Workplace segregation of the sexes: this could certainly have been predicted
The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
Men are trying to protect themselves against false accusations in the workplace and on business trips. They observe that these days the woman doesn’t have to offer much or any evidence of sexual wrongdoing in order to make a “credible” [sic] accusation, and so men are thinking that one way—and perhaps the only way—to protect themselves would be to strictly limit their contacts with women at work.
But I don’t see see how that would succeed in keeping false accusations at bay, although I hear the suggestion often. After all, if an accusation is false it can be false in its entirety, can’t it? A man doesn’t actually have to have been alone with the woman to be falsely accused of making a sexual advance, although it helps. So I suppose it might reduce the chances of being falsely accused. But if a woman is willing to make up the story of a sexual assault or harrassment, why wouldn’t she be willing to make up the part of it that indicates the two people were once alone? And if she isn’t asked to offer proof of the assault, why would she be asked to offer proof that they were once alone?
If it’s the stupid and dangerous mantra “believe the women,” it’s “believe the women” all the way, isn’t it?
A classic line from Miller’s The Crucible comes to mind, which could be easily tweaked for today:
DANFORTH
In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But (ravishment) is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The (ravisher) and the victim. None other. Now we cannot hope the (ravisher) will accuse (him)self; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon (his) victims – and they do testify, the (women) certainly do testify. As for the (ravishers), none will deny that we are most eager for all their confessions. Therefore, what is left for a lawyer to bring out?
And they complained about V.P. Pence who would NOT be alone with a woman not his wife.
The point is not to be alone with a woman. There must always be another person, preferably more, present. Never touch a woman. Never mentor a woman. Never travel with a woman. Never socialize with a woman, not even lunch or coffee breaks, without others present.
Well, it helps if you have never been alone with a woman. We interviewed a woman for a job once, myself and another man. Afterwards she called her recruiter and falsely reported that we had both made rather crude sexual propositions to her. Our case was certainly bolstered by the fact that there were two of us uttering rather incredulous denials.
The Left can screw* up everything. Even sex.
*The statement would have more punch were I to substitute a more appropriate, though vulgar, verb.
My career as a surgeon proceeded all this sexual assault hysteria. I was very aware, however, that nurses preferred to work with a male supervisor. Women were too catty around others and had favorites.
When I spent 15 years, after retiring from surgery, teaching medical students, more than half my students were female. I noticed a femininization of medical school the past 20 years but my female students seemed to prefer my rather curmudgeonly teaching of basics. There were female instructors who asked me to add their group to mine for the teaching of anatomy. They had forgotten, if they ever learned it.
Cleavage, short skirts, and high heels should be banned from the workplace.
Far too many ideas, of every type, are not thought completely through. If a man’s career can be ruined by accusations of conduct that may have been done 30-40 years ago, there will certainly be a conscious effort to minimize the possibility. There are too many qualified young males that will not accuse you of anything decades later. Too bad. But it’s absolutely predictable.
The reason it reduces the probability of a false accusation is because the woman doesn’t know where the man was if he wasn’t with her. Was he in the middle of a group of 15 people, each recording him on their cell phones? That’s the kind of evidence that would destroy your story. Then, the woman is in possible jeopardy for making a false accusation.
As we saw from Dr. Ford’s squirrely behavior, it seems the threat of a perjury charge somewhat restrained her accusations. I believe it also made the second accuser, Ramirez, refuse to go under oath.
Matt_SE:
But that assumes that the woman is required to set a date, time, and place for the offense. We have learned from Ford that that is not the case. She is “credible” anyway, and it finesses his ability to mount a defense.
What’s more, she can say it happened on a certain day when she knows she was in the office and he was in the office. Unless he has a hidden security camera running at all times in his office and saving all the video for decades (which isn’t the way security cameras usually work), he can’t prove it didn’t happen.
She says they were alone; he says they were not. “Believe all woman” says that she is the truthteller.
This problem is as old as time. In Genesis, Joseph was thrown into prison because his master’s wife, in a fit of rage because he refused to sleep with her, falsely accused him of rape.
There was no rule of law as we know it in those days so she could get away with it. If the woman must be believed, then the rule of law will revert to the will of the Pharoh as it was four thousand years ago. The only solution, if the Democrats get full control, is full sexual segregation at work complete with 24 surveillance for defense. I’d also force extreme sexual modesty on the women as it used to be with no exposed flesh in public and chaperons until marriage. Maybe when the Muslims take over and institute Sharia Law, things will calm down.
