Do you walk around in thunderstorms holding a golf club over your head? I think @inactive_user is saying that it does happen, even if rarely, and there are non-harmful ways of mitigating risk.
I think this is part of HR culture. Companies and organizations are trying to protect themselves from liability. There aren’t any morals about it. If they have a policy in place, they can say “we aren’t liable, and if that did take place, it was in breach of our conduct policies, and entirely the fault of the accused”
It is, in a sense extremely immoral and heartless, but legally defensible.
And stupid.
But this generally isn’t HR making the decision. It’s individual, high powered men, who I think again, in many cases want to teach women a lesson. Complain too much, and you’ll just get cut off.
They’re trying to deny that is the reasoning, but a lot of it is just that basic.
It’s really fucking childish - it’s kind of the adult equivalent of, “Oh yeah? Well I’m gonna take my ball and go home.”
I dunno. I spent 30 years in corporations, had over that time literally dozens of female direct reports, and mentored a number of them, and I don’t recall ever worrying that if I were to spend any time alone with them (which I did) that I ran the risk of being accused of assaulting or harassing them. And I can’t recall a single such accusation of others during my career that turned out to be false. I, for one, would like to see some evidence that it happens any more frequently than fatal lightning strikes before granting the point.
To me, this is of a piece with other male business practices. The boys play golf together, the boys go drinking together, the boys go to strip bars together, the boys ogle the female staff together and speculate about them sexually. The boys bond, and are promoted, and the women remain on the outside,
The key words in both of our posts were “reasonable” and “non-harmful” when it comes to sexual harassment precautions. Obviously, not mentoring women or not taking any one-on-one meetings with women is neither of those.
I’m glad you’ve never dealt with false accusations in your work, but I have. Not directed at me, but at one of my subordinates. After a months-long investigation, the woman accuser admitted she made the harassment charges up to mitigate her own problems in another unrelated investigation. (This was in the Army.) She was appropriately punished and the innocent soldier was returned to his regular duties.
That women are a black box to men is such a trope and yet seeing this play out in real life policy is astonishing.
Have you seen monday.com ads on Youtube at some point? One of the more recent ones had a guy thinking (paraphrasing) “How do I manage Cynthia?" and then a quick pan to a young woman with RBF and a lion growling in the background. Somehow it seems adjacent to post #metoo and maybe i’m reading in to things, but it had a lot to say in like two seconds, something about inscrutability of the feminine to men.
Personally I see men keeping themselves away from women alone is less of a worry about women than a worry about themselves, as if they wouldn’t be able to stop, or be unable to distinguish, when the kind of locker room talk they use about women in the company they normally keep, would or would not be appropriate with women they were unfamiliar with. Of course in their own minds they frame it as a THEY rather than a ME problem.
Sure, that’s fair enough. My objection is to the original story, where people treat it like the chance of a false accusation is a greater harm than the actual harassment that occurs.
Yup.
Things like being afraid to mentor women or otherwise avoid helping women succeed and/or presenting them the same opportunities as men are unreasonable and totally fair game IMO for lampooning and consequences.
Furthermore, doing something like IDK asking women what makes for comfortable, non-threatening one-on-one meetings with male (or any, but let’s be honest that we’re talking about situations that are almost exclusively male manager → female employee) management that put everyone in a position to not have to worry about harassment is probably the jam.
That’s because it’s insane and objectionable.
I don’t see how one can be greater than the other. Both sexual harassment and false accusations cause catastrophic damage and can ruin lives. How can you say that one victim “suffers more” and is “more important” than the other?
#MeToo may have had a positive outcome in raising awareness but a good outcome does not excuse any wrongs committed to attain it. The ends (better awareness) do not justify the means (trial and punishment by media).
Here’s a simple policy for managers when giving feedback to a woman in an office alone, keep the door open or don’t close the blinds… solved. I mean these are simple ideas that are in practice today and were in practice prior to MeToo too. It’s not a requirement to walk on water.
Oh and don’t do stupid shit that seems to be common in some industries like requiring men and women to share hotel rooms. Purchase separate rooms for each of your employees.
I can’t imagine this ever happening. What industry? When?
Apparently the gaming industry based on a few articles about issues there. It would not happen in my industry (well maybe smaller companies might be that… iffy). It’s idiotic. I have heard some industries might have the same gender share though, for larger conference. Every event I have ever gone to was a private room and even the thought of sharing with someone of the same sex and I knew made HR nervous. It’s a liability.
Because one happens all the time, and the other doesn’t? Because ‘someone sexually asssaulted you’ is a greater harm than ‘someone said some bad stuff about you?’ Because there have been no practical consequences for assaulting or harassing women for most of recorded history, and it is only now that there are that we’re hearing about the terrible ‘harm’ of false accusations? Which suggests it’s just whatabouism designed to suppress accusations or taking them seriously? Is this a trick question?
Which is the greater harm, being murdered, or the chance that you might be falsely accused of murder?
Years ago my employer merged with another employer. As part of the effort to integrate, we staged a meeting where the execs all came together to meet each other, etc. The two CEOs gave short speeches to introduce themselves, their team, their culture, etc. I still recall today hearing the other company CEO talk about how financially responsible they were, how it was a practice that execs traveling together on business always opted to share hotel rooms in order to demonstrate that fiscal responsibility. I remember thinking at the time ‘these people are out of their minds’. Later it came out that the entire other executive team had participated in accounting fraud for years. I don’t really see how the one thing caused the other, but it’s weird nonetheless.
Well this is pretty intense.
Of note, claims have arisen against Vic Mignogna. Many people may not know the name, but he’s a famous voice actor who has had notable roles of the English-dubbed Edward Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist, Broly from Dragon Ball, and most recently Qrow from RWBY (whose studio has just cut ties).
Liam Neeson, what are you doing?
For context:
40 years ago, Neeson found out someone he knew was raped.
“She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way,” Neeson says. “But my immediate reaction was…” There’s a pause. “I asked, did she know who it was? No. What colour were they? She said it was a black person.
“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by somebody – I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some [Neeson gestures air quotes with his fingers] ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could,” another pause, “kill him.”
Neeson clearly knows what he’s saying, and how shocking it is, how appalling. “It took me a week, maybe a week and a half, to go through that. She would say, ‘Where are you going?’ and I would say, ‘I’m just going out for a walk.’ You know? ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘No no, nothing’s wrong.’”
He deliberately withholds details to protect the identity of the victim. “It was horrible, horrible, when I think back, that I did that,” he says. “And I’ve never admitted that, and I’m saying it to a journalist. God forbid.”
“Holy shit,” says Tom Bateman, his co-star, who is sitting beside him.
“It’s awful,” Neeson continues, a tremble in his breath. “But I did learn a lesson from it, when I eventually thought, ‘What the fuck are you doing,’ you know?”
All three of us know – Neeson, Bateman and I – that this is a distressing admission. “I come from a society – I grew up in Northern Ireland in the Troubles – and, you know, I knew a couple of guys that died on hunger strike, and I had acquaintances who were very caught up in the Troubles, and I understand that need for revenge, but it just leads to more revenge, to more killing and more killing, and Northern Ireland’s proof of that. All this stuff that’s happening in the world, the violence, is proof of that, you know. But that primal need, I understand.”
At least he is the one telling the story. Maybe he’s trying to make a point about something. I’m willing to listen.
Reading it, sounds like he’s trying to say that what he did was a terrible thing and he is still struggling trying to deal with it.