Pajamas Media

201 Comments

1. Bernard Chapin:

“At first I had said some very vicious things back at them to defend myself but when they reacted by taking serious offense and playing the victims, the idiot managers would reprimand me.”

He fully understands the situation.

“The “take it like a man” line is said to psychologically weaken you and shut you up so don’t listen — it is a manipulative tactic meant to silence you.”–Dr. Helen gets it too as she invariably does.
Another exquisite piece, Dr., and thanks.

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:31 am 2. Zz:

Helen’s advice seems to be more of a legal nature: Sue them, you can win.

In some industries (probably fast-food is not one of them), you can easily get informally blacklisted if you sue. Other employers may not want a slap-happy suer (or someone they perceive to be that way).

So take Helen’s legal advice with a grain of salt. I know that her husband is a law teacher, so she also knows everything about law, but the salt is still needed.

Aug 20, 2008 - 4:53 am 3. Zz:

Further: She is providing a legal assessment of your chances of winning this particular type of tort suit. She is doing it based on a few cases she may have found.

That is not the proper way to do a legal assessment of your chances of winning in your specific case. She doesn’t seem to even be aware of that, however.

Aug 20, 2008 - 4:55 am 4. cwm:

Just remember the real world is this:
Women=men-(accountability+responsibility)
Meaning that even if you have a valid complaint society will manage to make the females the victim and you being male will be the villian.
They will counter with women only make 75 cents to every dollar a man makes even though Katie Couric makes three times what her counter parts do. I see the same thing in grocery stores, how many male check out clerks are there? They are usually out in the elements gathering carts or mopping floors, lifting heavy boxes etc. When the check out clerk gets a little behind they call a male to come and bag and get her caught up so she can talk on her cel phone.

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:25 am 5. Helen Smith:

Zz,

First, telling someone to find a lawyer is not “making a legal assessment.” The lawyer can let this young man know if he has a claim. Second, all the women and minorities who brought discrimation suits had to be brave enough to be the first. If no man is that brave, it is a pity.

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:26 am 6. mommadona:

“If you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”

Men – you are getting the outfall from being “part of the problem”.

No “slight pregnant” on this one, dears.

You broke it, you own it.

Now, YOU all go sort it out before some of your member of your sex destroy the world with their actions.

We, women and children, are waiting with ‘bated breath’

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:28 am 7. Locomotive Breath:

Len needs to be more subtle. When the women aren’t looking, go in the “ladies” [clearly not the case] room and pee all over the seat.

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:32 am 8. Cynic:

Well, Zz, if you think that a psychologist is the one to go to for “a legal assessment of your chances of winning in your specific case,” then maybe you need your head examined. This is an advice column, and her advice was to go see a lawyer. It seems like good advice to me. And as for “informal blacklists” those apply to anyone who sues in lots of industries. It doesn’t seem to have stopped women, blacks, and so forth from filing lots of lawsuits, though.

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:36 am 9. The Sexist In Me Made Me Post This Photo « The Reluctant Optimist:

[...] Workplace discrimination against men. Lord knows I have seen plenty of this even in my career field. And I always feel used [...]

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:44 am 10. Glenmore:

I am no lawyer but I have been forced to file a lawsuit in the past, and in my opinion it is rare for anyone other than an attorney (or an insurance company) to actually ‘win’ – you may win the judgement, but after paying all the costs and going through all the aggravation, you’ll not feel like a winner. If I was Len, I’d keep my mouth shut and go look for a different job – I can’t think of a fast food job worth getting stressed out over.

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:59 am 11. edh:

Len writes well for a burger flipper.

In an integrated workplace, I do think men are channelled into the jobs women can’t/won’t do.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:01 am 12. Leo:

There are two kinds of harassment outlined here, sexual harassment, and then retaliation. Once you complain about it and management or coworkers retaliate against you for making the complaint, that is retaliation. This can be a fairly huge tort, but most people would simply prefer the harassment to stop.

Corporate HR would be the next place to go, though in Mass, once you are being retaliated against, you can go directly to the state agency that investigates that sort of thing. Keep notes about who you spoke to and subsequent actions.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:04 am 13. SDN:

Don’t forget, most cell phones have built in recording capacity. The girls nor management know if the cell phone in your pocket is set to record….. Even if you can’t use it in court, it may be useful for other things.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:08 am 14. Joel:

Mommadona:
What the heck are you babbling about?!?

Everyone else:
Sadly, this is happening across the whole spectrum from the fast food joint to college professors to corporate professionals. Hillary was even counting on some of this discrimination to help her candidacy. If Len does go the lawyer route I can only suggest that he get a female lawyer if possible, the reason for this is obvious. And be prepared to change jobs as the women and the whole management chain will be a bit upset with him.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:09 am 15. Valerie:

This guy’s problem is that he’s working in a fast food joint, and he classifies most of the work in the place as “not work.” And, the people who are giving him the criticism are not “girls,” they are his co-workers. I’ve done every job there is to do in a fast-food place, and it is all work. Furthermore, I have observed that people who are not willing or able to do the quick, light work of taking orders, cooking, answering the phone, assembling plates, delivering the food and accepting payment are very quickly are shifted to sweeping, mopping, and carrying buckets.

If the company has gotten into the habit of pre-judging men in this fashion, it’s likely that a showing of discrimination can be made, with effort. But this young man should get his legal advice from a lawyer. A good lawyer will advise him that fighting over a lousy entry-level job is not worth the aggravation. He can get a better job and more satisfaction in life for much less time and trouble.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:13 am 16. Heather:

“They are usually out in the elements gathering carts or mopping floors, lifting heavy boxes etc.”

Men used to take pride in being stronger and tougher than women, now they’re pissy because they’re not treated like delicate flowers?

Odd.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:14 am 17. Stosh2:

I used to work for a Fortune 500 company at a regional branch office. One day, we were all called into the conference room to hear an HR representative give a talk on corporate policy. The HR woman, a Driector from HQ, perhaps 4 or 5 rungs up the corporate ladder from me, earning at least 3 times as much as me, immaculately & expensively dressed and coiffed, stated that men were the oppressors, and that’s why the company had certain rules… The situation was so absurd and I was so astonished at the obvious juxtaposition in her status and power and ours, I couldn’t help myself and barked out a single laugh of disbelief. Mistake. She certainly was not amused and launched into an offended / defensive historically mangled and economically ignorant, but very politically correct sermon. Corporations may be as bad as academia when it comes to things like this.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:18 am 18. Zoe Brain:

Get a sex change?

Sorry, bad joke, particularly from me.

Discrimination is Discrimination is Discrimination. And it’s wrong. The problem with “Affirmative Action” is that it’s only applied in areas where it’s not needed, and never applied in areas where it might, possibly, be the lesser of two evils if applied as a temporary measure. Say 10 years.

Having been on both sides of the issue, so to speak, discrimination against women is still the biggest problem. But the difference is decreasing, not because women are being discriminated against less, but that guys are being discriminated against more. Most women have no idea how hard it is to be male, even if your biology and endocrine system is set up for masculinity.

Too many women have been victimised by males X, Y and Z, so take it out on innocent victim males A, B and C. And yes, then B will take it out on innocent victim females P and Q.

I think Helen’s advice on getting legal help may be the only way we’re going to break this vicious circle.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:20 am 19. steve:

> Men – you are getting the outfall from being “part of the problem”.

Part of most problems, yes, and part of most solutions too, no? How’d you like a world with no technologies?

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:27 am 20. Edgehopper:

In law school, I did a year long employment discrimination clinic. We were chomping at the bit for something more unusual than the standard sexual harassment against women cases, and at the end of the year took a case of male-on-male sexual harassment (that I didn’t think was particularly strong), looking for something to do. We’d have loved a case like this.

Helen, you’ve gotten at something important that a lot of people don’t realize: Sexual harassment is more than just the “A pressures B for sex” type behavior that we usually see. It also includes cases where a workplace makes employees’ lives miserable because of their gender. It also covers retaliation claims, like what your correspondent talked about–where the other employees punished him for complaining about gender discrimination. All of this behavior is illegal, and definitely worth talking to a lawyer about.

Helen’s advice is absolutely correct:

1. Don’t tolerate sex discrimination, no matter which direction it goes.
2. Document everything.
3. Find a lawyer. In addition to contingency plaintiffs, there are also other free or low-cost legal services such as law school clinics, legal aid, and maybe there’s even a men’s rights group or two out there with a legal department.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:29 am 21. CaptDMO:

I’ve always found that when someone clings to the “Take it like a man” response, a simple “Glad you understand that concept.” precedes the boxing of their ears.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:30 am 22. Trey:

Mommadonna, are you trying to make a point, or was that some kind of acid drenched haiku?

Trey

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:32 am 23. jay c:

“The “take it like a man” line is said to psychologically weaken you and shut you up so don’t listen — it is a manipulative tactic meant to silence you.”

Mommadona’s comment is another case in point.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:35 am 24. Edgehopper:

Valerie-

“A good lawyer will advise him that fighting over a lousy entry-level job is not worth the aggravation. He can get a better job and more satisfaction in life for much less time and trouble.”

If all he wants is a better job, then yeah. If he wants to make a stand, then it’s worth fighting. I represented a woman in a sexual harassment suit last year working minimum wage in a restaurant. We never would have told her, “Oh, just find a better job.”

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:44 am 25. Sheila:

Boys – try and also have some pity for childless women (and, I’ll concede, men) working in professional firms. Forget having any type of social life, because somebody has to pick up the slack when the mommies and daddies need to take time off for maternity/paternity leave, sick days, pick up from the creche/childminder, etc. And don’t even think we slaves are entitled to be paid more or should be promoted sooner, just because we’re the ones in the office ALL. THE. TIME.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:45 am 26. twolaneflash:

1. HR works for the corporation, not the employee, so don’t go there looking for an ally. They solve problems for the corporation, not for the individual. Depending on corporate culture and history, HR may be a bastion of political correctness which has a boiling pot of water waiting for males, caucasians, Christians, and other selected targets. Tread lightly and don’t go there without substantial documentation, witnesses, and the willingness to be terminated over your complaint.

2. If this is a temporary job for you and no other is available, take their crap and take their money. Evaluate your benefit and risk of challenging an entrenched establishment as it relates to your life goals. Even Jesus didn’t tell his Apostles to stay in places they were unwelcome; He told them to “shake the dust” of the place off their shoes and be gone.

3. To be successful, you must look to do the most you can do for the business, not the least you have to do to get a minimum wage paycheck. When the business is better because of you, you and others will have a higher opinion of you. The day may come you need a reference for a better job, or you may need that burger-flipping job again. Then it will be your reputation and relationship with that employer that will either make your day or dash your hopes. Don’t let the small things become stumbling blocks to your personal success. Learn from this experience to hold your tongue at work; you can’t be punished for what you don’t say.

4. Unless you get a million dollar++ settlement, suing should be the thought on your mind. The lawyers will win, and you will pay far more for the effort than you can imagine, especially in time, mental anguish, lost opportunities, and finanacial stress.

Good luck.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:00 am 27. Cousin Dave:

When I was a junior in high school, I had an after-school job in an ice cream shop. There were about 10 employees, of which all were girls except myself and one other guy whom I’ll call A.

After a couple of weeks, I was informed that starting the next week, I would be working every Saturday and Sunday, along with A. Why? Saturday was the busiest day of the week, but it was also the usual day for ice cream deliveries. The shop was in a mall, and the only entrance was to the interior of the mall. The ice cream delivery truck only delivered to a mall loading dock which was halfway down to the other end of the mall; shop employees had to go get it and bring it to the shop’s freezer. And once it had been brought in, the contents of the freezer (a huge, walk-in job) had to be rotated.

A and I got this job, every Saturday. The rule was that the freezer door had to be kept closed at all times, so we worked inside it, moving heavy barrels of ice cream around, with the door closed. We needed to step out every few minutes and get warmed back up, because a -10F freezer gets really cold very quickly even if you’re wearing a heavy coat. There was an inside release for the door, but it didn’t work if someone held the outside handle. Of course, the girls thought it was great fun to hold the outside handle so we were locked in. They’d do this sometimes for 15-20 minutes at a time, only letting us out when things got busy up front and they needed help. A got frostbite on one of his toes once when they wouldn’t let him out.

On Sundays, A and I had the job of defrosting the display cases. This involved moving all the ice cream to the walk-in freezer, spraying the inside of the display case with hot water, scraping off the ice, and then sucking the water out with a shop vac. Every few minutes, the shop vac got full, and then the heavy thing, full of water, had to be lifted up to the sink to pour it out. It was a messy, cold, wet, unpleasant job.

The result of all this was that not only did A and myself have the two worst jobs in the shop, we also had to work every Saturday and Sunday, while the girls only had to work one weekend day per week, and they were able to rotate having the entire weekend off. When A and I complained about this to the shop owner, he looked at us like we were idiots: “Do you really expect the girls to do all that heavy work?” When we asked if we could have a weekend day off occasionally, he just looked at us like we were idiots.

After a few months of this, I was ready to quit (despite my parents’ pushing me to stay on), because it was cutting into my schoolwork time, not to mention destroying what little social life I had. When A came to me and informed me that he had found out, by going through a file drawer that had been inadvertently left unlocked by the store manager, that all of the girls were making more money than we were, that was the last straw. We both quit on the spot. We found out later that after that, the shop owner couldn’t get another guy to work for him, and he was having to rotate the stock and defrost the display cases himself.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:03 am 28. jeff:

A man should handle it the same way a woman should handle it: Suck it up, or go find another job.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:06 am 29. James B:

I studied computer science in college, and during the summers I would always try to find temp jobs that used my computer skills. I was a fast typist (100+ WPM) and could do data entry or any kind of computer work really, much faster than your average $6-an-hour temp worker.

The temp agency never gave me those jobs. Why? Because I’m 6-foot-1, male, and built like a football player. Guys get the “light industrial” jobs, girls get the office jobs. In the temp world, “light industrial” means any kind of physical labor, like tearing down a closing department store’s shelves, or picking up 50lb boxes of caulk that fell off of a tractor trailer when he took a turn too tight and put the trailer in the ditch.

This isn’t a statement about the guys, it’s about the girls. Girls don’t like to do manual labor, and for some things they aren’t very suited to that kind of work anyway. It had nothing to do with me and my skills, or the fact that I was the fastest typist to ever set foot through their door. I was capable of doing the crap jobs that the girls were either unwilling or uncapable of doing, so as a temp agency owner assigning manpower, are you going to give the male applicant the office job and pass on the light industrial job? Or are you going to give the female applicant the office job and give the male applicant the light industrial job?

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:06 am 30. twolaneflash:

correction: “suing should be the LAST thought on your mind.”

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:10 am 31. Lili von Shtupp:

Sheila, stop using your job as a reason why you have no social life. If you choose to work all the bloody time instead of occasionally taking a vacation (even a daycation), that’s no one’s fault but your own. Go ahead, delude yourself into thinking the whole corporation would fall apart without your unique contribution. (Somehow, I think they managed before you were hired, and miracle of miracles, they’ll stumble on without you somehow when you go.)

BTW, you don’t have to thank me for raising the little boy who will someday grow up to pay your social security benefits. I see that it’s all you, ALL. THE. TIME.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:12 am 32. Toad:

Side Note:
Large corporations are in serious trouble these days because the recruits they get, even if they are top graduates from top universities aren’t at the top of the bell curve of entrepenureship. The smart hard chargers take a look at the tuition costs, the pc environments of the schools and the corporations and figure they can take there money start their own small businesses.
Most fast food places are the bottom end of large companies with high turn over. So the most expedient thing to do is go find a job somewhere else.

The resturant rules.
1. Do what they tell you to do for the first six months.
2. Show up, show up a bit ahead of time, if you can’t show up call far enough ahead to let
them get a replacement.
3. If you notice something that you think needs a change quietly ask in a non-
confrentational manner in the form of a question why it is done that way and would
it be better to do it in the way you thought of.
4. If you get a job at Hooters don’t sue if you can’t get hired as wait staff.

Side Note:
Large corporations are in serious trouble these days because the recruits they get, even if they are top graduates from top universities aren’t at the top of the bell curve of entrepenureship. The smart hard chargers take a look at the tuition costs, the pc environments of the schools and the corporations and figure they can take there money start their own small businesses.
Most fast food places are the bottom end of large companies with high turn over. So the most expedient thing to do is go find a job somewhere else.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:13 am 33. Shinobi:

I hope he brings a suit, this kind of hostility is not cool when directed at anyone of any gender, race, sexual orientation, or whatever other thing people can think of to draw battle lines on. He has a right to be assigned tasks according to his aptitude, or some fair internal policy.

