sexual misconduct

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Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

So where are we? We wrote 10 pages, and if there was a solution, I missed it.

So let's take a different tack. We know the problem, and we don't seem to have a solution to go to. What about the rest of the world? We have like 4000 members, from all over the world. Is anyone doing a better job of this? Is there anywhere in the world where this is considerably better, and how did they do it?

We have lots of travelers here, is anyplace better? I assume there are places that are worse, but how about places that are neither better or worse but just different? Different how, and maybe a combination approach could moderate this?

I've told some stories I would prefer not to even think about, others have too. I feel like it's wasted if we can't even get to suggestions for improvement.

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jennypenny
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by jennypenny »

We couldn't even agree on the nature or parameters of the problem. :(

nestbuilder
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by nestbuilder »

Apparently Iceland has been a leader in gender equity for many years now and gender pay equity is now the law for larger companies. Pay equity and other measures are relatively new, so it may take a generation or three for the shift in power dynamics to play out in terms of sexual "misconduct"/abuse/violence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/02/worl ... aders.html

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... -maternity

http://fortune.com/2017/03/09/women-ice ... ty-gender/

rref
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by rref »

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Last edited by rref on Sat Dec 16, 2017 7:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

@jp:
We couldn't even agree on the nature or parameters of the problem. :(
Yeah. Sorry about that. I jacked your thread. It was with the best intentions, but rude none the less.

I'm going to copy a post from another thread to explain my reasoning, because I am lazy.
@RJ. You sound just like the guys in my office!
That was intentional. As I clarified later, I am relatively bike friendly, for a cager. But some topics here have a tendency to get general support, having as much to do with signaling as agreement. This causes me to have an urge to play devil's advocate. Because if there is no dissenting opinion, we get an echo chamber, and nobody considers the problem from a different perspective, and the subject is not developed.

We can all agree that we SHOULD ride bikes, and that SUVs are killing the planet, but agreement with each other doesn't address the interests of those who have other priorities, nor does it lead to alternative solutions. Both of those are NECESSARY for an actual, working solution.

I am not so self centered as to believe that we are really solving the world's problems here. But we are participating in solving the world's problems in the sense that the world is constantly changing, and how that change happens is related to the conversations about the problem. Better conversations lead to better solutions. Better solutions infect interested parties, as people here come up with a different solution, and then members here talk about the interesting idea they heard about in their other forums.

For instance, above, I suggested a bikelanes utility. Not because I think someone here would start such a thing. But because a bike rider here, may share the idea on their bike rider's forum, where it may reach a bike friendly silicone valley aggressive CEO wannabe, who may look at running with it.

Or not. Maybe it dies on the vine, and we just have to go through life with a better understanding of the people who disagree with us. That would suck, I guess.

The things I said here weren't to make folks uncomfortable, though I'm sure they did. Nor to change the subject. I wrote what I wrote because this is a serious issue, worthy of serious discussion, and I have been trying to keep the conversation going, because I REALLY want this fixed.

To that end, I dredged up some stories, so we had specific things to talk about. This is a subject that is both uncomfortable and deeply subjective. By sharing my stories, I was at least hoping to limit the subjective part of the conversation.

And I will admit to being a bit manipulative, in that I tried to engage a few specific forum members beyond the general membership. Specifically, I targeted:

CS, because I usually disagree with her, and she is very vocal on gender issues, so if we get a solution, she is an excellent conduit to people most likely to be able to get action or traction on it.

You, for your media and conservative connections.

Jacob, for a great high level view of the systemic problems/potential solutions.

Saving 10 years and nest builder for just well thought out posts. I am most hopeful for a solution to come from this quarter.

And of course 7w5, for reasons outlined in earlier posts.

As always, my intentions are clear to me, but my methods resemble madness to others. My only excuse is that I consider "disagreement in support" to be primarily support, and forget that many people only see disagreement. :oops:

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jennypenny
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by jennypenny »

@RJ — I wasn’t aiming that at you at all. I was referring to the spectrum of responses from the women. Some feel only direct action (and only if the woman hasn't acted stupidly) is out of bounds. At the other end, some feel any microaggression that is unique to the male on female dynamic can be deemed sexual misconduct. If we (women) can’t agree on what constitutes a foul, how can we decide what the penalty should be or who is qualified to be the referee?

