Feminism Built That!
Catherine Rampell writes in the WaPo that women on Capitol Hill are having a hard time getting one-on-one time with their bosses.
"There was an office rule that I couldn't be alone with the congressman," one anonymous staffer reported.Another: "I was not allowed to staff my boss at certain events without another male staffer present -- because I was a woman."
And another: "My former boss never took a closed-door meeting with me in the span of working for him, off and on, over a 12-year stretch. Even when I was in a position of senior leadership."
Rampell calls this behavior a "deliberate inequity." I call it prudent, vis a vis the feminism-driven witch hunts that have deposed men in workplaces, at conferences, on campus, and elsewhere -- sometimes for as little as a joke.
ICYMI: My recent New York Observer piece on sex differences and what ignoring them gets women, "Science Says 'Lean In' Is Filled With Flawed Advice, Likely to Hurt Women."
In the business world, it's been that way for decades. Some men won't even get on an elevator with a woman alone. Going on a business trip together is completely out of the question.
The same is true in universities, where a male professor would have to be a complete fool to meet one-on-one with a female student, especially if she is also a visible minority.
Soon, male students may figure out they need to do what the business men and professors have long done, and for the same reasons. For starters, this would mean not dating women who attend their own schools.
Imagine if men in general begin following these sorts of practices in their daily lives. For example, group-style dating might come into vogue for the protection it provides from false accusation. Daytime outings might be preferred to nighttime. Clubs that have video cameras covering the entire location might be seen as advantageous rather than as an intrusive invasion of privacy. Men might take cabs to a date instead of driving their own car so they're not alone in a vehicle with a woman.
To allow a relationship to progress from dating-only to intimacy, there might be entirely new services like relationship counseling engaged for the purpose of verifying consent. A pair of counselors (always two, including at least one woman) meet with a woman from time to time to establish a paper trail verifying that she is engaging consensual intimacy with a man.
Picture also a service in which a woman logs onto a website and reads a prepared text affirming her consent to sex as the system compares her voiceprint and other biometrics to prerecorded benchmarks to confirm she is not under undue stress and is telling the truth when she consents. A puff into the breathalizer confirms she is not drunk. Her pupil dilation is normal, ruling out the influence of some drugs. The system sends a message to her boyfriend confirming it is safe for him to have sex with her that evening.
Does that scenario seem far-fetched? Maybe it is, in part or whole. But, decades ago, did anyone expect the NFL to try to buy sociopolitical protection for itself by hiring a feminist as an "advisor" and forcing the players to wear pink gloves on the field?
Lastango at May 19, 2015 11:22 PM
We all need to #ShutUpAndListen, #BelieveSurvivors, and even walk across the street to make women feel safer #SchrodingersRapist and now Congressman need to mentor women, and be alone with women,
Well good! I hope more Congressman are busted for "creeping" on their female staffers.
What could possibly go wrong with that!?
jerry at May 19, 2015 11:42 PM
Lastango is right. This has been S.O.P. for generations in business. It just avoids so many problems - mistrust, temptation, accusations, awkwardness. We didn't need feminism to come along and stick a finger in our eye.
I don't think it's a form of pastryarchy. It's kind of a combination of integrity and self-preservation.
Canvasback at May 20, 2015 3:46 AM
It avoids problems but causes others; it removes natural human interaction, forcing one half to be in perpetual CYA mode. Difficult in engineering, because good engineers love to has things out "My way is better", engineers are often black and white, no shades of gray. It's either right or it's wrong, and are very often blunt in saying so.
I actually worked at a place where it took 3 or 4 false accusations of sexual harrassement after business trips before management caught on that "maybe it wasn't the guys. 4 trips, 4 different guys, same woman, guys accused, investigate, nothing there".
mer at May 20, 2015 4:48 AM
I disagree that this has been done in business for decades. Back in the 1980s, when I first had an office with a door, I never thought twice about one-on-one meetings. It didn't matter what gender the person was; if you were discussing something confidential, you closed the door.
Nowadays, of course, I would never close that door. If I had to have a confidential talk with a woman, I would reserve one of our glass-walled conference rooms.
With another guy? Much simpler. Just close the damned door already.
As Amy's title says: This is what militant feminism has created. In the old days, I am sure that some men in some companies discriminated against women. Today, thanks to feminism, all men in all companies are forced to discriminate against women.
a_random_guy at May 20, 2015 5:20 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/05/20/feminism_built.html#comment-6022451">comment from a_random_guyI also disagree that this has been done in business for decades. We often had closed-door meetings back when I worked in advertising in the mid to late 80s.