Neo:
But maybe that was the reason Ford’s accusations failed in the end. She couldn’t name a place, date, or even year. If she genuinely could have named a time and place where they were both at the same party, maybe that would have been enough to finish the nomination, even if she was lying about everything else, and nothing happened.
I think everybody just mouthed the word ‘credible’ because they didn’t want to be seen as a rape apologist if Kavanaugh was unable to defend himself.
RohanV:
Ford’s audience was completely different than what transpires in the workplace. Ford had to convince a Senate that was majority Republican and voted along party lines with only one exception for each party. Do you really think that logic, evidence, or lack of evidence was the deciding factor there? It was politics, pure and simple: if the number of Democrats in the Senate had been just one greater, Kavanaugh would have been turned out on his ear.
In the workplace, who is in charge? From what I’ve seen, it’s pretty much PC all the way. The way things are going, I don’t see logic or evidence leading the way.
“Logic and proportion have fallen soggy dead.”
Not to worry, Shariah Law will straighten it all out… permanently.
neo, I have to disagree. Suits for wrongful discharge are expensive to defend, and juries tend to sympathize with the poor shlub who lost his job. It’s also expensive to replace highly-paid professionals, which is the class of employees we are talking about. In my case, the law firm was faced with the alternative of replacing two partners versus declining to hire one apparently litigious paralegal: they made the expedient choice.
y81:
I hope you’re right. But I’m not so sure that a report of sexual harrassment, even if unproven, wouldn’t be considered cause.
Neo wrote: “So I suppose it might reduce the chances of being falsely accused.”
Exactly!
Mr. Frank wrote: “Cleavage, short skirts, and high heels should be banned from the workplace.”
Noooooooooooooo! I once read, I forget where, that sexily-dressed women in the workplace actually improved work performance.
There is a very good reason why missionaries (and not just LDS ones) are always in pairs, and never alone. At this point, our mission rules don’t even allow the elders (age 18-22, which is a great source of etymological amusement sometimes) to teach single women without another church member present as well.
It’s a proactive defense against false accusations, and a reactive defense against temptation.
BTW, this is the same kind of back-lash that occurred with the ‘ban the box’ legislation / regulation against asking about prior convictions.
People reduced hiring of people who MIGHT be more likely to have checked the box if it had been there, instead of being able to weigh the merits of the applicants against the severity & type of charges.
Both might be unintended consequences, but both were certainly forseeable (and foreseen).
OTOH, given what we know about the left, the resulting partitioning of people at work are probably exactly what they intended, as giving them more “reasons” to yell about oppression, discrimination, and victimization.
The goal is always to make conservatives live in Catch-22 Land.
We might have to bring back chaperones.
I spent my career (I’m male) at a large engineering company. Circa 1985, a young woman, call her X, joined our project. We noticed that she dressed rather provocatively – unbuttoned buttons up top and skirt slit well up the side. Shortly after she joined the project, another gal warned me “Be careful with X. She told me that she’s trolling for a sexual harassment suit.” We men were careful to never be alone with her.
MEO – there is money in everything the Left champions.
Pop quiz: which “workplace” has generated most of the false accusations of sexual harassment / assault?
https://www.city-journal.org/campus-diversity-bureaucracies-16223.html
“The sheer size of the diversity landscape is staggering. The University of Michigan’s diversity bureaucracy employs nearly 100 full-time employees, one earning more than $300,000 per year, at an annual cost of more than $11 million. More than a quarter of UM’s diversocrats make more than $100,000 a year, far more than the average salary of assistant professors with doctorates. UM is not exceptional. The University of Texas at Austin employs a similar number of bureaucrats in its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (boasting eight vice presidents), at an annual cost of $9.5 million. The head of UT’s diversity bureaucracy makes over $265,000 a year, more than most tenured faculty.
The Economist reports that UC Berkeley has 175 diversity bureaucrats, and nationwide, the trend is toward increased spending in this area. According to The Economist, “Bureaucrats outnumber faculty 2:1 at public universities and 2.5:1 at private colleges, double the ratio in the 1970s.” Over the same period, tuition has soared. Ohio State’s Richard Vedder estimates that more than 900,000 nonteaching administrators—most of them unnecessary—bloat university payrolls.