I was glad you shared. I want to understand this from a male perspective. I think it’s hard for women to grasp how 'good' men can ignore this behavior. It's also hard for men to understand the kind of vulnerability women feel in these situations. Even strong, gun-toting women. ;)

The closest male equivalent we’ve discussed on the forum might be in the thread about pre-nups. Many men seem to have strong feelings about divorce, women taking their money, and the legal preference still given to women in court. I sensed a particularly strong vulnerability when it came to relationships and money. I assume that’s from our traditional roles of men being valued for their earning potential and women being valued for their child bearing potential, but I’ll leave that to 7W5 to decipher since she’s much understanding those motives than I am.

I stopped posting in this thread because I have mixed feelings about the current climate. I'm very happy to see victims come forward and to see a shift in cultural attitudes towards this kind of thing. I really hope it sticks. That said, I'm uneasy about the way people's lives can be demolished in a matter of hours on social media. While I don't think any of the victims in this particular round have been innocent, the power of social media to 'richard jewell' someone almost instantaneously petrifies me.

Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

That said, I'm uneasy about the way people's lives can be demolished in a matter of hours on social media.
Scott Alexander wrote a nice post on this.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/02/be ... -meanness/

He has banned folks for misusing gendered pronouns in reference to transgender, and this seemed extreme to me at first, but I have come around on this issue. His rules are different from Jacob's, but are similarly well thought out.

Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

@ nest builder,
Thank you. That is exactly what I was looking for. I don't think we can depend on a top down, legislation approach to get us a working solution, but that could be my own inclinations.

I prefer to keep the distance between decisions and feedback as little as possible for the most accurate adjustments

Kind of like the drunk driving car they came up with in the 90's, where they put a small, variable delay into the steering and brakes, then put sober drivers in the car, on a controlled track. Driving is easy. Driving a coned off course, easier still. Driving with a delay between command and response is almost impossible.

The same principal applies when talking about making societal change with the sledge hammer of government. Overcorrection is not an unusual problem, it is the norm.

But I have high hopes that a more gender equal balance of power and money may help a lot.
@nestbuilder: The solution is to be a small, homogeneous population with a social democratic bend on a remote island (easy to control immigration) with a climate that isn't attractive?
All fair critiques of Iceland, but not of her suggestions.

saving-10-years
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by saving-10-years »

@RiggerJack Now I feel under pressure to say something well thought out! Well its been THE thread for me for deleting messages and deciding not to send. Often because by the time I get there I can see that what I have written won't be helpful.

I have found your personal disclosures really interesting. They, and some of @7w5's posts, have had me pause and reflect on things I did in my youth which could be construed as a mild type of sexual misconduct (although there was no intention there on my part).

I don't have quite such a colourful past as either of you do, but I do have some interesting skeletons rattling about. I worked at one time at a national level in sex education so I am aware of the prevalence of sexual misconduct affecting young people, especially those with learning difficulties. Exposure to such real life tales possibly desensitise me from complaints about sexual misconduct where the parties are operating as equals and have the option of speaking out or leaving. Many people don't have either of those options.

@CS's responses have taken me back in time. Made me recall the strong differences in opinion between branches of feminism that caused me such frustration in my youth. Perhaps its inevitable that for each generation there may be a sense of complacency and a certain battle-weariness around issues where we have fought hard and feel we have made significant progress. Younger people arriving at the scene need new challenges and to make their own progress and discoveries, raise their own questions. (I once was that younger person).

@jp reading your recent comments - after having written this post - I feel that there is plenty that the women here can and do agree on. But we've been trying to test what we each understand by this term and what we should do. If anything I have posted gives the impression that I am impatient with women (or indeed anyone) who does not stick up for themselves. Take action. Stop abuse in its tracks. Then I apologise. I do get impatient with anyone who bitches about things and does nothing (or worse bitches about things on social media and then think they _have_ done something), but I am all too aware that different women have different personalities and backgrounds, varying levels/types of sexual history, tolerance and aspirations.

