Sexual Harassment Allegations: Page 8 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Sexual Harassment Allegations

Burnwinter

y va marquer wrote:
Yep, I do imagine it would be difficult to be the guy who calls a halt to the "harmless banter"

There's a social cost to it. I can give you a really low impact example.

When I started work as a naive uni graduate, I went to work at a software house (they developed a product that did amazing stuff with remote sensed imagery).

At this place there was a weekly "topless chick" email thread that one of my younger colleagues used to run. I found it a bit uncomfortable, especially in that work setting, so I raised the issue with the R&D manager at my first probation meeting. They ended up shutting the thread down, but "the boys", that is to say my coworkers who were sort of the ringleaders of that type of sensibility in the office, never quite trusted me after that.

There were only two women in that entire company, both of whom were battle-scarred "admin ladies" …

Daz

As a social worker (and even now as as an academic) I have always worked in female dominated workplaces so I've been mostly shielded from these kinds of situations. But I've encountered several 'lower level' situations in social and sporting contexts and I've generally felt compelled to speak up. Mostly the challenge has been constructive/received ok, but a couple of times I've copped mild backlash. It's always worth it.

Burnwinter

I think engineering / tech jobs in Australia have come ahead really well in the past couple of decades.

About a decade before I had that first job, I did teenage work experience at an industrial engineering company that did projects for the resource industry, in the design area (so lots of CAD experts and huge A0 blueprints and so on).

At that point in time all the companies in the sector, meaning both the resource industry clients and the engineering and construction companies, had their own company-branded topless calendars that they distributed as freebies at conferences and so on. A lot of the engineers had three or four different topless calendars pinned up in their cubicles.

Madness to be honest, and about as erotic as a rotting tree log.

Qwiss

Even if it was erotic why would you want to be turned on in your cubicle at work.

Tony Montana

Bold Tone wrote:
Tony Montana wrote:
Maybe your mate should have thought twice before going ahead with the one night stand...

You do realise there is more than those 3 months.
I know an ex-taxi driver who was arrested as a rape suspect because his mobile number was found in the victim's phone.

What would you advise him?
Think twice before becoming a taxi driver?

This is the type of questioning that women face regularly when they are victims.

As Y Va has explained not enough is done to battle both the harassment and the unfair victim blaming.

Tony Montana

y va marquer wrote:
I have to say that even now you guys do not get just how f***** bad it is and just how much it happens to women.
I told of what happened when I was 12 but there have been countless other instances from being jumped by a complete stranger at a party to having a work colleague pull the zip of my dress all the way down my back in a bar in front of everyone.
It's bloody ridiculous.

Not true. I alluded to how bad it is in my reply to Big Willie.

In general people find it very difficult to see things from other perspectives because they never experience otherness. It's racial, gender, religious, class, income etc.

Bold Tone

Tony Montana wrote:
Bold Tone wrote:
You do realise there is more than those 3 months.
I know an ex-taxi driver who was arrested as a rape suspect because his mobile number was found in the victim's phone.

What would you advise him?
Think twice before becoming a taxi driver?

This is the type of questioning that women face regularly when they are victims.

As Y Va has explained not enough is done to battle both the harassment and the unfair victim blaming.

As Flobaba asked you, are you are agreeing with it because he is a man?
He has now lost his house in London and has had to rellocate to a cheaper place, Luton.
Are you happy to tell his wife and child that he should have thought twice before embarking on that career because that's what women face regularly?

Tony Montana

Bold Tone wrote:
Tony Montana wrote:
This is the type of questioning that women face regularly when they are victims.

As Y Va has explained not enough is done to battle both the harassment and the unfair victim blaming.

As Flobaba asked you, are you are agreeing with it because he is a man?
He has now lost his house in London and has had to rellocate to a cheaper place, Luton.
Are you happy to tell his wife and child that he should have thought twice before embarking on that career because that's what women face regularly?

No I'm not happy to do that.

I'm saying there's bias against women when it comes to sexual crimes. However bad it is for men it's worse for women.

There's outrage on here at how men are treated but when it's women it's basically expected. We're supposed to believe that it's how women act and behave that is the problem.

Life is unfair. It's not right but it's not worse for men than women.

