the saga of Jian Ghomeshi

[genevieve]

I don't have any hard-and-fast conclusions about all this but if I were the mom of a college-age son in the US, I'd be very emphatic in instructing him on how to stay out of legal trouble. And that's sort of sad.

I would think it would be more helpful to emphatically instruct any hypothetical sons how to treat and communicate honestly with women and not be an entitled jerk when it comes to relationships.

 

[mag]

Then why did she pander to his ego? If I think someone is a creep I sure don't tell them it is "amazing" that they are in my universe.

I think everyone has that self-preservation "little voice" inside but for some reason at times people ignore it. Society doesn't have much sympathy for women who go to a man's home or hotel room & get raped. They say she should have known. I think way down inside they did know something was wrong but for various reasons they didn't listen to that voice. (BTW no, they weren't "asking for it" & it's still rape.) If your "creep alarm" goes off around someone, cut them out of your life as fast as possible. I had a man on a 1st date smack me on the butt once & I said don't do that. He did it again & even though it didn't hurt I took it as a sign of disrespect & wouldn't go out with him again. Who knows? It may have saved my life or at least a really bad experience.

I my family we call that "little voice" alarm bells. I don't know if people ignore it, but I do think that it is something that has to be developed when a child is growing up. I also think that the helecopter parent syndrome is not helping the development of alarm bells or little voices in our kids. This is not to any excuse for the behaviour we are discussing in this thread, just more of an aside. Kids need to gradually become more independent so that they have the opportunity to develop those alarm bells before they get to high school. Kids need to be taught to listen to their feelings and that it is okay to get away and or say no when something doesn't feel right. And that starts when they are young. If little Tommy doesn't want to give an adult a hug, he shouldn't be told to do so or to "stop being silly, Uncle Bill just wants a hug." When a parent says that they are teaching their child to not trust their instincts. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with Uncle Bill, it just means Tommy is uncomfortable and that should be respected.

 

[gkelly]

I personally don't know who this man that this thread is about but it seems to me that he's a sicky man who went into the BDSM lifestyle to be able to abuse woman and not to have a good time.

Maybe that is how he has a good time.

But since it involves causing other people to have a bad time, potentially dangerously, it is not acceptable.

 

[PRlady]

I would think it would be more helpful to emphatically instruct any hypothetical sons how to treat and communicate honestly with women and not be an entitled jerk when it comes to relationships.

That goes without saying. I don't have a son but I did have a stepson, who's in his forties now, and he got that message from me loud and clear. But if I had a teenaged boy today, I would also, with some misgivings, explain why some behavior could be misunderstood and that he needs to think how his behavior would look to a third party if stories change.

 

[Desperado]

Another National Post on the subject, I particularly like the part about the CBC's part in all this (possible cover up): http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/10/30/robyn-urback-the-dam-breaks-on-jian-ghomeshi/

 

[overedge]

And another. http://m.huffpost.com/ca/entry/6077296

 

[4rkidz]

I agree with the move by CBC to now have a 3rd party neutral team to do a full investigation within their own company (CBC) to find out why the allegations by female staff members were covered up. They are also bringing in counsellors. BTW these are some powerful women who are coming forward with the same stories but for them it was over 10 years ago, so I can appreciate how difficult it is now for kids my daughters age to come forward now with their names etc., I can only hope that moving forward that people will understand more about sexual assault - both men and women. I totally understand why women don't come forward and I would be the same because I know what happens when you do and the revictimization.

 

[PRlady]

Jian's PR firm has resigned. Rats, sinking ship.

 

[4rkidz]

Jian's PR firm has resigned. Rats, sinking ship.

that was the 2nd PR firm., he might be best to stay in L.A. - he was supposed to be at a function I was going to on the 28th.. he's in hiding

 

[VALuvsMKwan]

that was the 2nd PR firm., he might be best to stay in L.A. - he was supposed to be at a function I was going to on the 28th.. he's in hiding

Maybe he just got tied up somewhere longer than expected.

 

[4rkidz]

Maybe he just got tied up somewhere longer than expected.

 

[MacMadame]

I am a little unnerved by the overstatements about rape culture. This could be a function of generation and age, but OTOH I'm a bona fide second-wave feminist 1970s version.

No, it's not. It's your opinion that you hold all by yourself.

An opinion that I -- and many feminists in all the waves -- find completely mystifying. Because here we have a situation where a man forced himself repeatedly on women without their consent -- 8 that we know about -- and almost none of them are willing to even say who they are because of fear. A fear that is completely justified because of how our society is and how it treats the victims in these situations. And here we have a situation where "everyone knew" about this guy, that he wasn't safe, that he was trouble. But they felt like they couldn't say or do anything about it.