I was interested in a comment that @ffj made when we were in the 'white knight' discussion phase. I understood that comment as 'I am a good guy I hang around with good guys and so I don't have the opportunity to spar verbally on this issue with others, or fight them physically if they get out of line'. It brought back to me forcefully that when I was 20 I was disgusted with a friend's husband G (she was much older than me). G saw no problem with spending time socially with someone who physically abused their wife - G knew they did this or at least knew his own wife believed they did this. G described this friend as a 'good guy'. This was c.1975. I don't think G would think this way now. But I also worry that if the good guys only stick with the good guys then how are the bandits ever going to be called to account, or even see a different model up close?

rref
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by rref »

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Last edited by rref on Sat Dec 16, 2017 7:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

7Wannabe5
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

jennypenny wrote:Many men seem to have strong feelings about divorce, women taking their money, and the legal preference still given to women in court. I sensed a particularly strong vulnerability when it came to relationships and money. I assume that’s from our traditional roles of men being valued for their earning potential and women being valued for their child bearing potential, but I’ll leave that to 7W5 to decipher since she’s much understanding those motives than I am.
Ha, on me having greater understanding. I think you are on to something here. The question being to what extent men want to be valued/validated for their earning potential alone even absent the possibility of being jacked.

In "The Power of Beauty", Nancy Friday suggested that there are a lot of men who are very open to the idea of being appreciated aesthetically by women. Women, otoh, frequently feel oppressed by constant pressure to focus on their aesthetic presentation. This sort of pressure comes from other women, perhaps even more than men. I was struck by a recent article that bubbled up in my feed which had to do with a woman outing another woman for "body-shaming" her while she was out shopping. Apparently, she loudly commented on the fact that her clothes were too tight to be attractive. I started wondering whether I would be more put out by another female making such a comment about my appearance versus a man saying something crude, lewd, but at core complimentary. It's a well known phenomena that when a man walks into a room of people, he checks out the women AND when a woman walks into a room of people she checks out the other women too. And, it is common practice for women to compliment other women on aesthetic matters when attempting to be friendly, as in "What a cute barrette!", "I love what you did with the living room!"

So, I think sometimes, when it comes to low-level harassment, it can almost be splitting the difference between aesthetics and objectification. It's hard to believe that men are acculturated towards objectification since they take and distribute pictures of their own junk way more often than women do. It's also somewhat hard to believe that women are acculturated towards aesthetic since they keep spending money at hair salons or on new clothing and then getting grumpy if man in life doesn't even notice. But, maybe it is just acculturation and we could work towards greater parity.

Since I ride on buses a good deal these days in a university community where attractive men also ride the bus, I performed mental exercise where I considered the multiple barriers to the possibility that I would ever place my hand on the thigh of a strange man on the bus. Illegality. Civility. Embarrassment. Practical Consequences. Unknown reaction/response. How strong would somebody have to be internally driven to risk such behavior? What if I had been culturally trained that it was acceptable practice with somewhat predictable outcome? What if Riggerjack double-dawg dared me to perform such an experiment for the benefit of research, and BRUTE bet a bitcoin that I wouldn't do it? OTOH, how much would I, or any other woman, pay to receive a 100% guarantee of zero possibility of every suffering offense of unwanted grope, catcall, or crude pick-up attempt in inappropriate setting? How much would I pay to never again hear my mother saying something like "You have such a cute figure, I hate to see you ruining it by eating that donut ?" or to preclude the possibility of hearing some strange young female referring to me as a "person of Walmart" due to unfortunate choice in yoga apparel?

Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

@RiggerJack Now I feel under pressure to say something well thought out! Well its been THE thread for me for deleting messages and deciding not to send. Often because by the time I get there I can see that what I have written won't be helpful.
Well, that wasn't the intent. In particular, the self editing. The "no wrong questions" concept works very well with my model of "better conversations make better answers and better answers spread" (which clearly needs a better name). Many folks have called me smart over the years, but when I try to communicate, I feel very stupid. Part of my communications problem is an inability to establish a baseline set of precepts. People coming in, and rehashing something from several pages back show where communication broke down, or may present something already said in a way that someone reading, but not necessarily writing, may pick up on when they missed the way it was originally presented.

