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

[spottedvasa.livejournal.com]

A feminist is someone who supports equal rights for women. I am not going to malign feminism in general because the road to putting equality in action has proven uneven and men have sometimes been discriminated against. So, as a feminist, I will say a slightly altered version.

In some cases society (individuals, the law, the workplace, as it applies) has gone too far in its pursuit of equal rights for the sexes, and I am willing to relinquish in some cases hard-earned power because having it makes things unequal.

[adam rice (from livejournal.com)]

I'm no expert on employment law, but it strikes me that this might be better interpreted as a misapplication of reasonable rules than regular enforcement of unreasonable rules. In other words, an HR person going off half-cocked.

[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.

[greendreams.livejournal.com]

I have a simple rule: co-workers and students are NOT friends.

I don't really like it, but I made the rule to protect my family and lifestyle.

A presenter at a workshop recently commented how we now have a choice between accepting total honesty from every person or completely living in fear.

There is no way to have "privacy." I actually carry a camera with me everywhere so I can have my own picture of what happened just in case I ever need one.

[terriblelynne.livejournal.com]

I'm totally down with you on this one. It's a rare, RARE occasion when I exchange anything other than work-related information and very light niceties to coworkers, and unless I already know them from some aspect of my personal life, they get to know NOTHING about mine. I get my social interaction needs met in other ways, and my life is otherwise none of their damn business.

[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.

[errantember.livejournal.com]

I should probably be more specific, too. What I think shouldn't have happened here is for someone to get fired because of something (potentially) sexist they said outside work to a coworker. Unless it was some kind of realistic physical threat, which it almost certainly wasn't, the most that should have happened is a discussion with HR about how someone was feeling uncomfortable. The fact both 1) that's it was even possible for this to happen and 2) that it happened the way it did is a *direct* result of feminist efforts to combat sexist in the workplace.

The question of how to handle interaction between the sexes in the workplace is definitely an important and difficult question. To me the easiest answer is for everyone to be mature enough to discuss their issues and own their feelings, with HR as a backup if something can't get resolved. Obviously the society we live in doesn't teach people that kind of maturity. The way that I see it now, though, is that men have to walk on eggshells in any interaction with women or they could get summarily dismissed. This isn't even remotely fair or reasonable.

As far as interactions at work go, it's kind of funny. I *used* to be out to everyone at work, but now I'm not. And now I definitely keep a firewall between my outside life and my work life, which is why I don't use my name on my LJ and rarely post identifiable pictures of myself there.

[bouncyone.livejournal.com]

This is probably one of those cases where a small percentage of a group are spoiling it for the rest. =/