If that isn't rape culture, I don't know what is. And I don't see how that could even be close to being 'overstated'. If anything, it's understated.

And your response to hearing about this situation is that you are worried about the overstatements of rape culture and that you'd teach a son how not to get in legal trouble and not to get furious that our society is *still* in a place where this shit is going on? Okay...

I my family we call that "little voice" alarm bells. I don't know if people ignore it,

In his book, The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker talks about this and how this voice is a gift to us that can keep us safe and how we do ignore it because of other messages we have received over the years that cause us to minimize our fears and talk ourselves out of it.

I remind myself of that when I'm situations where I don't feel safe but I feel like I need to have bravado because being afraid doesn't fit my self-image. (Which is one of the messages that causes me to ignore my little voice.)

 

[PRlady]

You are misunderstanding me. This guy is dangerous and probably criminally liable for assault -- almost definitely so given the number of accusers and the consistency of their stories. When the original story surfaced, on top of the ugly stories coming out of the atheist community (which I'm in), the college campuses, Gamergate etc, I wondered aloud if men are getting "worse" or women are standing up for themselves against behavior that used to be tolerated. (That's why I used the word "re-categorized.")

I do indeed worry that we're at a low point in gender relations in general, that the ugliness on social media is magnifying it, and that ordinary interactions between young men and women will be tainted with suspicion and fear. I don't think most men are rapists or even slimeballs and I don't think "rape culture" is as defined a thing as some do, it's amorphousness as a term or category is problematic. That's all.

 

[taf2002]

I learned my lesson about that little voice at age 18 & that may have been what kept me safe during my single life. I was on a city bus (that was the last time I've ever been on one) & a man got on & asked me to move over to the window seat although there were plenty of other seats. Even though my creep-meter went off I did as he asked. A few blocks later I felt his hand sliding up my skirt. Being a nice police young lady I screamed & pushed him as hard as I could & he fell out on his butt. The bus driver stopped & came back with blood in his eyes but the man got up & ran out the back door before anyone could catch him.

 

[algonquin]

Ghomeshi was two years ahead of me at York University. When I was in my 2nd year, he was student president (can't remember the exact title). I was introduced to him once at a student gathering and stuck by his charisma. (Margaret Wente writes about his charisma in today's Globe.) He had an amazing ease with people and wonderful ability to remember names. After that brief meeting, there was no doubt in my mind that someday he would be famous. At the time, I thought that he would end up in politics (he was a political science major). Moxy Früvous was the next time that I heard about him. I thought that they were a very poor version of the Bare Naked Ladies and wondered why he didn't go into politics.

I really enjoyed Ghomeshi time as the summer guess host of the CBC's Sounds Like Canada. That show made me laugh and I needed to laugh that summer. He was quite hilarious in chronically his attempt to read James Joyces' Ulysses over the summer. I listened to Q from time to time, but did not become a huge fan. I saw his bit on Tessa and Scott's show and thought, "Ick".

So, I am not writing this to give you my account of a brush with someone famous. Rather, I read the Globe and Mail's article, Behind the CBC's decision to Fire Ghomeshi this morning. (Sorry, can't link the article, I used up all my free views.) I was stuck by the fact that the CBC executives said that if Ghomeshi had been even somewhat repentant and willing to get help, they could have worked things out. He wasn't. Shame, Ghomeshi is talented and charismatic, but somewhere along the line developed a huge ego. Goes to show that there really is truth in the old saying, "Pride goes before the fall".

 

[Anita18]

You are misunderstanding me. This guy is dangerous and probably criminally liable for assault -- almost definitely so given the number of accusers and the consistency of their stories. When the original story surfaced, on top of the ugly stories coming out of the atheist community (which I'm in), the college campuses, Gamergate etc, I wondered aloud if men are getting "worse" or women are standing up for themselves against behavior that used to be tolerated. (That's why I used the word "re-categorized.")

I do indeed worry that we're at a low point in gender relations in general, that the ugliness on social media is magnifying it, and that ordinary interactions between young men and women will be tainted with suspicion and fear. I don't think most men are rapists or even slimeballs and I don't think "rape culture" is as defined a thing as some do, it's amorphousness as a term or category is problematic. That's all.