A long way of saying that what you wrote has value, even if every point you make has already been raised and addressed, and my preference would be that you post without the self editing. More voices going over the same ground will spread the ideas better than fewer voices.

Or, at least that is the story I tell myself to justify my own lack of editing...

bryan
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by bryan »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:48 am
Since I ride on buses a good deal these days in a university community where attractive men also ride the bus, I performed mental exercise where I considered the multiple barriers to the possibility that I would ever place my hand on the thigh of a strange man on the bus. Illegality. Civility. Embarrassment. Practical Consequences. Unknown reaction/response. How strong would somebody have to be internally driven to risk such behavior? What if I had been culturally trained that it was acceptable practice with somewhat predictable outcome? What if Riggerjack double-dawg dared me to perform such an experiment for the benefit of research, and BRUTE bet a bitcoin that I wouldn't do it? OTOH, how much would I, or any other woman, pay to receive a 100% guarantee of zero possibility of every suffering offense of unwanted grope, catcall, or crude pick-up attempt in inappropriate setting? How much would I pay to never again hear my mother saying something like "You have such a cute figure, I hate to see you ruining it by eating that donut ?" or to preclude the possibility of hearing some strange young female referring to me as a "person of Walmart" due to unfortunate choice in yoga apparel?
This echoes of the market clearing behaviour/signal/costs/prices theory mentioned earlier.

Diverging off topic.. but what would a target person be doing in such a situation which might push you over the edge to make (physical/verbal/otherwise) contact? Smiling, earbuds in ear, reading a book, looking bored, gazing dreamily into the distance, leaning/open body posture, a look of shock as they notice something about you, checking out your feet/shoes, holding a token of conversation ("I love X!"), etc? During the #vanlife I noticed that if I'm just killing some time at a bar reading a book (somewhere approachable like at the bar instead of a table), there's a decent chance some person will have the confidence/curiosity to interrupt my reading :lol:. Nice though, as stranger conversation is probably more enthralling than whatever I'm reading. Similarly, if you are dancing by yourself earnestly, others will approach and dip their toes into the possibility of initiating something. Public situations e.g. bus rides seem much more costly/risky, but seems like it's a market where one could profit.

Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

@nestbuilder and rrref:
“It’s a good place to be a woman,” says Thorhallsdottir. And it is. Almost 80% of Icelandic women work. Thanks to mandatory quotas, almost half of board members of listed companies are now women, while 65% of Iceland’s university students and 41% of MPs are female.

Yet, women I met on my journey were also clear that the country has a long way to go. They still have less economic power than men – only 22% of managers are women; only 30% of experts on TV are women; and women still earn around 14% less than men. Iceland’s record on all of these fronts is better than most countries; in the UK, women’s hourly pay is 18% less than men.
From the guardian article.

I think Iceland makes an excellent example. It looks like a progressive paradise. With all the legislative changes they made, they still seems to have an equality problem. I would be very curious if they have these same cultural problems, and whether there has been any unintended consequences of these policies. But I'm not interested in going to Iceland to find out.

My interest in Iceland started and ended with their debt crisis back at the beginning of the great recession. Now I guess we have another reason to look at them.

My own experience and preferences lead me to doubt whether quotas and legislative equality will address sexual misconduct, and I think are likely to make it worse in ways. But I recognize that I have no evidence beyond my own experience to back that up. But I am very hopeful of the kind of cultural training described with the preschoolers on the playground.

So, has anyone been to Iceland? Is anyone here in Iceland now? Does anyone have a similar example or counter example?

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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by jacob »

Well, you guys keep bringing up Iceland as if it's some kind of global special case unicorn. I grew up in Denmark which sounds very similar to Iceland. Women in top political positions (president, speaker of the house, ... equivalent); pwning the majority of higher education, ... happiest nation, progressive paradise, check.

Of course, without hard data, it could mean I grew up in a [rural nerd] bubble :-P, but the fact that it took me quite a while to figure out WTH some [Americans] were going on about when they called me a sexist and made snide comments about my use of the word "businessman" or complained about my neglect of using "he or she" as the generic pronoun in the early days after publishing the ERE book might indicate what a general non-issue certain things already were or had become where I grew up, compared to the US(*), insofar they ever were issues in the first place. Or it might indicate how idiosyncratic the US trajectory really is? Or how clueless I am? Or how things in the US will look half a century from now?

