Originally Posted by
cwolff
The problem is that when people ask to be treated better or more fairly or for a change in how they are treated there is a knee jerk reflexive backlash. The word equality doesn't even matter here. The movement is simply that women want to be treated differently in their professional life and that causes this whole big thing where people freak out and start whining/crying about PC culture and "hurt feelings". The reality is that they feel hurt. They feel attacked or somehow accused of behaving badly so they lash out. Things would be soooooo much easier if we didn't have to go through this stupid backlash all the time. Gays want to marry: no worries; African Americans prefer being called African American: Doesn't bother me one bit; Women don't want to be ogled at work: Fair enough. The reality is that these things should be simple and easy but we always find a way to make it a wedge issue. People have to take to the streets, hold rallies/marches and fight political/social war just to be treated in the manner they prefer.
It stood out to me the other day at work. We had a class to take and one of the engineers gave the class. She's pretty hot. At the end, as she gathered up our tests, my boss made some crack about how he could barely pay attention because her eyes are so beautiful. They dazzled him. The instructor just smiled and played along but it occurred to me that she probably gets some comment on her physical appearance all the time and it must grate on her nerves. After all, she's a fully qualified and educated engineer but she still has to politely smile and laugh along when the guys halfway hit on her. The next week we were told about recent HR complaints and zero tolerance and I'm wondering if she finally got fed up and complained.
Telling someone not to ogle someone hot of their preferred gender is like telling them not to breath, it ain't going to happen and it is a very unreasonable request. Telling them not to speak the idiotic things that come to mind is far more reasonable though.
My only issue with the latter is that people take it too far and think they should be "safe" from anything that offends them and people are getting in trouble just for others hearing something they don't like that has nothing to do with them. Just as an example to make it a bit more clear we have persons A and B who are talking and joking when person C passes by and hears something they don't like, that isn't directly related to them, so they report persons A and B who then get in trouble. One would think that after a point people would grow up and be able to recognize when words are only words and not get offended by them. This isn't to say that people should always be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want, freely and nothing happens to them either but we should be able to find some kind of happy medium.
[LNet]-GSIV:Lysistrata: "And I'm pretty perfect sooooo... What can I say. I'm dedicated. (To Jeril's cock.)"