Discussion for article #222586
You can see her thong. Just sayin’.
I would like at ask a question here. I am a 60 something woman who never experienced an unwanted sexual situation during college, does that mean what I think it does, well anyway it is true that the “Madison Ave” image has haunted us our entire lives. I have fought it over many years while raising our children No Barbies and No guns pretty much were iron clad rules.
Anyway my question is, is there any room in this discussion for some concern or compassion for the considerate male who would somehow get caught in the crossfire of this discussion? What about the young man who would wrongly be painted with that black brush by a very dysfunctional female, and then have to carry the baggage and trauma then? My husband who was a professor in a nursing program and at the time the majority of students were women was accused of sexual harassment. The case went through the lawyers, depositions and a pretty public process through other faculty. The college settled rather than allow the case to go to court, leaving a black cloud of ??guilty?? over him. In later months, years it was found that the woman had other situations like this, and also that this young women’s ideas were actually encouraged, if not downright fostered by other female faculty with their own anger/dysfunctional issues. That has been probably 20 years ago and to this day my husband still carries the scars of this unfounded accusation and what he felt like was a betrayal of the college for their settlement.
I know that is a long winded approach, but I have a son and grandson who are good people and who have not been involved in aggressive and inappropriate sexual behavior but who because of the behavior of others could get hit at any moment by a stray bullet or accusation. How do we solve the obvious problem of male bias and inappropriate perceptions without damaging those who are not inclined that way?
A second question is how do we emphasize and teach that the girl/woman needs to be responsible for her behavior and choices, that she cannot and should not put herself in situations that could have the worst outcome. It may not be fair but maybe they can’t try and drink the guys under the table and be absolutely safe. It is like the lesson you teach children at the beach, never turn your back on the ocean, because there is always the potential for a rogue wave to take you down, enjoy the beach but always be cautious. It seems now a days that to try and make that point with women is to be accused of justifying bad male behavior.
Is there a middle ground that can be addressed or has the game been permanently rigged against both sides?
Hmm. Lots to think about here (excuse me, but perhaps because the first half was a bit disjointed and disconnected from the last portion of the article…).
As a woman trying to make it in a male dominated world, i don’t necessarily feel overtly discriminated against, although there are the guys who go out to lunch together and never ask me, the managers who have great relationships with the clients because they go to hockey or basketball games together or play golf together, and ugh, the worst is all that fantasy football talk i hear in the hallways. Comparing cell phones, that’s always annoying too.
But i feel i’m fairly close to where i should be in my career because i got to where i am by working hard, paying my dues, and not relying on being a skinny bean pole with a low cut blouse. There is definitely a confidence gap, and i found the linked article to be much more relatable and focused that this one was (again, my apologies for the criticism because I realize it is already difficult enough to put yourself out there with an article like this one.)
What started out as a quasi on topic rant about sexual harassment and sexual assault on campuses devolved quickly into an all around feminist complaint. Some good points were made above so I’ll skip them and just say that if women are tired of being treated like sex objects or being sexually harassed, perhaps it might help if they pick up the slack in the mating process. Risk rejection, make the approach, ask men out, pay for the dating process, make the first move, and if it becomes serious enough for marriage, women can perhaps spend 1/4 of their annual salary on an engagement ring for her guy. Otherwise I guess you’ll just have to make yourself skinny and attractive and wait until a man takes the bait and does all the work like it’s always been. And perhaps that man will be clumsy about it, perhaps you’re not interested but he can’t read teh signals and charges in anyway, perhaps he’ll do it at an inappropriate time or place. That’s just the price you pay as long as your game is to wait and look good enough for ‘Mr Right’ to make the approach.
As far as the confidence thing…of course men project more confidence, they have to, women typically aren’t attracted to men without it. So even if you don’t have it, if you’re a man you have to at least fake it until you make it or you’re just not dating material. It’s still incumbent on a man to cross the room, approach the woman you don’t know or barely know and make the move, risk rejections and if rejected, somehow maintain that confidence enough to do it again with someone else.
And yet…
One thing about being old is that I get to see my viewpoint change over time. And although I share some of Ms. Kelly’s cynicism about how things are in the “real world,” I believe we can and should keep trying on this stuff.
Strategy and tactics are two different animals. Sure, there are tactics that “work” for staying above water and getting ahead, and we’ll continue to teach them to our daughters (and sons) as long as they need them. And yeah, we’ll talk about diets and rigged systems over cocktails–sometimes we’ll complain about the fact that they still exist, and sometimes we’ll talk about how we ourselves can use them better.
But overall, we can focus on long-term strategies, like this new legislation and transparency, that will change “the water” for our daughters and granddaughters, sons and grandsons. Cynicism is something that we have–but it is important to remember that cynicism comes from having bad experiences. The next generation doesn’t have to have as many bad experiences around this stuff as we did, and they won’t need to be as cynical.
It will take more generations that ours to change things. But be of good cheer, Ms. Kelly–I’m guessing you’re younger than I am, and my daughter is younger than you are. It will happen if we make it so.
I hate it when a topic is posed as an either/or question. Just lazy writing reflecting lazy thinking. Of course there are incremental things that need to be done including girls and women being expected to take responsibility for choices that in this culture invite, or seem to invite, disaster. And of course there are institutional and structural problems that need to be continually challenged and hopefully, over time, changed. That said, I’m an old lady now, a somewhat battle-scarred veteran of second-wave activism, and I join in deploring the current practice of altered photographs. But a law against it? A new bureaucracy to police the law? That’s where we want to go with this to be taken seriously? Strategy and tactics indeed.