Jaysus...I do love the mansplaining going on here...D'oh!

 maryte wrote: 

 maryte wrote: 

 islander wrote: 
Separated at birth, only I'm the loud one.

 maryte wrote: 
After Scott's statement, I was wondering if I might be a woman. Now I'm wondering if I might be Mary.

 meower wrote: 
Up until now, I was just commenting on the title of the link that you posted and the portion of what you posted.

Now I went and read your article and the only extra that I got from reading it is that it is all the fault of white men.  I guess that is what you want to talk about, only.

I was trying to start a discussion on what was once normal behaviour in the workplace and how it may have changed and why into what it is today.  Nothing more.  Things like, is this problem the same as always or has it become worse.  Your article does not address that.  Just goes on about white men being monsters.

Hollywood, its the same as it ever was.  For anyone to be shocked by what happens in the entertainment industry is shockingly naive to this ancient old white man.  The modern business workplace is another story and comparing the two just prevents any rational discussions from beginning.

If you want to talk about the modern workplace, you need to also talk about HR.  The people who do the hiring and firing and disciplining.  The creation of HR departments is a direct result of the 1975 establishment of the term sexual harassment.   They have just as much of an impact on this, maybe even more.  The establishment of formal HR departments was supposed to prevent or mitigate sexual harassment and gender inequities.  But never mind something meaningful.  Go back to its all the white men's fault.  Hope it makes you feel good.

Edit for extra credit points ... For those of you who have been to many different workplaces over the years, have you ever noticed that in some of them, the women tend to all have similar appearances ?  Ever give it more than a passing thought ?  Well if you have noticed, did you ever think that it was because of who is doing the hiring, that they have a personal preference for a certain type or appearance of a woman ?  Its not right, but it is what happens and also goes a long way to determining the culture that exists in a particular workplace ...

 kurtster wrote:

 

To be clear, none of this has to do with the article that I posted.

 

 kurtster wrote: 
My mother and her sisters were forced to leave the workforce by their employers when their pregnancies started to show.

My Aunt Agnes hid her marital status in order to keep her job.

1940s and 50s.

 kurtster wrote: 
Sure. Of course. The difference is your behavior today, in this subject alone, indicates you stopped questioning anything. Once you got a handle on how to get along, you stopped checking yourself to see if things kept changing. Here's a news flash, Kurt: everything you were taught is always wrong. Takes about 5 years, then you better re-evaluate it. Even how you handle the golden rule mandate will change. Because your idea of how you'd like others to treat you changes along with everything else.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Pretty self righteous there. 

Like I said, coming of age then was most difficult.  Coming of age and getting things right is difficult anytime, but try doing it when everything you were taught is suddenly wrong.  Yeah, dealing with the changes and a conscience and awareness of things like the golden rule only made things more difficult.  You question everything, including things like the golden rule.  To say that you didn't would be lying.  I guess you really had to be there for this one.  Kinda like growing up without having to deal the draft.  There is a huge difference between having a draft card and having one when the draft is actually happening.  But you wouldn't know the difference unless you actually had to deal with the active draft.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
I'm married to a woman who was a licensed general contractor in the State of California, no easy feat.  She moved here and started her own painting / remodeling business and suffered through the things you mentioned.  It is still that way.  Its about stereotypes just as much as anything else.  I don't have any answers, but refusing to look at things that happened before accurately doesn't help move us along either.  The first step in solving a problem is defining it ...

 kurtster wrote: 
So you abandoned the manners your mother taught you in order to appease some other person's indignation? Doesn't sound like the Kurtster who usually posts here.
  
Don't get me wrong; lots of what our parents taught us needs to be reexamined. But if it's a choice between being a jerk or not, that reexamination should probably come down on the side of "the golden rule."

 meower wrote: 
To be clear, its not an idolized time in my life.  Its a point of reference, only, as far as I am using it.  I absolutely know that there were many women who were not allowed by their husbands to work.  They were kept barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove.  Its not something that I ever approved of at any time or at any level.  The way you appeared to present it was taken as there were legal obstacles preventing women from working.  You offered no clarification or context to such a broad brushed assertion.  I was asking for clarification.

