You may want to consider hanging out with a different crowd...

Also, this is not "hanging out", this is the workplace. Different standards should apply. Bullying and intimidation in the workplace is unacceptable for any reason, and in this case it's both bullying and sexism.

Yes, I know this is how certain groups of men behave. It also happens to be the same men who's jobs are in danger of permanently disappearing, and this is exactly one of the main reasons nobody gives a shit.

They must find something to tease you about, whether it's being "gay" , your nationality or just the football team you follow.

Unfortunately in this case in the absence of anything else they chose to pick up on her being a woman.

Think about your list of things to joke about. If you're not a straight, masculine, white, English man then they joke about whatever makes you different. Which means sexist, homophobic or racist jokes. If you are a straight, masculine, white, English man, then, ha, ha, you like Manchester United. It's not ha, ha, your mum's got cancer, or ha, ha, you lost your wife in a car accident. No, hurtful jokes only get made to people who are different. People who are like the majority get made fun off for having different taste with regards being a sports fan.

Just because it's a tradition, and they don't mean it, doesn't mean it's okay.

You'd also probably get made fun of more for being say Irish or Scottish than for being black.

Whether or not it's "okay" it is not something you could reasonably expect to be changed for one person.

I would think that really her employer should have managed her expectations better.

Calling someone who is gay "gay" is generally not a problem. (Depending on context it obviously can be, but that's then more dependent on the context, not the word.)

The implication of calling someone who isn't "gay" is that being gay is somehow bad or something to be offended about. That is as clear a homophobic statement as there can be.

It is homophobic, by the way, even if the intent of the speaker isn't there.

The way I've always thought of the word "gay" being used in that way was not so much that it was bad to be gay (as in the sexuality) so much, but that you are associating the person with certain stereotypical gay traits such as effeminacy which would be somewhat insulting to a stereotypical macho construction worker.

The difficulty is when you put people not used to that environment into it, the real issue is a conflict in expectations rather than the exact language used.

And you may want to consider actually being more truthful about what you and your pals do do when you hang around.

(Not to mention the irony of 5 lines below, in your same comment, using language like "gives a shit").

>Also, this is not "hanging out", this is the workplace. Different standards should apply.

Only for puritan cultures, that hold a clear distinction between work and normal life/play.

>Yes, I know this is how certain groups of men behave. It also happens to be the same men who's jobs are in danger of permanently disappearing, and this is exactly one of the main reasons nobody gives a shit.

This sounds like a reason to actually "give a shit".

Not sure how you justify yourself, morally, to care (or pretend to care) about "sexism" and "male jokes" while at the same time "not giving a shit" about people being forced into unemployment.

And no, I truthfully don't hang out with such scum.

You seem to have a very twisted idea of what normal, civilized male behavior is.

Yes, it's "not giving a shit" about people forced into unemployment, and calling other people "scum" and "neanderthals" (after an extinct race of people -- might as well go full on and use the other n... word).

Swearing, holier-than-thou, casually racist remarks for whole classes of people (as if construction workers described in the article are "sexist and homophobic neanderthals" for making some comments between them in jest as 99.9% of the male population does, and one should "not give a shit" about them).

Way to prove your superior, non-sexist, caring and sensitive "civilized male behavior".

Secondly, there's the fact that these jokes single her out. She's the only one getting sexual and sexist jokes, so that makes her a special target. If it were all those men making constant gay and sissy jokes to a gay man, you wouldn't think twice about calling it bullying. Hazing becomes bullying if one person gets singled out.

Bullying with a sexual component is straight up sexual harassment. Maybe it isn't meant that way, but that's exactly what it is. A lot of bullying exists because dumb people don't think about what they are doing. "It's just a joke," they say. But it's not. It's the same joke, every day, from everyone. This is exactly the kind of situation where an employer has to step in and tell everyone to grow up and leave it at home. And when I say they have to, I mean it's the law, and they're going to get sued.

Also, the less direct sexism the writer faces show that she is not being treated like the men. The assumption that she is lost or trespassing because she is a lone woman on a building site is pretty sexist. Sure, women working on building sites are rare, but so are women getting lost on building sites. The whole asking if she was "fit" e-mail conversation was cringe inducing - and completely not how a man would be treated.

Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other.

Not that the men on that site were necessarily going to rape the engineer, but it was certainly orders of magnitude more likely than them raping each other.

For the record I understand your point and you might be right, she may well be being accepted, but I don't think it's really reasonable that she should just feel OK with it.

EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant.

Women do not typically fear sexual violence from men either. Any woman I've ever asked "Do you really live in constant fear from rape as the internet activists suggest" has answered with "Not really, unless I'm going down a dark alley alone at night it doesn't really cross my mind"

But y'know, going down a dark alley alone at night, I'm pretty damn on guard myself and I'm a guy.

For the record: I have always felt americans (and anglosaxons in general) are orders of magnitude more afraid of the world than any other people I've ever spoken to. Men and women alike.

EDIT TO YOUR EDIT: > EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant.

Ideal or not, hazing and bullying has worked for countless millennia to distinguish those you can rely on in a tight spot from those you cannot. The more dangerous the circumstances, the harder becoming accepted by a group seems to be. It's just how humans are.

You should qualify that by where you live. There are dangerous places and there are safer places. America is a bit more dangerous in many places than Europe.

I wouldn't let my wife walk alone at any time in India these days but I have no problem with her walking alone in Beijing in the middle of the night.

The world is vast.

I'd be surprised if the most violent places and times in the US were really that different to the most violent places and times in Europe. However, what I suspect is different is where and when violence is likely to occur.

You're an intelligent guy, surely you realise that this can be used to justify any number of barbaric, animalistic behaviours. I could make up a list of lurid things society should let me do to you and your family by this logic, but like I said, you seem clever enough to imagine them yourself.

As far as I'm concerned this kind of dawkins-style biological reductionism represents the abandonment of enlightenment thinking and I will not stand for it. I am not an ape, and neither are you.

Rather than the typical corporate america style "rat race" where everyone is very polite but happy to stab each other in the back for their own aims.

The people who are responsible for hazing? --The ones that go at it with the most gusto? I've learned that those are the ones you should trust the least.

There is absolutely nothing respectable about hazing.

Would it be fair to rephrase this as "Americans and citizens of the UK and its former dominions have an expectation of public order that many other people do not, and are troubled when the expectation is not met."?

For the record, I (an American) have been held up at gunpoint. It did not keep me from being out and about late at night, though it made me more aware of what was around me. What should I have done to reduce my fear by an order of magnitude?

So has being in constant danger of being eaten by a large carnivore, why don't you submit yourself to that then?

    Just replace all the sexist jokes with gay jokes or sissy 
    jokes

What kind of fucking zoo do you work at?

In blue-collar workplaces constant ribbing and bullshitting is usually a way of keeping low stress and friendly.

To the rest of us, consider it a form of play.

All the jokes and insults you listed are extremely problematic and most certainly also deserve our attention (though that is most certainly not a valid criticism of this article, no single article has the obligation to mention every problem).

I think you mean "men physically smaller than themselves". This is how morons, not men, organise themselves.