"Any woman could be a bomb waiting to explode his career and more over a "can I buy you a drink?"
That would have sounded crazy just a few months ago ..."

Fraid not. This has been true for quite a while. It is worse in some fields and less in others. It is also random. Nine times out of ten nothing may happen. But that tenth one where your career is ruined is enough to make the other nine irrelevant.

Incidentally the worst jobs for actual harassment or abuse are ones in constant downsizing. Journalism is one example. The average age for a journalist is very young. They are easy to replace so the pay sucks. If you report someone then you can be replaced on many common excuses. Since people are being let go all the time how can you prove otherwise? And there are ten new people just waiting to take your place.

Phrases that keep springing to mind in the current climate:

Chickens coming home to roost
Revolutions eventually consume their own
Cognitive Dissonance

...having clear rules allows you to bend 'em sometimes.

... and how could I forget:

Law of Unintended Consequences

See the link to the NYT story after the next blog post, because sheesh.

This is disheartening as well.

Pod on Twitter recommended this piece,

Uh, same piece, never mind.

It's Sadie Hawkins' world.

Oh Dear Lord. Put that together with the NYT Weinstein piece, and....

Look, it's not surprising to me that women experience a lot of really ugly things because of men's behavior.

But it's amazing how such powerful men could be so recklessly hurtful and think they could get away with it in an essentially lawful, capitalist and democratic nation.

...And be right about that.

Let's not equate Harvey Weinstein style predations with asking a coworker out. The behavior we're talking about with Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein et al is not simply "can I buy you a drink?"

Walking around an office or hotel room naked while a cowed subordinate tries to figure out an escape is not workplace romance, not harmless flirting.

Nor did Rachel Benedikt marry a coworker. Her husband's relationship to her at work was boss-to-subordinate. His asking her out was not an equal relationship, but a power one - even if she reciprocated the attraction, even if his power over her as her boss was a part of the attraction.

Every boss flirting with or asking out a subordinate thinks he's harmless. He's a cool, attractive guy, right? But what if the subordinate does not feel she can say "no thanks" and keep her job? Even Harvey Weinstein probably thought of himself as one of the good guys.

> Weinstein probably thought of
> himself as one of the good
> guys.

While his interior conditions are not of interest, I doubt it. I doubt being a good guy was ever much of a consideration for him at all. These exposés describe a psychopath.

The first line from the second graf of this piece is more interesting that the rest of it, because I'm not sure it's true.

Industries & sectors (to my knowledge) yet untouched by the Autumn 2017 scandals include: Academe (a biggun!), farming, hospitality, transportation, manufacturing, finance (another biggun), medicine, armed service, and law (as perpetrators).

Woe-KAY then. Per this list, we can strike ̶f̶i̶n̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ and ̶h̶o̶s̶p̶i̶t̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶.

And I'm not even through the list yet.

But it would have been better if they'd included dates of publication for accusation, and even casual links to more info.

Someone should be writing this down. A book five years from now is not enough. In the internet age, you think there'd be a searchable index on the web.

Maybe I'll go look at a Wikipedia.

...farming, hospitality, transportation, manufacturing, finance (another biggun), medicine, armed service.... ~ Crid at December 6, 2017 5:44 AM

Who knows? Farming may be rife with sexual misconduct scandals. Would the public at large hear about it? Probably not. Someone should really check the back pages of the Des Moines Register.

Crews.

Really bad morning in L.A. I can see this from the roof of my spanky sex palace: It's baaaaadd

Wrong thread for the third time in three days. Sorry

To answer your question Conan, no farming does not have a large sexual harassment issue. There is the well known illegal immigrant issue. And that brings with it a significant rape issue for those crossing the boarder. But once you get here the biggest issues are getting your last day's pay and crappy housing.

Border. Friggen Border. Darn insomnia followed by oversleeping.