…
Diversity bureaucrats exist to service the grievances of an evolving—and potentially unlimited—number of supposedly oppressed groups recognized by postmodern identity politics. Thus, by promoting “social justice” and encouraging “marginalized” students to embrace victimhood, diversocrats ensure their own job security. The mission of campus diversity officers is self-perpetuating. Affirmative action (i.e., racial and ethnic preferences in admissions) leads to grievance studies. Increased recognition of LGBT rights requires ever-greater accommodation by the rest of the student body. Protecting “vulnerable” groups from “hate speech” and “microaggressions” requires speech codes and bias-response teams (staffed by diversocrats). Complaints must be investigated and adjudicated (by diversocrats). Fighting “toxic masculinity” and combating an imaginary epidemic of campus sexual assault necessitate consent protocols, training, and hearing procedures—more work for an always-growing diversocrat cadre. Each newly recognized problem leads to a call for more programs and staffing.
Unless the cycle of promoting and nursing imaginary grievances is ended, diversity bureaucracies will take over our colleges and universities, supplanting altogether the goal of higher education.”
And I bet a lot of those diversity officials moon-light by as sex-harassment case workers. (In financial circles, they would be investment brokers churning transactions to increase their fees.)
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/309913/
OCTOBER 10, 2018
I’M SURE THIS WILL BE A BIG DEAL IN THE NEWS STARTING NEVER: Ariz. Dem Donor Charged with Felony Sexual Abuse. “There has been no documentation that any of the money has been returned by the Garcia campaign, which did not respond to a Free Beacon inquiry on what it planned to do with the money.”
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 8:00 am
From the linked story:
“The Garcia campaign is not listed in the police report, but the address and time of the event Rivera attended that are listed in the report match the listed address and time of the campaign’s event. The name of Rivera’s victim and witnesses who were able to corroborate her account are also left out of the report.
The report indicates, however, that Rivera was asked to leave the party because he was too drunk and became “verbally aggressive.”
“[Rivera] became intoxicated while at a social gathering and [the victim] accepted the task of driving him home,” the report states.”
* * *
Women need to be a bit more pro-active about staying away from potential trouble; this task should have been given to a man.
FWIW, there are: an actual date and time, police charges, and witnesses.
I was enjoying Dave Begley’s report on Trump’s Iowa rally, and noted this excellent comment exchange in re sexual harassment / Ford-Kavanaugh.
mlmontagne • 13 hours ago
(quoting Dave)
” A sitting federal judge was accused of sexual assault and gang rape and there was no corroborating evidence. Any fair analysis showed it was all lies. CNN last night asserted that President Trump’s statement that Justice Kavanaugh was proven innocent was false. Only a deranged partisan would not think Brett Kavanaugh was proven innocent.”
There are, unfortunately, a lot of deranged people in this country, or outright liars, I’m not sure which. I have asked a number of people why they find Christine Ford more credible than Crystal Mangum or Jackie Coakly. I have also asked, if they find Ford to be credible, to describe an accusation that would be non credible. No one has ever responded to these questions. I sure hope this translates into votes in a few weeks.”
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Thresherman mlmontagne • 12 hours ago
“To the left, Ford is credible solely on the grounds that she was “sincere” when she told her story. But “sincere” and “credible” are not synonymous terms. Scammers and con artists all sound sincere, it’s their stock in trade, but no one would ever describe them as credible. But as the con artists say, you can only con those who want to be conned and the people who say they find Ford credible, do so, not because her story is credible, but because they want it to be. In short, they want to be conned and the Democrats are all too willing to do so.”
Forgot the link for Dave’s report:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/dave-begley-live-from-council-bluffs.php
Reporting supporting the “ban the box” parallel I mentioned earlier.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/ban-the-box-gets-boxed-in-again.php
One can’t escape the risk of a false accusation but one can minimize it. If you are known to always avoid being alone with women a false accusation against you is less credible. I am known to not engage in pre-marital sex for religious reasons. I was at a restaurant with friends when one of them showed someone I had never met a picture of my girlfriend and joked about my not having slept with her. That person insisted that, surely, I must have had relations with someone as attractive as her (fortunately my girlfriend was not present at the time.) All of my friends proceeded to explain to this person that THEY would have had sex with her by now but that I am different. I also always refuse to drink with coworkers after hours. The reputation that my habits gave me saved me the one time I was falsely accused of inappropriate behavior. That was before the whole #metoo movement so a false accusation might carry more weight today but being respectful and careful is always a good idea. As they say, Pence is the master, we are the students.
