May 24, 2015



Women Now Demanding To Be Treated As Eggshells, Not Equals

Camille Paglia gets it right on sexual harassment, from Playboy from 1995:

"[You can't have] the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man's reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail. My definition of sexual harassment is specific. It is only sexual harassment-by a man or a woman-if it is quid pro quo. That is, if someone says, "You must do this or I'm going to do that"-for instance, fire you. And whereas touching is sexual harassment, speech is not. I am militant on this. Words must remain free. The solution to speech is that women must signal the level of their tolerance-women are all different. Some are very bawdy."

Actually, a law professor with an evolutionary orientation, Wayne State's Kingsley Browne, argues that men shove each other around with language; it's a form of exercising dominance.

And if women are actually men's equals, their response to language isn't filing suit -- or trying to bring down a man's career through social media because he makes a joke.

In fact, Browne points out, men using language to shove women around the same way they do to other men involves treating women equally.

It used to be that women marched around claiming that they weren't fragile little dollies; that they could handle what men could. Now just the opposite is the case. Women get men fired over jokes overheard at conferences.

In 2008, Rebecca Solnit sniveled in the LA Times that men won't "let her" talk. Me? I just talk. Nobody stops me. Not even by trying to sue me for $500,000 (though I did have help from a man, First Amendment lawyer Marc J. Randazza, on that one).

I've also been writing here about the awful injustice done to Bora Zivkovic. Many science writers who proudly proclaim themselves skeptics unquestioningly swallowed the notion that Zivkovic was guilty of harassment.

Here's an example of his "crimes." While out for a drink with his wife and one of the women who later accused him, he bought a rose for his wife. He then asked the seller for one for the woman (who was standing beside him at the time), saying he'd also take one for his (heh heh) "concubine."

Say that to me and I'll laugh; I won't file charges against you. It wouldn't even occur to me. (I suspect that women who think this way are those who have not accomplished much in the world and realize that their only source of power -- and, especially power over men -- is the unearned power they can have through sexual harassment charges.)

If this sort of crack is something you can't take, you are not men's equal or anything close. You don't belong in the workplace; you belong at home where your biggest challenge is getting the brownies out of the oven without overcooking them.

Playboy quote via @instapundit

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