Plenty has been said about women in the workplace and their interaction with men, and most of it has been negative. Feminists and progressives on one end have little good to say about female prospects at work in the face of discrimination, while on the other end men and many conservatives are concerned that efforts to dampen supposedly rampant instances of sexual abuse/harassment in workplaces are making it too difficult to navigate the work environment without walking on eggshells all the time.
While harassment certainly does occur at work due undoubtedly to the presence of many very thirsty and tactless betas in America, feminists still all too often make mountains out of molehills. This recent article on ThinkProgress (which, unfortunately, recently made itself abundant on my facebook newsfeed) drives this point home. The title? “Five Examples Of How Employees Turn Women Into Sex Objects”.
…issues that women encounter on the job can run deeper than being unfairly assumed to be less competent or less valuable than their male counterparts. In many cases, women are up against very specific assumptions about their sexuality, their role as “objects” intended to be attractive to men, and their responsibility to prevent men from desiring them.
This argument is a common one from feminists and, as usual, it seeks to remove all consequences of female action more than it seeks to create actual equality.
The reality here is that both genders have a responsibility in the workplace. Men have to keep their thirst in check and avoid letting it run rampant in their pursuit of ass. Women, conversely, are asked to make this a little easier by not trying too hard to attract those same men in the workplace.
Both sides are asked to tame their sexuality to some significant degree in order to facilitate their getting along. Many men, who instinctively enjoy the act of pursuing/chasing an attractive woman and would normally be immediately inclined to make many sexual/romantic overtures upon the sight of a woman who appeals to them have to avoid doing this in the work place.
Many women, who instinctively enjoy (and are usually quite skilled in) the act of getting men to initiate said pursuit with themselves as the target, are asked to avoid doing this at work. On paper, this sounds like a fair tradeoff.
Feminists do not agree, and have listed five examples here to tell us why:
A New Jersey judge ruled that casino waitresses can be fired for gaining weight.
Twenty two former cocktail servers sued a popular casino in Atlantic City over a policy that forbids waitresses from gaining more than seven percent of their original body weight.
This is the silliest example provided by the article.
Certain occupations rely on the maintenance of a certain level of physical fitness and/or appearance. An employer should have every right to take such things into consideration if (and only if) they can be considered relevant to the success of the business at hand. In this case, the casino waitresses are there to look hot, fit and enticing to customers in order to encourage their making the kind of decisions (drinking and gambling) that result in their handing the casino their money. To ensure that their waitresses meet this standard, the casino sets a weight limit and it is well within its rights to do this.
Similar examples that impact men abound all over the country. In professional sports, many men are contractually obligated to maintain a certain weight lest they find themselves released altogether. The same thing happens in Hollywood, where the ability of many actors to maintain a role is tied directly to their ability to maintain a certain physical appearance. There are plenty of men in Hollywood who would have an issue if they gained seven percent of their original body weight after taking a role, even if most of that weight came from healthy muscle mass instead of fat accumulation (bulkier men are not desired for many roles). This is to say nothing of the well known advantages that men with certain physical appearances (ex: more height, certain skin tones, etc) have in the workplace, advantages that put more pressure on men.
The bottomline is simple: men as a sex are not exempt from the need to maintain certain physical standards in order to keep certain jobs. Women should not expect to be either.
A widely-used employee training manual tells women how to make sure they don’t lead men on.
Earlier this week, Jezebel reported that a popular manager training guide — used as companies like Google, Groupon, and Modcloth — essentially tells women that they’re responsible for preventing advances from their male co-workers.
And men are responsible for doing the same exact thing.
The manual tells women who are “touchy-feely or flirtatious by nature” to “dial it back,”
…something men are also asked to do.
Women at Merrill Lynch have been instructed to seduce their way to the top.
Other employee trainings have similarly gone off the rails when it comes to guidance on women’s behavior in the workplace. Female employees at Merrill Lynch allege they were made to read a book called “Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics From a Woman at the Top”… To get men to do their work, the book suggested “play[ing] on their masculine pride and natural instincts to protect the weaker sex.” To diffuse tense situations, it pointed out that men “puff up” at being told, “Wow, you look great. Been working out?”
I can’t even really get the issue with this bit. If anything, it evidences sexism directed at men by implying that they are easily manipulated and suggesting how to carry out such manipulation.
The Iowa Supreme Court decided it’s okay to fire attractive women if they pose a risk to men’s marriages.
James Knight, a dentist in Iowa, didn’t fire his female assistant Melissa Nelson after 10 years of working for him because of performance reasons. Instead, Nelson alleges that Knight’s wife told him to do it because “she was a big threat to our marriage” given that he was sexually attracted to her. Yet in July, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court stood by an earlier decision that she wasn’t improperly fired because it wasn’t gender discrimination.
I’m more torn by this one. I don’t feel that it is ok for a man to fire a woman simply because he grows to find her attractive, but the alternative doesn’t seem great either. If he continues to employ this woman and the sexual tension between them remains (even if neither of them act on it), he could lose his marriage which, as we’re all aware, could be financially devastating for him.
In either case, the Iowa court was right to uphold their earlier decision. The female employee was not let go simply because she was a woman. She was let go due to details relating to her specific relationship (not that of her gender, just her) with the dentist, a fact that would preclude any notion of gender discrimination.
Gender discrimination does exist in workplaces and, as I’ve said before, plenty of thirsty and tactless betas in the working world give women a hard time there. This is a reality I don’t doubt. What I also do not doubt, however, are realities that feminists fail to acknowledge in their bid to manufacture this notion of a pervasive “rape culture”. Women can be held in certain occupations to certain physical and aesthetic standards, but so can men. Women are asked to put a lid on their sexuality when working with the opposite gender, but so are men.
These are truths, and ignoring them will not make them disappear.
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