Bettina Arndt: Feminism’s workplace gulags (how the former Sex Discrimination Commissioner tightened the screws on men at work)

An excellent piece.
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2 thoughts on “Bettina Arndt: Feminism’s workplace gulags (how the former Sex Discrimination Commissioner tightened the screws on men at work)

  1. Yes it is. “women’s and men’s perceptions of sexual harassment by the opposite sex tend to differ, with men typically finding sexual harassment by women ‘to be amusing or at least not serious” at she point out the research showing a substantial proportion of men receive sexist behaviour in work from women. The feminist lobby saying in fact that men are generally far more resilient and to take comments to heart. This same formula is used to explain away similar findings for domestic abuse or violence. That the actual behaviours are the same but the crucial difference is in the “victims”. Which of course adds up to the most traditional of sex roles, the expectations of female fragility and male resilience. In the first decade of this century (following the USA) there were at least 5 large scale research projects on representative samples of teenagers around abusive behavious in teenage relationships. All found “surprising” results. Boys were far more often physically hit by girls than the reverse, girls reported they were far more likely to use a abusive behaviours than the boys reported being abused, and generally girls labelled things abuse , while boys described their bad treatment as “just something that happens”. Needless to say all subsequent research ignored boys.
    The point is of course that this reflected very traditional gender roles. Never hit a girl, mind your language, sticks and stones……, man up. For the boys. And the same expectations of female sensitivity, fragility and need of help, but now “repackaged” in the language of “abuse”.
    So though males continue to have the same “superpower” of nor being fragile, nor having fragile egos and being resilient girls have exactly the same “weaknesses” with the addition of institutions to act up their feelings.
    The real conundrum for males is that they are “silenced” by their own ability to be resilient and sort themselves out and regard minor problems as not insurmountable but “just what happens”. I have some hope that the universality of feminist “relationship” education in schools may make young men more aware that the bad behaviour they experience can be called “abuse” and start pointing out that they are on the receiving end of the same bad behaviour from girls as vice versa. But then another part of me remembers that boys are generally far less ,likely to be affected by the “tsunami” of “mental health” problems that we are told increasingly beset girls!
    In the context of Bettinas article maybe if men too decided their hurt feelings were a good tool to get money or revenge in petty arguments, or reduce rivals for promotion, then the huge explosion in claims might make everyone think again.

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