Trust me, the 50's (and before) were a very structured and limiting time for everyone, not just women.  The 60's were about breaking these limits and what has followed since then is the readjustment, which is what we are apparently speaking about now.

Sexual harassment has been around forever.  The ways it manifests itself are pretty much unchanged as well.  The ways that we deal with it are changing.  We must make sure that it is resolved in a sane and lasting way.  I've followed this thread but pretty much stayed out of it because I have some thoughts that I would like to discuss on the subject, but fear that they will be taken 180°'s from the way I present them.  And so far that seems to be the case.

Just one more thing about being raised in the 50's as a child and coming of age in the 60's as a man.  It was profoundly difficult understanding and adjusting to things that you were taught as proper and considerate like opening doors for women and standing up to give a women your seat suddenly becoming sexist, demeaning and insulting, and being considered as harassment to women.  Being called names for opening a door for a woman.  At the very least it was confusing and in many cases harmful in understanding how to get along with the opposite sex.  You didn't know who held what beliefs.  So it became easier to walk through a door and let it slam shut behind you in a woman's face than to hold it open, like you would for anyone, man or woman.  It made us ruder as a society and even more confused than before.  Make of it what you will.  This has little bearing on the subject at hand.  Just wanted you to know that the 50's and 60's were not easy peasy, cut and dry for men only like you seem to think.  The sexual revolution of the 60's had profound effects on both sexes.  When you only have to deal with the results instead of living through it as well, thoughts on the subject at hand may be very different.  The world was never perfect, and I have never pretended it was nor pretend that it ever will be or for that matter, can be.  All's I can hope for is to make it better, fully realizing that better is a subjective term.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
That's exactly what I thought when I read it. And I knew my response would be angry, and I'm making an effort to not go that way these days (with varying degrees of success).

 kurtster wrote: 
We don't even need to travel back in time to the 50s. "Allowed to work," if we understand that to mean "...in the job they desire," meant many military jobs, legally mandated. In a more practical everyday sense, we still look sideways at women in building trades, for one example (because it's still unusual, at least around here)(and you can bet they're subjected to a lot of shit because of their gender). Add in the taboo meower discusses where if a mother held down a job outside the home, it brought shame on the father in many cases. Your challenge of her statement just showed a belligerent refusal to recognize the single most significant social reality America has been battling in our lifetimes. I know you knew all this. You can't not know it. 

 kurtster wrote:

 
picking my jaw up from off of the floor.

 

So, my statement was very serious in terms of the fact that women were being sexually harassed at work during the period of time that you idolize. The part about being allowed to work was somewhat sarcastic with the understanding that most people know that during the 50's and 60's many women were not "allowed" to work outside of their homes by their husbands (I grew up on a block of 10 families, 7 of whom had stay at home moms, at LEAST 4 of whom wanted to work but were not allowed to by their husbands and church.) Sarcastic also in (and again, I thought that most people knew this,) that when women were allowed to work, they were not afforded the opportunities for employment that men were.  Most people who idolize the time period in the way that you do do so BECAUSE women were home, and thus supposedly able, to provide the family that you believe existed back then.

To be clear, single moms and women who were mom's in poor families were always working (in low pay/menial jobs.) But I don't think that you refer to those families when you talk about the idolized time of your youth.

 

 

 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Who's being judgmental besides you here ?

Its not a rhetorical question.  Its a serious question.  I took her statement as a serious one at face value.  I'll let meower answer before I comment further.

 kurtster wrote: 
You say this with that jerky attitude of someone who just knows he's right. Right now, I imagine any women reading are thinking "holy fuck are you fucking kidding me?"

 meower wrote: 
Women who were allowed to work ... that is a very strange statement, at least to me.  Please tell me just when and why women were not allowed to work in this country.

 meower wrote:
I want to be at peace, and to leave others in peace.

That's often interpreted as left alone. Fine, I guess. But the goal is peace, not alone.