truthtacular

Awesome site!

Do you make sex jokes at work?

I dunno if you're right about the difference between men and women. I do know that there's a difference between a professional and a non-professional environment. If you're talking about sexy stuff in a professional environment where you don't really know all the people within earshot, at the very least you're exhibiting some fairly poor judgment. And, at worst, you might be making some of the strangers around you very uncomfortable.

I guess I just disagree with your interpretation of Richards' response. If you were made to feel that horrible chill while you were sitting in a professional space, if you thought about it and realized that the ones making you feel so uncomfortable really shouldn't behave that way in this environment, would you not have the right to speak up for yourself and say, "Hey, this is inappropriate, it's wrong, and it's not fair for these people to be making this space uncomfortable in this way?"

Maybe we just have to agree to disagree. That said, I'm sorry you got picked on, stranger. Fucking sucks, doesn't it? That shit's toxic, and it fucks with your head for a very long time. I am sending you an imaginary virtual hug.

I second rmrfrmrf here. People are acting like it's easy or fun to be the one to stand up and try to do what's right. It isn't easy or fun and part of the reason people don't do it is that when you stand up, you become a nice visible target.

Yeah... these trolls (and yes, I am name calling, but look through this thread and what it has attracted...what else would you call them?) can't be dissuaded. These Men's Rights guys are frightening. I know you meant well with your original comment, but if you read it again, I think you might see how some parts of it seem to make it sound like you might be interested in joining their little club. I know you're not. You know you're not. They, however, are not yet convinced. They think they can talk you over to their side.

I see value in both this comment and the one it answers. I'm just kind of trying to put myself in the position of sitting there in that audience, in my professional capacity (and probably in uncomfortable shoes...), and hearing "puerile" and "juvenile" jokes being whispered right behind me, possibly also with some muffled laughter.

Since I wasn't there, I don't know how it went down. But I can at least imagine how that could be a really, really uncomfortable situation--if in my head I am wondering if they are looking at me as they giggle--or really enraging, if it feels like these guys are treating our shared professional space as their private pizza-crust-carpeted beer-stinking bachelor pad living room.

I think their tone might really impact how I'd feel. Laughter can be super cruel. Or it can be innocent and not at all hurtful.

I'll admit it: I got teased mercilessly in middle school & high school for having big breasts. When I turned 18, I promptly had breast reduction surgery...yeah, they were that big, and I am very small-framed...yeah, there were good health reasons to do the surgery, but mainly my psyche was fucking bruised from having so much unwanted and often mean-spirited attention directed at my breasts. All through college, if I heard a group of guys laughing as I walked past, I'd get really self conscious and think they were probably looking at me and laughing about some aspect of my appearance...even though I'd had that surgery and now nothing much really stood out about me. I tell this little story because you have to understand...when you get hit on, teased, picked on, bullied, all throughout your adolescence, just because you're female, the snickering whispered laughter--and sexual jokes--of guys can make you feel very very uncomfortable and bad.

I have no idea if this is something like what happened to Adria Richards, but it sounds like it. She may or may not have misinterpreted the intended cruelty or degradation of the joking.

But the fact remains that none of this would have had a chance of happening if those two guys had behaved professionally in that environment. In the end, if someone got fired, I'd imagine it was the lack of professionalism that did it. Or the lack of good judgment.

That's postfeminism, I think you mean? And mainly postfeminism isn't "sex-positive" so much as it is a reactionary backlash against 2nd wave feminism's tendency toward slutshaming any woman who didn't fall into line and march alongside her sisters (ALLEGEDLY).

Postfeminism is "sex-positive" in the sense that it's all about how awesome it is to be girly and how gross and narsty those annoying feminists are; girls should go wild! according to this kind of postfeminist attitude. If a woman wants to stay home and raise her kids, well, darn it, postfeminism says there's nothing wrong with that, and it's the dirty stupid "you can have it all" feminists who want to kill the American family! Or who want to shame the women who don't aspire to the things that 2nd wave feminism said women should aspire to. If a man makes a joke that degrades women, the postfeminist says "LAUGH AT IT!!! because it's FUNNY!! why are you so sensitive?!?!" The postfeminist is dtf and she's fun as hell...until you criticize her in some way that she thinks is trying to shame her for just being a woman. And then she's not so much fun.

3rd wave feminism isn't so well defined and I don't think that "wave" has quite crested yet. I see you linked to a wiki page on it, but I'd be surprised to see it offering some kind of cohesive definition. In lots of ways, postfeminism wants to be called 3rd wave feminism...but it lacks credibility since it mostly seems geared towards calling female activists bitches and telling them to stfu about gender-based oppression already.

I acknowledged that some gender bias does seem to swing in women's favor in my own comment. I acknowledged, as two examples, the way the family courts favor mothers in custody battles (not something I have evidence on--just an impression I have somehow acquired) and the fact that the US military, when it last had a draft (involuntary conscription) only took males and didn't ask females to sacrifice similarly for their country.