I think bad behavior that is relatively rare in real life is magnified online. And that women are not tolerating it as much as they used to. You won't believe how many of the older generation (I'll just say over 40) I saw on Facebook responding to NYC artist who filmed herself walking around getting catcalled with "I'd love that sort of attention! Get it while you're still young!"

Every guy I knew in college and is following now on Facebook, are unabashed feminists and a number will post articles about it. I also happen to follow a bunch of guys on Twitter who are very much anti-GamerGate too, so I think a lot of younger men (let's just say under 40) are starting to come around. But that just makes the bad guys so much worse in comparison, and we're wired to look for the danger.

Alf may have pushed the boundaries a little, but he's also physically slight enough that I could fight him off if I needed. (He only has 12 lbs on me and I can deadlift his body weight.) I don't feel as safe with men who are much larger than me...not until I know them well as friends first. I suspect that's something that was unconsciously taught to me by my paranoid parents. So yes, maybe the ordinary interactions between men and women will continue to be tainted as long as there are men who display bad behavior, especially online where everyone can see it.

 

[antmanb]

You are misunderstanding me. This guy is dangerous and probably criminally liable for assault -- almost definitely so given the number of accusers and the consistency of their stories. When the original story surfaced, on top of the ugly stories coming out of the atheist community (which I'm in), the college campuses, Gamergate etc, I wondered aloud if men are getting "worse" or women are standing up for themselves against behavior that used to be tolerated. (That's why I used the word "re-categorized.")

I do indeed worry that we're at a low point in gender relations in general, that the ugliness on social media is magnifying it, and that ordinary interactions between young men and women will be tainted with suspicion and fear. I don't think most men are rapists or even slimeballs and I don't think "rape culture" is as defined a thing as some do, it's amorphousness as a term or category is problematic. That's all.

Obviously this is totally anecdotal and I can't say if it plays out this way everywhere but in my experiences in the corporate world in two major regional cities here in the UK outside London, I've found that the 40 year old plus men that run the professional services firms and companies are mostly creepy slimeballs that range from mildly sleazy to outright made me fear they could be rapists. Even when the people I was with and "networking" with knew I was gay they wouldn't hold back on the, frankly, disgusting way they would talk about women, i've never experienced misogyny like it. Obviously just because people say things it doesn't mean they will carry out any of the things they say, and when you get too much testosterone in one room, the one-up-manship and dick swinging that goes on may embolden men to behave in ways they otherwise might not, but still it was constantly a truly scary thing to witness. And networking is bad enough without adding this side of things to it.

In one firm, I was single when I joined so didn't have an easy way to come out to colleagues and after a while felt like it probably wasn't safe to in any event, the way male co-workers talked about our female colleagues was scary at times. I'd like to think that my generation and younger don't behave in this way and that the middle aged men in these organisations now are the legacy and product of what went before them, and that future generations will have more of a clue, but it seems that men do model this creepy behaviour.

All of the rampant paedophilia that has been uncovered here in tv/media from back in the 60s and 70s shows that there is a whole world of abuse that has been institutionalised in major companies like the BBC, and it seemingly was all known about but kept hidden. It's pretty shocking really.

 

[Scrufflet]

I think bad behavior that is relatively rare in real life is magnified online. And that women are not tolerating it as much as they used to. You won't believe how many of the older generation (I'll just say over 40) I saw on Facebook responding to NYC artist who filmed herself walking around getting catcalled with "I'd love that sort of attention! Get it while you're still young!"

Every guy I knew in college and is following now on Facebook, are unabashed feminists and a number will post articles about it. I also happen to follow a bunch of guys on Twitter who are very much anti-GamerGate too, so I think a lot of younger men (let's just say under 40) are starting to come around. But that just makes the bad guys so much worse in comparison, and we're wired to look for the danger.

Alf may have pushed the boundaries a little, but he's also physically slight enough that I could fight him off if I needed. (He only has 12 lbs on me and I can deadlift his body weight.) I don't feel as safe with men who are much larger than me...not until I know them well as friends first. I suspect that's something that was unconsciously taught to me by my paranoid parents. So yes, maybe the ordinary interactions between men and women will continue to be tainted as long as there are men who display bad behavior, especially online where everyone can see it.

As an over 40, I would never tell a young woman to enjoy the catcalls while she can still get them. I am grateful that I no longer have to put up with that kind of behaviour. I found that ignoring it didn't make it stop; confronting it directly didn't make it stop either.
I am so glad that the young men you know are more progressive. Treasure their friendship!
As for "paranoid parents", you are very lucky to have had them install good survival instincts in you. I love that you can deadlift his body weight.