(Also, I think we should be fair and say that this incident and incidents like this are not evidence that all women are evil, they are evidence that women are just as evil as men. We are all human.)

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:33 am 34. Cousin Dave:

Shiela, I know exactly where you’re at on that.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:40 am 35. Saltherring:

I can’t figure out why any self-repecting man would want to work in a “womans job” anyway. Fast food and grocery clerk jobs are for women and wimps. Look for a job in heavy construction, utilities, commercial fishing, trucking, mining, energy exploration, truck/equipment repair or metalworking shops where real men work. I guarantee you won’t have to deal with a limp-wristed, feminized culture in any of those environments. If women dare enter, they are usually as tough as the men and are willing and able to work just as hard. And if you can’t handle performing hard work with real men, get used to cowering in the corner with other “men” and whimpering “yes, ma’am”.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:57 am 36. JohnMc:

Wrong tactic. You are attacking the wrong agent.

Get yourself a digital recorder, learn how to operate it, and put it on your person somewhere out of sight. When you get the next attack get it on tape. Then you sue the women NOT the company.

Just be sure its worth your time. This kind of stuff does not resolve itself in a day. My advise — find another job.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:08 am 37. Miller Smith:

I paid an EEOC lawyer to send a cease and desist letter to my administration over the issue of always placing men in “danger duty” positions in the school. I was like an atomic bomb going off.

The admin issued new duty positions that were totally random. The female teachers were very upset at being “placed in harms way.” They wanted to know why the admin did this. Admin demured even telling them the reasoning which resulted in the female teachers filing a grevance with the union over their equal treatment.

The union refused to go forward with the grevance and rather insisted that profession security be hired and positioned rather than relying on teachers.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:09 am 38. Clayton E. Cramer:

I was sitting in a very boring meeting at work one day, and I thought, “My, there are a lot of women managers here, especially considering that there aren’t that many female engineers.” So I went through the org chart (with hundreds of people listed on it). Of the individual contributors, 11% were women. Of the supervisors, 34% were women.

Imagine if the situation were reversed: 34% of the workers were women, but only 11% of the supervisors were women. Would that be evidence of sexual discrimination? Almost certainly. But since I work for a Fortune 100 company, this is a sign of the company’s progressive viewpoint.

We’re getting ready for a big layoff (our division only had $7 billion in sales and a 7% year over year increase in profits, so we gotta cut people), and the phrase “demographics” keeps getting passed around–which seems to be corporatespeak for getting rid of older white and Asian males, so that the engineering workforce looks more like America.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:10 am 39. 49erDweet:

Used to work in a large state agency with “equal opportunity”, lots of outlets and many job movement openings. Once interviewed for promotion in an all-female (?) office where the proposed ‘local’ job duties – over and above the norm – included [every day] unlocking and locking the office, putting up and taking down the flags, emptying all the trash cans 2x day and restocking the printer paper on demand at each workstation. Couldn’t take a planned day off unless a male part-time employee were available to do those duties in my stead. Hmmmmm. None of that was the “normal” job, either. Nope, no discrimination there. All other employees in that office worked either early or late shifts, btw, not both.

Fortunately found another office where the woman manager changed her own printer paper. She was a boss one could die for.

Charitably, some women are blind to male-based discrimination. But many abuse away without regard for the consequences. When I later became the hiring authority I seldom promoted a woman who didn’t know how to change printer paper. Was a small thing, but wonderful insight into a candidate’s personal integrity and ethics, imo.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:11 am 40. Farix:

Men used to take pride in being stronger and tougher than women, now they’re pissy because they’re not treated like delicate flowers?

You can thank the women for that. It was they who fought for “equal treatment” in the workplace. Now when men demand the same “equal treatment”, the men are painted as wimps, whiners, and wussies. It is a double standard that should not be tolerated.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:15 am 41. Holdfast:

Heather wrote: “Men used to take pride in being stronger and tougher than women, now they’re pissy because they’re not treated like delicate flowers?”

That’s right sugart*ts, we did (and really still do) take pride in being stronger, working harder and doing the difficult jobs, but we used to get compensated for it, but then along came a little concept called pay equity. You might have heard of it? It’s the idea that a female typist (usually a single woman or a second income) in a climate-controlled office should receive the same pay as a guy working outside all day in the elements doing hard, heavy work (and absorbing the long-term health damage that entails) in order to feed, clothe and house his family, despite the fact that when they signed up for the jobs, they clearly knew that the pay scales were different. Now granted, the greater number of working single moms has also affected this calculus, but a lot of it is this notion that somehow the “work” involved in the two jobs is equal when it clearly isn’t.

I too worked in a fast-food joint when I was in high school. Out restaurant had clear male-female task distinctions, but they were also complicated by the division between those who could speak clear English and those who couldn’t.

The guys were expected to work all the late shifts, because the girls didn’t like to walk home at night (understandable, but how about calling them a cab?) – as a night person, I didn’t mind but some guys did. Also, when the store received its thrice-weekly resupply, only guys were called upon to unload it. If there weren’t enough guys on shift at the time, more were called in on a short-shift to unload it, even though you were never supposed to have to work less than a 4 hour shift. Girls were never called in for short shifts like that. There was also an operating assumption that guys would work in the kitchen and girls would do the customer service, though this was complicated by the whole lack-of-English thing among some employees.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:27 am 42. Crafty Hunter:

For those who mention using a hidden voice recorder, I caution that many states have laws forbidding this. They call it “wiretapping” or somesuch. Yes, I know there’s no actual tapping of communications lines. You could be in serious legal trouble over it. Check your state laws.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:39 am 43. Heres to you bros !! - General Discussions:

[...] Heres to you bros !! We are not the villains …we are just treated that way !! Pajamas Media

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:55 am 44. PJ:

My husband is in IT and currently does contract work (it’s the only work he can find at the moment as many IT positions have either been eliminated or moved overseas). He also has to settle for a job well below his skill level.

He’s been in his current position for two and a half years and has been there longer than any other contract worker currently employed in that department. Well, when a full-time position recently opened up, he wasn’t even considered, but it went to a woman who hasn’t been there nearly as long as he has. Wonder of wonders, the department manager is also a woman.

Now it’s possible that she does a better job than he does, but seeing as other contracters have been let go for poor performance and he has been kept on, I seriously wonder. And the company he’s contracting for is touted as a great one to work for if you are full time, but is notoriously difficult when it comes to getting your foot in the door. One would think that long-term contracters who have shown their worth would be given first crack.

Meanwhile, he keeps his mouth shut because he needs the work, even though he is making only about a third of what he used to make when he held a full-time position seven years ago.

Discrimination? Maybe, maybe not. But because he doesn’t want to be shown the door, he doesn’t dare make waves in an effort to find out.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:58 am 45. Jim:

“Men used to take pride in being stronger and tougher than women, now they’re pissy because they’re not treated like delicate flowers?
Odd.”

Nothing odd about the hypocrisy of feminists campaigning for equality and then whining and calling it “odd” when men want equality.

Maybe if women did more heavy physical work they could handle labor with a little less noise.

Aug 20, 2008 - 8:58 am 46. Bumr50:

As a 32 year old white male, I believe that current societal trends are punishing me more and more on the basis of color and gender, and although there has been light shed on this disturbing trend the pendulum is far from finishing its swing.
I usually try to stay objective when commenting on any board, but this is a subject affecting me on a daily basis.
Competency has taken a clear back seat to “correctness.”

Aug 20, 2008 - 9:00 am 47. Roark:

Thanks for the kick in the balls, women’s lib!!!

Aug 20, 2008 - 9:06 am 48. mydyingbride:

Well— if you file a foram complaint– your performance will be reviewed and you will eventually be fired, or conditions will so deteriorate that you will lea e on your own.

Men have no power as individuals or as a group to pursue these claims.

If you want to do so– get a nice voice recorder– an Olympus 331M or one like it. Its tiny and records all conversation. Tape your fellow employees as they harass you. Tape meetings with supervisors. There is no need to “fight back” becasue you have the evidenc of misconduct on tape– and its entirely legal.
Since the comments and such are now objective fact, you cannot be subsequently smeared.

Aug 20, 2008 - 9:27 am 49. mydyingbride:

I did not see the former comments about a voice recorder.

Thats incorrect– wiretapping and such is recording conversations between two other people without their knowledge– eavesdropping. In some states that is legal under certain circumstances.

But a person can almost always record conversations he is a party to. Indeed,most states are “one party” states– so you can record phone conversations you are a party to.

With the advent of tiny digital voice recorders, its no longer a ” He said, She said” world… everyone can tape almost any interaction they are a party to. Trip to have your car repaired… tape the fellow giving his quote.. and then he is bound by it… any potentially adversarial encounter should be taped.

With the very small voice recorders like the Olympus line, its easy. A digital recorder that holds 555 hours at SP speed… and has fantastic sound at HQ speed… etc. It fits easily into a front pocket with no tell-tale bulge– 3 1/2 inches long and 1/4 inch wide with integrated UBS port to downlaod to your computer.

It cannot be said how much these devices help in adversarial situations– and most everything involving an exchange of money can become adversarial…

ANd its amazing how relaxed you can remain when you know its all going down on tape… and people engaging in misconduct cannot lie about what they said.

Aug 20, 2008 - 9:46 am 50. countingthedays:

This is not just a fast food environment issue. Here is an example from real life:

Location – a workplace in corporate America

A minority employee (by sex or race even though the majority of employees in this workplace are minority) can cry “racism” or “harrassment” and get his/her way.

However, a white male, especially a conservative Christian, can be treated like garbage.

He can have a furious minority female storm into his office – shouting, getting “in his face”, being physically threatening (actions that he would be fired for) – and nothing will be done to the out-of-control employee except to give her a promotion. HE will be told that it must have been his fault.

He will be required to work 60 – 80 hour weeks to cover when a female employee is out for four months on maternity leave. None of the minority/female employees at his level of management will help him pick up the slack. (He did not get any extra leave when his children were born, and he was reprimanded for taking more than a few days off for an emergency operation by a minority female supervisor.)

He would find it very hard to win a lawsuit in this environment, with the possible exception of one based on age discrimination. He puts up with it because he is very close to retirement – it’s the price he’s decided to pay to get a little more income from the employer.

Sad, isn’t it…

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:00 am 51. Ralph Gizzip:

Heather:

“They are usually out in the elements gathering carts or mopping floors, lifting heavy boxes etc.”

Men used to take pride in being stronger and tougher than women, now they’re pissy because they’re not treated like delicate flowers?

Odd.
Aug 20, 2008 – 6:14 am

Women have been complaining about being treated as equals in the workforce for years. Now when men are demanding they do equal work they get pissy about it.

Odd.

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:02 am 52. mydyingbride:

Enjoyed reading ALL the comments

One notices how abusive the women are–Mommadona,Valerie,Heather– most women thing “equality” just means whatever is in women’s self interest. At minimum, they have no intention of applying the concept neutrally. Hence, they deride men who demand to be treated equally. Women typically have no use whatsover for “equality”, just wanting a world built for women.

As far as pursuing this formally
twolaneflash is right about the HR department– thats just informal “discovery “for the company. They will get all the info you have — in order to best plan their strategy to defeat you. They are your opponents, not your allies.
edgehooper’s law school experiences won’t help– lawyers look at cases like surfers look at waves— they won’t pay any attention to any case unless their is a very nice payoff for little work. Representing men claiming unequal treatment is not a big money maker, so finding a lawyer will be almost impossible.
if you do go legal, you will be dragged through the mud, while the opposing legal teams run up the billable hours.

Take home message— for the vast majority of people,esp men, the law is simply irrelevant. Their rights are routinely violated, but there is no way for them to file a grievance or get redress — the system responds to money and there is no money here.

Becoming known as a guy who tapes everyone is not good either…

Pessimism reigns

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:33 am 53. 11B40:

Greetings:

One aspect of male/female workplace discrimination traces back to a little addressed issue in the original “equal pay for equal work” legislation. Gender pay discrimination is, in fact, allowable in situations where the quality or quantity of the work performed by either group is demonstrably different.

My favorite example of this is the U.S. Tennis Open, soon be be again upon us, at Flushing Meadows, NY. For years, the female (victim) players agitated for prize money equal to that of the male players, in spite of the fact that the men had to play up to five sets to win while the women only had to play three. Additionally, if the women had to play the men, I doubt any of them would even be ranked. And yet, the male players do nothing to try to correct their victimization.

Back in the last ’80s, while I was working for the federal government, I was sentenced to Equal Pay/Equal Work training several times. My question, which was never quite answered, was in the Equal Pay/Equal Work world, who moves the desks.

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:52 am 54. W. Keller:

A couple thoughts. First, get off your ass, go back to school, get a real job and let the ladies move on to the next “victim”.

Share with the “ladies” the universal truth no woman wants to admit, they can’t out work a man, especially when strength is required. Whether you accept this or not, a few well placed barbs (perhaps a custom T-Shirts showing the ladies a weak wusses) should go along way.

The only way they can disprove your statement is to step up and do the work. And, if they can’t do it physically, tough – and you get to prove your point.

Ultimate revenge – become their boss and give them the heavy duty, crappy jobs – with a smile, of course.

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:57 am 55. mydyingbride:

Where do all these losers come from who demean this man for what he is doing for a living.
Thats irrelevant.
If a woman was complaining of discrimnation as a maid– would people say ” Stop complaining– get a real job, bitch !”– which condones the discrimination?

Aug 20, 2008 - 11:10 am 56. Ron Hardin:

Actually, men don’t complain about such things.

A certain kind of irrationality is expected, and accepting that is part of men’s role in domestic tranquility.

Aug 20, 2008 - 11:27 am 57. programmer:

A job is just a job. It is an offer of payment for services rendered. Look for the joy in everything you do. If you are a young man doing hard work, revel in your strength. Be pleasant to others. Offer to help where you can. Use your strength to help others. If you are truly mistreated and unhappy in your work, find other work. There is always employment for strong, willing, pleasant labor. Start your own business if you can’t find another position. Be a contractor that specializes in doing the work that others will not do. If you are pleasant, affable, and do good work, you will soon have opportunities for other people to work for you. No one owes you a job. Every employer (to include yourself when you prosper), needs someone that works for less than the employer can sell the results of that labor for (i.e., a profit). If you do this consistently, you will generally be working when all others are long gone, if you choose. Note well: Life is random, stuff happens even if you do all the right things. However, if you keep a good attitude, it is amazing how often good things happen.

Aug 20, 2008 - 11:37 am 58. Twok:

Such attitudes my militant women is merely evidence that Islam has not taken root in the West yet. Once Sharia Law starts to gain a foothold in the legal system of the US, feminists are going to be in big trouble.

Then, the world’s two must unsavory groups – radical Muslims and redical feminists, will war with each other, and cancel each other out. Then normal people will be free of both of these pests.

Aug 20, 2008 - 11:56 am 59. Twok:

Always remember – those women may be bullying the man, but the best trial lawyers usually ARE men.

Sue the employer, you can win. Your MALE lawyer will do it for you.

Aug 20, 2008 - 11:59 am 60. Twok:

Remember, when something gets too out of whack in the natural world, mother nature finds a way to correct it.

Extreme militant feminism is in violation of nature. So is radical Islam. Until now, the two never had to meet face to face, instead both fighting the common enemy – the US military/white males.

Eventually, they will have to meet. Then, both will be decimated. I look forward to it.

Aug 20, 2008 - 12:04 pm 61. Kevin:

I work in a lab where I am the only male employee (out of around 20 people) except for the manager. There were two other men working there but the manager found reasons to get rid of both of them. One case was possibly valid; the other completely bogus. This happened after unspecified complaints made about him by a couple of vicious old crones who tried to act as my boss when I started there, even though I have a higher position. Since I became the last remaining male employee, the boss has begun subjecting me to a series of unfair and unreasonable decisions which would have the tendency to make a person dissatisfied with their job.

Recently there were posters around the lab advertising a L.A.B. Campout. L.A.B. in this case meant Ladies At the Beach, with an asterisk that it was in no way an official lab event, and please no men or children. The male lab manager’s wife, who doesn’t work in the lab, and the two crones organized the event. While it is not unusual to socialize with only those coworkers you wish to socialize with, you don’t prominently advertise that everyone is welcome except ___________. Female coworkers in other departments thought it sounded rather strange.