(*) And talking about the US as a whole as if e.g. Alabama and California are the same thing might be a mistake on its own.

(One pertinent fact about the language battle front of the gender culture wars is that while English doesn't have an impersonal pronoun (English writers can use "one", but it's kinda forced), Danish does(*). It's interesting to note that some Danish vocations used to have gender-specific nouns, e.g. chairman and chairwoman, say, ... whereas these days, both genders uniformly use whichever used to be the most prevalent by volume. For example, nursing used to be either "sygeplejer" (M) or "sygeplejerske" (F). In my "era", the former had already been downgraded to mean either specifically someone who was a medic in the armed services or a lower level orderly in a hospital. There's now no such thing as a "sygeplejer" anymore and both genders refer to themselves as "sygeplejerske" and think nothing about it (as far as I know)).

(*) And the word is "man" which has the original etymology of referring to a generic "homo sapiens" similar to how "human" refers to human person being ... and not a hu-male. Being conversant in more than just one single language might prevent such kinds of myopic mistakes/conclusions.

Maybe some of the Danes would weigh in? Since 2000, I only have remote-sensor data from newspapers, etc. Feminism is still a thing over there (or at least feminists still exist), but it seems to take its cue from the US wrt current concerns and trends, much like other social studies ... and general public interest peaked about 50 years ago. Maybe I'm inadvertently offending some people here ... I've read a few accounts of #metoo statements in the Danish papers, but there are AFAIK no public scandals at the level of the US (save one movie company ... and that wasn't taken seriously because they're notorious for being a bunch of weirdos---news coverage lasted only 2-3 days). In any case, nobody resigned, again AFAIK.

One [general sentiment] I remember back from 1994 (when it was my time) was how unfair it was for boys to get conscripted for military service at age 18 since it meant losing 1-2 years of career trajectory (and salary growth); whereas getting pregnant (which was the opposing argument for lost careers and salary) was voluntary and quite well covered by law (full salary for 6 months, I think it was at the time, not as generous as Sweden) and anyway didn't quite compare to involuntary government-service resulting in possible injury or death. Danish girls, at the time, could volunteer for the military, but that was very rare. Boys tried to avoid it (I avoided it) but some still volunteered for various reasons, like tradition, life-experience, character-building exercise, or simply not knowing where to go next after HS ... I know quite a few guys who volunteered even if they weren't drafted. I know no girls who volunteered. [The draft system has changed [twice?] since then, first eliminated, and now trying to reinstate it because of fear of Russia. The national strategy is currently to provide experts (think Army Ranger level) for various offensive military adventures far away from the country's borders instead of traditional defensive cannon-fodder to keep the Soviets (which no longer existed at that point btw) at bay for a few hours before getting overrun to buy the rest of NATO some mobilization time as was the idea in the 1990s] Norway, AFAIK, has a far more equal-opportunity/demand way of dying for your country, converging on Israeli IDF-level equality. (Any Norwegians, please verify.)

Anyhoo... conscription matters aside, from a dating point-of-view, my Danish experience is at least 3 Wheaton levels away from both what is considered a sexual assault in the US as well as 3 Wheaton levels away from the US-rules instituted to prevent such assaults. Living in the US, I'm so glad I'm married and FI already, so I don't have to navigate this on a practical level. Insofar I grew up in an "evolved society", US sexual, gender, and dating culture seems rather stone-age to me. Insofar I grew up in a "bubble", I apologize ...

In any case, Danish dating culture in my 1990s time (or space) was far more gender balanced. Both genders took initiative (equally as far as I could tell, but I'm not swamped with data points or social studies), but connecting ("making the trade" in my model terms) was still stymied by youthful cluelessness, as courting---also in the Nordic countries---is something adults leave youngsters to figure out on their own through trial and error, unlike, say, arranged marriages in other cultures with adult or at least parental assistance. There may be other solutions still, but in Nordic culture, gender matters or mattered far far less than it currently does in the US, even if youthful ignorance guides the overall dynamics in both cases.

