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What should happen to men fired for sexual harrassment?


Sociotard

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Your friend's co-worker should have had their record expunged as a matter of common sense, but company guidelines are often arcane and cryptic to make management more empowered. 

 

My sister had her behavior reported by a rival HR employee because the other woman didn't like the way she went about her business. She was successful in her defense the other woman left the company in a huff. This was in 2015. HR is still weird. 

 

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56 minutes ago, Enforcer84 said:

That sounds horrible. I'm glad he was exonerated.

 

But he wasn't fired so the "What does the fired guy do" questions doesn't fit here, he got due process. His accusers made their case, he was able to respond. That's the system working, that's not an attack on dudes being nice. 

 

I just don't think industry reforms should be abandoned because "some bad women did stuff once." to borrow a phrase. 

 

 

 

 

So should his accusers face penalties following his exoneration? (They didn't, and are now a protected class, so probably saved their jobs by taking that action)

 

How about his legal fees? Is that just the price of reform? 

 

I can assure you the gentleman in question doesn't feel the system worked out very well for him. What happens if someone else does this to him? He's not actually a friend of mine, I observed this in an administrative capacity. Just seems extremely wrong. 

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Yes. The Price for Freedom is occasionally money.

 

I'm sorry for your friend, but he did have his day in arbitration, and he won. That's how it's supposed to work. 

 

He didn't spend 38 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. 

He didn't lose his job

He didn't have to sign Non-Disclosure or pay out on flimsy evidence. (though payouts are usually payed by company insurance? I may be wrong there)

 

It was a terrible thing to happen to him but that doesn't change my opinion on the matter. 

 

As to accusers facing penalties - Don't know, probably. 

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Enforcer84 said:

Yes. The Price for Freedom is occasionally money.

 

I'm sorry for your friend, but he did have his day in arbitration, and he won. That's how it's supposed to work. 

 

He didn't spend 38 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. 

He didn't lose his job

He didn't have to sign Non-Disclosure or pay out on flimsy evidence. (though payouts are usually payed by company insurance? I may be wrong there)

 

It was a terrible thing to happen to him but that doesn't change my opinion on the matter. 

 

As to accusers facing penalties - Don't know, probably. 

 

 

I believe we are going to have to agree to disagree on this, I've never felt comfortable with the concept that innocent people have a burden of proof. I would consider the price of progress too high if we are sweeping up folks who have committed no wrong doing, and he definitively suffered a career impact from this that will linger for years regardless of the actual outcome. 

 

I'm going to look into implementing the OIG process, seems like a higher standard. 

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15 hours ago, Enforcer84 said:

Encounter another man who doesn't know the difference? 

 

I'm assuming you mean a woman who screams sexual harassment when a gentleman says hello? 

Given the way harassment is handled, the chances of anything happening to a man for speaking to a woman in the office in a professional manner are exceedingly slim.

 

 

 

 

Well, I do work in a 80% female environment.  And I am fairly prudish, so I don't really talk about sex.

 

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10 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

So should his accusers face penalties following his exoneration? (They didn't, and are now a protected class, so probably saved their jobs by taking that action)

 

How about his legal fees? Is that just the price of reform? 

 

I can assure you the gentleman in question doesn't feel the system worked out very well for him. What happens if someone else does this to him? He's not actually a friend of mine, I observed this in an administrative capacity. Just seems extremely wrong. 

This is a general fault with your society and work environment. You should go fix that.

 

If anything, stricter laws regarding infractons lead to stricter laws regarding wrongfull accusations.

In a world where women are not protected by law and culture, you are liable to accept any accusation at face value.

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36 minutes ago, Christopher said:

This is a general fault with your society and work environment. You should go fix that.

 

If anything, stricter laws regarding infractons lead to stricter laws regarding wrongfull accusations.

In a world where women are not protected by law and culture, you are liable to accept any accusation at face value.

I'm not even sure what you are referring to here. Change society? Okay, I have decided we now live in a meritocracy with strong social safety nets, and a deep commitment to social justice issues, where no innocent individual is wrongly accused. Make it so. 

 

The actions related to work environment are governed by State regulation (including the now protected class status) and their agency policies. I indicated the recommendation I'm giving them related to policy change which is specifically part of my charge in this case (adopt OIG investigative standards as policy - in short it results in more robust investigative processes, which in the case of a malicious false claim finding with evidence to support it as in this case results in sanctions against the complaintant up to and including termination). 

 

Obviously women deserve the protection of law and culture, as do all humans. I suppose if there was anyone indicating otherwise that would be a rather surprising world view. So do men. So do non-binary gender folks. 

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55 minutes ago, Christopher said:

I do not get how that happened.

How did their wrongfull accusations net them a Proteciton Status and not getting fired?

In California, the submission of a grievance and participating in an arbitration process provides a level of protected status. This is intended to protect whistleblowers, and encourage the submission of legitimate grievances. 

 

Had the employer put the federal (OIG) policy guideline in place prior to the complaint, action would be allowed. The state regs aren't as rigorous in protecting the accused (pretty silent on the subject).

 

Which is why I'm suggesting they adopt language to address this issue, but it isn't retroactive. So, they are pretty difficult to take any action about and he will still get to enjoy supervising them after all this.

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14 hours ago, Hermit said:

I think you're assuming more power on the gent's side than he actually had. Tennessee is a "Hire at Will" state which is pretty much code for "We will fire your ass whenever we want for whatever we want".  

 

 

EDIT Yes, as I get older I kind of envy you hippie locales. But that's for another thread

Oh we're fire at will here as well. I'm not saying he had power. As I've found out. That's pretty much the norm. 

