My friend got canned for comments made outside work.

[errantember]

It's worth noting this entire thread was supposed to be a comment on troyisburning's LJ. I can only blame pumpkin inhalation.

I agree that there should be a reasonable recourse for anyone who feels uncomfortable at work because of someone else's behavior, but the current state of affairs regarding sexual harassment is definitely disproportionately unfair to men. Much the same as the damage that can be done to someone's reputation by a false accusation of rape, women in a corporate environment can do almost any amount of damage to someone's career an livelihood, up to an including getting them fired and making it very hard for them to find another job. Troy's experience here is an uncomfortably real-world example. The fact that this environment exists is directly the responsibility of feminists' efforts to deal with the *other* inequality of institutionalized sexism in the workplace.

Until we work to rectify *all* inequalities for *both* sexes, there will be good reason for complaint. In most cases I agree with feminism's efforts to earn equality for women, but in circumstances where all it's done is reverse the direction of discrimination, it needs to be resisted, like any other form of oppression. I need to hear people who identify as feminists say "in some cases we have gone to far, and we will willing relinquish in some cases hard-earned power because having it makes things unequal."

Comments

[austingoddess.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree, for a couple of reasons:
1) Sexual harassment is not just to protect women from men - that *would* be unequal. It goes all ways. Women get fired for this, too. It's just much more prevalent for men to harass women sexually. Women talk allll sorts of shit about men when they aren't around, and I wouldn't begrudge a man doing the same with other men for that reason. (Though with us, it's information sharing much more than anything else, making sure that nobody in our tribe gets unnecessarily stuck with bad genetic material, I imagine. I can't think of the last time anyone told a stupid man joke, for instance.) I agree that education is the better long-term solution to stopping harassment, but I'm OK with a short-term solution that brings attention to the problem by hitting the offenders where it hurts: their wallet. If a woman lies to get someone fired, she should be sued for libel. Same as a woman falsely crying rape goes to jail for filing a false police report.
2) If your friend was talking smack outside of work, unless it was at a work-related party or with a group of all-coworkers, I don't see how his bosses could consider that as evidence. Work policies aren't supposed to police people outside the workplace, nor should they. If a KKK member goes burning crosses at night in black people's front yards, but is polite and respectful-acting towards them in the workplace and does not in any way interfere with their work, let him. *I* wouldn't chum to him if I knew that was the case, but I'd be polite. And if it took work policies to make sure that he was polite in the workplace, I'm OK with that.

I have no idea what your friend's situation is. I do know what CS's situation is, being afraid to be genderqueer in the workplace, even at a place that is very friendly towards that in their policies. It only takes one co-irker saying some occasional dumb shit to really fuck with your work.