 

[Southpaw]

As an over 40 I can't stand being called ma'am, but on the other hand it's way better than being in that "hey baby baby lemme look at you" territory.

 

[PRlady]

I think bad behavior that is relatively rare in real life is magnified online. And that women are not tolerating it as much as they used to. You won't believe how many of the older generation (I'll just say over 40) I saw on Facebook responding to NYC artist who filmed herself walking around getting catcalled with "I'd love that sort of attention! Get it while you're still young!"

Every guy I knew in college and is following now on Facebook, are unabashed feminists and a number will post articles about it. I also happen to follow a bunch of guys on Twitter who are very much anti-GamerGate too, so I think a lot of younger men (let's just say under 40) are starting to come around. But that just makes the bad guys so much worse in comparison, and we're wired to look for the danger.

Alf may have pushed the boundaries a little, but he's also physically slight enough that I could fight him off if I needed. (He only has 12 lbs on me and I can deadlift his body weight.) I don't feel as safe with men who are much larger than me...not until I know them well as friends first. I suspect that's something that was unconsciously taught to me by my paranoid parents. So yes, maybe the ordinary interactions between men and women will continue to be tainted as long as there are men who display bad behavior, especially online where everyone can see it.

I would really like to believe that younger men are doing better than the geezers my age, but the Gamergate guys and the college campus frat assaults are in your demographic. Not too many 60 year old guys avidly playing video games and uniting in online forums about it....

For the first time in my life, I'm seriously involved with a man much bigger, physically, than I am. I always preferred men my own size, and pondered whether that was because I didn't even want a physical mismatch, to feel like I was literally getting the short end of the stick. The truth is that even men my own height outweigh me and are much stronger, and more used to physical combat (my ex-husband was a Marine and a boxer, had he ever wanted to hurt me he certainly could have, despite being only an inch taller than me.)

I watched the Shoshana Roberts video too, of course, and again was ambivalent. I didn't like that the verbal assailants were almost all minority, but that's another issue. As a frank display of what women put up with it was very useful. But I don't think the kind of men who do that are going to be put off by a shaming video, not for one minute, nor do I think catcalling is necessarily intended to be hostile. The result may be hostile, the intention some of the time is to be complimentary, and it would be nice if men could learn it's not taken that way. I'm not optimistic.

 

[Anita18]

As an over 40 I can't stand being called ma'am, but on the other hand it's way better than being in that "hey baby baby lemme look at you" territory.

As an over 40, I would never tell a young woman to enjoy the catcalls while she can still get them. I am grateful that I no longer have to put up with that kind of behaviour. I found that ignoring it didn't make it stop; confronting it directly didn't make it stop either.
I am so glad that the young men you know are more progressive. Treasure their friendship!
As for "paranoid parents", you are very lucky to have had them install good survival instincts in you. I love that you can deadlift his body weight.

Yeah, I'm sure every older person doesn't agree with the "Catcalls are positive attention!" sentiment. It was both men and women who commented. The men were expected, the women were

 

[Anita18]

Obviously this is totally anecdotal and I can't say if it plays out this way everywhere but in my experiences in the corporate world in two major regional cities here in the UK outside London, I've found that the 40 year old plus men that run the professional services firms and companies are mostly creepy slimeballs that range from mildly sleazy to outright made me fear they could be rapists. Even when the people I was with and "networking" with knew I was gay they wouldn't hold back on the, frankly, disgusting way they would talk about women, i've never experienced misogyny like it. Obviously just because people say things it doesn't mean they will carry out any of the things they say, and when you get too much testosterone in one room, the one-up-manship and dick swinging that goes on may embolden men to behave in ways they otherwise might not, but still it was constantly a truly scary thing to witness. And networking is bad enough without adding this side of things to it.

In one firm, I was single when I joined so didn't have an easy way to come out to colleagues and after a while felt like it probably wasn't safe to in any event, the way male co-workers talked about our female colleagues was scary at times. I'd like to think that my generation and younger don't behave in this way and that the middle aged men in these organisations now are the legacy and product of what went before them, and that future generations will have more of a clue, but it seems that men do model this creepy behaviour.

All of the rampant paedophilia that has been uncovered here in tv/media from back in the 60s and 70s shows that there is a whole world of abuse that has been institutionalised in major companies like the BBC, and it seemingly was all known about but kept hidden. It's pretty shocking really.

