I keep hearing that #metoo has gone too far too fast. It is just hysteria, the things men have been fired for are too minor.
When I ask which claim is a hysterical minority - rape, groping, sexual harassment, asking women to have babies and then holding them back at work when they say no, locking women in rooms so a man could expose his dick, a man having his penis groped in public - the conversation changes.
It refocuses on the concern that in the future men might not get due process or will be innocently removed from their jobs.
This argument is basically, "Stop while it is working and no wrongdoing
has happened so that men are protected from losing their jobs
innocently."
We don't have to stop doing the right thing because the wrong thing might happen in the future. We can talk about the overreach when someone overreaches.
I think the real fear here is that men feel accountable for the first time and they are afraid. They are afraid they might say the wrong thing and upset a woman's feelings and get fired.
Men are finally starting to feel what women have been feeling since the beginning of time. If we aren't nice enough - we are bitches. If we are nice, some men think we are signaling sexual attraction. If we don't signal attraction, we cannot get promoted. If we signal attraction, men hit on us.
We are not hitting some over reach, we are hitting a balance; a time when men feel as afraid of the sexual misunderstandings or interests of their workmates as women do.
I would like to remind people that women innocently lose their jobs because they cannot negotiate men's sexual feelings at work. To demand that women give up on a safe workspace in order to make sure men stay safe is to assert that men are more important than women, work is their space and women are the visitors at work. Men are entitled to work, women are not.
That is sexism and it's male privilege. A man demanding he not be held to the same work conditions as women because it is unfair is just fragility.
Everyone should be able to go to work without having to protect a man's fragile sexual ego or his privilege.
We don't have to stop doing the right thing because the wrong thing might happen in the future. We can talk about the overreach when someone overreaches.
I think the real fear here is that men feel accountable for the first time and they are afraid. They are afraid they might say the wrong thing and upset a woman's feelings and get fired.
Men are finally starting to feel what women have been feeling since the beginning of time. If we aren't nice enough - we are bitches. If we are nice, some men think we are signaling sexual attraction. If we don't signal attraction, we cannot get promoted. If we signal attraction, men hit on us.
We are not hitting some over reach, we are hitting a balance; a time when men feel as afraid of the sexual misunderstandings or interests of their workmates as women do.
I would like to remind people that women innocently lose their jobs because they cannot negotiate men's sexual feelings at work. To demand that women give up on a safe workspace in order to make sure men stay safe is to assert that men are more important than women, work is their space and women are the visitors at work. Men are entitled to work, women are not.
That is sexism and it's male privilege. A man demanding he not be held to the same work conditions as women because it is unfair is just fragility.
Everyone should be able to go to work without having to protect a man's fragile sexual ego or his privilege.