There are many women who are raped and abused who do not get justice.

Bold Tone

Really?
Have you read the thread?
This "outrage", as you exaggerate it, is specific to one of your posts a couple of pages back and your subsequent responses.

goon

Yeah, as far as I’m aware absolutely no one has victim blamed women in this thread so your argument is little disingenuous to say the least Tony.

Big Willie

Tony Montana wrote:
y va marquer wrote:
I have to say that even now you guys do not get just how f***** bad it is and just how much it happens to women.
I told of what happened when I was 12 but there have been countless other instances from being jumped by a complete stranger at a party to having a work colleague pull the zip of my dress all the way down my back in a bar in front of everyone.
It's bloody ridiculous.

Not true. I alluded to how bad it is in my reply to Big Willie.

In general people find it very difficult to see things from other perspectives because they never experience otherness. It's racial, gender, religious, class, income etc.

You alluded to what exactly, Tony?

Big Willie

Tony Montana wrote:
Bold Tone wrote:
As Flobaba asked you, are you are agreeing with it because he is a man?
He has now lost his house in London and has had to rellocate to a cheaper place, Luton.
Are you happy to tell his wife and child that he should have thought twice before embarking on that career because that's what women face regularly?

No I'm not happy to do that.

I'm saying there's bias against women when it comes to sexual crimes. However bad it is for men it's worse for women.

There's outrage on here at how men are treated but when it's women it's basically expected. We're supposed to believe that it's how women act and behave that is the problem.

Life is unfair. It's not right but it's not worse for men than women.

There are many women who are raped and abused who do not get justice.

Also where is this outrage? And by whom? I don't think anyone on here has ever said that they are outraged by how men are abused whereas they expect it with women.

In fact if anything most posts seem to indicate sympathy with what's happening to women whilst acknowledging that although it also happens to men (on a smaller scale but still) no one ever makes a fuss.

I don't think I know anyone who would sit back and find it ok to see a woman being abused, groped or even spoken to in a way she did not like. On the flip side I doubt any of these guys would step in if a male friend was being groped.

No one blamed any victim on here. Women who have been attacked should be able to plead their case and not feel ashamed or be made to think that what happened to them is their fault when it is thh fault of the animal who carried out the attack. I challenge you to find anyone on here who says differently.

Burnwinter

It certainly does suck getting objectified or assaulted as a man.

However, in response to the question raised earlier, the rules are very different for men.

90% of rape victims are women. An even greater majority of rapists are men. Anything from being approached in the street, to harassment, to more difficult situations may have to be treated as a possible threat by a woman.

Two of my friends have been raped in the past two months, both because they let their guard down at two different, large house parties where they didn't know everyone. One was a close friend of my partner's, and another was my boyfriend's girlfriend's housemate. Both were women, of course.

Not trying to use what happened to them to make my point, but I've personally been shocked and horrified by it, and reminded that it's a very different world in which women continue to live from the world in which I live.

Coombs

y va marquer wrote:
For the record I've never seen or heard of any female friend / colleague harass, grope or assault a guy or falsely accuse them of rape.

I have to say that even now you guys do not get just how f***** bad it is and just how much it happens to women.
I told of what happened when I was 12 but there have been countless other instances from being jumped by a complete stranger at a party to having a work colleague pull the zip of my dress all the way down my back in a bar in front of everyone.
It's bloody ridiculous.

I don't say this to elicit sympathy I'm saying it now to demonstrate just how normalised and ignored this behaviour has been, how most of us women just get on with life and put the s*** behind us, but it's beginning to look like this thread is veering into the men are the ones suffereing territory - avalanches of false accusations on the horizon, super aggressive females roaming offices throughout the land.
Really??

Preach.

It is really, really fucking bad. I mean, it's unbelievably bad. And what's worse is that the systems for mandatory reporting and offices that deal with harassment provide these annoying checklists that are not really about respecting your colleagues and students, but rather about covering the organization/institution's ass, and in turn become implicit instructions for how to "get away with it." I've heard people brag about how carefully they tread so they don't get in trouble, and how airtight their "systems" are. It's an absolute plague on our society, it's a plague on the earth, and I think to some extent that it is the very foundation of many of humanity's ills.