Aug 20, 2008 - 12:36 pm 62. Mary Jackson:

I wonder why “Len” doesn’t specify what are “the girls’ tasks” and what are “the boys’ tasks. And, of couse, we must take his word for it that “the girls’ tasks” are easier than his. This goes unchallenged.

As with the recent column on a man being raped, the men are automatically believed – by Dr Helen and most commenters – and the women automatically disbelieved.

Misogyny is the new cool.

Aug 20, 2008 - 12:58 pm 63. Quincy:

Mary Jackson, would you say it’s misandry when similar claims from women are automatically believed?

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:05 pm 64. Mary Jackson:

Mary Jackson, would you say it’s misandry when similar claims from women are automatically believed?

Yes. No claim should be automatically believed or disbelieved. Automatic belief of claims by men is somehow regarded as cool, interesting and orginal.

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:10 pm 65. Cletus:

I would just show up with some firearms and give the walls a nice red paint job

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:17 pm 66. fesick:

To Heather:

“Men used to take pride in being stronger and tougher than women, now they’re pissy because they’re not treated like delicate flowers?”

Are you serious? It was women that cried “we are equal and demand to be treated equally”. But that was never the purpose of the feminazis. Many women including you I’m sure do not knwo the real meaning of “equal”. To you and other femi-nazis to be equal means to have the advantage. In the case of women, it’s to be paid equally. hold the same positions as men but not have to be as accountable as the men.
Your assessment that men want to be treated like “delicate flowers” is absolutely wrong. It is women that demanded to be treated like men, without actually having to do any of the “manly” things.

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:20 pm 67. Quincy:

Hey, at least you’re being fair. Though I gotta say, I think labelling either misogyny and misandry is attributing malice to a simple case of hearing-what-one-wants-to-hear.

Also, what do you have to say to the commenters, like Cousin Dave, who lay out a case where specific duties and schedules are assigned by gender?

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:24 pm 68. WayneB:

“I wonder why “Len” doesn’t specify what are “the girls’ tasks” and what are “the boys’ tasks. And, of couse, we must take his word for it that “the girls’ tasks” are easier than his. This goes unchallenged.

(There were more like this, but this one was easiest to get hold of.)

Did those of you who said some version of the above miss the quote below, or ignore it?:

“To be sure I wasn’t just exaggerating, I took it upon myself to learn how to do the girls’ tasks also and confirmed my suspicions: the girls had it much easier than the boys and we were both paid at the same rate.”

Also, to those saying this guy should just bail and forget about it – when you do that, you’re just enabling this type of thing to continue. And I would suggest a FEMALE lawyer, because then there would be less of a sense that the lawyer is just showing solidarity with another man.

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:28 pm 69. Helen Smith:

Mary Jackson,

“Automatic belief of claims by men is somehow regarded as cool, interesting and orginal.”

Yeah, sure. Tell that to the Duke Lacrosse team and the numerous men accused of false rape. Please. And as for “misogyny being the new cool”– the use of that word is nothing but a buzz word for “I don’t agree with you or like your politics.” And really, if you felt that your points alone were sufficient, you would not have to throw out the insults.

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:31 pm 70. Edgehopper:

mydyingbride-

Contingency lawyers are focused on the money, which is why they might not be a good choice for this kind of case. Law school clinics and public interest groups are much less mercenary. We took a case that probably had a maximum award of a few thousand, for the experience. There are also lawyers doing pro bono work, and they’re not all feminists.

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:37 pm 71. Valerie:

mydyingbride:

Reread my comment. I did not abuse anybody.

In addition to working in a fast food restaurant, I also worked in a job where I had a classic sex discrimination, hostile environment claim. My immediate supervisor pestered me physically, and threatened me with a bad review. I got an ulcer over it. So, I went to the doctor and got some pills to help me keep my food down, and started looking for a better job, quietly. By the time I found that new job, the upset stomach was gone.

The original job I had was a white-collar professional job that paid much, much more than an entry-level fast food job, and I had proveable medical damage, and knew it. Even so, it STILL wasn’t worth a lawsuit. During my exit interview, I did say I was leaving for a better job with more pay, and also explained what prompted the job search. He was demoted. They gave him my desk and chair.

My next job was a great one, that I enjoyed immensely. I’ve never regretted my course of action, including bypassing the legal remedy, because I chose to fashion a a better one on my own. The best remedy for having a bad job is to get a better job: then you can be happier, and have more money. If you decide to sue, the next two years of your life are going to be spent living and breathing the lawsuit, you won’t be happy, and when it’s all said and done, you won’t have any more money than if you’d gone back to work right away.

Aug 20, 2008 - 1:41 pm 72. Joe:

When I was in my mid-twenties, I got a non-student job in the student computer services department at Arizona State University. My boss was a woman. At the first staff meeting, I immediately noticed that there was only one other male on staff. I quickly noticed that my hiring managers top cronies didn’t like me very much. I attributed that to me being much more experienced about computers than them (for example, I knew computer programming; they didn’t.)

As soon as finals crunch time ramped down, I was laid off under the 90-day trial period with the sole explanation that “I wasn’t working out.” At the time, I figured my boss was just gaming the system and hiring people during high load times, and then letting them go before the 90 day probationary period was up.

Six months later, I’m working as a computer programmer for one of the best managers I’ve had in my career. One day, I told him about my experience at ASU. He asked the managers name. I told him. He laughed. She had done exactly the same thing to him and to every male employee (with the one exception) that he knew about.

* * *

Based on my oldest daughter’s stories, sexual harassment of all types if rampant at fast food restaurants, including Macdonalds and Fazolis. She said the worse by far were all female managers. The oddest was at Macdonalds where the female boss cut the Hispanic girls slack, but made life hell for the non-Hispanic girls and only slightly better for the boys, regardless of race. Followed closely by the place where the female boss was constantly hitting on the teenage boys. My daughter tried to encourage them to take action, but they wouldn’t. (Mind you, this is a girl that at one job told the male boss with a flirting reputation that if he touched her, she’d kick him in the balls.)

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:06 pm 73. Mary Jackson:

Tell that to the Duke Lacrosse team…

Well, surprise surprise. The new anti-feminists love that one. The Duke Lacrosse case that single-handedly, even though the accused were acquitted, makes up for all the rape victims denied justice. This one woman was lying. Therefore all women are lying unless proved otherwise. And men never lie. And men are now the new – fashionably new – victims.

Also, what do you have to say to the commenters, like Cousin Dave, who lay out a case where specific duties and schedules are assigned by gender?

Quincy – to that I would say that he may – assuming his case is proved – have a point. Likewise a woman discriminated against.

My point is that Dr Helen, even in her latest response, has not offered specifics. In what particular was “Len” discriminated against? What specific tasks was he assigned that “the girls” – the evil bitches – were not assigned? Specifically what?

I’m open to persuasion by facts. For both sexes. What I am not open to is a blanket assertion that men are the new victims.

Facts, please.

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:06 pm 74. Jim:

“Misogyny is the new cool.”

And whiny accusations are the new feminism. Or not so new, actually.

“The Duke Lacrosse case that single-handedly, even though the accused were acquitted, makes up for all the rape victims denied justice. ”

Rape victims – you mean like James Landrith?

Mary, please! You just need to learn to take it like a man.

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:20 pm 75. Mary Jackson:

Jim, and anyone else inclined to talk about “whiny feminism”:

Facts, please.

In what particular was “Len” discriminated against? What specific tasks was he assigned that “the girls” – the evil bitches – were not assigned? Specifically what?

Facts, please. Facts, please.

Evidence, please, that “Len” was discriminated against. Details of his duties. Details of “the girls’” duties. Evidence – not sufficient for a court of law, but sufficient for an intelligent reader – that “the girls’” duties were less onerous than his. Evidence of male/female segregation of duties.

Evidence, please. Facts, please.

(It’s a female thing. Must be the time of the month.)

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:33 pm 76. Quincy:

C’mon Mary, I’m starting to think you’re suffering from a case of “the facts are only those things I want to hear”. Cousin Dave lays out a pretty plausible case of discrimation, which is about as good as it’s going to get on an internet message board, and you acknowledge that he “might” have a case.

What’s your standard of proof on a message board where anonymity is the norm and corroboration is nigh impossible?

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:47 pm 77. Jim:

“In what particular was “Len” discriminated against? ”

No, Mary, Helen did not offer the detailed facts, Len did. He said he and other males were given heavier tasks for the same pay. That is discrimination whether the basis is race or gender, at least under US law.

“What I am not open to is a blanket assertion that men are the new victims.”

Strawman – no one is asserting that. I doubt that soemone who indulges in drama queen exaggerations is going to persuaded by facts.

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:50 pm 78. Mary Jackson:

What’s your standard of proof on a message board where anonymity is the norm and corroboration is nigh impossible?

Some details of the tasks. Was he required to mop floors while the girls waited tables? If so, did their jobs take less time than his?

Quincy, this is a message board, not a court of law. But so far we have only (second hand) Len’s feeling that he was discriminated against, with no attempt at specifics. Feelings are supposed to be a girlie thing. Yet Dr Helen, so sceptical of female victims of discrimination and even of rape, leaps to his defence, as do most commenters here. On what grounds?

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:58 pm 79. fesick:

Mary Jackson, would you say it’s misandry when similar claims from women are automatically believed?

Yes. No claim should be automatically believed or disbelieved. Automatic belief of claims by men is somehow regarded as cool, interesting and orginal.

Mary Jackson,

I don’t believe you’re being honest. I’m sure you’d believe a woman before you’d believe a man automaitcally. I bet you were askin for the Duke Lacrosse’s b*lls on a platter during that fake rape case.
Please don’t deny it. I won’t believe you since you know I am a man and probably missogynistic.

Aug 20, 2008 - 2:59 pm 80. Mary Jackson:

No, Mary, Helen did not offer the detailed facts, Len did. He said he and other males were given heavier tasks for the same pay. That is discrimination whether the basis is race or gender, at least under US law.

He said he and other males were given heavier tasks for the same pay.

He “said”. Therefore he’s right. (Compare: she “says” she was raped.)

What tasks? What?

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:01 pm 81. fesick:

What tasks? What?

Mary Jackson,
The tasks that he did which were designated “girls” tasks. Those are the tasks.

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:09 pm 82. Quincy:

I didn’t say it was a court of law. In fact, I’m willing to take more at face value on anonymous board because it’s only for the purposes of discussion.

Moreover, I see you asking for “Facts, please. Facts, please.” Yet, when presented with the facts you ask for by Cousin Dave (note, I’m *not* talking about the original letter or Dr. Helen), you say he “might” have a case. I’m guessing, perhaps wrongly, that had Cousin Dave been Cousin Mary, and gotten harder tasks because she was female, that you wouldn’t have been as quick to throw the “might” into your assessment of the situation.

We all have our biases. One of mine is self-described feminists claiming to treat men and women evenhandedly when it comes to believing claims. Why is it a bias? I have yet to see it happen with my own two eyes. (Same goes for self-described anti-feminists, by the way.)

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:15 pm 83. Mary Jackson:

I don’t believe you’re being honest. I’m sure you’d believe a woman before you’d believe a man automatically. I bet you were askin for the Duke Lacrosse’s b*lls on a platter during that fake rape case.
Please don’t deny it. I won’t believe you since you know I am a man and probably missogynistic.

You may believe – and spell – how you like. I’m British, and never heard of the Duke Lacrosse case until I saw the anti-feminist reading of it, which is, basically, that all women who allege rape are liars. What that girl did was wrong. The men in question are guiltless and should be compensated.

But now that one case is gleefully seized on by misogynist men and women as negating all the other cases of genuine rape going unpunished. Men jumping on this bandwagon is reprehensible, if understandable. Women do it with an added dimension – they get extra points in a male-dominated media for telling men what they want to hear. It is the oldest trick in the book.

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:23 pm 84. Mary Jackson:

Quincy – Cousin Dave was not the subject of this piece. “Len” was. Yet we know nothing of “Len”, other than that he was the victim of nasty “girls”. Those “girls” – the evil bitches – are very real to most commenters and to the author. Yet “Len”, even second hand is not asked to describe – even in his own words, let alone corroborated evidence – some, any, detail of what happened to him.

Quincy, I believe “Cousin Dave” within the confines of this blog post. “He” offers much, much more evidence than “Len”.

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:29 pm 85. Johnnie:

Two suggestions, Dr. Helen is correct about documentation, but does not emphasize it enough. It is the most important thing. Remember it does not mean photos or witnesses, though those can be important. You just need to write down in a dispassionate and factual manner what happened. The best method is a journal type entry. For those things that happened in the past, put down as much detail as possible. For the present and future, the journal method is great. Remember to always use a persons full name and title. Document your polite objections to anything directed against you. Don’t be verbally hostile. Be polite and if told to ignore or forget about the incident by management, document that. Sureptitious recording of private conversations with managers is good to, but be careful of state laws on recording. Some states allow one party consent on phone recordings. If applicable, use the phone to make your complaints to HR and management. Record and save their reponses.
Consider a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. You can do that self service if you can’t get an attorney. But be methodical about documentation. Do get witness statements if you can. Document the girls training and the boys training. Once the company hears that the EEOC is investigating they might make a settlement offer. At this point it will be easier to get an attorney and that could help you in settlement negociations.

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:38 pm 86. anomdebus:

Mary,
You are asking for a level of proof that is not possible in an internet discussion. Most of us take the discussion to be contingent on an adequate description of the facts; nobody here is calling for boycotts or contributing money to a legal fund. If he is not telling the truth, then the advice given will result in him paying money to a lawyer who will look at the case and say he has no case; strangely win-win for a lawsuit.

Also, I would find your scepticism more compelling if, for example, I had seen some of it from you regarding the Duke case. As far as I can tell, you only bring it up to claim that anyone bringing it up de facto disbelieves all rape claims, which is a dishonest tactic.

I almost didn’t mention the Duke case because I don’t believe I can tell you what to discuss. However, you do paint yourself as being an equal opportunity sceptic.

I shouldn’t be replying, you may be a masterful troll. If so, kudos!

Cletus,
Seek help soon.

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:41 pm 87. anomdebus:

nb – I searched your blog for Duke cases

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:42 pm 88. Quincy:

Mary –

Then you and I are generally in agreement. The original letter serves as a discussion starter, and not a terribly great one at that. Personally, I find the comments on this post to be much stronger than the post itself.

Also, on the Duke Lacrosse case, you missed a long, drawn out witchhunt based on flimsy accusations against the players. While you have heard the “anti-feminist” version of the story, you’ve missed months of intensely anti-male coverage from our media. Not saying “you should’ve known,” but just to let you know why some folks seem to have a bug up their bum about the case. (BTW, I don’t think the case should serve as a test of the virtues of feminism, but as a lesson in what happens when the media isn’t sufficiently critical of a prosecutor. That’s the real danger, and certain folks have let their anti-feminist viewpoint obscure that.)

Aug 20, 2008 - 3:47 pm 89. Mary Jackson:

<iYou are asking for a level of proof that is not possible in an internet discussion.

On the contrary. I am asking for the bare minimum. What duties was “Len” given that “the girls” were not given – as general as you like? Even one sentece on the subject would suffice. For example:

“I had to clear the drains. The girls had to wait tables.”

Just a statement. Just an opinion more specific than “it’s not fair”.

Aug 20, 2008 - 4:00 pm 90. Self-hating boomer:

Well, since Len’s not here, Len can’t answer. I thought that was obvious. Can we stop all this stupidity now?

Aug 20, 2008 - 4:52 pm 91. Vario:

Don’t take Mary Jackson too seriously.

She wants to deflect and mislead and spin around with details. She wants to do anything but acknowledge things here.

I am truly happy that these ideas are catching on and that people are starting to see reality despite feminist attempts to obfuscate.

What a bitter, nasty woman. Imagine being married to her.

Aug 20, 2008 - 5:21 pm 92. Justice?:

Well Heather;
“We women can do anything a man can.” Isn’t that the old feminist saying. Then get with it! Just do it. Or are you the typical type who just blows hot air out of the bottom.