The legal system's tendency to give women lighter sentences for crimes may also be a good example of one of these rare issues. But you're acting like I said that there's no such thing as gender bias that favors women. And in fact I did not say that at all.

I also don't believe that there's such a thing as a hierarchy of struggle. Just because women haven't achieved the goal of being treated fairly and equally doesn't mean we have to set aside efforts to redress injustices directed at men. It's all important; it all affects people's lives; no injustice or bias should go unaddressed just because the person impacted sits at the apex of the current power pyramid, or just because there are others who are suffering more.

There ARE some activists who believe that you need to tease out the "relationality" of oppression and then pick which oppressor you have to fight first. A great example of this would be some of the Civil Rights debates that took place... did black women have to "sit down and shut up" about their situation and just support black men in the fight against race-based oppression? The Black Power movement was awfully dismissive of women's issues at times. Black women activists were told, "You have to be a revolutionary first, Sister second."

For me, I can see why some people think you have to pick and choose what to fight and when, but I personally couldn't look at someone who was suffering and just be like, "Yeah, fuck you, you're not suffering enough yet... we'll get to you."

> Men have the same amount of gender equality issues (maybe even more) than women in Western countries.

FYI, when you stay stuff like that, you seem totally unhinged to people who have actual contact with the real world. That may sound harsh, but I ain't in this internet arguin' business to baby folks.

The "facts" you link to are pretty laughable. You seriously found a reputable source that says men are more likely to be raped than women? Amazing.

> Meanwhile in history men have been forced to fight bloody wars, work to death in horrible conditions etc.

I hate how women are always forcing men to go fight wars. Also, ugh, hard work sucks! The United Nations Development Programme tells us that

"Women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, produce 50 percent of the food, but earn only 10 percent of the income and own only one percent of the property." (http://tinyurl.com/cy2dtzs)

You can argue with these facts and figures, question them--how they were compiled, what they really mean, etc.--but the vast preponderance of evidence, gathered by scholars and researchers (male and female) from many fields over many years, is going to contest your assertions.

And the worst part is...you probably have a handful of really good points buried in amongst all the nonsense. Like about how courts automatically seem to favor mothers in custody cases, like about the draft exempting women, etc. But how seriously is anyone going to take those genuine concerns when they can't be seen through the morass of much sillier claims?

Yeah, just saw your reply to our "pal" from /r/mensrights. I was wrong about you--wrong to imply you might harbor misogynist impulses. I apologize for the remark and accept that you, sir, are awesomesauce.

I take it back. You clearly would not fit in over at /r/mensrights... which says only good things about you. :)

I can't judge what happened at this convention--wasn't there, don't know what all was overheard, or what people may have said during an interview with managers that might have led to a firing... nor do I know if the firing was indeed some kind of appeasement gesture that really was massively unjust to the guys. So I'll leave it to those more familiar with the events and people to determine whether or not this was a justified firing.

As an aside, and possibly an irrelevant one...in my experience, which I know doesn't count as evidence towards anything, people get away with making crude jokes at the expense of others most of the time. It's rare to see people held accountable for their poor judgment. You've got to be pretty confident of your own untouchability to make off-color jokes in a professional environment when you're surrounded by people you don't know. Maybe these guys didn't do anything like that, and, if so, what happened to them is quite bad. Even if it was just a misunderstanding (they didn't think they were making crude remarks; if they'd had the chance to talk it over with the person who reported them, she'd have seen that she had misheard them and would agree they were blameless), it'd be quite sad that one of the guys got fired because of it. On the other hand, I'd like to live in a world where people don't feel smugly confident that they can do or say whatever they want and the rest of us will hunch our shoulders and take it.

Mmm. Nothing gets the Men's Rights fanatics frothing like the suggestion that they aren't the most oppressed people of all time (OF. ALL. TIME.). So it might help ease their minds to acknowledge that there are a few significant scenarios in which there is actually gender bias that favors women. The worst one is probably child custody. Who says moms are automatically better single parents? I'd say the other bad one is the draft...we don't have one right now, and maybe now that women are allowed in combat, if we do have a draft again it won't only be men who are conscripted.

But yeah, aside from a few outlying examples, for the most part gender bias favors males, so the excessive whining of the Men's Rights movement is just a big steaming pile of Yeah...No.

Hi. Savagedm came in here to sing your praises. I just wanted to let you know--before you graciously acknowledge his adulation--that he represents a large and fairly freaky population of misogynists on reddit who typically congregate in http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/, and who have an especially sharp hatred for feminists of any stripe (be they ever so humble).

The giveaway is > Women frequently engage in behaviour that, when mirrored in men, would be called out for sexist. One point I was discussing with the girl I currently am dating is that there needs to now be a "mens' [sic] rights movement" similar to what women have accomplished [...]

Don't be fooled. The Men's Rights subreddit is just thinly veiled misogyny, often with some white supremacy thrown in the mix. Just go browse the sub--don't take my word for it.

Some of your comments suggest you might fit in over there. Then again, maybe not.