All this happening lately has made me decide that I need to be much more careful at work. If I'm walking down the hall and I see a woman coming the other way, I'll avert my eyes, or take a detour down another aisle. I'm being very careful not to discuss any non-work topics with women, or express an opinion about work done by a woman. And yes, I'll try to avoid going into an office or conference room where women are present, unless it's a large enough group (at least 5-6 people). I don't go out after work with co-workers, and I'm leery about who I go to lunch with. And I'm no longer mentoring, because the possibility of having a young woman as a protege is just too risky. Two decades ago, I went through a situation, which I've recounted here before, which was unjust and seriously damaged my career. Now that the moral panic has arisen again, I just want to avoid trouble and put in my time until I can retire.

Our company just cancelled the company Christmas party. They cited cost as the reason. And that's a plausible explanation, but I can't help thinking that another, unstated motivation was the fear of lawsuits and loss of reputation stemming from anything that might happen, or anything that someone claims happened.

You can add the abortion industry to your Perv-O-Rama list, Crid.

Amy, you're a right-minded person who puts individuality before genitalia, and fairness before feeeeeelings. It's too bad that there are far too few women like you. Society is going over a precipice that most will bitterly regret later, when it is too late to go back.

In the near future, girls' eyes will widen with disbelief when told that there was a time when men and women generally liked each other and cooperated, rather than being bitter, resentful adversaries. Boys will laugh when told that men once treated women according to an attitude of chivalrous gentleness and accommodation.

Is it any wonder that the PTB are desperately trying to tamp down and stamp out the Mens' Rights and MGTOW movements in an effort to keep men from getting "woke" and banding together against women the way that women have always done against men? That won't be fair to women, but that's the price they will pay for allowing hate-mongers to conflate the meanings of "feminists" and "women".

Nonetheless, keep up the good work, and thanks for what you do.

The affection that men have always felt for women as a group is not being transformed by feminism into hatred of women -- which is what the feminists have been counting on in order to justify their continued existence. The sea-change will be manifested instead by something with which women find it impossible to manage -- indifference!

Only when they become generally indifferent to the welfare of the feminine will men ever be liberated from their suffocating roles in what has always been a Materiarchy -- the system whereby men do the work and take the risks to provide resources and security for women, and the children that women consider their own.

The real losers? Those children who still managed to be conceived and survive the gantlet of abortion to come into this topsy-turvy, single-mother-loving world.

This ad captures the zeitgeist:

https://vimeo.com/155730143

The problem is that there are no standards for normal non-sexual behavior. In some environments everyone goes around hugging everyone else. Predatory men are never rebuffed or reprimanded. It has been considered old fashioned to watch your language so people tell off color jokes and share about their sex lives with everyone (on facebook and in person).
I know lots of people who met their spouse at work. To end this option will end dating opportunities for many people. I have read about universities sending a memo saying no prof can date anyone in the university: students are off limits and so are faculty. The reasonable demand that one not date students in your own classes (power imbalance) or faculty you might supervise, was extended (by the precautionary principle no doubt) to faculty and students in other departments. In a college town, that means most everyone is off limits except the people working retail.

Yeah. My husband is torturing himself over some knee he touched 20 years ago. She gave him the eye and he backed off. I told him to knock that shit off.

The reason we avoid this, woman who works at home alone, is because once the advance is made and rebuffed, things are *at the very least* awkward forever.

If the advance is not made, you have someone mooning around someone who is likely not interested but cannot say so because the crusher keeps things in the realm of plausible deniability. And yes, being in that position for 40 hours a week is excruciating for those of us with empathy, and that's if the crusher is well meaning. If they have stalkerish tendencies and are making it into a power play, which is so often the case, then that's just evil.

Say, aren't you the gal who writes about evolutionary psychology which posits that women evolved to be picky? Isn't that what we are seeing right now is women rising up en masse and setting boundaries once and for all? WHY are you so hell bent on castigating women who are exhausted by setting the same boundaries over and over and over? What's wrong with you?