Don’t listen to Mary Jackson; She’s British, anything they say sounds to have come out of their bottoms. The number of false accussations, quite common in divorce courts, by far outnumber the actual act. Many women are hypocrites. It’s all about their issues. I feel sorry for their sons, for they are secondary to their daughters in the family tree. Hell with the Heather’s & Jackson’s type.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:14 pm 93. Vario:

The reader who wrote in to ask advice is remarkably “expressive” for a young man who works in the bowels of the fast-food industry.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:27 pm 94. Farix:

On the contrary. I am asking for the bare minimum. What duties was “Len” given that “the girls” were not given – as general as you like? Even one sentece on the subject would suffice.

Does it really matter what the specific jobs were? The fact that the jobs were segregated between men and women is bad enough. The only case where you can feasibility justify it is cleaning the restrooms (men cleans the men’s restrooms, women cleans the women’s restrooms). And even that doesn’t get very far. The point is that when Len complained about the disparity, he was told to “suck it up” and the female employees retaliated by harassing him.

Aug 20, 2008 - 6:47 pm 95. Farix:

Let me add that the one bug in Len’s story is how the restaurant hires its employees. Did the applicants have to apply for specific positions within the restaurant? Or were the employees hired as “general laborers” in which they could fill any vacant position?

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:05 pm 96. Tennwriter:

Vario,

Perhaps so, but frequently fast food is a refuge for young men with brains and talent who can’t find a square peg hole to put their square peg self in, or get the credentials to get in the door at a good job.

One of the smartest guys I ever met was a delivery driver. Pure redneck, fish, beer…and you thought he was just an ordinary guy until you noticed him when he was quiet.

High level genius is nice, and so is writing skill (wonder if Len is using his part-time job to write a novel?), but the owner of that shoppe made a couple million a year, and he was fairly smart, but nowhere near the class of the driver in brains. Now in obsessive attention to detail, and energy, and boldness he had the edge.

As to workplace discrimination…yah, been there, had it done to me. Hard work, like genius, only gets you so far. I’d sure have liked to see the world tilted to benefit hard work and genius, but such a tilt would be unfavorable to women personally even as it benefited men personally, society as a whole, and I suspect women personally as well.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:27 pm 97. Derek:

I had an issue with a female boss than ultimately lead me to quit my job after 8 years. I dated a girl in the office for a few months. We broke up (saw it coming, was not worried about it, she broke it off) and she began to kiss my bosses ass rather excessively. Before long my ex was insulting me in the office, playing mind games, and generally getting upset about everything from how fast I opened the door for her to not picking up the phone at home when she called.

My ex decided that I did not trust her enough because of a incident where I would not let her see the root password for the system that I am in charge of. So decide that this was unforgivable and decided that we can no longer talk to each. I ultimately decided and communicated to her that professional type relationship should be the only thing we have to in common going forward. Nothing beyond work should be talked about and we both agreed to this.

My ex violated this about a month later when she asked me to help her with a non work related email. I refused stating that was not a work related. She became furious, called me an asshole, went out to her car and brought in a bunch of small gifts I had given her months ago, broke them all and tossed them on my desk.

Prior to that inident my boss had started at first just bringing them up and later attacking me about things my ex was saying I was doing to her. Things ranging from she is physically afraid of you, to you don’t respect or you don’t trust her enough. She was telling me that she was in tears over the horrible things I was doing to her. I tried responding to these claims for a while without gaining any traction. I later repeatably asked my boss to leave me alone about the girl, but every week there was some new horrible thing I was doing to this girl.

My boss was becoming more and more hostile to me. She began to disregard my opinion on system issues and openly mock and attack me. Instead of taking this girl (now her very close friend) to task for the incident above, she took me to lunch and berated me for an hour about how I was not doing my job properly. When I finally brought up the incident, she told me I should have lied to the girl (It was some kind of thing where the girl was asking me back into her world by wanting help with a non work email) and that I handled it all wrong. My request that she prevent another incident like this one was rebuffed. She stated that she could not do anything about it.

It turned out later the girl was making up stuff about me on a weekly basis depending on her mood. Things ranging from non-existent insults to me slamming her with the office door. She played up the victim angle to the max. Honestly she just had a lot of mental issues. My boss being a big time feminist and already a bit hostile towards men ate it up. Being believed absolutely is a real invitation for abuse and control.

Things quickly went down hill from there. Every week my boss found something new to attack me over and it came close to aborting a major upgrade because she flipped out would not listen to anything I had to say. I eventually had to tell people under me to ignore what she was saying to get the project completed. All the attacks and constant put downs was having an some rather bad effect on my life. It got to the point where I could not stand to be in the office around either my boss or this girl. So I told my boss that I need to get away. Move me to another office or let me go on leave. She responded by moving the girl from the office (to another job in a different department).

I was hoping with her gone things would return to normal and that I could get on with my job. Unfortunately, the attacks just intensified. My boss very much blamed me for her friend being moved out of our office (Something I had never asked for, I just wanted my boss to stop attacking me). She began to take any opportunity to trash me. Any mistake in my work became hour long bitching sessions at me. Finally after another 2 months of this I turned in my resignation.

Why did I not go straight to HR? I don’t have a good answer. For years my boss had been very good to me. Hired me when I was below min quals and she gave me the chance to excel. I really had a lot of loyalty towards her and I kept trying to reason with her. But it in the end it was always, men bad, women good. This girl always told the truth and I by virtue of being a man, I was a lier. I also did not begin documenting things till very late in this process. It’s hard as a guy to admit that I need outside help to fix something. I honestly thought I could get her to come around to what was going on at some point.

To this day I can’t understand how someone could believe things so crazy and not like me without even checking with me if they were true.

Aug 20, 2008 - 7:41 pm 98. Mary Jackson:

…feminist attempts to obfuscate.

So, asking for specifics – that an argument should be supported with facts – is “obfuscating” is it?

Basically, Len’s argument is: “It was discrimination. It just was, OK?”

And men, according to the misogynists posting here, are supposed to be the logical ones?

Don’t listen to Mary Jackson; She’s British, anything they say sounds to have come out of their bottoms.

Against such reasoned argument, who can compete?

Aug 20, 2008 - 9:09 pm 99. Daniel Love Glazer:

A few years ago I worked as a computer contractor for Kraft Foods. Kraft decided to transfer the division I worked in from Chicago to Madison WI. Several employees didn’t want to make the move, so new employees were sought. I applied for one of the jobs for which I was eminently qualified–I had been doing similar work in my contracting position. The hiring manager declined to interview me or tell me why I wasn’t qualified. Eventually another manger told me that I was not being considered because HR was putting on pressure to hire a woman.

Aug 20, 2008 - 9:46 pm 100. ddc:

Oh for Christ’s sake, when in doubt use the “Duke Lacrosse Team” as defense of all men’s innocence. As if by mentioning the case all future rape accusations should immediately be tossed out a window because well you know…the DUKE LACROSSE TEAM proves that men don’t rape. We get it. And guess what, the disbarred idiot attorney gets it too. Let’s see, disbarred and sued for damages. It’d say the Duke Lax Team got some dang good justice. We are, as we should be, happy for the DUKE LAX TEAM. We should only hope women (and children) who ARE truly sexually assaulted get this kind of justice.

What is even more interesting since YOU brought up the Duke Lax Team, it seems that while a girl will be consistantly referred to as a dumb-slut, her behaviour questioned without mercy, and will be thought to have apparently deserved the raping she got due to the copious amount of alcohol consumption. Yet, never was it mentioned that perhaps the DUKE LACROSSE TEAM were equally as dumb and slutty to have hired the services of questionable individuals for the sole purposes of getting their drunken selves off to said questionable stripper t1ts and a$$. Boys just being boys right?

As far as discrimination in the worplace for men? I cannot say for sure as I’ve certainly never been aware of it. While discrimination is not fair at all perhaps it’s the men’s turn to have a little taste of that. Who knows.

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:16 pm 101. ddc:

To Len,
Neither males nor females should ever be subjected to on the job discrimination. The women who name-called are terrible human beings. Since you claim that the other male employees are in agreement with you, you might want to make a collective complaint to HR. Both about the delegation of tasks by managers and the work atmosphere made unbearably hostile by the female employees. Reprimands should be in order for both. If you do not receive satisfaction you can also inform corporate headquarters and your local newspaper. Corporations are terribly allergic to bad press.

Good luck.

Aug 20, 2008 - 10:36 pm 102. Scott:

I am a nurse so obviously I work in a female dominated workplace. From my perspective the workload is divided fairly, and there is very little difference in what men and women are expected to do. The few things that I am asked to do more often are due to the fact that I am stronger than most of my co-workers, for example: when we get a particularly heavy patient that needs to be moved I am always called upon to help. I have absolutely no problem with that because it gives me a chance to show off my strength, and usually there are several other people (men and women) who are helping. The one complaint I have is that the women I work with universally participate in male bashing. When I hear it I speak up but they usually don’t get it. In my workplace speaking ill of the opposite gender is a one way street, they can say pretty much whatever they want but I can say nothing.

Aug 21, 2008 - 12:08 am 103. Ron:

The boss always wins since he/she makes the rules. I’ve been working for 45 years and observed the employee looses unless the boss is really, really, stupid. I was even laid off from a government job in 1966 because they needed the money to hire blacks. My bosses felt so guilty they helped me get a better job.

While there are plenty of examples of an employee winning a small settlement no one wants to hire someone who sued their employer or even complains about their employer.

In the situation described the angry male doesn’t have a chance. He admits to verbally abusing his female co-workers, just not as well or often. Should they be punished because their name calling skills are better?

Suck it up or get another job when you’re having trouble with the boss no matter what color or sex you are. The anti-disrimination laws provide employment for lawyers and HR drones, rarely protection for picked on employees.

As to boys and lifting, I suspect most supervisors care less about your sex and more about your size and strength. I once noticed an athletic 6 foot woman coworker was asked to lift things about as often as the guys.

Aug 21, 2008 - 12:57 am 104. Cletus:

Mary Jackson:

This is the internet. Helen was explaining to him what he may do to right this wrong, assuming it did happen. Why does he have to present YOU with evidence? What is compelling him to do that? If it did happen, and he does proceed to sue, he will present his lawyer and the court with evidence. He doesn’t have to show you anything. Go ahead and disbelieve.

Aug 21, 2008 - 2:29 am 105. Mark:

@ddc
“As far as discrimination in the worplace for men? I cannot say for sure as I’ve certainly never been aware of it. While discrimination is not fair at all perhaps it’s the men’s turn to have a little taste of that.”

That comment gets right to the heart of the problem: our societies (US & UK) have created large numbers of women who, so focused are they on their own interests and so attuned are they to their own treatment, simply cannot see, or worse, willfully refuse not to see, extensive discrimination and even major human and civil rights abuses as they happen to men, and yet who will raise all hell should they themselves be subjected to even a single minor component of such treatment. Further, there are many more women still who, even if they do see discriminaton, justify it on the same deceptive grounds as has ddc. And make no mistake, this is a deceptive argument: a claim that A was discriminated against by B in no way justifies C claiming beneficial treatment over D, simply because C has some arbitrary characteristic in common with A.

It is fascinating having discussions with such women. In neutral contexts, they can see discrimination in a New York second, but reframe the conversation slightly to reveal that it is a man on the receiving end and suddenly all manner of justifications for the treatment crop up and an injustice that was outrageous just a moment ago is now not nearly so bad. It’s like a form of mental illness, and that it doesn’t happen with women in every country, to me, speaks to the power of the media for mass brainwashing.

Aug 21, 2008 - 2:39 am 106. pashley:

Somewhere in all these ancedotal incidents you should realize that men and women exercise authority and leadership differently. Men plce divisions between how they feel about a person emotionally and how they act professionally. Women don’t. So, in male leadership, you can have a job evaluation and training without the hangover of how they feel about you professionally. Women don’t cut those distinctions, the processing on professional, emotional, and personal interaction takes place at the same level.

So, when an organization becomes dominated by women managers, job evaluation is processed on the personal level. Your in, or your out. Consequently, its more challenging, and yet more rewarding, for the rare male who can survive and thrive in female-dominated organizations, who can convince the women he works with that he is both in the coffee click, and yet steer them in a professionally useful manner. Not every guy can do that.

Forget about PC, PC is just a stick for some people to exercise authority over others, promoted by lawyers and representatives of aggrieved minorities. And unless you are the vengeful type, forget lawsuits, you’ll just be working for the lawyer at great toll to yourself and little reward.

Aug 21, 2008 - 2:50 am 107. Gregory:

Indeed, I have noticed that quite a number of Ms Jackson’s posts here in PJM are along similar lines. While some of them I can agree with, others read somewhat anti-male polemic in nature.

Ms Jackson, are you saying that there is NEVER a case of female-on-male sexual discrimination, or that the number is too SMALL to be of any significance? But nevermind that.

Ms Jackson, do you not find it so supremely strange that the very FIRST thing out of your mouth is…

I wonder why “Len” doesn’t specify what are “the girls’ tasks” and what are “the boys’ tasks. And, of couse, we must take his word for it that “the girls’ tasks” are easier than his. This goes unchallenged.

i.e. “I don’t believe him! It could not have happened! Pix or it never happened!”

Even the most stridently staunch feminist (mommadona) or the more rational Valerie take him at face value and muster their arguments and discussion points likewise. Indeed, unless it is an entirely out-and-out beyond belief letter, I suspect most people would have a similar response. After all, we’re not talking about the Penthouse forum here…

ddc:

As far as discrimination in the worplace for men? I cannot say for sure as I’ve certainly never been aware of it. While discrimination is not fair at all perhaps it’s the men’s turn to have a little taste of that. Who knows.

And congratulations, I have automatically assumed that you are a woman and that you, like the stereotypical woman, will not be satisfied until other men have paid over and over and over again for what some men have done to other women. Revenge is a woman’s specialty dish, and all that.

I may be the only one who thinks that though, so you just keep on doing your thing.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:40 am 108. Mary Jackson:

Ms Jackson, are you saying that there is NEVER a case of female-on-male sexual discrimination, or that the number is too SMALL to be of any significance?

Of course not. Merely that I would like some detail as to what happened. All we have here are this man’s bare assertion that he was discriminated against. No specific tasks.

As I said before, even one very general sentence, such as: “I had to mop the floor and the girls waited tables” would help. I am not, as I have said repeatedly, requiring the kind of evidence needed for a court of law.

Isn’t there something between zero and very detailed?

Dr Helen, Heather Mac Donald and co would not accept a woman’s word for it on such a flimsy or non-existent basis – they would demand evidence. But men are the new victims in journalism.

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:04 am 109. Locomotive Breath:

The new anti-feminists love that one. The Duke Lacrosse case that single-handedly, even though the accused were acquitted, makes up for all the rape victims denied justice.

Mary “facts please” Jackson is evidently not familiar with the facts of the Duke lacrosse false rape accusation.

DA Mike Nifong was forced to recuse himself because after the NC SBI had told him there was no DNA evidence he had hired a private lab to try to find some, and then not finding any from the accused, conspired with the director of the DNA lab to cover up the fact that the false accuser Crystal Mangum not only had no DNA in her from the accused but that she did have DNA in her from 5-6 other men.

He was just barely caught at this. If not for the work of a lawyer named Brad Bannon he would have gotten away with it. By one vote, the NC Bar decided to go ahead with a complaint against him before the case had been adjudicated. That’s never happened before and forced Nifong off the case.

If the case had gone to trial it is highly likely that a Durham jury already inflamed against the accused would have convicted or at least hung.

By this point you will have maybe figured out that the three accused were not “acquitted” because there was no trial.

After Nifong was gone, the North Carolina Attorney General oversaw a months long exhaustive investigation and then got on national TV and declared the three accused were INNOCENT and that there was not one shred of evidence that there had ever been a rape.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that the three accused could have been sent to jail for 20-30 years each, the filing of a false rape claim is only a misdemeanor with which Crystal Mangum was never charged. There are still people running around trumpeting that she’s somehow a victim in all this. Will you go on record supporting the same penalty for filing a false rape claim as for actually committing a rape? Instead, she continued on in college, received a degree, and will go on about her business as if she hadn’t spent an entire year lying to get three innocent men thrown in jail.

If you think that false rape claims are an extraordinary occurrence then you are naive. The only thing extraordinary about this false rape claim was the attention it received because of the racial angle.

Here is an example (one of many) of the local media falling all over themselves to support her claim of rape

Mother, dancer, accuser

This was AFTER the DNA came back negative from the SBI.