Riggerjack
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by Riggerjack »

Ok, it looks like the appeal to global perspective didn't work. No offense, Jacob, but I would expect you to be in the same boat as the rest of us guys with no real experience with this.

So let's try a different take. One of my favorite places comes through again:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/04/ag ... arassment/
Instead, since we’ve chosen a narrative where one side can only ever be a victim and the other can only ever be perpetrators, we’ve made it impossible for anyone to see both perspectives. Self-interested men worry only about how to avoid allegations, self-interested women worry only about how to make sure all allegations are believed, and nobody worries about how to make a system where they expect fair treatment no matter which role they find themselves in.

The solution is to treat harassment the same way we treat terrorism. It’s something that’s bad. It’s something that some groups might do more often than other groups, but this is not the Only Relevant Factor About It, and we are suspicious of people who seem more interested in stereotyping the groups involved than in making sure everyone of every group gets justice.

And once we get good evidence that someone is guilty, we have drones bomb their house. Seriously, the terrorism model has a lot going for it.
It's a bit deeper than that, but still a good read.

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jennypenny
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by jennypenny »

If the culture is truly changing and we are finally choosing to believe the accusers unless there is some credible reason not to, then yes, Trump has to be held to the same standard and has to go.

distracted_at_work
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by distracted_at_work »

jennypenny wrote:
Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:49 am
believe the accusers unless there is some credible reason not to
Pouring one out for the justice system tonight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence

7Wannabe5
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Bryan wrote:Diverging off topic.. but what would a target person be doing in such a situation which might push you over the edge to make (physical/verbal/otherwise) contact? Smiling, earbuds in ear, reading a book, looking bored, gazing dreamily into the distance, leaning/open body posture, a look of shock as they notice something about you, checking out your feet/shoes, holding a token of conversation ("I love X!"), etc? During the #vanlife I noticed that if I'm just killing some time at a bar reading a book (somewhere approachable like at the bar instead of a table), there's a decent chance some person will have the confidence/curiosity to interrupt my reading :lol:. Nice though, as stranger conversation is probably more enthralling than whatever I'm reading. Similarly, if you are dancing by yourself earnestly, others will approach and dip their toes into the possibility of initiating something. Public situations e.g. bus rides seem much more costly/risky, but seems like it's a market where one could profit.
It's very hard for me to answer this question because from my perspective the market is completely out of whack because a chubby old messy woman whose estate consists of a 40 year old camper parked on a vacant lot in a decrepit neighborhood can pick up attractive men on the internet easier than shooting fish in a barrel, so I would only approach men in a public setting if something else was at play. However, I have recently noted that I seem to be receptive to conversation if somebody tells me that I have a cool backpack, even if that somebody looks exactly like Santa Claus, and therefore the fact that maybe he is hitting on me means that maybe I really do look like Mrs. Santa Claus now (sigh.)

The market seemed much more egalitarian to me 30 years ago when I was a college student living among peers who were almost all also single and there was no internet dating. I think this might be a factor, because in a culture where families no longer involve themselves in the process; school, work, dating specific venue, or public setting would be the options for meeting/macking, and some people seem to be slower on the uptake that work is no longer an acceptable option unless you are very, very careful. I mean, if Matt Lauer had been outed simply for adulterous behavior for which he found partners on Seeking Arrangements, or even Craigslist, that would be gossip-worthy, but not likely to be directly causative of career collapse, until/unless his employers determined how it played in audience-poll. However, I would also note for the record that internet dating sites are very strict about booting off participants that cross the line of acceptable behavior based on complaints, but there is also likely some site out there on which any sort of behavior anybody found acceptable would be considered acceptable.

bryan
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Re: sexual misconduct

Post by bryan »

Thanks. I've always been curious if one could consistently breach the wall of stigma/risk in public, in a good way. I mostly figure it would be folks with 100% charm or risk-takers (or have little to stake) that try.

The office dynamic is interesting, especially, because on one hand harassment happens and it sucks. On the other a lot of people legitimately meet in the office (it's like the main source of friendships in cities for folks just out of university). Then there's the incorrect notion that it's not possible to have one without the other that has become a dumb talking point (but a source of amusing tweets)..

Locked