"Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"
Anyone says that at my workplace and they will be shown the door in less than 120 seconds.
"Lighten up"
241–250 of 829 posts
Re: "Lighten up"
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm actually a fairly baudy person. I've made sailors blush. I don't mind joking around at all. What irks me is when someone does something sexist, and I do speak up about it... and I'm told to 'lighten up'. If it was important enough for me to say something, then at least acknowledge that. Most of my co-workers are awesome. They'd never dream of making the dress comment, or tell me to go get their coffee. But it doe…
Fair enough. Is the place large enough to have a separate HR department? It's one thing to joke around, but another to make unwanted sexist comments. I've never known any HR folks who put up with the smallest bit of it. It's their job to get righteously pissed off at that kind of behavior.
It's very rare for someone to be so overtly sexist that the HR department can intervene. Usually, there's some doubt for the harasser to receive the benefit of. And besides that, how would that affect her reputation if she turns into "the complainer who got Joe fired"?
Re: "Lighten up"
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there IS changing everyone's behaviour. In my lifetime, drunk driving and spoual abuse have become socially unacceptable. Overt racism has become socially unacceptable. Two women got engaged at centre-ice in a hockey game, a bastion of blue-collar society. All these changes happened because people said, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"
> In my lifetime, drunk driving and spoual abuse have become socially unacceptable Seeing the change in your lifetime does not mean the entire process occurred in your lifetime. How many lifetimes is it taking for women, gays, and black people to become treated as equals, and we're still not there. Like I said, it takes lifetimes. I'm not saying don't fight discrimination. I'm saying she should consider her health. U…
OK, black people were literally property in mid-19th century America. That's pretty much rock bottom, just 157 years ago. For reference, a full human lifespan is something like 120 years, and the average is a little over 70. So today, a mere two lifetimes later, a guy descended from the slave owners can marry one of the slaves' descendants and nobody even bats an eye. And a first-generation African-American is running the country. In the face of all this, how can you say meaningful change can't happen on the scale of a person's life? (And most of that civil rights process did happen in raganwald's lifetime if he was born before the '60s.)
Re: "Lighten up"
#244I applaud the author for sharing her feelings. I also note that she does not speak for all women. All we can do is share our own experiences. I've been through many of these discussions: sexism, racism, ageism, and so on. After receiving many a rhetorical punch in the nose, I have a simple rule: I don't do it, I don't approve of it being done, if I am in management I stop it. I also don't let people yank me around by…
I think these kinds of discussions are immensely productive even when they don't appear to go anywhere.
For a lot of people, these things are subtle and hard to process. It takes time and repetition for them to understand and acknowledge the problem, let alone become part of the solution.
Sexism is taking generations to sort out, so it's unsurprising that we can't see a difference in the course of a single discussion. But I believe that without discussion, we'll see no progress at all.
Re: "Lighten up"
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
You put quotes around the phrase "nothing can ever change", and yet that phrase doesn't appear in the parent comment. I suggest restricting yourself to rebutting arguments I actually made.
How would you characterize the difference between "the problem is unfixable" and "nothing can ever change"? They are substansively the same position.
I thought it was clear from context, but I've added a clarifying clause. The point is that, if firing people for commenting on low-cut dresses doesn't work, complaining about it in a blog post certainly isn't going to do the trick. The problem is unfixable using the means at the disposal of the OP. In this case, although the outcome is lamentable, leaving the industry may be a rational response.
Re: "Lighten up"
#246As the woman, I've been the only person in the group asked to put together a pot luck (presumably, this work is beneath the males). I've been the only one asked to take notes in a meeting... even if I'm the one who's presenting (because my title really should be 'secretary who we let on the servers'). This, more than the jokes and comments, is the meat of the problem. Inappropriate jokes can be much more easily addre…
In my mind, an important point here is that NO ONE should be asked to put together a pot luck. Why does anyone think this kind of thing is appropriate in the workplace? It makes me want to vomit when workplace boss becomes social boss. If anyone ever told me to put together a pot luck my immediate response would be "go fuck yourself."
Re: "Lighten up"
#247I find posts like this extremely frustrating. Yes, I feel sorry for this woman. However, I also feel sorry for all male programmers. A lot of male programmers I've met have extremely pent-up sexual drives. A lot of them do not feel comfortable with women or society. The prototypical male programmer was extremely nerdy in adolescence, had minimal interaction with women, and sex life - forget it. Now they are working i…
Too bad.
Programing or any place in the world isn't some special place for poorly socialized men to hang out and ... what... hide? You know what would be good? Learning social rules and improving. Them maybe his life wouldn't suck and he could get a date. And you know what would help that? Being forced into social situations with women and being slapped when he steps out of line.
If you have a puppy and it pees on the floor, you don't feel sorry for it and lock it in the house so it can pee on the floor forever, you train it not to.
If we "just give up" on these men and leave them alone they will be miserable forever. If they are forced to learn (at a later age, you know what, all the rest of us learned this a long time ago) they maybe they can get on with their lives and not be miserable.
Re: "Lighten up"
#248Have you ever worked in an office with all women? I did and the sexism and comments are worse because they know they can get away with it. Our world has become too politically correct. At one of my jobs, they brought all of the developers into a room and said that "something somebody said was offensive and we needed to watch our language". We're adults, not kids at school..but it sure doesn't feel like it because peo…
That took some scrolling until I found a reasonable comment. Thanks for this.
The other aspect is: Groups will always bond together in one way or another and emphasize their "superiority" over some other group. May it be because of gender, race, political views, intellectual views or just sports teams.
The only difference I noticed from sometimes working with almost exclusive female teams is, that they are smarter in regards to "testing the water", i.e. those who don't share their sense of humor and are unable to cope with less appropriate remarks get isolate pretty fast. But I never understood why people get sensitive over things like these.
In fact I would argue that the more something is a high pressure environment, the less PC the environment becomes.
Re: "Lighten up"
#249My wife puts up with this all the time. She is an assertive and decisive businessperson, but is labelled "abrasive" and "a bitch" because she isn't meek, submissive and soft-spoken. The same behavior in males is encouraged and rewarded.
My parent's generation moved us past overt sexism; our generation needs to move us past subtle sexism. Otherwise, we are still wasting a large part of our human potential.
Re: "Lighten up"
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Uhhh, I'd smuggle them somewhere else where they could live free, duh. This isn't exactly the best example. Sure you would, buddy. Just like you're out there beating up the people who are oppressing the original poster, like fucking batman. > Also, are you seriously saying that you'd tell folks who will live their entire lives and die as slaves to just "hang in there"? Yeah, I would. Because if you have any foresig…
"Schindler's List" would have made a lousy movie if he just told people to "Hang in There".
And who says he never did do that? You think he never came across people who were too risky to try to save? Why wasn't he able to save all the jews?
My point was that it's pretty far fetched for anyone to believe InclinedPlane would risk his life saving slaves when he won't even risk his career trying to legally torpedo the original poster's workplace. It's posturing, nothing more.