Soon Britain will will be living under sharia law. You’ll then find out what the true abuse of women looks like.

Aug 21, 2008 - 5:30 am 110. Mary Jackson:

So the Duke Lacrosse case never even came to trial? That Duke Lacrosse case that misogynists, male and female, trumpet as “proof” that women are not being raped at all but are all lying and falsely accusing men? That Duke Lacrosse case that misogynists, male and female, crow over endlessly never even came to trial? And we’re supposed to believe that men are the new victims?

Soon Britain will will be living under sharia law. You’ll then find out what the true abuse of women looks like.

A little more evidence and a little less schadenfreude, please.

Aug 21, 2008 - 5:48 am 111. WayneB:

“Let me add that the one bug in Len’s story is how the restaurant hires its employees. Did the applicants have to apply for specific positions within the restaurant? Or were the employees hired as “general laborers” in which they could fill any vacant position?”

It’s a Fast Food job. In the Fast Food jobs I’ve had, the Shift you were hired for was the only hiring distinction. Based on Len’s account, it would appear that this was the way the job was presented, but the managers imposed a sex-based division of duties.

And I repeat to Mary Jackson – Len said he learned the girls’ jobs, in order to find out if he was being unfair in his assessment. Why does he have to specify those tasks to you? Isn’t his experience with both sets of responsibilities good enough?

Aug 21, 2008 - 6:17 am 112. Locomotive Breath:

It’s telling that you don’t believe that someone was not victimized when the legal system dragged them through the wringer for over a year and nearly sent them to jail over an immediately demonstrable false accusation of rape.

Especially when nothing at all happened to the woman who made the false charge except she spent a full year living at government expense while her false charge was pursued. And in the process squirted out a third child that she can’t care for. I guess women need not be held accountable for their malicious actions.

I notice you ignored my question. Will you go on record supporting applying the same penalty for women who falsely accuse men of rape as would have been levied against a guilty rapist?

Of course not. There’s your feminist equality right there.
————-
I’ve been in Londinistan recently. The covered up women trailing their husband down the street at a respectable distance is all the proof I need.

But if you want more here’s but a few.

Police sniffer dogs to wear bootees during house searches to avoid offending Muslims

Muslims outraged at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman’s hat

Sharia law is spreading as authority wanes

Adopt sharia law in Britain, says the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams

Viewpoint: Women and Sharia law – Aina Khan…specialises in achieving solutions using Sharia law principles in the English courts.

Sharia law SHOULD be used in Britain, says UK’s top judge

Drool Britannia. Britons are about to be slaves.

Got your burka picked out yet? Or are you going to wait for your beating by the religious police because your ankle is showing?

Aug 21, 2008 - 7:07 am 113. Mary Jackson:

Will you go on record supporting applying the same penalty for women who falsely accuse men of rape as would have been levied against a guilty rapist?

Most certainly not. False accusation of rape is not in the same league of crimes as rape itself. And if the penalty were as great, no woman would ever report a rape. They have a hard enough time as it is with the likes of you, Mac Donald and others.

By the way, if you want women in burkhas, try Dearborn. And at least the UK isn’t about to elect a Muslim-friendly president. On second thoughts, contine to feel smug and superior, because the US press is far less self-critical than ours.

Aug 21, 2008 - 7:32 am 114. anomdebus:

Mary “show me the proof” Jackson,
Please show proof that Duke citers predominately “trumpet as “proof” that women are not being raped at all but are all lying and falsely accusing men”. True you predicate that by citing misogynists, however in this forum you aren’t trying to determine whether these Duke citers are actually misogynists, but you assuming they are.

Aug 21, 2008 - 8:32 am 115. Lamont Cranston:

Hey Mary – Len’s not participating. You’re not going to get any facts. You now have my permission to drop the subject. You can, in fact, say that you “won,” because he didn’t stick and give you “facts.”

So – here are “facts” for you. When I was a lifeguard at the Charleston Naval Base (administered and staffed by civilians – I claim no military experience), I was one of two males on a staff of 20. The boss was a woman in her mid-30’s. Most of the staff were in our late teens or early 20’s.

When the mandatory bathing suits were ordered, the women got modest tank suits. They guys got speedos. The women got to manage and work at the Officer’s Club and CPO pools. The guys worked the Fleet pool. When the showers were renovated, the women got individual stalls. The men got a big room with nozzles coming out of the walls. Men got the job of scrubbing down the pool walls with disinfectant and scrubbing pads. Women did the paperwork in the climate controlled office.

How’s that for facts?

Lamont

Aug 21, 2008 - 8:41 am 116. Aureliano:

It’s like a form of mental illness, and that it doesn’t happen with women in every country, to me, speaks to the power of the media for mass brainwashing.

I’ve believed for some time now that modern doctrinaire feminism has devolved into little more than an elaborate, largely unconscious form of psychotherapy for women with emotional problems of one sort or another. The more serious the emotional problem or trauma (rape, abuse, or true clincal mental illness), the more rabid and irrational the patient’s devotion to modern versions of ‘feminism’ and ‘women’s issues’, which the most devoted view primarily as a form of getting even with those who raped, abused, neglected, ignored, or made fun of them (mostly in their adolescent years). It’s an understandable but monumentally small-minded, pedestrian, and downright boring phenomenon especially for anyone over the age of 40.

Mary Jackson and ddc are two such individuals, given the nature of their posts here and on other PJM discussions. SOMETHING happened to damage them, which is why they are so blind to their own behavior. Len’s problem really isn’t that complicated, unusual, or hard to comprehend in the sense of right/wrong — the bizarre lack of perspective on their parts is the result of pathology, not rationality. Getting the Duke Lacrosse false-rape case wrong is the perfect example of such mental instability.

They will doubtless protest with an appropriate level of snark. Rather than bore us with your wit, however, why don’t you two come clean, be honest for once, and tell us about your trauma. Your current strategy for dealing with your issues obviously isn’t working, so why don’t you try coming clean by discussing things openly, rather than spend so much time with this overly elaborate girrrrl power! nonsense.

Think of PJM as your own personal therapist’s couch (in a sense, it already is), so you might as well be honest with your therapist. Who knows, you might find it cathartic.

Aug 21, 2008 - 8:47 am 117. Mary Jackson:

Lamont:

How’s that for facts?

That’s fine. Sounds like a cast-iron case of discrimination. That’s more than can be said for “Len”, who doesn’t give any.

Aug 21, 2008 - 8:54 am 118. Aureliano:

Correction: ‘mental instability’ should read ‘intellectual incoherence’.

Aug 21, 2008 - 8:54 am 119. Jim:

“But now that one case is gleefully seized on by misogynist men and women as negating all the other cases of genuine rape going unpunished. ”

One case? That is flat dishonest. False rape accusations are a dime a dozen. Just a year before the Duke case there was another high profile case in which a white women sought Kobe Bryant out in his hotel room at 10:00 at night, they ahd sex, and afterwards she claimed she was raped. the case dragged on for months when by rights the lying little white***** should have been kicked to the curb. You are probably going to claim ignorance of this incident too. You can just as well claim ignorance of the fact that false rape accusations and lynchings resulting form them were a major form of racist terrorism in the South. As unaware as you are of this background, it is a wonder that you presume to comment on the Duke Lacrosse case at all, even to say that it was “one case”.

As for your demand for detailed facts, they are in fact superfluous after one fact has been established – that there was one set of tasks for one group and one for the other determined by something other than job criteria or pay. If the groups had been identified by race, there would be no question whatsoever that this was discrimination, at least under US law, which in this case its the law that matters.

“False accusation of rape is not in the same league of crimes as rape itself. And if the penalty were as great, no woman would ever report a rape.”

False accusations are accusations in which the accuser knowingly makes a false statement. It does not cover statements made in good faith that turn out not to be true. But a false statement that results in false imprisonment of up to several decades is a crime at least on par with rape, at least to anyone with a moral conscience. what objection can you have to trying to discourage false accusations. as for discouraging any and all rape accusers………facts please. Facts.

But this one is truly abysmally ignorant:

“As far as discrimination in the worplace for men? I cannot say for sure as I’ve certainly never been aware of it. While discrimination is not fair at all perhaps it’s the men’s turn to have a little taste of that. Who knows.”

“Men” have had plenty of experience with discrimination, White Girl.

“So the Duke Lacrosse case never even came to trial? ”

Oh, it was tied alright, in the press all across the country. It was tired in a fashion at the university, where 88 bigots on the faculty signed a denunciation that presumed guilt. But then too, lots of rape accusations never went to trial before the mob with a rope showed up at a man’s house.

“On second thoughts, contine to feel smug and superior, because the US press is far less self-critical than ours.”

Lying is presenting something as a fact when you know that you do not know for sure that it is fact. So you are saying that MSNBC and Fox are not currently engaged in a protracted bitch fight? You are saying that right wing media in this country have not been waging war to get NPR defunded for years? You are saying that Andrew Sullivan and others at the Atlantic magazine do not regularly expose errors in New York Times reporting and castigate it for that? Incredible. You really are just making this up as you go a long, aren’t you? So much for your standard of “facts”.

But why bother with someone who equates the dress of a part of the population in an out-of-the-way little city with a pronouncemnt by the senior judge in the country?

Aug 21, 2008 - 8:55 am 120. Aureliano:

“As far as discrimination in the worplace for men? I cannot say for sure as I’ve certainly never been aware of it. While discrimination is not fair at all perhaps it’s the men’s turn to have a little taste of that. Who knows.”

“Men” have had plenty of experience with discrimination, White Girl.

As Dr. Helen’s husband might say: heh.

You can just as well claim ignorance of the fact that false rape accusations and lynchings resulting form them were a major form of racist terrorism in the South.

Mary is an English Lit lecturer, I believe. Perhaps she’s already read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ (although as a Brit I rather doubt it).

Aug 21, 2008 - 9:07 am 121. Mary Jackson:

As for your demand for detailed facts, they are in fact superfluous after one fact has been established – that there was one set of tasks for one group and one for the other determined by something other than job criteria or pay.

That “fact” has by no means been established. In most teams people are assigned different tasks. It is Len’s contention – unquestioningly believed by Dr Helen as a woman’s contention might not be – that his tasks were “harder”. But he offers no evidence for this, and doesn’t even say what any of the tasks were. So it’s his opinion, which is being treated as “fact”. A woman’s opinion would not be.

But why bother with someone who equates the dress of a part of the population in an out-of-the-way little city with a pronouncemnt by the senior judge in the country?

If you had bothered to read Lord Phillips actual speech or the Times law report thereof, or my article on the subject here at PJM, you would realise that what he said was actually the opposite of what was widely reported by ignorant tabloids and believed by ignorant Americans. He explicitly established the limits of sharia – to private contracts that are already legal under English law. The position is exactly as in the US – anyone can contract to do anything within the law, some of which may, coincidentally, accord with Sharia or any other system. So our position, affirmed by Lord Phillips is no different at all from that in the US.

But don’t let the facts get in the way of a smug, and perhaps suicidal superiority.

Aug 21, 2008 - 9:20 am 122. Cousin Dave:

Mary: The events I described in that first post occurred decades ago. It never would have occurred to me at the time to take legal action. And even if it had, there really would have been no point. As others have pointed out, generally the only winners in such lawsuits are the lawyers. And anyway, back then, low-wage fast-food jobs for teenagers were a dime a dozen. It was trivial for me to go find another job — I started in a pizza joint the same week that I quit the ice cream parlor.

To fill in the picture a bit more: As for tasks division, generally A and myself got most of the jobs that were labor intensive or unpleasant to do. If the store was busy (such as on Saturday afternoons), more or less continuous cleaing was needed. The division of labor was basically that the girls waited on customers and took money, and we did the cleaning, going out into the customer area to clean up spilled ice cream, drinks, and the occasional vomit from an overfed 8-year-old. We were expected to do all of the mopping and sweeping. We cleaned the employees’ restroom (being in a mall, the shop didn’t have a public restroom). We brought in new barrels of ice cream when one ran out, and we had to reach into the drain sump to clean it out when it got stopped up with almonds. The girls mostly waited on customers. When business got slack, they would do some light cleaning (wiping off countertops and such), take inventory, or just take a break, while we were expected to “catch up on things” like cleaning the grills on the refrigeration systems, or the aforementioned stock rotation.

Our other gripe was that the owner did not normally allow any employee to be on the clock past closing time. All of our chores were supposed to be done by closing, and if we didn’t get there, we wound up finishing on our own time. Some of the tasks A and myself were assigned, notably the display case defrosting, were things that were nearly impossible to do with customers in the store, so inevitably we wound up doing a lot of our work off the clock, while the girls rarely had any such problem. At worst, one of them might have to stay 30 minutes past closing to count money and reconcile the register — and if there was a boy on shift, we were required to stay until that was done even if we were finished with all of our chores. See, the owner considered it too dangerous for the girls to take the deposit bag to the bank; if A or myself was on shift, we were required to do that task. (If neither of us was on shift, the girls were allowed to just put the bag in the safe, and the owner would fetch it the next day.) So A and myself, by virtue of being male, had to give the shop a lot more free time then the girls were required to.

Aug 21, 2008 - 9:32 am 123. Mary Jackson:

Cousin Dave – there’s compelling evidence there that you and the other guys were discriminated against.

Years ago I had a temporary job where the discrimination went the other way. Targets were set for jobs, and you got a bonus – making a considerable difference to your wage packet – if the targets were exceeded. Men and women were assigned different jobs. Men and women were paid the same basic wage, but the targets for the jobs were lower for the men, so they always – even the slackers – earned bigger bonuses. It was a way of getting round the Equal Pay Act, later successfully challenged by one of the permanent staff.

Discrimination occurred in both your case and mine, and is wrong in both cases.

Aug 21, 2008 - 9:49 am 124. ken in sc:

SCOTT: the same constant male bashing goes on in public school teaching. It is the primary form of conversation among most female teachers (80% of the group). They appear to be totally unaware of what they are doing. Of course the men move the desks–without complaint.

Aug 21, 2008 - 10:44 am 125. Aureliano:

Mary Jackson: Aug 20, 2008 – 1:10 pm
No claim should be automatically believed or disbelieved.

Mary Jackson: Aug 20, 2008 – 2:06 pm
Facts, please.

Mary Jackson: Aug 21, 2008 – 9:49 am
[In reference to a temporary job she claims to have had …] Men and women were assigned different jobs. Men and women were paid the same basic wage, but the targets for the jobs were lower for the men, so they always – even the slackers – earned bigger bonuses.

In the spirit of your stated positions ….

Facts, please. What was the product or service of this organization? What were these ‘different’ jobs, specifically? What were the targets, specifically? Quantify ‘slackers’. What was your source for this information? What were your duties at said organization? Once you’ve provided specifics, prove that the men were worse than the Leviathans of Competency™ that were the women in the office, or put another way, what is the time period we’re talking about? How long were you in the office, and was it enough time to establish a trend, not just a snapshot of the process? How many men and women were there in this office?

Facts, please. (If I deem your ‘facts’ insufficient, your arguments are automatically moot.)

Mary Jackson: Aug 21, 2008 – 4:04 am
… I would like some detail as to what happened. All we have here are this man’s bare assertion that he was discriminated against. No specific tasks.

Aug 21, 2008 - 10:56 am 126. Jim:

“and perhaps suicidal superiority.”

Well, well – “suicidal” – the monkey really is showing his tail now.

“In most teams people are assigned different tasks.”

I specifically excluded random work assignments. Read more carefully.

“that his tasks were “harder”. ”

Immaterial to a determination of discrimination. If his tasks were easier, that would still be discrimnation, against the girls – just as wrong, as the dsicrimination against you you describe was wrong.

“A woman’s opinion would not be.”

Facts please. You have a very childish way of trying to tell the future and predicting what others’ actions will be and of presuming to read other people’s minds.

Aug 21, 2008 - 10:56 am 127. Mary Jackson:

Packing boxes as opposed to packing catalogues. Complete gender segregation – no men packing catalogues, no women packing boxes.

Slackers – could be seen idling, taking fag breaks whereas the women didn’t have time.

6 months – long enough to establish a pattern. Plus, as I said, this was successfully challenged at a tribunal by a member of staff. “Len’s” is simply asserted to be (a)true, (b) part of a bigger trend.

As for women’s opinions not being believed, Dr Helen has Mac Donald-style form. Her previous post about a man being “raped” by a woman accepted his account without challenge, but asserted that women making false accusations was the main problem.