I’m putting this on both posts today for different reasons; it’s an omnibus article.
MB/FC doesn’t list the website in its database, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess it would be “right bias”– you betcha.
http://www.watcherofweasels.org/donald-trump-false-accusations/
September 6, 2018 Bookworm
“Within the past few days, Bob Woodward dropped a book claiming to have first, or second, or third hand information from anonymous people who are, like, totally in the know, and thereby backing up Omarosa’s claim that Donald Trump is a crazy meanie. With perfect timing, an anonymous, but nevertheless really important person, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which s/he announced that Trump is a crazy meanie, so that the person has been forced to mount a seditious movement . . . er, sorry, a Deep State movement . . . er, sorry, a resistance . . . er, sorry, a “steady state” movement (yes, really — “steady state”) to undermine the will of those American people who just happened to elect Donald Trump.
…
Decades ago, I also worked on a case in which a man disagreed with a minority woman who held a position superior to his. She could simply have reported him for insubordination. Instead, she falsely accused him of major acts of sexual harassment. She backed it up with an affidavit from an even more junior women in the organization who claimed to have witness the sexually-based verbal abuse and intimidation. When I spoke to the young woman, she admitted that she had lied because her job was threatened.
It ought to have been a no-brainer to get rid of the matter, but as is the case today with so many young men false accused of rape at America’s colleges and universities, it was a nightmare to deal with the institution. Its employees lied; its attorneys lied; it withheld documents; it threatened other employees to suborn perjury; etc. In other words, it was a microcosm of what goes on today, whether on campus or in dealing with the FBI and the DOJ if you’re unlucky enough to be Mike Flynn, Carter Page, or anyone else caught up in the Mueller abattoir. Mike Flynn, almost certainly afraid that Mueller would destroy the life of Flynn’s son, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, even though the FBI agents working the case acknowledged that he hadn’t lied.
In the case of my client, wee ended up settling for a purged record. We did so because my client lacked the company’s deep pockets and couldn’t afford the attorneys fees. He also could not handle the professional threat constantly hanging over his head.
I also know people here in Marin with sons’ whose lives have been destroyed by the man-hating Title IX offices at college campuses throughout America. There, aided in part by the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter, men are dragged without notice before tribunals that accuse them of horrible, but often unspecific sexual crimes; deny them the right to talk to parents or other counsel; refuse them the right to question accusers or witnesses; and then summarily kick them out of college with the phrase “sex offender” scrawled across their records. Often, these accusations come from young women with mental problems, women who got as drunk as the men but nevertheless are not responsible for their actions while the men are responsible for theirs, and women seeking vengeance for bad break-ups. Thank goodness, as I mentioned above, the Betsy DeVos is trying to bring some sanity back and, even more importantly, young men are suing and winning instead of running away in shame from these Kafka-esque, kangaroo courts.
…
The other person to whom I spoke was also on the receiving end of an overzealous prosecutor and ended up pleading out to a lesser charge, not because he was guilty but for the same reason as my client: he couldn’t afford either the legal fees or the risk to his professional reputation. Moreover, because he was dealing with a government agency, it did what those agencies do (see, the FBI and DOJ, above): Its people lied and it refused to turn over relevant documents that would instantly have proven his innocence.
…
All these stories are a reminder that big organizations, whether federal, state, municipal, or corporate, as well as frenzied mobs, have unbelievable power. When people who glory in power, are malicious, and/or dishonest get in the driver’s seat, they can pervert justice in ways that are truly Kafka-esque.
Worse, it’s not just individuals who suffer terrible harm. These events make justice such a travesty that they lead to vigilantism. If the law is manifestly corrupt, people will take power into their own hands, often with results more violent, although in many ways no more cruel, than what flows from corrupt governments or deep-pocketed entities.”
Filing fake charges of sexual abuse should be a hate crime and those who file those charges should receive the same punishment.
I don’t support the “believe all women” ideology. I support believe those who tell the truth.
“There were men who specifically said I will not hire a woman going forward,” he explained.”
Sounds rational to me. I don’t really see the problem with it, nor do I think that the left themselves are in any position to disapprove.
Cold-eyed, self-interested, unrelenting formality may be found unappealing by some, but as long as mentally disturbed people are running loose like insane suicide bomber tar-babies, it is best to effect certain disciplines and procedures.