I think it comes down to local culture. I have female friends who are scared of working in tech now, but my mom worked in tech back in the 90's and never had any bad experiences working with men. One of her bosses was female, who later moved on to be a manager at Google, then Facebook. My mom said she just did her work and didn't try to call attention to herself, and men seemed to respect that.

I also think it may have had something to do with the work that she was doing - it wasn't glamorous programming work and maybe even guys were like "Hey, if the lady wants to do QA and debug, let her! We don't want to do it!"



Just anecdotally, I haven't had creepy guys hit on me at tech events (though I have friends who've had that experience ), but I have had older men comment about my grabbing a plate full of whatever they're serving. "Are you really going to eat all that? You're so tiny!" I just go, "Yup!" even if I'm going and a little bit inside.

I would really like to believe that younger men are doing better than the geezers my age, but the Gamergate guys and the college campus frat assaults are in your demographic. Not too many 60 year old guys avidly playing video games and uniting in online forums about it....

Sure, but exactly how many of them are actually displaying that sort of behavior directly?

I'm a member of a comic book forum. Posters are typically male, young, and most of them are probably gamers. There is a GamerGate thread there, and you know what? Everyone who's posting in it, except for exactly one guy, acknowledges that GamerGate is a thinly veiled excuse to be nasty to women. That one guy still insists that it's about journalistic integrity, and posts pages and page of "proof" about it, so it seems like the thread is taken up by pro-GamerGate folks, but it's really just the one guy.

Another geek forum that I'm on, people tend to disagree with Anita Sarkeesian's way of doing things, but they certainly don't condone death threats. And they treat the women there well, and we're a minority. Nobody's ever been nasty to us.

Like I mentioned, bad behavior is magnified online because the crazies are also really loud and obnoxious. I'm optimistic that it's getting better on the whole, but the minority crazies are just crazier because of ease in finding others like themselves online.

 

[overedge]

Re @algonquin 's post, I think Moxy Fruvous demonstrated Ghomeshi's egotism even at an early stage of his public career. He wasn't a great singer and their songs weren't anything exceptional, and they certainly weren't the only band with songs about social issues. But they had this attitude of how innovative and cutting edge they were. Uh, no.

The Globe story is well worth a read. If only for the revelation that "his" essays that opened each episode of Q were 95% written by other people.

 

[algonquin]

Re @algonquin 's post, I think Moxy Fruvous demonstrated Ghomeshi's egotism even at an early stage of his public career. He wasn't a great singer and their songs weren't anything exceptional, and they certainly weren't the only band with songs about social issues. But they had this attitude of how innovative and cutting edge they were. Uh, no.

Yeah, they were mediocre at best.

 

[agalisgv]

I have a hard time relating to the view that relations between men and women are getting worse. Prior to 1970, spousal rape wasn't even a crime in the US. It wasn't until the mid 1990's that all states passed laws banning spousal rape. I remember the first prosecution of marital rape in SC. In that case, the husband bound his wife, taped her mouth and eyes shut, beat her repeatedly, and raped her *on videotape* while recording her screams of pain and cries for help. The jury still acquitted. That was 1992.

I don't think one can reasonably argue that men have gotten worse. Rather, the things we find shocking now were par for the course a couple decades ago. Sometimes I think we forget how far we've come.

I also agree with antmanb and anita that there's a real generational aspect towards treatment of women. Very generally speaking, the younger guys are, the better they tend to be in their treatment of women. I would also say the same regarding homophobia (which tends to mirror gender relations).

I would argue that the situations of gamergate and skephick are related to the phenomena antmanb described--when women do not have significant presence in a group, you tend to see increasingly skewed perceptions and behaviors related to women on the part of men. The same holds true for groups without a significant gay presence--they tend to have more homophobic views than groups where gays have a visible presence. Ditto with race, disabilities, etc. Both gamer communities and the atheist movement overall heavily skew male. The more women are visible and comprise a significant number within those communities, the more such behaviors will wilt away. But to me, those are very different situations than that of Ghomeshi.

And gamers aren't just your 20's set--they run into their 40's and 50's.

 

[PRlady]

Maybe you're right. I work in a pink ghetto field -- heavily skewed to women, but the top, best-paying and most influential jobs are mostly men. I well remember one of the fat old white guys at my PR agency saying, in the '80s, that all a PR agency needed to succeed was three smart guys and several pretty girls. Seriously. That was one reason I consciously decided that I would only work on the 'heavy" issues management accounts, not the plan-an-arts-gala, to ensure I never got put in the pretty girl box....