Amy Alkon at May 20, 2015 6:18 AM
Well, "decades" may be an overstatement, but it's certainly been true for about the past 15-20 years. The mid-1990s sexual harassment hysteria is when it changed. Under the guilty-until-proven-innocent standard that applies now, any male in a management or professional position today would be a fool to have a closed-door meeting with a woman, because she could then levy a sexual harassment charge that would be unrefutable.
And anyway, "office" is becoming a thing of the past for everyone except senior management. What we're getting now is wide-open, no-partitions workspaces where if you have anything to say, you will say it where everyone can hear -- because there isn't any other option. Welcome to the universal surveillence state.
Cousin Dave at May 20, 2015 6:31 AM
With another guy? Much simpler. Just close the damned door already.
Only a matter of time until some enterprising fellow decides that making an accusation and then getting money for it is a nice, simple way to pay off all those student loans he's racked up. "He came on to me" or "He made a gay slur" and "he kept it up for months and months and they did nothing about it".
Myself? I've given thought to purchasing a body camera.
I R A Darth Aggie at May 20, 2015 6:57 AM
Um, the eighties was decades ago and so was the nineties. 1980 was 35 years ago. So even if it changed in the 90's, that is still decades. Ouch. To me the 80's are only yesterday.
rsj at May 20, 2015 7:50 AM
Right. The 80's were 3 decades ago. Odd confusion there.
Mitch at May 20, 2015 8:24 AM
The comments in that article are a sign of progress in the discussion.
There is one lone sanctimonious man-hater who slings accusations and snide insinuations at male commenters for pointing out that this caution is simple prudence, and at least one commenter called her a racist and a liar by drawing the comparison between these potential false accusations of harassment and the way a white woman was able to have a black man hanged on a simple accusation.
People are finally pushing back, and in a publication like the WaPo. That is progress.
Jim at May 20, 2015 8:57 AM
The exact same thing goes for children — perhaps even more. I wouldn't be around one for even a minute without its minder present.
Kevin at May 20, 2015 9:59 AM
Gee, a feminist learns the lesson "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes"
Warhawke223 at May 20, 2015 12:01 PM
This kind of thing has reached such ridiculous extremes that I think it's time to propose re-legalizing discrimination of all kinds. By anyone except governments.
Think about it. The only bigots left these days are those who play the "race card" (or similar) to get out of the earned and deserved consequences of their own behavior. To them, society is still chock full of every kind of discrimination. Everyone else knows it isn't, and hasn't been for decades.
jdgalt at May 20, 2015 1:00 PM
Unlike Cousin Dave, I remember the guilty until proven innocent standard back into the early 1980s. As a woman officer I had to investigate two harassment complaints in 1981. The federal government standards even back then said that if a woman thought it was sexual harassment, it was. The standards were always squishy and nearly impossible to refute. It was incredibly unfair to the men and still is.
Retired Navy at May 20, 2015 2:33 PM
It's actually "Capitol Hill" rather than "Capital Hill", just to be pedantic.
The Jolly Patriarch at May 20, 2015 2:49 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/05/20/feminism_built.html#comment-6023168">comment from The Jolly PatriarchIt's actually Amy blogging late at night and her brain getting a little loosey-goosey. Will fix.
Amy Alkon at May 20, 2015 6:25 PM
Early on in my career -- one of my first real jobs -- so it would have mid-90s maybe early 90s -- I got the advice to never be alone be in closed door room alone with a woman.
The Former Banker at May 20, 2015 7:40 PM
In one the places I have worked, offices have glass doors or large glass windows in the rooms so that people can see in. If for some reason the office has no windows and a meeting is needed it is required to be done somewhere in the open where people can see you and/or the security cameras clearly can. One time I had a meeting with a colleague in the pharmacy lobby because there were no available rooms with windows and he had no on-site office. It was a very odd situation and very distracting since it was a busy place. It was just policy that employees, especially superiors, should not be in an enclosed space with members of the opposite sex. Of course, the policies and safeguards didn't prevent complaints from being filed and investigations launched. I'm not aware of any complaints being validated at my work site during the time I worked there.
BunnyGirl at May 20, 2015 11:18 PM
Right. The 80's were 3 decades ago. Odd confusion there.
Four acctually
80s
90s
00s
10s
lujlp at May 21, 2015 12:26 AM
Retired Navy (thanks for your service, BTW), I had no idea. I first encountered it in 1988. The women I worked with in the computer field back in the '80s were all adherents to some extent or another of second-wave feminism, and for the most part they walked the walk. They wanted to prove their worth by their job performance, not by playing a sex card.
Cousin Dave at May 21, 2015 9:43 AM
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