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

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

#101
post #34
post #20

I'm surprised so many men in here are comfortable being alone with women. You've given another person the power to put you in prison and destroy your entire life at any time without any evidence. All they have to do is make the accusation. You'll lose your job. You'll probably lose your family. You'll probably lose your freedom. It's not worth the risk.

Such an irrational fear, like worrying about getting hit by lightning on the way to the shops. Also goodluck convincing anyone that I sexually assaulted someone. People wouldn't be able to take you seriously after a claim like that.

As others pointed out before, women are generally believed, as long as the men who allegedly assaulted them isn't employing a much higher position than the woman.

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.

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

#102
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when there is no evidence one way or the other, you're saying you'd believe the accuser. This pretty much supports the grandparent's statement. I know of a woman who has made a successful career of extorting "settlements with mutual confidentiality agreements" out of a succession of positions as a PA to multiple high level executives, with each exec settling for tens of thousands to avoid this person leveling dama…

I don' think you understood what I said. My point is that a woman (or man) will not come out of a 1:1 or a drive home or talks over dinner and take an ambiguous statement or thing they thought they saw or heard and run to HR. People are rather loath to make the wrong conclusion and will give other the benefit of the doubt. Now, bad, vindictive, extortionists, etc., will not need you to take them out for drinks or hav…

I was responding to the part of your comment where you wrote:

> "I would say it would be extremely rare for a woman (or man) to make baseless accusations from uncertain interpretations. People who bring forward accusations are typically people who've had the same untoward thing done to them repeatedly."

To me, this sounds like your default position would believe the accuser over the accused where no evidence exists. Apologies if this is not what you were trying to convey.

I do agree that vindictive individuals are probably rare, but I do believe that they are out there and I also believe that there are lot of people in the world who look to take offense in innocent situations as I have been confidants of such people in the past and things that I interpret as innocuous can easily be interpreted in a poor light if the person has their "default" mindset to interpret things in a negative light.

And yes, your point about vindictive people is a good one, but I still think that avoiding 1:1 situations would make it much more difficult for such accusations to have as big an impact.

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

#103
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At least in many [white-collar office-with-glass-door easy-access-to-legal-and-HR-departments harassment-training-mandated-as-part-of-the-orientation coworkers-not-prone-to-gossip] jobs I've had."

I've worked in retail, in warehouses, in call centres, as a medical technician, and now in tech, and never with a half-decent HR dept. At no point in any of my jobs was there a norm for people to be wary of 1:1 meetings with the opposite gender.

Look... up until a few years ago, I would never^ have had an issue with a 1:1 meeting, i'd had plenty of them. However, in recent years, the media has become so one sided about sex discrimination that I know an accusation could end my career (that's all it takes). Places like Ars Technica, the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald (and a host of others) paint a very one sided picture of sex discrimination (as do some of the comments in this thread that should have been modded down to oblivion but weren't). It's no accident that it's one sided and it has little bearing on reality#.

It doesn't matter if it's issues like domestic violence# or inappropriate behaviour in the workplace (eg. Marissa Mayer and her significantly under reported and alleged sacking of most of the male staff at Yahoo), the media continually present a one sided story to the point that we now almost solely accuse men of sexism. We've even had an Australian politician from Queensland try to legislate crimes by gender, with almost no criticism from the media. She's still in office because the media gloss over her sexist attitudes. If it were a man, he'd be out of government within a week. This has been going on for years.

So, I understand people becoming extremely wary. If the media wasn't so consistently prejudiced, the picture might be a little different.

^ Having said never (above), it's not quite true. I have been sexually harassed (physically and verbally in the work place). I was terrified to report it because one reverse accusation could have finished me. Thankfully, one of my bosses saw how stressed I was and this woman had a history of harassing male colleagues. Nobody would touch her for fear of recrimination, but, my boss ensured the opportunity of sexual harassment toward me was avoided.

# Perform a search on domestic violence using Google. Look at the imagery. You will see almost only white adult females as victims and white males as perpetrators (across thousands and thousands of images). The same one sided dialog is given in the articles linked to those images. Compare this one-sidedness to the actual stats and the story is very different (30-50% of the aggressors of domestic violence are female [1][2][3][4]). This is just one of the more extreme issues (ie. ignoring domestic violence females across the media) that underlies how imbalanced (and consistently imbalanced) the majority of western media are. There are many other examples of this one-sidedness other than this one topic. However, it's good to illustrate how easily people are blinkered to a topic as fundamental as victims of violence.

Stats to support my domestic violence comments are from government sites (where possible) because they are the most credible. [1] " rel="nofollow">http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/... [2] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-224-x/2010000/t002-eng.htm [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_the_Unite... [4] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...

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

#104
post #78

When I was in college I was a team lead at Best Buy for a while. I was in charge of a mostly female team of cashiers, and I was alone with them in the cash office frequently while they counted their tills. 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 vid…

Your point about having video evidence brings up an interesting question for me, how does the HN community generally feel about pervasive workplace surveillance? It seems based on some of the articles I've read about harassment, that many times people will only feel comfortable coming forward when they have hard evidence such as texts, emails, video, etc against the perpetrators.