Aug 21, 2008 - 11:13 am 128. ken in sc:

SCOTT: the same constant male bashing goes on in public school teaching. It is the primary form of conversation among most female teachers (80% of the group). They appear to be totally unaware of what they are doing. Of course the men move the desks–without complaint. –its not clear if my post made it or not, if it comes up twice I’m sorry–

Aug 21, 2008 - 11:14 am 129. ddc:

Mark: “It’s like a form of mental illness, and that it doesn’t happen with women in every country, to me, speaks to the power of the media for mass brainwashing.”

What is a form of mental illness is the worldwide male abuse and exploitation of women on every continent and western males dismissal of that as “it doesn’t concern them, not my problem” attitude. it’s everyone’s problem, just like you want Len’s little problem with the girl’s and alleged unfair treatment to be ours.

____________

Mary Jackson asserting that not having sufficient information on the particular tasks Len was asked to do that was unequal to that of his female co-workers was correct. That was one part of Len’s story and is an important missing piece to the story, IF Helen wants us to make a reasonable determination. The females bashing Len is another part of Len’s story.

The article is flawed.

Aug 21, 2008 - 11:27 am 130. ddc:

Mary Jackson: “By the way, if you want women in burkhas, try Dearborn. And at least the UK isn’t about to elect a Muslim-friendly president. On second thoughts, contine to feel smug and superior, because the US press is far less self-critical than ours.”

Touche’

Aug 21, 2008 - 11:32 am 131. ddc:

“Men” have had plenty of experience with discrimination, White Girl.

How do you know i’m white? In saying that am i to assume you are black? and your point is? That Len might be black and this is a case of RACISM and sexism? As i said. Helen’s article, similar to your ridiculous sentence is flawed.
______________________

Aug 21, 2008 - 11:43 am 132. Mary Jackson:

Another thing that puzzles me is how Len managed to “learn” the girls’ jobs. Did he learn by doing? If so, how? If not, how much value does his “learning” have?

Len may well be a victim of discrimination. But without even a single fact presented here, we will never know.

Aug 21, 2008 - 11:49 am 133. Locomotive Breath:

Most certainly not. False accusation of rape is not in the same league of crimes as rape itself. And if the penalty were as great, no woman would ever report a rape. They have a hard enough time as it is with the likes of you, Mac Donald and others.

And there you have the feminist double standard. Women should not be held equivalently responsible for their actions as are men. Q.E.D.

In such a supposed woman-hostile environment, Crystal Mangum didn’t have too much trouble getting the authorities to believe her without any shred of evidence now didn’t she?

I can only hope that some day you are falsely accused as a sex offender and have to live the remaining 50 years of your life with that hanging around your neck. Maybe then you will understand. But I doubt it.
——————
So you admit that London looks like Dearborn. A quite damning admission. When Dearborn is the center of U.S. culture, government and religion you might have a point.

Even if Obama is elected (that’s an if – at the moment the polls are tied) it’s only for four or maybe eight years. We’ll have far worse problems with him as President than his unproven attitude toward Islam. Or maybe you think he’ll force Michelle Obama to start wearing a burka?

Once Elizabeth Regina passes from this earth, the ever shrinking U.K. will be saddled with the upper-class twit of the millennium, your new Charles Rex who only then will come out of the closet to fully reveal his Muslim sympathies.

Unlike the U.S. and Obama, you’ll have to put up with him until he dies. Since he’ll be “Supreme Governor of the Church of England”, we in the U.S. will be laughing ourselves silly as he prevaricates as “the defender of (not the) faith”. Of course, a burka on horse-faced consort Camilla would be an improvement. Could we get Charles to wear one as well? ‘Cause I’m all about equal treatment for men and women.

On second thoughts, contine to feel smug and superior, because the US press is far less self-critical than ours.

The comedy never stops. It’s unclear whether you mean by “self critical” the press criticizing itself or the press criticizing the government. When the U.K. finally gets around to enshrining freedom of the press in actual law get back to me about the superiority of Fleet Street. (Yes, yes, I know everyone’s moved out.) How’s that Official Secrets Act working out for your press and the government? If you think the U.S. press has not been critical of the current U.S. government then you must have been living on the far side of the moon.

Find me one single quote from any credible U.S. national government or religious official suggesting that the U.S. subvert its Constitution by turning over the law to sharia. Yours is the country that still actually has enshrined an official state religion so you are already half way there. Do you really believe that if Chief Justice John Roberts had suggested that the U.S. use sharia law in U.S. jurisprudence as did Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips it would not have been reported?

At the same time you add freedom of the press to the law you could also add freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Things we’ve had in the law since we kicked out you lot a couple of centuries ago.

Aug 21, 2008 - 12:34 pm 134. Jim:

“How do you know i’m white?”

Nobody was talking to you or talking about you, ddc. Nobody knows anything about you and nobody cares.

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:02 pm 135. Mary Jackson:

Do you really believe that if Chief Justice John Roberts had suggested that the U.S. use sharia law in U.S. jurisprudence as did Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips it would not have been reported?

At the risk of repeating myself, Lord Phillips defined the limits of Sharia law and stated that the position wouldn’t change. That position – that all and only contracts that comply with national law are allowed, is EXACTLY the same as the position in the US. Sharia-compliant contracts are allowed under US and UK law, provided they also comply with those laws. Thus far and no further, said Lord Phillips.

This was reported by The Times. It is in the original speech. But you, and other ignorant Americans prefer to accept at face value the half-witted and misleading shriekings of our tabloids, read by people whose lips move when they read.

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:18 pm 136. Aureliano:

Mary Jackson: Aug 20, 2008 – 1:10 pm
No claim should be automatically believed or disbelieved.

Mary Jackson: Aug 20, 2008 – 2:06 pm
Facts, please.

Mary Jackson: Aug 21, 2008 – 11:13 am
Packing boxes as opposed to packing catalogues. Complete gender segregation – no men packing catalogues, no women packing boxes.

Slackers – could be seen idling, taking fag breaks whereas the women didn’t have time.

Plus, as I said, this was successfully challenged at a tribunal by a member of staff.

Under your own rubric, the above claims are insufficient, given that they cannot be believed. Please provide facts, not assertions. For instance, the tribunal’s ruling should be available to the public, even in Britain. Please provide a link. Failing to do so, you have not established any facts under your own definition of what constitutes a ‘fact’, and therefore your anecdote can be dismissed out of hand by any random third party perusing this discussion board (i.e., ME).

This is your intellectual edifice, Mary, not mine. If this seems ridiculous to you, then you have some insight into how ridiculous you look to others. Additionally, you didn’t answer all of my questions. Why? It is not up to you to decide what is and is not a relevant fact –- only I can do that. (Again, this is your rubric, not mine.)

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:20 pm 137. Aureliano:

“Len’s” is simply asserted to be (a)true, (b) part of a bigger trend.

Er, you simply asserted Len’s story to be (a)false, (b)not part of a bigger trend.

Please prove your assertions with facts, please.

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:20 pm 138. Aureliano:

As for women’s opinions not being believed, Dr Helen has Mac Donald-style form. Her previous post about a man being “raped” by a woman accepted his account without challenge, but asserted that women making false accusations was the main problem.

Whatever you say, Donna Quixote. Setting aside a demonstrated intrinsic tendency to joust at windmills, I’m beginning to wonder at the slightly homoerotic predilection to save pre-emptively Dulcinea from that mean ol’ phallic dad-dragon. Now that’s not entirely fair, but then again, I already believe that the shriller the post-feminist, the more penetrating the emotional pathology. Dr. Helen is, after all, a forensic psychologist. Methinks you reveal more to people in your … jousting … than you realize. Some things really aren’t that hard to figure out ….

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:22 pm 139. Jim:

“How do you know i’m white? ”

Nobody said anything about you, ddc.

“Packing boxes as opposed to packing catalogues. Complete gender segregation – no men packing catalogues, no women packing boxes.
Slackers – could be seen idling, taking fag breaks whereas the women didn’t have time.”

This is clearcut discrimination, Mary. You are absolutely right. And it is exactly what Len, Cousin Dave and others have described.

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:27 pm 140. Mary Jackson:

So you admit that London looks like Dearborn.

No. Not at all. Dearborn is chock full of black ghosts. In London there are too many – even one is too many – but the proportion of the London poplulation is tiny.

And never mind Dearborn, have you read this description of Brooklyn by Sarah Honig in the Jerusalem Post?

“I suspected that some supernatural time-and-space warp had transported me to Islamabad. This couldn’t be Brooklyn.
Women strode attired in hijabs and male passersby sported all manner of Muslim headgear and long flowing tunics….I decided to photograph the masjid, sensing it could make a story. Kathy became frantic. “Don’t you dare,” she almost yelled. As I slipped the camera back into my handbag, she explained that several weeks before my arrival two journalists, Bos Smith and Paul Williams, HAD photographed a similar Brooklyn mosque, Masjid al-Takwa. They were grabbed by 20 ninja-uniformed men, shoved into the mosque cellar, held captive and roughly interrogated by the group’s henna-bearded leader, Ali Kareem. He released them only after they fibbed that they were interested in converting to Islam. On a subsequent visit to the site they were accosted again and an attempt was made to seize and break their camera.”

So much for freedom of the press in the good old US of A.

Still, continue to feel smug and arrogant.

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:36 pm 141. Mary Jackson:

Aureliano – I am not the one claiming an increasing and hitherto ignored trend in discrimination. It is Dr Helen who makes that claim. She enlists in support of it, one “Len” who states not one single fact. Not one.

You are now requiring evidence that would stand up in a court of law. I have no such requirement from Len, merely – again at the risk of repeating myself for the slow-witted – one example: “I had to mop the floor while the girls waited tables.” I don’t require times, places, witness statements, anything like that, merely a for instance. An example.

There is not one. Yet Dr Helen and her supporters accept Len’s story without question.

If “Len” is the best Dr Helen can muster for her argument, that does not say much for the “trend”.

Aug 21, 2008 - 1:42 pm 142. Locomotive Breath:

Completely irrelevant as we were talking about law and the government suppressing freedom of the press and whether the press would be critical of the government. As if in some fashion the U.S. press would not report creeping sharia in the U.S. legal system.

Having admitted that you want women to enjoy privileged treatment under the law by not having to suffer the consequence of their actions, I still want you to quote me any national official in the U.S. talking about surrendering U.S. legal tradition to sharia and it’s abuse of women. You can’t, but officials in the the U.K. are doing it, and soon you will find out what true abuse of women really is. Under sharia, if Crystal Mangum had been raped she would have been the one on trial.

Still, continue to not understand the difference. But you will come to know.

Aug 21, 2008 - 2:39 pm 143. ddc:

Jim: “As far as discrimination in the worplace for men? I cannot say for sure as I’ve certainly never been aware of it. While discrimination is not fair at all perhaps it’s the men’s turn to have a little taste of that. Who knows.”

“Men” have had plenty of experience with discrimination, White Girl.

You brought it up by paraphasing, you fool.

Aug 21, 2008 - 2:50 pm 144. Mary Jackson:

I still want you to quote me any national official in the U.S. talking about surrendering U.S. legal tradition to sharia and it’s abuse of women. You can’t, but officials in the the U.K. are doing it

See my earlier posts – repeated ad nauseam for the dim-witted – on what Lord Phillips actually said. Which was – and I repeat myself once more for the moronic – THE OPPOSITE -of what is alleged. The position is exactly the same, no more, no less, than in the US and has been explicitly stated to be so, in black and white. Read, if you can read, my article, The Times law report, the actual speech….

On second thoughts don’t. Remain in your ignorance, and your vindictive, misogynist smugness.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:03 pm 145. Mary Jackson:

Having admitted that you want women to enjoy privileged treatment under the law by not having to suffer the consequence of their actions…

I admitted nothing of the kind. I said that false accusers should not be punished to the same extent as rapists.

Perverting the course of justice is not as bad as raping or killing someone.

Can’t you read?

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:05 pm 146. Mary Jackson:

Ironic, too, that Locomotive Breath claims that the UK press does not report creeping Sharia, yet quotes that very UK press to demonstrate it.

Ironic. (It’s a Brit thing.)

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:07 pm 147. ddc:

“Whatever you say, Donna Quixote. Setting aside a demonstrated intrinsic tendency to joust at windmills, I’m beginning to wonder at the slightly homoerotic predilection to save pre-emptively Dulcinea from that mean ol’ phallic dad-dragon. Now that’s not entirely fair, but then again, I already believe that the shriller the post-feminist, the more penetrating the emotional pathology. Dr. Helen is, after all, a forensic psychologist. Methinks you reveal more to people in your … jousting … than you realize. Some things really aren’t that hard to figure out ….”

How rich. And honestly even more telling of the author of such.
1.”Donna Quixote”
2.”homoerotic predilection to save pre-emptively Dulcinea from that mean ol’ phallic dad-dragon”
3. “that the shriller the post-feminist, the more penetrating the emotional pathology. Dr. Helen is, after all, a forensic psychologist.”

Let’s see. Most glaring is the general pomposity. Metaphor much? Mountain of a Mole-hill much?
Secondly, such blind faith in good Dr. Helen, that the mere challenge of whom would appear to be akin to denouncing the immaculate conception! Especially when writing a poorly factualized article such as she has. Good grief! I do believe had this been the 17th century, Mary Jackson along with her challenges for mere facts would be roasting on an open fire.

Mary Jackson, whyever do you dare?!

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:14 pm 148. Jim:

Mary, then if there is no issue, how do you explain your frantic stern warning post on this very blog?

Mary, you’re a fine one to go accusing people of misogyny. You are quite on par with ddc, who flatters himself by thinking he’s part of this conversation, for being a misandrist knob. You argue dishonestly, as Locomotive Breath and I have pointed out, you make no secret of your loathing of men, both in this thread and in the thread on James Landrith’s rape, and you seem to revel in any finding any slimy little thing you can find to say against the US. How trite you are; your kind is cheap and abundant. Keep it up and you will end up gagging on your own bile.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:16 pm 149. Mary Jackson:

Keep it up and you will end up gagging on your own bile.

Well, until this moment, I found your arguments wanting. But now I have seen the light. Such eloquence. Such cogency.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:23 pm 150. Aureliano:

Donna Quixote,

Let me help you out, since your intelligence drifts more towards post-pubescent snark and provincial euro-bigotry than it does to healthy, full-fledged adult cognition.

You’re basically saying that if Len had simply said “I had to mop the floor while the girls waited tables” then his story would have qualified as believable. Absent that one simple little statement, his story is –- voila! –- not to be believed, and therefore the proposition that anti-male discrimination is increasing in the workplace, for which Dr. Helen provided a link, is presumably disproved*, or at least put on hold until more ‘facts’ are forthcoming**. Indeed, the whole idea that anti-male discrimination is increasing is preposterous, even though on this very thread, in your own statements and in those of other women, you see ample evidence that such a trend has at least some support in the everyday psychological sense.

Is THIS the grrrrl power! logical singularity you think we ignorant, slow-witted rubes are not getting? Do you have any idea how astoundingly moronic this seems, in the sense that you’re fooling no one except yourself?

Setting aside the point that anything Len says still qualifies as an ‘assertion’ and not a fact under your, ahem, intellectual rubric, are you really so dense that you can’t understand that Len sent Dr. Helen a LETTER, not an article. Presumably Len wasn’t writing to please post-feminist windmill-warriors, or to thoroughly vet the letter for public consumption, he was merely relaying an experience of his, either of his own volition or by general request or Dr. Helen (see the end of this article). It’s just an idea to be discussed on a Web log, not a political gender-manifesto to be refuted shrilly and obsessively by a stable of harpies. As I’ve been saying, some things really aren’t that hard to figure out.

Which reminds me, since you’re already using post-feminist commentary as psychotherapy, why don’t you stop with all this nonsense and just tell us what your issues are. Rumor has it that at least one person on this discussion board is an expert in at least one area of psychology. Maybe we could help you figure out that spending a lifetime nursing resentments is no way to live your life.

* Actually, the only point you seem to support that is even remotely on-topic and accurate is that anti-female discrimination still exists, an assertion that is not in contention (thus the references to jousting at windmills, and pre-emptive, vaguely homo-erotic Dulcinea-saving).
** Bye the way, sweetie, you meant ‘details, please’, not ‘facts, please’, at least according to what you believe is sufficient to consider Len’s story viable. For a veritable juggernaut of competency in English semantics (one who admonished others for their spelling earlier in the thread), you sure seem to lack severely any facility with the English language. (So much for vaunted European education.)