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There is a long history of some men abusing their positions of power to harass women.  Obviously that's bad.  There's also a long history where some women would willfully go along with it because they could benefit from it.  Obviously that's bad too.  It perpetuates the behavior -- the guys will keep doing it when they realize it sometimes gets them what they want.  Part of the Harvey Weinstein problem (how much, we don't really know) is that, according to the rumors, many young actresses were perfectly willing to sleep with the fat ugly guy if it meant they got a part in a movie.  So, to a degree, you can understand why he kept doing it.  Whether a particular behavior makes you a creep or a stud is at least partially defined by its success rate.

 

There are certain cases where it's really really obvious that somebody is in the wrong, but I'd argue that the vast majority of cases are not so clear.  Bob makes an off-color joke to Steve by the water cooler ("...then the doctor says, 'Ok, now it's my turn to cough'"), and Sarah overhears, gets mad, and goes to make a sexual harassment complaint.  What do you do about that?  Could it be sexual harassment?  Sure.  Bob and Steve could have been leering at Sarah when they made the joke.  Or maybe they didn't even know she was in earshot and she's just an angry bitch.  Each company is going to handle that differently, and without knowing all the details of the people involved and how the company operates, it's almost impossible to judge whether they made a good decision or a bad one.

 

People don't have more or less moral worth just based upon gender.  It's a complete lie that men are all pigs and women are all pure flowers.  Now there's still some degree of that perception because of older social norms, where that kind of behavior was accepted in men, but women were supposed to remain chaste and virginal.  And our culture generally expects men to be the first mover when it comes to initiating a relationship.  But since the Sexual Revolution, when we as a society decided that it was okay for women to have the freedom to make their own sexual decisions, we've had to deal with conflicting ideals.  We accept that women shouldn't have to wear a hijab in public, they can dress attractively and display some sexuality if they wish.  On the other hand, people shouldn't be coerced into sexual behavior that they don't want.  But once you eliminate the bright-line rule, and you accept that yes, sometimes women do want sex, you get this big muddy area in the middle where behavior might sometimes be appropriate but not always.  How do you judge which is which, particularly when the person making the decision for the business didn't witness most of it?

 

 

The problem is that with no real uniform standard in place, a guy who has been fired for sexual harassment could just be one step removed from a serial rapist, or he could be completely innocent of any wrongdoing and just the victim of an angry person and a company terrified of litigation.  And we have no way to know whatsoever.  So I think anything beyond the guy getting fired is entirely unjust.  The original action of him getting fired may have been unjust in and of itself, so additional action with no new information would be even worse.

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4 hours ago, massey said:

Bob makes an off-color joke to Steve by the water cooler ("...then the doctor says, 'Ok, now it's my turn to cough'"), and Sarah overhears, gets mad, and goes to make a sexual harassment complaint.

Okay, I do not understand how this could be interpreted as something sexual?

 

4 hours ago, massey said:

It's a complete lie that men are all pigs and women are all pure flowers.

Who actually says that?

If nobody actually says that, then it is just distraction.

 

4 hours ago, massey said:

The problem is that with no real uniform standard in place, a guy who has been fired for sexual harassment could just be one step removed from a serial rapist, or he could be completely innocent of any wrongdoing and just the victim of an angry person and a company terrified of litigation. 

Uniform Standart?

Oh, that will trigger a lot of Conservatives "Evil Federal Government" Paranoia.

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6 hours ago, Christopher said:

Okay, I do not understand how this could be interpreted as something sexual?

 

Doctors feel your balls when they have you cough.  Actually for that line I just googled "punchlines without jokes" and found the first one that made me chuckle.  Point is the guy says something off-color and someone not involved in the conversation gets offended.  Look at Iuz the Evil's example above for a sexual harassment case being stirred up without any actual sexual harassment.

 

Quote

Who actually says that?

If nobody actually says that, then it is just distraction.[/quote]

 

So you don't disagree then, good.  It's just how I'm structuring my argument. I'm beginning with a general statement that everyone should agree with, and then moving forward with more explanation for why I believe the way I do.  It also helps signpost where I'm going next.

 

We can also look at the title of the thread, "What should happen to men fired for sexual harassment".  As though women were never sexual harassers.  There's an underlying assumption that it's always men who are the problem.  That is not true (and you've already acknowledged you agree with that).

 

And Andrea Dworkin said things like that.  "Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman."  Our Blood (1976)

 

Quote

 

Uniform Standart?

Oh, that will trigger a lot of Conservatives "Evil Federal Government" Paranoia.

 

I don't know that a uniform standard can exist in a situation like this.  Different companies and different states are going to have different ideas on it.  I am not saying that a uniform standard should exist, just that since we don't have one at all, extra punishment beyond someone losing their job is completely unacceptable.

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16 hours ago, massey said:

I don't know that a uniform standard can exist in a situation like this.  Different companies and different states are going to have different ideas on it.  I am not saying that a uniform standard should exist, just that since we don't have one at all, extra punishment beyond someone losing their job is completely unacceptable.

Federal Laws. Organising stuff like that is literally why you keep the Federal Agencies around.

 

On 14.2.2018 at 4:54 PM, Iuz the Evil said:

In California, the submission of a grievance and participating in an arbitration process provides a level of protected status. This is intended to protect whistleblowers, and encourage the submission of legitimate grievances. 

While it sounds good, it sounds like a Overcompensation. If hte US had a decent Social Security System, being fired would not be nearly as devastating. So this exceptional amout of protection would not be needed.

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4 minutes ago, Christopher said:

Federal Laws. Organising stuff like that is literally why you keep the Federal Agencies around.

 

While it sounds good, it sounds like a Overcompensation. If hte US had a decent Social Security System, being fired would not be nearly as devastating. So this exceptional amout of protection would not be needed.

Absolutely agreed on both points.

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