Seeing as we, in the US at least, seem to be fairly comfortable with having a pervasive surveillance state(lets ignore for a second whether this is rational, I personally believe the pendulum has swung way too far to the side of surveillance) due to the threat of terrorism, maybe we should also embrace this in our professional lives.

I personally think harassment in the workplace probably affects the day to day lives of more Americans than terrorism does. Is it time to institute these kinds of surveillance practices in the workplace? Maybe have 24 hour video/audio surveillance at work, disallow off work socializing between employees holding differing levels of seniority, only allow approved, and recorded, methods of communication?

For the record, I'm not sure how I would feel about such things, I'm leaning towards it being fraught with all sorts of negative unintended consequences, so if its a stupid idea please let me know, I'm simply curious to hear some opinions.

Edited for clarity.

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

#105
post #80
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you, but your post is hyperbolic and creates barriers for women out of unrealized, unrealistic fear. In particular: > One accusation of ill-doing on my part and my life is essentially over. This flies in the face of of...well, just about everything, in most industrialized countries. Serial sexual harassers get away with it for a long time and men who out-and-out assault women do to; somewhere almost…

I get what you're saying. There are many examples of people doing shitty things and getting away with it; at the same time I work in Sweden; a country that has quite some sensitivity regarding what constitutes rape (strongly suggestive comments are legally rape). It _might_ slide off me if someone accused me of something. But I really wouldn't put that to the test; at the same time. If you can mitigate the risk then…

> And again, the female perspective (that I could be abusive, hurtful or a rapist) is certainly enough to dissuade "alone time" for them

On this, I think you and I are in agreement. I've never managed women (had women managers, though), and thinking through how to square that circle is something that I'd probably want to talk to my director about. Not because of fear of consequences for me, but to provide the best environment for my coworkers.

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

#106
post #45
post #3

What are people so uptight about? 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 wei…

It helps to understand features of conservative religious communities: 1) sex, marriage, and family are still inseparably linked and are believed to be foundational to life and human flourishing. Thus, breaking marital vows reflects a profound failure of character. 2) individuals within Convervative Christian have a deep mistrust of their own capacity to resist moral failures. From my conversations, the individual is…

From a quick google search surveys show that American's almost unanimously find cheating morally wrong, and 60% of all children in America are born to married parents.

>Outside Christian communities, sex, family, and marriage are not inherently related

I don't think you can say that at all. Looking at the marriage rates in looks like the majority of sex is probably happening in married relationships, even outside of conservative Christian communities. The average American may be OK with sex outside of marriage, but I think they're still pretty related in most people's minds.

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

#107
post #35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Phnom Penh and I'd say the crime here is about as bad as an average larger American city, but in a different way. There is more petty crime, especially theft. I've lived here 4 years and never had any problem really, but I see visitors and expats alike getting robbed frequently. I've avoided it because I don't carry anything worth stealing and I am not the type of person that thieves target.

How do you avoid being the type of person a thief targets? Is it a brawny/threatening look, or just not using an iPhone in public?

Both if possible. Don't look wealthy, do look like you can defend yourself, being male helps, being young helps. It's unfortunate, but there are reasons that I don't get messed with ever and yet other people set foot off the plane and are robbed mere hours later (my uncle for example, who visited me in Phnom Penh).

I don't mean to blame anyone for being robbed, but being a little clueless and careless is definitely one of the main causes too. People forget that the cost of a new iPhone is almost the same as the average yearly wage in Cambodia. It's like seeing someone walking in a big US city with 20,000$ in hand, from the thief's perspective.

Cambodia is a very nice place in general though.

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

#108
post #29

It's a cultural issue with Americans. There seems to be a belief there that equality is not really equality but a battle of the genders imo. Women and men alike obsess over the differences and have very traditional dating structures/marriages. Gender equality in Europe makes the states look like a joke

>Gender equality in Europe makes the states look like a joke

Not necessarily true when you consider all of Europe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/10/25...

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

#109
post #95
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it irrational? According to the UN, 40-50% of women in Europe experienced unwanted sexual advancement at work[1]. 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, statistically speaking without breaking it down by industry, close to half of women at your workplace are getting harassed and could report the perpetrator. 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 afr…

In that case, should 50% of men at your current workplace be immediately fired for previous harassment? You are probably assuming it is one or two people doing all the harassment, but what if it's uniformly distributed?

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.

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

#110
post #18
post #3

What are people so uptight about? 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 wei…

I'll speak up with an example from a man's perspective; it has nothing to do with attraction or religion, it's just not worth the risk. If I'm one-on-one with a woman and a misunderstanding makes her feel uncomfortable or threatened and she accuses me of misconduct or sexual harassment I'm at an enormous disadvantage without any witnesses. When even being accused could be career ending it's best to bring someone else…

> When even being accused could be career ending

I'm surprised by this. Would you really be damaged if someone makes an accusation against you without any evidence?

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