I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and I wonder what you think too. Way back when I was young and pretty, a boss cornered me in a room alone after everyone else was gone for the day, and this seriously scared me. I got away from him, managed to grab my purse, and left that job with no notice. I never wanted to see that guy again.
This is the worst kind of guilt by association. There’s a difference between association via friendship and socializing, and association via employment. It’s not good that it was that easy to get Castro to resign but that hard to get rid of the actual predator.
Feb 23, 2022·edited Feb 23, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
For your situation, I really think unions are the only hope. Obviously, I'd prefer a world where you could complain and get him fired. However, I don't think we can fire anyone with a complaint. I don't want to engage in some incel conspiracy to the effect of "women make all this shit up," but I absolutely think there are men and women who would make exaggerate or mislead to move up in their careers.
As for the immigration comment, I don't know man. This seems like an unintended consequence of the great awokening. Ten years ago, I could have said "bigotry? yeah, fire that asshole." But today? Math is white supremacy. I just think the grounds are so diluted that I just don't trust anyone to make good decisions based on accusations of bigotry.
In the case of Castro, I think organizations need to stop bowing to public opinion or a vocal minority within their ranks. Our liberal institutions need to start saying "fuck off."
...but then there's also another point that makes this tough. I remember listening to an interview with a Smash Bros player/Youtuber who was accused of dating a 14 year old girl. Months after leaving Youtube, he said he was offered a job, but they rescinded it after finding his history. I don't know if the accusations are true. Even if they are though... like, pedophiles need jobs too, you know?
I am so sorry that happened to you. I think pretty much every woman on earth has at least one story like this. Here's mine (one of several), which I offer because I will use it to make a larger point after I tell it:
One summer, when I was 19, I worked in a temporary office that had been set up by an Illinois construction company to take bids for a proposed skyscraper in our city. I was the receptionist and file clerk, and the other five men in the office were managers in construction. Four of the five men were wonderful, and the fifth, who unfortunately was the most senior of all of them, well, he was not so great. He talked constantly about how young and attractive I was, and how his wife was old and ugly. He asked me not to wear my glasses (I have 20/500 vision) because I was "prettier without them." He used to loom over my desk and make little comments about my face and body all the time. The company didn't get the bid, and so the nice guys went back to Illinois while the creep and I stayed behind to close up the office--at which point I discovered how much the nice guys had protected me from the creep. The first day, the creep asked me to lunch, and I felt horribly uncomfortable. Even worse, he suggested that we go out to lunch every day for the rest of the week. That night, I told my parents how icky my day had been, and for the rest of the week they drove into the city from our outlying suburb to take me to lunch. They would arrive in the office a bit early and glare at the creep while I got ready. He got the message.
I am sharing this long story because I think the problem of sexual harassment can only be solved by a multi-pronged approach. Those lovely men in my office (and my parents) exemplify part of the solution: good people, men especially, need to speak up and make it clear that sexual harassment is wrong, wastes employees' time, and destroys the potential of workers who could contribute to the world and to the company's bottom line.
But additionally, institutions in general and universities in particular need to stop looking at harassment from the perspective of ossified senior faculty, who too often view female graduate students as though they were the lords of the manor and the graduate students were the succulent virgins whom the lords have license to plunder. That is not the point of graduate education, however much some senior faculty might wish it were so. If the policy at universities were less "This is a super-important person whom we'd like to indulge" and more "We are working here, and all this grabbiness is inappropriate," we would all be better off, and the talents of thousands of women like you, and like me, and like so many of my friends, would not go to waste.
I've lived in the tension that Castro faced and it's dispiriting. I had no options that let me go home and feel good about the outcomes available. And 20 years later, I still have no idea how to do it better..
Hecklers assume perfect world answers in our imperfect world. I'd love to trust that I could punish every evil doer based on my certainty of the crime (or impropriety). But I've been wrong and seen authority be wrong and seen the innocent punished too often to believe that it works like the movies. And that sucks because there are too many people getting away with shit that hurts the most vulnerable among us. And there are too many people being punished for what they can't control.
Not to belittle a frightening experience but what about proof and due process?
Going with that you speak truth about this sleazebag, it's obvious that he abuses the need for proof in any dispute or criminal charge.
Put it in reverse though: yuo enter a shop. You get your stuff, pay and leave. Ten days later you are fined for theft based solely on the word of the shopowner.