Things change. Decades ago, I worked closely with a woman in a field project. Turned out, looking at the maps when we left, I'd drive her home. Two days. I can't recall, but I'd go 70-30 we didn't even shake hands when I dropped her off.
Today, using our kids' friends as an example: When the woman visits for the first time, we shake hands. When she leaves, we hug. I don't make the first move. When she comes back for another visit, it's hugs coming and going.
Now, of course, this is at the front door, or on the porch, with other people around, but it's still far different.
And if you did this at work.....
Best to be very careful even for those who have no intent of making any kind of move.
Because you never know.

WHY are you so hell bent on castigating women who are exhausted by setting the same boundaries over and over and over? ~ Bitchlasagna at December 7, 2017 12:04 AM

Welcome to the real world, bitch. I'm tired of telling people how to pronounce my last name over and over. But new people I meet have not been instructed in the pronunciation and require what to them is new instruction, but to me is a tired repeat.

...woman who works at home alone.... ~ Bitchlasagna at December 7, 2017 12:04 AM

Because people who work at home now never have any interactions with other people, have never had any other job, and couldn't possibly have any insight into human behavior.

"And yes, being in that position for 40 hours a week is excruciating for those of us with empathy..."

Empathy: That word does not mean what you think it means.

"The reason we avoid this, woman who works at home alone,..."

OooOOOoo! Another snark. Hey, lemme ask you somethings:

Ever been to Streisand's house on Brando's arm?
Ever been to Elmore Leonard's house?
Have you been on TV - on purpose -- to discuss issues of the day?
Aw, heck, let's go back - ever have people line up around the block to hear what you have to say...
...yet be discreet enough to be trusted by a number of public figures?

I bet not, keyboard warrior!

For you haven't noticed that our hostess is and has been shapely enough to have to deal with the things that have angered you. For longer, I bet.

But you're acting like this here is all she's ever done. Nope. At least read back in the blog. Some of the regulars have ironclad points to make, real information to impart, and they have done so. The repartée is often better than the initial post.

"being in that position for 40 hours a week is excruciating for those of us with empathy"

And anyone who doesn't take on that mantle of needless suffering simply isn't qualified to live on my planet?

As trolls go, you're not very good.

In some environments everyone goes around hugging everyone else.
_____________________________________

I consider that an example of American pretentiousness. Maybe it's different in Italian or South American communities - I wouldn't know. All I know is, I don't like it when WOMEN I don't know well try to do it.

I wouldn't be too surprised if, pretty soon, NO two people could meet in private. Everything will have to take place at a restaurant or in a board room.

Why? Example: the scandal of Stan Rosenberg's husband, Bryon Hefner, who has been accused by four men of harassment and assault. (SR is the President of the Massachusetts Senate.)

Kevin Cullen had a good column on it - you have to subscribe to read it, sorry to say.

"Stan Rosenberg should step down as Senate leader, not just temporarily but for good, and the Senate should have absolutely nothing to do with the investigation."

Can't find a hard copy right now - I suspect someone stole it from the library - but I remember that one point was that, even though SR himself is not being accused of any wrongdoing, there's just too much margin for political error and manipulation if he remains married to someone with such serious accusations against him. (Kevin Cullen LIKES Rosenberg's political record, IIRC, so it's not as though he was trying to kick him out.)

More details:

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1920&bih=937&tbm=nws&ei=A6MpWt3zBouijwTAmo-4Bw&q=Bryon+Hefner&oq=Bryon+Hefner&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0l5.14000.14000.0.14393.1.1.0.0.0.0.97.97.1.1.0....0...1c..64.psy-ab..0.1.96....0.Q3YnOVsRV7o

Bitchlasagna "women rising up en masse and setting boundaries once and for all" well, that is fine for objecting to Matt Lauer telling women to get undressed in his office ("telling"), but some of the statements about men say that no flirting, no dating, no looking at work, and some of us pointed out that lots of people do find partners at work. The demand that men never flirt leads to the extinction of the human race, because few women take the initiative (which is simply the shoe on the other foot, by the way).

