Prelude:
I would like to challenge you. If you identify as conservative, you will probably agree with my opening statements but then by the end, perhaps you will see something different. If you are a liberal, you are going to condemn me in the first few paragraphs and then rail against me without letting me finish. Keep reading to the end, both of you.
This is a series of posts I hope will shed some logical thinking on problems that charge people up. This hasn't worked well in the past as we saw when a guy from Google asked the unaskable questions. But I'm going to try anyway.
Part II: Sexual and Other Harassment Lately, corporate America is bombarded with HR warriors telling us how we dare not offend anyone for any reason. It isn't enough that we behave well, we must behave in the way certain other people think it is OK to behave.
In some cases, this is clearly a great thing. Obviously, movie executives groping women and TV stars slipping you a mickey isn't OK and I'm glad we are getting at least some awareness of that problem and maybe finally fixing it.
However, there are two problems. First, is that there's an implied idea that if someone of a “protected subgroup” is offended, then offense was given. On top of that, there is no consequence for making repeated false allegations.
I like to think of things fairly so let's try to unravel this. John Oliver interviewed Anita Hill recently where she made a great point. If you are in a car wreck that was someone's fault but they didn't mean to hit you, it doesn't matter. Great point. But she was mixed up about one thing. If it is your fault and you didn't mean to, that's true that it should not relive you of responsbility. But by analogy, what she really wanted to say is “if someone hits me, it is their fault no matter what I did. Furthermore, even if they don't hit me but I just don't like how they drive, that should be their problem, too.” Before you overreact, let's do a thought experiment.
I would hope we can all agree that in a normal workplace you should not hang pornographic pictures up, right? I'm all for that. But who gets to decide what is pornographic? Let's say you have a calendar that has people on tropical beaches and some of them are in bathing suits. Perhaps not super professional, but is it pornographic? But wait... what if you are part of a religious sect that thinks women should not show anything above, say, the knee? Your coworker — from your point of view — just put up pornography but most of us would not agree. What if you are in a religion where women should not show their faces? Do you have a right to force other people to cover their faces and not display pictures of lewd women who show their faces to anyone?
Why not? After all, it doesn't matter what the coworker thinks. You are offended and so this must be addressed, right? In reality, most of the time people want their view protected but don't give a whit about anyone elses'.
For example, if I formed a group of men at work and called the “Straight Sex Employee Organization” that would get shut down right away. But it is OK to have other specialized groups. Why? The fact that I would like everyone to know how much I enjoy straight sex and I like living with a member of the opposite sex and sharing their company in a variety of activities is just as important as your need to share with me that you like other men or women, isn't it?
I'm not saying that me or you or anyone thinking something is OK makes it OK. I am saying that me or you or anyone thinking something is not OK is not a sufficient reason to punish/ban or whatever. Companies and government need to have clear guidance on what is actionable and what isn't. And there should be clear penalties for repeatedly accusing people with groundless accusations.
I have personal knowledge, for example, of a case where a woman accused a man of placing a pencil on his desk that was pointing aggressively at her every day. An employee recognition program had a guy who was leaving preprinted notes on people's desks when they had locked their workstation that they could redeem for a gift card was investigated because one woman felt that was “harassing behavior.” The fact that these were even investigated was a fail, but the biggest fail of all is that the accusers were both serial accusers and there was no consequence for making these rediculous accusations.
I want people to report bad behavoir and I want bad behavior stopped. But we have to have some agreement on what is bad behavior and — here's the bad news kids — not everyone will be in total agreement. You might not agree where the city puts a stop sign up instead of a stop light. You are even welcome to ask if that can be changed. But you can't just run the stop sign because you don't like it.
The wholesale encouragment of a victim mentality is killing workplaces and making companies unproductive. It is going to make it harder for legitimate victims to be taken seriously. We have to find a way to make reasonable standards, stick to them, and penalize people who are taking advantage of the situation to attack others.
Please share these links: Part 1: https://write.as/otsf7fgqgtk8p.md Part 2: https://write.as/o0ayexhoygdr2.md Part 3: https://write.as/vpq6gsa2syk3q.md