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:24 pm 151. ddc:

Mary,

Would i be correct in saying that sharia law has not been incorporated in its entirety in the UK? That it exists on limitations and ONLY apply to Muslims. For instance, in terms of marriage between Men and Muslim women, cetain sharia laws might apply only where it does not cross the law of the land. Meaning, if the age of consent in the UK is 16, but under Sharia law there is (obviously) no age of consent, that this crosses the line of UK law and therefore will stand as a punishable offense.

Apparently these cretins think that muslim wife-beaters will go scott free in England since it’s justified under Sharia law. If it is against the law in UK to beat the wife, then any Muslim woman-hater, sharia law or not will (if convicted) cool his butt in prison just like any other lout.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:33 pm 152. Mary Jackson:

You’re basically saying that if Len had simply said “I had to mop the floor while the girls waited tables” then his story would have qualified as believable.

More so, yes. And?

So “Len” wrote a letter not an article. But Dr Helen wrote an article, and the best she could come up with to support her argument for a “trend” in anti-male discrimination was “Len”.

Not impressive.

“Details” not “facts”? Pathetic. I wanted facts. One fact at least. One detail, if you like. Same difference.

By the way, don’t try sarcasm. It’s pitiful. Like a dog walking on its hindlegs…

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:35 pm 153. ddc:

lulz @ Aureliano.

Pure comedy.
It is astounding that inquiring as to details and or facts about a declaration of male discrimination by a male will get you such an overblown diatribe from an “Aureliano” is really odd. It’s as if you were questioning whether or not he possessed the ability to get an erection.

classic

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:43 pm 154. Mary Jackson:

ddc – you are absolutely correct. There is no parallel legal system of Sharia – or any other parallel legal system in the UK, and the Lord Chief Justice, contrary to what the cretins think, explicitly, clearly stated that this was out of the question.

Contracts between freely consenting adults may, coincidentally be Sharia-compliant. People can agree to do anything within the law. As in the US.

Lord Phillips’ remarks were unwise, because he did not directly condemn Sharia. Then again, what Western leader has condemned it? For an informed analysis, please see my article at PJM here.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:45 pm 155. Aureliano:

It’s like a form of mental illness, and that it doesn’t happen with women in every country, to me, speaks to the power of the media for mass brainwashing.

I’ve believed for some time now that modern doctrinaire feminism has devolved into little more than an elaborate, largely unconscious form of psychotherapy for women with emotional problems of one sort or another. The more serious the emotional problem or trauma (rape, abuse, or true clincal mental illness), the more rabid and irrational the patient’s devotion to modern versions of ‘feminism’ and ‘women’s issues’, which the most devoted view primarily as a form of getting even (by proxy) with those who raped, abused, neglected, ignored, or made fun of them (mostly in their adolescent years). It’s an understandable but monumentally small-minded, pedestrian, and downright boring phenomenon, especially for anyone over the age of 40.

Mary Jackson and ddc are two such individuals, given the nature of their posts here and on other PJM discussions. SOMETHING happened to damage them, which is why they are so blind to their own behavior. Len’s problem really isn’t that complicated, unusual, or hard to comprehend in the sense of right/wrong — the bizarre lack of perspective on their parts is the result of pathology, not rationality. Getting the Duke Lacrosse false-rape case wrong is the perfect example of such intellectual incoherence.

They will doubtless protest with an appropriate level of snark. Rather than bore us with your wit, however, why don’t you two come clean, be honest for once, and tell us about your trauma. Your current strategy for dealing with your issues obviously isn’t working, so why don’t you try discussing things openly, rather than spend so much time with this overly elaborate girrrrl power! nonsense.

Think of PJM as your own personal therapist’s couch (in a sense, it already is). You might as well be honest with your therapist. Who knows, you might find it cathartic.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:56 pm 156. Mark:

bourne@ddc
“Mark: ‘It’s like a form of mental illness, and that it doesn’t happen with women in every country, to me, speaks to the power of the media for mass brainwashing.’
What is a form of mental illness is the worldwide male abuse and exploitation of women on every continent and western males dismissal of that as “it doesn’t concern them, not my problem” attitude. it’s everyone’s problem, just like you want Len’s little problem with the girl’s and alleged unfair treatment to be ours.”

As I said, ddc, yours is a deceptive argument. You are trying to claim/justify preferential treatment for some arbitrarily defined class of people which, conveniently, includes yourself, with the costs to be born by many of the readers here, based on a claim of alleged injustices suffered distantly either geographically or temporaly or both, by some third party, C, at the hands of a fourth party, D. Doesn’t wash. You don’t get to benefit because someone else somewhere else may or may not have been discriminated against.

Len’s ‘little problem’ is an entirely different case. His problem is ours because he and most of us here are subjects CURRENTLY to the same legal jurisdiction, a jurisdiction in which the laws and the enforcement thereof have been skewed so systematically and so extensively in favour of one class of people, that people such as Len who fall into a separate class, though no fault of their own, and based solely on a birth characteristic, find that their remedies are determined not by the facts of the case, but rather by their membership or otherwise of that class, in direct contravention to the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Moreover, where many practices in times gone by, and currently in other parts of the world may be excused to the extent that they were/are born of ignorance, the bigotry of many modern western feminists, occurring as it does in today’s supposedly more enlightened times, and utilising the tactic of deliberately elevating hyperbole and statistics known to be false above provable fact, is unforgivable.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:58 pm 157. Aureliano:

Time to go, ladies. I have an all-important sports event to watch on my widescreen (not the Olympics).

Now go to bed, Mary — it’s getting late in Euro-land, and you’re getting too chatty.

And ddc … you just … go do whatever it is you do.

Aug 21, 2008 - 3:59 pm 158. Mark:

Oops! temporally!

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:01 pm 159. Mary Jackson:

I have an all-important sports event to watch on my widescreen (not the Olympics).

The mind boggles.

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:04 pm 160. Mary Jackson:

Would i be correct in saying that sharia law has not been incorporated in its entirety in the UK? (ddc)

Sharia law has not been incorporated at all in the UK. Contracts may be made following Sharia principles, or any other – Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Jedi – provided they don’t contradict UK law. Same in the US and most Western countries.

Contrary to what the cretins think, our Lord Chief Justice confirmed exactly that.

For an informed assessmment, please see my article at PJM here.

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:17 pm 161. ddc:

Yes aureliano, you go rest your fingers and put your little book of metaphors away now.

Mark,
Discrimination exists everywhere and for an untold ridiculous number of reasons, racism, sexism, ageism, fatism, appropriate dressism. My point is that very many forms of discrimination are worse than others. I’m even sure YOU would agree.

Had the story been more detailed oriented as many such stories are, i.e. “i was escorted from the aircraft because i was told my skirt was too short (6 inches above my knees) and top too short (revealing skin from my hips to underneath my bra)and i feel i was discriminated against.”

Then there’s the “I cannot attended school because i am a girl and my country won’t allow it and my father/brother/uncle/husband can kill me if i cause dishonour to them in the form of refusing to marrying the 80 year old man my father picked while i am only 13,” kind of discrimination.

Then there is Len.

On top of which there are absent, the vital details. You can just as easily be accused of “male-ism” getting in your way of making a clear-headed decision about Len by simply siding with him (absent clear evidence) the same way you readily accuse women of letting their “feminism’ get in our way.

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:27 pm 162. anomdebus:

Mary,
Peace! Relax for a moment, I am not trying to attack in any way.

You sometime seem very reasonable in a way that I think most people here would agree with you, but you seem to view this site very differently than the other participants. There is nothing wrong with that necessarily.

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I take some of the assertions as a given for the sake of conversation in part because I am not basing anything on it. At most, the original topic may change slightly my idea of what equality should be where I had previously taken for granted. I am not taking any actions based solely on the word of the writer and don’t see how what was said is helpful unless he is telling a version of the truth (one that I frankly don’t see as being outlandish).

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:34 pm 163. Locomotive Breath:

Perverting the course of justice is not as bad as raping or killing someone.

She did a lot more than “perverting the course of justice”. You say hanging a false sex charge around a guys neck for the rest of his life is not the same as raping someone. I say it is. Prove otherwise. You obviously think that Crystal Mangum escaping responsibility entirely is the right outcome.

Ironic, too, that Locomotive Breath claims that the UK press does not report creeping Sharia, yet quotes that very UK press to demonstrate it.

Sigh. You said the U.K. press is more critical of the government and so therefore creeping sharia is reported in the U.K. but not in the U.S. I said it’s not reported in the U.S. because it’s not happening in the U.S. Now who can’t read? If you move to the U.K. you should be required to operate exclusively within the existing legal framework. Go ahead and let the Islamic community set up their own parallel legal framework. We’ll see how long the laws of the U.K. continue to be enforced.

Mary is one of those ideologues who’s just going to have to learn the hard way. Only when it is too late will you understand. I’m gone for now but I’ll be back later to laugh at your pain.

You can have the last word and do your little “victory” dance all by yourself. Make sure it gets on your resume’.

Aug 21, 2008 - 4:40 pm 164. Mary Jackson:

If you move to the U.K. you should be required to operate exclusively within the existing legal framework.

As indeed you are. As indeed the Lord Chief Justice confirmed that you will be. For the umpteenth time.

See my article here.

(For some reason, the moderators seem reluctant to let me link in my comments to an article that was published here at PJM. If that article was so objectionable, why publish it? Perhaps they feel it is off topic. In which case, for consistency, they should disallow any comments about UK and sharia, most of which are quite breathtakingly ignorant.)

Aug 21, 2008 - 5:04 pm 165. Mark:

ddc, you really seem to be in your own little world don’t you? Earlier you stated that other posters claimed that “well you know…the DUKE LACROSSE TEAM proves that men don’t rape”, when from what I can see the only other person who claimed that was your fellow fruitcake. Then you make the all but unbelievable claim that you’ve “certainly never been aware of” discrimination against men in the workplace. Next you claim that men deserve to be discriminated against because some other person in some other place may or may not have been subject to it. Now you attempt to twist what I said in my last post. For the record, I made no comment as to the validity or otherwise of Len’s case, only its relevance to the readers of this blog, nor did I make any comment about women of letting their “feminism’ get in (y)our way, only that the bigotry of modern feminists is often worse than much of what they complain about that went before.

There is something about you that seems to prevent you from engaging in an impartial discussion or from forming logical deductions from a given set of circumstances. Everything devolves to how women are oppressed and men are the oppressors. That is exactly what I was referring to in my post of Aug 21, 2008 – 2:39 am when I said that “our societies (US & UK) have created large numbers of women who, so focused are they on their own interests and so attuned are they to their own treatment, simply cannot see, or worse, willfully refuse not to see, extensive discrimination and even major human and civil rights abuses as they happen to men, and yet who will raise all hell should they themselves be subjected to even a single minor component of such treatment.”
That describes you, ddc, and I suspect you are one of the few people here who cannot see it.

A (wo)man sees what (s)he wants to see and disregards the rest
Paul(ine) Simon(e)

Aug 21, 2008 - 5:33 pm 166. ddc:

Mark, perhaps you suffer from selective reading.

ddc: Aug 20, 2008 – 10:36 pm

“To Len,
Neither males nor females should ever be subjected to on the job discrimination. The women who name-called are terrible human beings. Since you claim that the other male employees are in agreement with you, you might want to make a collective complaint to HR. Both about the delegation of tasks by managers and the work atmosphere made unbearably hostile by the female employees. Reprimands should be in order for both. If you do not receive satisfaction you can also inform corporate headquarters and your local newspaper. Corporations are terribly allergic to bad press.”

This without the knowledge of any details as to what the discriminating factors were.

Pot kettle black Mark. Good try.

Aug 21, 2008 - 6:18 pm 167. Sarah:

When I worked at a movie theatre (small town) girls weren’t allowed to learn any of the “heavy” jobs. I learned how to load the projectors by sneaking upstairs and watching the guy do it — and on days when they knew it was going to be slow (Tuesday through Thursday, basically,) girls weren’t given shifts, because we weren’t allowed to take heavy boxes to the stockroom, lug the film canisters upstairs, or be in the building all alone. They also wouldn’t let girls lock up at night, because the risk of driving half a block away to drop off the nightly deposit was too great. In a town of 13,000 people.

Discrimination of this sort cuts against the women as much as for them, or against the guys — even if the women are too stupid to notice it. I had a lot of complaints about working for Disneyland, but they had no problem letting women take fifty pound boxes up and down stairs all day long, and paying us the $.25 extra per hour to do it (we even got to wear pants instead of ankle-length skirts in Frontierland and Critter Country.) That’s equitable treatment, and advantageous to everyone (including the employer.)

Aug 21, 2008 - 6:21 pm 168. 21st Century:

So then the issue, what does a man do when he faces discrimination.
Obviously not ask for support from angry women.
Doesn’t it come down to how badly you need the job verses what price you are willing to pay for justice? Sure it’s wrong, but on the other hand there are much worse forms of injustice, I always consider this stuff just part of being a man. Of course it’s not fair, but I can choose to get upset or have fun with it. I just don’t expect to get compassion from run of the mill people, it takes someone special to grasp things like this. Quality shows up when people respond with kindness in situations where they have no obligation to be nice.
Somehow looking smart has superseded compassion for the problems others are facing; rather a sad development for those who represent the feminine gender.
Is it human to want to see others suffer because we have suffered?
Just wondering?

Aug 21, 2008 - 7:44 pm 169. Slowjoe:

Mary Jackson wrote:

You may believe – and spell – how you like. I’m British, and never heard of the Duke Lacrosse case until I saw the anti-feminist reading of it, which is, basically, that all women who allege rape are liars.

Listen and be educated. Assuming that you are arguing this is good faith, there is a logical structure that you need to learn.

What is the opposite of “all cows are black”?
A: “all cows are not black”
or
B: “Some cows are not black”?

If you chose B, you win.

Now, what is the opposite of “All women who allege rape are truthful”?

A: “All women who allege rape are liars”
or
B: “Some women who allege rape are liars”?

Finally, for extra marks, what would be a synonym matches “anti-feminist”?

A: “In favour of discrimination against women”
or
B: “Not in favour of pro-women discrimination”

Aug 22, 2008 - 12:24 am 170. Cal:

Well put Slowjoe.

Maybe Len’s telling the truth, maybe he’s not. Evidence? I don’t see agony aunts demanding evidence when women write to them about being victims of rape. Maybe they’re lying to make men look bad, but what does it matter? As far as I can see what Laura’s done is told Len what steps he needs to take to address a perceived wrong, just as an AA would hopefully tell a rape victim where to get proper help.

So if Len is lying and everyone does the same job then he’s going to look like a fool, if he’s not then at least he can do something about it.

And your interpretation of these ‘anti-feminists’ (i.e. women haters) sound polar opposites to feminists (i.e. men haters). At least if your talking in absolutes they do.

Aug 22, 2008 - 2:47 am 171. Cal:

The majority of my last comment was intended for Mary Jackson, sorry if there was any confusion.

Aug 22, 2008 - 2:49 am 172. Mary Jackson:

I’m not saying Len’s lying, just that he fails to give any specifics – even one. It’s just a general feeling of unfairness with no concrete examplse.

People can feel they are unfairly treated without that being the case. Some men are brought up not to do much kitchen stuff, so they may feel it’s unfair if they are asked to do it, and that the girls have it easier because they do their work more easily. This may or may not be the case here – it’s impossible to tell. But I would certainly ask for more detail before advising somebody to sue.

When women write to agony aunts about being raped, they generally give at least some detail as to what happened.

Aug 22, 2008 - 4:53 am 173. notutopia:

I need to interject an observation missing in all the comments I’ve read. The ISSUE here is that we have a real problem in our current employment and workplace law interpretations of what is “Accommodation” and what is “Discrimination”. These are often not only confused and misinterpreted in written HR employee policy and procedures. The behavior of an organization of business is determined “legally” by it’s written policies and procedures. Before you accept any position for any place of employment, not only read them, but, study them. If there are not specific duties and responsibilities which are outlined in terms of weightlifting of objects for all employees, then you have a right to refusal to perform that task. Always, Always, follow your contract of your job description. If you apply for a job and there is no job description with duties and responsibilities that you have to sign to and agree to, take a quick walk out the door. Never put yourself in a position of thinking you will or can “endure” abusive behavior from ANYONE. This is called personal responsibility and accountability to yourself!

