Maybe she wanted to tangle beards.

Whut?

The video failed for me. Not technically, but a few seconds in once I realized it was Samantha Bee, I started involuntarily projectile vomiting.

i'm sorry that was again too much overstatement. change it to

'i just have this weird semi-irrational dislike for her brand of snark'

i've had a bad day sorry

The video was OK, as humor. As a serious piece it would have at least a couple fatal chinks in its armor. One being that women (or anyone) gets a pass for not owning up to their conduct in threatening situations; because, they didn't want to offend or were afraid. They don't get to blame being indecisive; or, compliant on anyone else. You can't respect someone who kisses your ass and A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave person dies but once are a couple of the names that tune goes by.

Which brings us to another fatal flaw, the notion that women (or anyone) can demand respect. Respect, like trust, is earned, not demanded. Women's behavior has to change. Men who present as easy victims have to change. If not, they'll fall by the wayside. They can go in the #MeToo direction; but, the path of retribution is short and won't get them far. We have penal institutions; but, people still commit crimes and there are repeat offenders.

#MeToo is a reactionary measure. Anyone jumping on that bandwagon thinking they're being proactive is delusional. The movement is like trying to prevent getting a disease by taking a placebo that makes people think they'll be OK when in actuality their well being will deteriorate because they refuse to acknowledge the underlying vulnerability is their own ineptitude at prevention.

The idea that we will always have criminals only works if this kind of experience is the exception, rather than the norm. #MeToo is about the fact that it has happened to basically every woman out there. And when we try to fight our vulnerability like you suggest--say, by creating a list of shitty men in a particular industry, to quietly spread the word and help keep ourselves out of those very situations you blame us for being in--we get attacked for gossiping and wielding anonymous power to destroy random men's lives for fun. It's hard to be proactive when it's e v e r y w h e r e.

There has been both enormous societal change and also an enormous drop in crime over time.

If you can get a new cultural rule into place, and have it stick, it wins.

I remember last time. It was the early-mid 90s. My ex came home from work and said that her co-worker, who was an acquaintance of ours, had gotten a sexual harassment charge, and he now faced a serious career threat, if not outright firing.

That hadn't been the case just a few years earlier. But there was this sense of change in the air. HR departments everywhere were on guard. Everyone knew, a new normal was well on its way. Most of us felt it was totally overdue.

And then, that all suddenly came to a Full Stop, exactly 20 years ago, as -- incredibly -- many feminists went silent and many even actively considered how harassment wasn't really that terrible of a crime after all.

Politics Makes Us Stupid

Politics can normalize things we'd previously agreed were bad things. Even near-universally accepted bad things like pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. But especially under-the-radar things like racism, bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia, that people had quietly clung to.

And it's always the other guy, on the other side--because we're the good guys and y'all are the bad guys.

Very true.

That's a mischaracterization even if it's a collective "you." I (we *Royal wave*) are not blaming you. Perhaps an analogy will help to clarify:

There are a lot of bad drivers on the road. You can drive along, exercising your right of way as a driver, even if it means having bad drivers crash into you. You can take their names, tell as many people as you can about them, sue them and maybe even have them put in jail. It's all reactive. You still have to deal with the aftermath of being in a crash.

So I point out that your situation isn't going to change unless you become proactive. You should do something to avoid the crashes in the first place. You should learn to recognize bad drivers before they crash into you and learn sound evasive action techniques.

Well lo and behold, there's a thing called a Defensive Drivers Course. Part of it is learning that it may be necessary to relinquish something (right of way) in the near term to gain something more (avoid a crash) in the long run. Suggesting you attend one is not blaming you for any crashes.

You can be proactive (even if you and others in a given situation have to devise the means); but, you don't have to be proactive. I'm not going to blame you for the crashes either way. I am going to get tired of listening to you complain about bad drivers crashing into you if you don't become proactive because I know there's a good chance it was avoidable with more effort on your part even if you weren't to blame.

My biggest assault was the aftermath of a crash, so I am a double loser in this blame the victim game.

I take it you hurt two fingers. I'm not sorry about one of them.

I'm not going to tell you which one.

See now if you had been proactive, say holding a gun, you wouldn't have been assaulted. :haha:

Sounds like xoB is sorry about your trigger finger.

Your cow orkers are not your friends.