Doesn't really seem like good idea to have such a system, does it?
Especially not if the two sexes, the different ethnicities and colours, religions, sexual preferences and so on are granted semi-official ranking in some kind of arbitrary victim/perpetrator-scale. Before you know it, it is you who is being put on the spot by someone with a better ranking than yourself.
Take it from someone living in a nation where feminism have turned burden of proof into accusation equals guilt - due process and burden of proof is a better way even if sleaze and scum exploits it. The opposite is woke inquisitorial courts.
I am a 65 yr old woman, have been in the work world for 40+ years. As the Me Too movement showed, most of us have a similar story to tell. As the stories told here show, most of these victims are young women. The creeps don't pick 40 yr old women as their targets. They go for the vulnerable and inexperienced.
So we could hardly create a better recipe for this to happen than to have a situation in which men have access to a plethora of young women, but no fear of being fired for bad behavior. I refer of course to the university tenure system. By making it impossible to fire anyone, we have practically invited this kind of behavior. It seems to me a classic example of unintended consequences. The more we as a society push the idea that people are entitled to the job by virtue of having been hired, the more we will be searching for new rules to extricate ourselves from the consequences of this initial bad policy.
Tenure was supposed to protect teachers and professors from arbitrary firing. We believed that tenure would allow freedom of thought and ideas - and a flourishing of intellect. Instead, universities have become hives of repression, where no one dare speak an unapproved thought. Meanwhile, sexual predators have free reign of the campus under the protection of tenure.
Instead of looking for more laws and rules to fix the problem, it is time to re-examine the initial premises. Maybe people should not be entitled to their positions after all. Maybe they need to be held accountable for behavior.
I would like to add that managing HR is the most thankless and soul crushing task in any organization. I think most who enter that field do so because they truly want to help people. But they soon find out that is not anything like the reality of the job.
Young women also need to learn how to better deal with these situations. I know that some will say that is "blaming the victim". But this quote from the story: "Lamas reportedly touched the employee’s knee and moved his hand up her thigh in a car while talking to her about job prospects after at least two years of other unwelcome contact" makes me think of Maya Angelou. When people show you who they are, believe them. If the guy has been harassing you for two years, why would you get into a car with him?
This is the worst kind of guilt by association. There’s a difference between association via friendship and socializing, and association via employment. It’s not good that it was that easy to get Castro to resign but that hard to get rid of the actual predator.
For your situation, I really think unions are the only hope. Obviously, I'd prefer a world where you could complain and get him fired. However, I don't think we can fire anyone with a complaint. I don't want to engage in some incel conspiracy to the effect of "women make all this shit up," but I absolutely think there are men and women who would make exaggerate or mislead to move up in their careers.
As for the immigration comment, I don't know man. This seems like an unintended consequence of the great awokening. Ten years ago, I could have said "bigotry? yeah, fire that asshole." But today? Math is white supremacy. I just think the grounds are so diluted that I just don't trust anyone to make good decisions based on accusations of bigotry.
In the case of Castro, I think organizations need to stop bowing to public opinion or a vocal minority within their ranks. Our liberal institutions need to start saying "fuck off."
...but then there's also another point that makes this tough. I remember listening to an interview with a Smash Bros player/Youtuber who was accused of dating a 14 year old girl. Months after leaving Youtube, he said he was offered a job, but they rescinded it after finding his history. I don't know if the accusations are true. Even if they are though... like, pedophiles need jobs too, you know?
I have a lot of mixed feelings on this subject.
I am so sorry that happened to you. I think pretty much every woman on earth has at least one story like this. Here's mine (one of several), which I offer because I will use it to make a larger point after I tell it:
One summer, when I was 19, I worked in a temporary office that had been set up by an Illinois construction company to take bids for a proposed skyscraper in our city. I was the receptionist and file clerk, and the other five men in the office were managers in construction. Four of the five men were wonderful, and the fifth, who unfortunately was the most senior of all of them, well, he was not so great. He talked constantly about how young and attractive I was, and how his wife was old and ugly. He asked me not to wear my glasses (I have 20/500 vision) because I was "prettier without them." He used to loom over my desk and make little comments about my face and body all the time. The company didn't get the bid, and so the nice guys went back to Illinois while the creep and I stayed behind to close up the office--at which point I discovered how much the nice guys had protected me from the creep. The first day, the creep asked me to lunch, and I felt horribly uncomfortable. Even worse, he suggested that we go out to lunch every day for the rest of the week. That night, I told my parents how icky my day had been, and for the rest of the week they drove into the city from our outlying suburb to take me to lunch. They would arrive in the office a bit early and glare at the creep while I got ready. He got the message.
