually pays a bit over the median National wage. The reason such a low skill jobs pays above a median wage is that the person is being compensated for the unglamorous nature of the job. A more glamorous higher skilled occupation like EMT worker pays half of what a sewer cleaner makes. The sewer cleaner is only payed more than the EMT worker for the very reason that cleaning up sh*t is considered a turn off by women.

There's no 'should' about it is there?

Women, as a matter of fact, are not at all happy with anything like the state of affairs you say they should be happy with. There's no excuse for imposing it.

dude come on, don't respond to those posts as if they're real posts.

--

Slater if you want to make ****ty troll posts maybe try going to OOT and pretending to be a flat earther, they eat that **** up.

Companies take this very seriously. If you don't have the ability to fire HR peons, you get fired. If you do, they pay off the victim and cover it up, bonus points to HR drone for being a team player who finds business oriented solutions.

Why is prostitution the oldest profession in the world? It's because women preferred that to the alternative of actually hunting for their subsistence themselves. Women and men very much like the idea of trading a low energy activity for the ability to acquire the proceeds of a high energy output.


This is not degrading women to simply point this out, I am no different. I would watch Harvey Weinstein take a shower if I knew he would honor an agreement to put me in a film with a speaking role. Hell, I would even have given him a massage with happy ending for a potential Hollywood career.