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

[errantember.livejournal.com]

I don't feel anything I said maligns feminism in general, simply that in some cases people acting under the umbrella of feminism have created reverse discrimination instead of equality. I don't think this makes feminism "bad', simply sometimes overzealous. And it's also unavoidable to a certain degree, because men and women will never seen fairness in exactly the same light, so each sex has to have it's own agency working to make things more equal, because in some cases men simply can't understand some women's issues, and vice-versa.

Some of the snot in my nose from last night still smells like paint.

The reason I *stopped* identifying as a feminism is because of precisely what you said. Most people who identify as feminists are working to get equal rights for women, not to end sexist oppression in general. I now identify as a humanist, because I've educated myself to see the other, far less-visible side of the coin, in which men are also oppressed. I can't approve of improving the lot of one sex at the expense of the other.