^^Really?
–(To a colleague) Let’s grab some coffee.
– No.
That’s not too blunt? It doesn’t sound to me like the way most people politely refuse that offer. In fact it sounds rude to me.
Women, when someone of either gender asks you to go for coffee, and you think it’s a friendly overture and not a sexual overture, would you say “No”? Does the gender make a difference?
I generally feel the need to explain/seek an excuse for a “no”, in most any context.
–(To a colleague) Let’s grab some coffee.
– No.
Would be “i’d love to but…” “I have this project to finish today” or “I forgot my starbucks card” or whatever.
It’s hard to say no without an explanation. I recently started work at a company with a culture that is very hostile to dieting. I’m a dieter, but no one at work knows this except a colleague who knew me before I started this job, and she has agreed to keep my secret.
I’ve tried just saying no to high-calorie treats and food-intensive events, but it generates a lot of hostility. So I’ve been making up excuses. But I think people are starting to see through that, too. I’ve also eaten the high-calorie treats sometimes even though I don’t want them and I’m sabotaging my own weight loss goals by eating them. But there’s only so much hostility a person can take, especially when it comes from colleagues that you need to maintain a good relationship with in order to do your job.
And this is just pizza and cookies. It’s so much harder when saying no involves something as sensitive as dating and sex.
There is a difference between a clear no however it is delivered and someone who prevaricates. Grace finally managed to vocalize in a manner that was understood…pity she didn’t just leave at that point but trying to figure out what she wanted out of the evening is clear as mud to me.
Marian, that is just awful. And it isn’t just pizza and cookies, it’s the underlying attitude of being hostile to someone who wants to go their own way, or just believes differently, or simply wants to eat for their health.
Maybe if you explain that you’re trying to lower your triglycerides on the advice of your doctor they will back off a bit. But you shouldn’t have to!
@HarvestMoon1, the following article by Andrew Sullivan (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/sullivan-metoo-must-choose-between-reality-and-ideology.html), who is a pretty thoughtful political analyst (I guess) with whom I don’t always agree, seems to disagree with your confidence that Grace’s outing and actions like it won’t contribute to building an opposing and successful male coalition. I have always been concerned about making maleness a problem in schools. In the latter part of Sullivan’s article, he is essentially making an argument that such a coalition is already close to being in place.
The issue I see with Andrew Sullivan’s article is that he has taken the most extreme version of this movement and utilized that as the foundation for his argument. That particular segment does not represent the vast majority of women who are hoping for more equality in the workplace and less gender harassment in general as they go through their day.
Personally, I don’t know any women who view men as fundamentally “problematic” or “toxic” and I have a large group of female friends. Most of them are married or in healthy relationships with terrific men, have raised amazing sons and would be the first to tell you they love men. What they don’t love is a lot of things that have been highlighted by posters in various threads on this forum and men like Harvey Weinstein et al who make their professional lives difficult. These are the things that mainstream women are pushing back against.
Andrew Sullivan can be a bit dramatic. He paints the whole movement with broad strokes that in reality do not at all represent the vast majority of women who support this effort. I saw a video clip on CNN of Scarlett Johansson making a speech at the women’s rally last January in D.C. She spoke again at a rally in LA today. I think she is the face of this movement that most women I know can relate to. She’s rational, reasonable and direct in her dialogue and there is nothing militant about her approach. And in her speech today in LA she makes it clear that women have to make some adjustments as well – get better at listening to their instincts and realize that true gender equality starts with how you think about yourself.
Noted sexist and feminist-hater Andrew Sullivan hates feminists. Film at 11.
I’m having trouble understanding his argument here. Men are different than women, he says (and who can disagree). And therefore… and therefore what? And therefore we women have to put up with male “handsiness and groping and objectification and lust and aggression”? Gay men don’t mind being groped by other men, so we shouldn’t mind being groped by men, is that the idea? If not, what is the idea?
Is Sullivan saying that women have to put up with men’s sexual harassment and assault because men, poor things, can’t help it? Baloney.
Yes he appears to think the objectionable behavior is more about nature, evolution and biology. Which is fine, he is entitled to his beliefs. But even if his argument does have some validity I would like to believe that the segment of the male population acting in this manner has the ability to regulate their behavior. Isn’t that part of what separates us from the animal kingdom? Otherwise we would just have a host of people walking around feeling quite comfortable behaving like Louis C.K.
ETA: Fundamentally Sullivan is just making the age old argument “boys will be boys.”
Another allegation about sexual harassment in Congress has transpired. The short version is that a staffer accused Rep. Patrick Meehan of sexual harassment. He paid her off with office funds, on the condition that both remain silent. Now that the story has become public, he wants to expose her name.
The longer version:
Rep. Patrick Meehan allegedly sexually harassed one of his female employees. The allegation: Although she was in a stable relationship with another person and he knew it, and although he is married and decades older than she is, he professed romantic desires for her both face to face and in a letter. When she did not reciprocate, he became hostile. Life at work became untenable for her, so she first worked from home and then quit.
This part is acknowledged by Meehan: She reached a confidential settlement with Meehan, paid from his own office funds (=our taxpayer dollars). Meehan was on the House Ethics Committee at the time. As a result of this settlement becoming public, Meehan has been removed from the House Ethics Committee.
Recently, people with knowledge of this story, not including the woman herself, told the story to the media.
Meehan now says that he wants the woman to waive confidentiality. The woman’s lawyer says the woman values her privacy, and does not want to waive it. Again, Meehan is not saying that the woman herself violated her confidentiality agreement; he just wants to expose her name in violation of the agreement he made.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/20/us/politics/patrick-meehan-sexual-harassment.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/20/us/politics/patrick-meehan-response-misconduct.html
He gave taxpayer dollars and she took taxpayer dollArs and now it is not confidential. I guess it is a risk for both parties to exchange $$ for silence especially when it isn’t even either of their money to exchange.
The confidentiality agreement still stands. She did not breach it. He has not breached it either as of now.
Then it should not be in the media…either of their names it feels like.
It should ABSOLUTELY be in the media that Meehan used our taxpayer dollars as his own personal slush fund to settle sexual harassment allegations, something he does not deny.
He denies that the underlying accusation had merit, but he doesn’t deny that he hushed it up using our tax dollars. He says he did nothing improper in hushing this up with our money. We’ll be the judge of that, thanks.
He did wrong, used our money to buy silence, and his name shouldn’t be in the news? Every one of their names should be on the front page.
I was going to say that we don’t know that he did wrong. But we do know that he did wrong: he used our money to buy silence. That in itself is wrong, regardless of the truth of the underlying accusations. In the first place, there shouldn’t be a House slush fund to buy off accusers, and if there is one, a guy who holds the purse strings shouldn’t be paying off his own accusers with money from the slush fund.
She is smart to remain silent. She already had to leave her job because of him, now he wants to use her name in an attempt to clear his own. Why should she reveal her name so that he can call her a liar?
Because she took taxpayer $$ too? He may very well have done wrong but this taking money to keep quiet is alittle too close to blackmail although it seems to be a popular choice as we are discovering and not these two,
She didn’t take money to keep quiet; it’s clear that she wanted to keep quiet in any case and still does. She took money in recompense for her harassment. For someone who wants people to complain and follow the process, @momofthreeboys, I’m surprised you’re attacking someone who complained and followed the process.