Nonetheless, because there are so many women in PR and communications, the testosterone overload isn't so bad. I agree that the atheist community skewed male for a long time, and Dawkins and Harris have turned out to be sleazy role models, and women speaking up is a good thing. It's gotten so toxic that some women have taken themselves off social media or left entirely.

Thus, agalisgv, the next time I claim religion is the source of patriarchal behavior, you can absolutely respond with BUT!!!!!!

 

[MacMadame]

I've been in high tech since before it was called that. Since 1977 in fact. I've seen the field change. In the beginning, sexism was blatant and no one thought anything of it and, if you objected, you were seen the as problem. Even in the early 80s, I had a boss who told the other team members that I was "pretty smart... for a girl." But that was starting to be seen as not acceptable. However management knew how he was and did nothing except try to limit the women on his team. It was still very much our problem. That really started to change in the 90s. It was hard to find tech workers and more and more were women. And if a company was cheap and didn't want to pay, they ended up with a lot of them and they had to figure out how to keep them happy and not get sued. That doesn't mean there wasn't sexism but it was very much underground and in public at least it was not tolerated. That doesn't mean you necessarily got satisfaction if you were having issues with sexual harassment, but it did mean that the practitioners of it were forced to be more subtle and the average joe wasn't doing it without thinking, because "that's how guys are." Today sexual harassment seems to be much better handled and there is this idea that there is no sexism. Everyone is equal. Yet there still is a glass ceiling and still pay inequity. But you can't talk about it because "tech is a meritocracy."

My personal experience, other than the "smart for a girl" manager have mostly been good. I think that's a function of how I interact with the world, being morbidly obese for a large part of my career (so not being seen as desirable to many), and luck. I've never had a situation at work where I was sexually harassed or where I felt I had to "put out" to keep my job. I've never had an experience at a conference like that either. I have had the experience of "Did you know about ____?" where women would trade info to watch out for someone. It was rarely a work situation though. (Once it was the adult skating scene though.)

I am not remotely worried about things getting murky for guys. I see no evidence that good guys are being taken to jail or even being hassled. I see way too many sleazy guys getting away with crap. Women getting raped, the men video taping it and boasting about it on social media and not getting charged and the women being slut shamed. We aren't even close to living in a world where a good guy who pays attention to women's cues routinely or even often gets in trouble. We live in a world where when women speak out, people twist themselves into pretzels to come up with ways to not believe them at best and where they get hassled and bullied at worst.

I think the most heartening thing about the Jian Ghomeshi situation is that so many people are willing to believe these women even though most of them are anonymous. He must be a real sleaze and people must have been pretty aware of it for that to happen. Because it hasn't happened with people like Bill Cosby or Woody Allen or Clarence Thomas, so I don't think the reaction I am seeing here is remotely the norm. I think the normal reaction is to bend over backwards to give the guy every single benefit of the doubt no matter how many things he does not to deserve it and then pat yourself on the back for "keeping an open mind" and "seeing there are two sides to every story."

 

[quartz]

I guess I have been pretty fortunate in my dealings with men. Aside from the bullying I got in high school, (barking, calling me a dog, etc...), guys have pretty much ignored me sexually. I have never been whistled at or groped or had any sort of unwanted attention. Nobody has ever called me Baby!

I have worked in factories, restaurants, retail, other customer services, and at a college, and have always felt respected in every aspect. When I was a teen I hitch hiked around town, and partied with guys I had just met, and never felt insecure or afraid. Guess I am more of the sister or buddy type.

I get along with men just fine, in fact my best friend is a guy. But, all my interactions are totally platonic; no guy ever comes on to or hits on me. So apparently, having a bitch face has some advantages after all!

Hugs to all of you who have to deal with being sexually harassed.

 

[Artemis@BC]

Thoughts on living in a "rape culture," from a man:
https://www.facebook.com/AaronPaquetteArt/posts/10152822324663754

I hang onto posts like this one in case I ever need a reminder that most men are not pigs.

 

[Artemis@BC]

... so I don't think the reaction I am seeing here is remotely the norm. I think the normal reaction is to bend over backwards to give the guy every single benefit of the doubt no matter how many things he does not to deserve it and then pat yourself on the back for "keeping an open mind" and "seeing there are two sides to every story."

That was, at least in part, my reaction when I started this thread: keeping an open mind, seeing both sides. But that quickly changed as new information became public. Then more. Then more.

And that's what's been the biggest struggle for me. Aside from feeling compassion and solidarity for these women, I feel embarrassed at how quick I was, initially, to believe the PR, to believe that there are actually two sides here.