To your first point above, I have myself been harassed by a woman, my professor, as an undergraduate, and it wasn't cool or sexy and it fucked things up for me quite a bit. It's one reason why I have been committed to making sure it doesn't happen to other people when I am now in a position to stop it. Even so, I am under no insane delusion that somehow men are getting the short end of any sticks. It's laughable. Anecdotal situations are just that. Men falsely accuse people of things all the time, it's not really part of the same discussion as long as we maintain the democratic necessity of innocent until proven guilty under the law.

Frankly, the statistics don't really matter in that they are entirely unnecessary. It's one of the most widely obvious problem along with racism, climate change, and the threat of nuclear war, yet folks still find ways to quibble and squabble about it. I don't think the answer is to just tell everyone to be nice, treat women with respect, etc. It all gets a bit condescending, as if the power still lies entirely with men. A better answer is to concede positions of power to women, even those around you, even at your own expense, and for men to learn to be better followers, rather than always trying to lead the way.

Big Willie

Burnwinter wrote:
It certainly does suck getting objectified or assaulted as a man.

However, in response to the question raised earlier, the rules are very different for men.

90% of rape victims are women. An even greater majority of rapists are men. Anything from being approached in the street, to harassment, to more difficult situations may have to be treated as a possible threat by a woman.

Two of my friends have been raped in the past two months, both because they let their guard down at two different, large house parties where they didn't know everyone. One was a close friend of my partner's, and another was my boyfriend's girlfriend's housemate. Both were women, of course.

Not trying to use what happened to them to make my point, but I've personally been shocked and horrified by it, and reminded that it's a very different world in which women continue to live from the world in which I live.

Of course it is BW. That is horrible, and I'm sorry to hear about what happened to these girls. People who commit crimes like that deserve the harshest sentences possible.

This whole discussion started after someone made a post about believing women and and not victim blaming following which there were anecdotal mentions of personal experience of times when accusations such as these seriously effected innocent people. It wasn't to say that women should not be believed and that they are lying when these things happen, in fact quite the opposite, take it seriously but don't be quick to convict someone without due process.

To clarify once again women should feel safe to expose what was done to them without being accused of lying. The claims made need to be taken very seriously and the outcome and actions taken should reflect the serious nature of the crime that was reported. This applies both in the majority of cases where the crimes commited are real where the perpetrator should be given a harsh sentence as well as in the few cases where it later transpires that the claim is made up.

The victim should be believed that they are telling the truth without being accused of lying unless it is proven to be the case. That is without a doubt and they should be given the benefit of the doubt in an atmosphere that will give them the comfort and confidence to come forward.

That being said the defendant being accused should be given the chance to defend themselves without everyone assuming their guilt until it becomes apparent that it is the case. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Whilst we as men will probably never fully be able to feel the struggles and difficulties women feel on a daily basis I doubt there is even one person on here that doesn't sympathise with what they have to go through. It's disgusting, should not happen, and is very sad to see.

Tony Montana

goon wrote:
Yeah, as far as I’m aware absolutely no one has victim blamed women in this thread so your argument is little disingenuous to say the least Tony.

Not in this thread but in society many people do it and you know it.

goon

Tony Montana wrote:
goon wrote:
Yeah, as far as I’m aware absolutely no one has victim blamed women in this thread so your argument is little disingenuous to say the least Tony.

Not in this thread but in society many people do it and you know it.

Oh ok, I thought you were referring to people in this thread.

Tony Montana

Bold Tone wrote:
Really?
Have you read the thread?
This "outrage", as you exaggerate it, is specific to one of your posts a couple of pages back and your subsequent responses.

Outrage from you on the taxi driver comment.

Tony Montana

Big Willie wrote:
Tony Montana wrote:
Not true. I alluded to how bad it is in my reply to Big Willie.

In general people find it very difficult to see things from other perspectives because they never experience otherness. It's racial, gender, religious, class, income etc.

You alluded to what exactly, Tony?

My response to you is what women face when they report sexual crimes.

Big Willie

Tony Montana wrote:
Big Willie wrote:
You alluded to what exactly, Tony?

My response to you is what women face when they report sexual crimes.

And that makes it ok because...

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