I am sharing this long story because I think the problem of sexual harassment can only be solved by a multi-pronged approach. Those lovely men in my office (and my parents) exemplify part of the solution: good people, men especially, need to speak up and make it clear that sexual harassment is wrong, wastes employees' time, and destroys the potential of workers who could contribute to the world and to the company's bottom line.
But additionally, institutions in general and universities in particular need to stop looking at harassment from the perspective of ossified senior faculty, who too often view female graduate students as though they were the lords of the manor and the graduate students were the succulent virgins whom the lords have license to plunder. That is not the point of graduate education, however much some senior faculty might wish it were so. If the policy at universities were less "This is a super-important person whom we'd like to indulge" and more "We are working here, and all this grabbiness is inappropriate," we would all be better off, and the talents of thousands of women like you, and like me, and like so many of my friends, would not go to waste.
I've lived in the tension that Castro faced and it's dispiriting. I had no options that let me go home and feel good about the outcomes available. And 20 years later, I still have no idea how to do it better..
Hecklers assume perfect world answers in our imperfect world. I'd love to trust that I could punish every evil doer based on my certainty of the crime (or impropriety). But I've been wrong and seen authority be wrong and seen the innocent punished too often to believe that it works like the movies. And that sucks because there are too many people getting away with shit that hurts the most vulnerable among us. And there are too many people being punished for what they can't control.
Thanks for articulating this so well.
Not to belittle a frightening experience but what about proof and due process?
Going with that you speak truth about this sleazebag, it's obvious that he abuses the need for proof in any dispute or criminal charge.
Put it in reverse though: yuo enter a shop. You get your stuff, pay and leave. Ten days later you are fined for theft based solely on the word of the shopowner.
Doesn't really seem like good idea to have such a system, does it?
Especially not if the two sexes, the different ethnicities and colours, religions, sexual preferences and so on are granted semi-official ranking in some kind of arbitrary victim/perpetrator-scale. Before you know it, it is you who is being put on the spot by someone with a better ranking than yourself.
Take it from someone living in a nation where feminism have turned burden of proof into accusation equals guilt - due process and burden of proof is a better way even if sleaze and scum exploits it. The opposite is woke inquisitorial courts.
I am a 65 yr old woman, have been in the work world for 40+ years. As the Me Too movement showed, most of us have a similar story to tell. As the stories told here show, most of these victims are young women. The creeps don't pick 40 yr old women as their targets. They go for the vulnerable and inexperienced.
So we could hardly create a better recipe for this to happen than to have a situation in which men have access to a plethora of young women, but no fear of being fired for bad behavior. I refer of course to the university tenure system. By making it impossible to fire anyone, we have practically invited this kind of behavior. It seems to me a classic example of unintended consequences. The more we as a society push the idea that people are entitled to the job by virtue of having been hired, the more we will be searching for new rules to extricate ourselves from the consequences of this initial bad policy.
Tenure was supposed to protect teachers and professors from arbitrary firing. We believed that tenure would allow freedom of thought and ideas - and a flourishing of intellect. Instead, universities have become hives of repression, where no one dare speak an unapproved thought. Meanwhile, sexual predators have free reign of the campus under the protection of tenure.
Instead of looking for more laws and rules to fix the problem, it is time to re-examine the initial premises. Maybe people should not be entitled to their positions after all. Maybe they need to be held accountable for behavior.
I would like to add that managing HR is the most thankless and soul crushing task in any organization. I think most who enter that field do so because they truly want to help people. But they soon find out that is not anything like the reality of the job.
Young women also need to learn how to better deal with these situations. I know that some will say that is "blaming the victim". But this quote from the story: "Lamas reportedly touched the employee’s knee and moved his hand up her thigh in a car while talking to her about job prospects after at least two years of other unwelcome contact" makes me think of Maya Angelou. When people show you who they are, believe them. If the guy has been harassing you for two years, why would you get into a car with him?