Extinction of the human race?

I'll worry about that when the global population growth goes into reverse. Even WWII didn't accomplish that.

In the meantime, conservative Ross Douthat is grudgingly(?) acknowledging, somewhat, that if the birth rate is dropping, the economy deserves plenty of blame. (In the past, he wouldn't talk about that - as if women who don't want to raise kids in poverty should be having kids anyway.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/opinion/sunday/the-sterile-society.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fross-douthat&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

Quote:

"...The cascade of revelations about powerful men is a continuation of this mitigation and correction process. But so far the process has not substituted successful marriages for failing ones, healthy relationships for exploitative ones, new courtship scripts for the ones torn up 50 years ago. Instead as Weinsteinian or Polanskian excesses have been corrected, we’ve increased singlehood, sterility and loneliness. We’ve achieved the goal of fewer divorces by having many fewer marriages. We’ve reduced promiscuity by substituting smartphones and pornography. We’ve leveled off out-of-wedlock births by entering into a major baby bust.

"Part of the problem is economic: Everything from student debt to wage stagnation to child-rearing costs has eroded the substructure of the family, and policymakers have been pathetically slow to respond. Last week’s struggle to get the allegedly pro-family Republican Party to include help for parents in its tax reform is a frustrating illustration of the larger problem..."

One commentator said:

SC TX December 3, 2017
"People are too broke, desperate, buried by debt to mate and court.

"So porn fills in (and yes it's messing people up).

"My hub and I make over 6 figures and raising our 2 kids is a hustle. Now we are going to get hit with a tax INCREASE??"

Can't find a hard copy right now
__________________________________________

Found it. It was in the Dec. 5th Boston Globe, starting on page B1.

Excerpts:

"...By his own reasoning, Rosenberg should resign his leadership permanently or there is a chance that those with incriminating information against Hefner won't come forward..."

"...Stan Rosenberg's husband allegedly exploited his spouse's position, believing he could get away with groping and forcing himself on men who needed Rosenberg's support for issues they care about. Beyond being wrong, it put the alleged victims in the position of not wanting to report Hefner's behavior lest it hurt Rosenberg, their careers, or the issues they care about. And it raises serious questions about the way the Senate conducts its business.

"Some of the victims are reluctant to cooperate with any investigation that has anything to do with the Senate, and I don't blame them..."

Last paragraphs:

"Presumably, many of the senators who refused to say Rosenberg should step down did so not just because they like him as a person and a leader, but because they wouldn't want to have their own political careers diminished or even ruined because of inappropriate behavior by a spouse or partner.

"Fair enough.

"But guess what: This isn't about them. It's about the people who were victimized."

"But guess what: This isn't about them. It's about the people who were victimized."

That would be the victims who refuse to cooperate with an investigation because they care more about the perks they got for keeping quiet than any future victims?

You missed the part where Cullen said: "the Senate should have absolutely nothing to do with the investigation."

Quote:

"The Senate is a powerful institution, and institutions instinctively protect their power, not individuals harmed or maligned by the misuse of that power.

"Does anyone think it would have been a good idea for the Archdiocese of Boston to decide who got to investigate claims that its priests raped and molested children?

"Does anyone think it would have been appropriate for the FBI to decide the terms of reference for the investigation into its enabling of the South Boston gangster Whitey Bulger?

"What makes the Massachusetts Senate any different?

"In his statement announcing his temporary relinquishing of power, Rosenberg acknowledged he was doing so because it is reasonable to assume some might fear political retaliation if they cooperate with the investigation. But if they had that fear before, it won't go away if they know that Rosenberg is going to eventually return to power."

The bottom line, of course, is that BEFORE the alleged victims can be asked to cooperate, "Stan Rosenberg should step down as Senate leader, not just temporarily but for good, and the Senate should have absolutely nothing to do with the investigation."