Aug 22, 2008 - 7:07 am 174. Cal:

But if they don’t give enough details they’re not considered to be liars.

Maybe Len should have given more detail, but like I said either he is being unfairly treated or he’s not. Like you said, maybe he perceives that he is and it’s not actually the case. Either way he’s been given the correct steps to take to come to a conclusion.

For my money I’m glad that more men are speaking out about things that they don’t think are fair. Sometimes it is whining or just plain sour grapes, but often they genuinely have a case. Like you’ve said some anti-feminists use this Duke case to claim that all women are liars, but that doesn’t then nullify any other comments made by their movement, anymore than some rabid feminist saying ‘all men are rapists’ derails their cause.

I imagine Len wrote to Dr Laura because he knew he’d get a sympathetic ear, which is sometimes all that people want. If it was genuine and the response was ‘I think you’re deluding yourself and making yourself a victim’, would any guys write in with similar problems? I think an agony aunt who dismissed a persons problem probably wouldn’t get so many people writing to them.

Aug 22, 2008 - 7:14 am 175. Self-hating boomer:

What Mary Jackson correctly grasps is that her own country, and the rest of the Western world are are in serious jeopardy of being overrun by misogynous polygamous marauding musselman invaders. What she doesn’t seem to grasp is that woman alone aren’t going to (and don’t even seem inclined to) resist. Keep it up, Mary. You’re alienating the only hope you have of avoiding the burka.

I can’t comprehend why some people insist that misogyny and misandry are mutually exclusive. They both exist, and they’re both wrong, and cheering for your own team is not only immoral, it’s self-destructive.

Aug 22, 2008 - 10:30 am 176. Self-hating boomer:

And as a PS to the Duke case, not only does the liar get no punishment for her perjury, she makes a bundle with a book deal:

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=6343080

Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Aug 22, 2008 - 10:59 am 177. cwm:

To borrow a well known line

Women = Men – (accountability + responsibility)

Aug 22, 2008 - 11:46 am 178. Mary Jackson:

And as a PS to the Duke case, not only does the liar get no punishment for her perjury, she makes a bundle with a book deal

That’s disgusting. Of course she should have been punished. She should have gone to prison. That’s what happens in the UK. See here.But not for as long as a rapist. This one went to prison for a year.

imagine Len wrote to Dr Laura because he knew he’d get a sympathetic ear, which is sometimes all that people want. If it was genuine and the response was ‘I think you’re deluding yourself and making yourself a victim’, would any guys write in with similar problems? I think an agony aunt who dismissed a persons problem probably wouldn’t get so many people writing to them.

True, but if you genuinely want to help victims of discrimination, wouldn’t you ask exactly what happened?

Aug 22, 2008 - 12:44 pm 179. mac:

You know, one of the important things left out here in the discussion of the Duke LAX Team rape hoax was the fact that it took more than $1 Million to mount the defense that kept these young men from being unjustly imprisoned. Any person who had not been able to muster the financial resources to procure such good legal defenses would quite probably now be incarcerated for decades, actually receiving the same kind of sexual brutalization he was falsely accused of doing.

That doesn’t seem to bother Mary Jackson much at all. She refuses to see that false rape accusations can be just as devastating and brutalizing as a rape, if not moreso.

Here’s a question for you, Mary. If forced to the choice, would you rather be raped once or imprisoned for years and raped dozens, if not hundreds of times?
Still want to say that a false accusation of rape is not as serious a crime as an actual rape?

Mary Jackson and ddc are so wrong on so many levels its simply not worth the time to refute them. I’d make this observation, however. Women USED to be honored, respected, and admired by men.

Femininity was cherished in women and their status in society, at least as viewed by most men, was that they were to be, and should be, protected.

That is almost no longer the case. Most young men today view you at best as competition, and the more cynical of them view you as skanks and whores to be pumped and dumped. Respect for your gender is declining about as quickly as the post-WWII British Empire. Even among older men this is the case. That should be truly worrying to most women.

For years it has been accepted that most women generally dislike most men, making exceptions for those they personally know and choose to allow to be close to them. Men, on the other hand, had liking women as the default position.

That is changing, and rapidly so. Your gender is well on its way to being seen by men exactly the same way women have seen men for years: as people who are potentially dangerous, not very likeable, and certainly not worth trying to conciliate.

When that comes to be the normal position for men vis-a-vis women, guess what happens? Men won’t want to PROTECT you, either. Good luck with that situation in today’s no-right-to-self-defense Britain.
The Muzzies are going to have rich pickings in you lot.

Aug 22, 2008 - 9:09 pm 180. Mary Jackson:

Femininity was cherished in women and their status in society, at least as viewed by most men, was that they were to be, and should be, protected.

Yes, well I know what “protection” meant. It meant having no legal rights. No vote, no equal pay, no redress if you were raped – after all “feminine” women who did as they were told wouldn’t get raped.

Protection racket, more like.

As for the self-defence thing, this is a common – if not universal – misconception among Americans. No, we can’t shoot an escaping burglar in the back. But we do have the right to self-defence.

Aug 23, 2008 - 3:07 am 181. mac:

“Here’s a question for you, Mary. If forced to the choice, would you rather be raped once or imprisoned for years and raped dozens, if not hundreds of times?
Still want to say that a false accusation of rape is not as serious a crime as an actual rape?”

No answer to the question, Jackson? I thought not. That’s typical of your ilk. If you had any intellectual honesty you would just come out and say you hate men and consider anything bad that happens to them as being justified.

And as for your right to self-defense in Britain, you DON’T have one. You MAY not be charged with assault if you defend yourself against a criminal, but that determination rests solely with the police and the magistrate. If they determine you used “excessive force” (the parameters of which are completely arbitrary according to the whim of the criminal justice system), you’ll be charged with assault or worse.

I lived in Britain for a while and saw your system at first hand. I also know a goodly number of your erstwhile fellow-countrymen (and women) who now live away and who never intend to go back. We discuss Britain quite a bit. People with mindsets like yours are a large part of the reason they left.

Too bad for Britain; the people I know are smart, capable and independent. They’re exactly the kind of people your country can’t afford to lose, and exactly the type of people your nanny-state government jobsworths, high taxes and criminal-coddling laws drive away.

Get your burkha. You’ll need it soon.

Aug 23, 2008 - 4:03 am 182. Mary Jackson:

“Here’s a question for you, Mary. If forced to the choice, would you rather be raped once or imprisoned for years and raped dozens, if not hundreds of times?
Still want to say that a false accusation of rape is not as serious a crime as an actual rape?”

Considering the very low level of conviction for rapists – around 5% in the UK – the number of men falsely accused AND imprisioned is negligable. To argue that innocent men being convicted is the main problem, when this is dwarfed by the problem of guilty men going free – is perverse, and can only stem from misogyny. Yes the Duke case was wrong. Yes she should be punished. No argument there. But this is a high-profile, low incident case with negligible relation to the main problem.

False accusations of rape or any other serious crime should be punished. But no, not to the same extent as the crimes themselves.

If they determine you used “excessive force” (the parameters of which are completely arbitrary according to the whim of the criminal justice system), you’ll be charged with assault or worse.

Our criminal justice system, like yours, is not perfect, but you have no basis other than your own prejudice and ignorance for dismissing it as “whimsical”. Ultimately the self-defence case will go before a jury, which is made up of ordinary people. As in the Tony Martin case, which Americans gleefully quote as often as misogynists quote the Duke case. The jury decided, rightly, that shooting someone in the back when he was escaping through a windown was more than just self-defence. A burglar should be punished for burglary, not shot.

In America you probably could shoot someone in the back who is escaping and get away with it. Perhaps you don’t have as much respect for life as we do – unless it’s a foetus.

Aug 23, 2008 - 5:08 am 183. mac:

“To argue that innocent men being convicted is the main problem, when this is dwarfed by the problem of guilty men going free – is perverse, and can only stem from misogyny.”

Nice strawman you made there, Jackson. I never wrote anything of the sort, nor was it even implied.

You, on the other hand, clearly believe that it would be less of an injustice for a man to be falsely imprisoned and sexually brutalized for years, maybe decades, than for a woman to get raped once.

Of course, you would think that; the disadvantaged are only MEN, so why would you have the slightest concern about the mistreatment of a group you hate and despise? The idea that such an outcome of long-term incarceration plus multiple rapes is a horrible miscarriage of justice, is, according to you, “perverse” and must “stem from misogyny.”

Your position flies in the face of English common law going back to Blackstone, who said that it was better 10 guilty men go free than that one innocent be falsely convicted.

For you, however, “the number of men falsely accused AND imprisioned is negligable.” Try that reasoning on some innocent MAN in prison doing twenty years simply because he didn’t have the money to afford a good legal defense against a false charge of rape. Again, it cost the Duke LAX team $ 1 million to beat those ludicrously false charges. I suspect that if it was YOU “imprisioned” due to a false accusation, you might view the situation a bit differently.

Again though, if it’s a MAN being punished, you couldn’t care less. Indeed, you probably have a “holiday in your heart” a la Ben Stein every time you hear that a MAN goes to jail. It’s one more of THEM out of the way, placed where you think most should be anyway.

As for my “prejudice and ignorance” about the British lack of a right to self-defense, why don’t you google the phrase “British right to self defense” and see what you find.

If I’m suffering from “prejudice and ignorance” in my belief on this matter, I’m in good company given that I’ve Glanville Williams, author of “Textbook of (British) Criminal Law, fully agreeing with me. Considered one of the greatest 20th Century commenters on British law, he’s an appeal to authority that even you can’t deny.

Concerning the British right to self-defense, Williams wrote that the requirement of “reasonableness” in response to criminal actions was “now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it (self-defense)still forms part of the (British) law.”

I think London Mayor Boris Johnson’s recent advice to Londoners witnessing criminal assaults to not interfere and let the criminal proceed with his action pretty well nails the argument home. If it was your right to defend yourself, it would be the part of all decent people to help you when you suffered an unprovoked attack by a miscreant. Instead, it’s your lot to submit and let the criminals work their will on you. Why not? It’s what the Royal Navy did when attacked by Iranian criminals.

In the United States, we too believe that burglars should be punished for burglary. For us, however, we have no problem with that punishment taking the form of shooting. A criminal breaking into a house, or trying to rob someone on the street might very well get shot, and he’d damned well deserve it. The criminals here know we Americans think that way, which is why one is six times more likely to get mugged in London than in the U.S.

As for our respect for life in the U.S., we DO have a lot more respect for the lives of innocent fetuses than for criminals who rape, rob, pillage or kill. If you and your country don’t, that’s just one more reason why you’re headed down the tubes at an ever-accelerating rate.

Your positions on both these issues are held through falsehood inspired by cowardice, misandry, bigotry and hatred. You inspire nothing but contemptuous disdain for both the poor quality of your reasoning and the poisonous venom in your heart. Stew in your own reek; I’m done with you.

Aug 23, 2008 - 8:09 am 184. Mary Jackson:

criminals here know we Americans think that way, which is why one is six times more likely to get mugged in London than in the U.S.

And in the US one three times more likely to get murdered. I think I know which is worse. I’m glad I live in a civilised country.

For anyone it happens to, being falsely accused of rape is a horrible thing, and being falsely imprisoned even worse. But the former happens very rarely and the latter hardly ever, if ever. Rapes go unpunished every day. Conviction rates for rapes are very small, even in enlightened countries, to say nothing of non-Western countries where it isn’t even seen as a crime. As for women raping men, this is extremely rare.

Yes, these things happen. But to make them the priority suggests a skewed sense of priorities and a misogynistic attitude.

Aug 23, 2008 - 8:58 am 185. Michael:

False accusations happen very rarely? Oh really? It seems the Innocence Project and the US National Institute of Justice would disagree with you, Mary…
“Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained, the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive, about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have “matched” or included the primary suspect.” The authors continued, “these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and the National Institute of Justice’s informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26 percent exclusion rate.”
http://overlawyered.com/2006/05/false-rape-accusations-may-be-more-common-than-thought/

As would UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, proving that a claim that very few women would make false reports is entirely consistent with the possibility that a substantial fraction of rape reports being false.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_04_10-2005_04_16.shtml#1113597035

And then there’s your little spat with Heather MacDonald on the issue, but she’s probably being misogynistic too, right?
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-woeful-misreading-of-campus-rape-myth/

Now I don’t know. I found all this in about 15 minutes, but maybe Google doesn’t work for you. Is it patriarchally oppressing you, Mary? Is it?

Aug 23, 2008 - 1:40 pm 186. Mary Jackson:

a claim that very few women would make false reports is entirely consistent with the possibility that a substantial fraction of rape reports being false.

Indeed. A “substantial fraction” of next to nothing. Most rapes are not reported or investigated, at least in part because of attitudes like Mac Donald’s. And of the 75% that are not false, only five per cent result in a convicton.

Men are therefore getting away with rape on a huge scale. False accusations resulting in a prison sentence, as opposed to high profile one-offs that never even came to trial? Name one.

Aug 23, 2008 - 3:58 pm 187. Michael:

Warren Blackwell.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article641324.ece

Daryl Gee
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article708140.ece

David Carrington-Jones
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7047442.stm

Roger Beardmore
http://www.innocent.org.uk/cases/rogerbeardmore/index.html

And there’s plenty more. Try here for example…
http://www.innocenceproject.org

Google still playing up for you?

That is an aside though since your argument is deceptive anyway. How so? The line you draw at conviction is entirely arbitrary because many innocent, falsely-accused men spend extended periods of time in jail before they are released or brought to trial, which in many cases is at least partially the objective of the false accuser in the first place. You see, Mary, the difference between ideologically-blinded zealots like you and the vast majority of men is almost every man has tremendous sympathy for REAL victims of rape and actively wants to see them get justice. But that’s REAL rape victims, Mary, and REAL rapists, not feminists’ la-la-land he-looked-at-me-in-a-funny-way ‘rapists’.

Enough of this. It is evident to me from the hypocrisy and half-truths of your comments here and on other articles that, on gender issues at least, you are all but incapable of debating in good faith, that you are highly unlikely to be persuaded no matter how much evidence is put before you and that you seem to think that merely shouting louder and longer than anyone else makes you right. It doesn’t.

Aug 24, 2008 - 3:26 am 188. Mary Jackson:

That’s still only a paltry handful, and if the conviction rate for rapists is only 5%, that means a hell of a lot of real rapists – not “la la land” – are getting away with it.

This, not innocent men being convicted, is numberically THE problem.

Aug 24, 2008 - 6:19 am 189. mac:

Michael, it’s not worth discussing this matter with this loathsome Jackson troll any longer. Dr. Helen, if you’re still following this thread, I think it stands as prima facie evidence that Mary Jackson is a dishonest troll who should be banned from this site. If indeed she is your co-blogger, you need to take whatever steps are necessary to dump her since to allow her continued presence without some form of serious rebuke impugns your own credibility.

Aug 24, 2008 - 6:44 am 190. Mary Jackson:

…impugns your own credibility.

Dr Helen impugns her own credibility by failing to provide details of what happened to Len.

Aug 24, 2008 - 7:03 am 191. Mark:

“if the conviction rate for rapists is only 5%, that means a hell of a lot of real rapists – not “la la land” – are getting away with it.”

But the conviction rate for RAPISTS is not 5% though, Mary, as I suspect you are fully aware. Nor is it anywhere near that. The 5% figure you quote is for ALLEGED rapists. If we allege YOU were a rapist and YOU were found not guilty, your acquittal would mean the conviction rate would fall even lower. Does that mean you would you be ‘getting away with it’? Of course not! You couldn’t be. You’re innocent. Exactly the same is true when instead of you being the falsely accused person it is a man, and just as in your case, he’s not ‘getting away with it’ either.

Aug 24, 2008 - 12:25 pm 192. Helen Smith:

Mac,

“If indeed she is your co-blogger, you need to take whatever steps are necessary to dump her since to allow her continued presence without some form of serious rebuke impugns your own credibility.”

I am not sure what is meant by Ms. Jackson being a “co-blogger.” I am assuming that the commenter who made that remark means that she writes columns for Pajamas Media. Ms. Jackson is free to write wherever she wants or for whomever wants to take her. She has no association with me or with my blog in anyway, however. And from the content of her comments, it should be easy to discern that.

Aug 24, 2008 - 12:37 pm 193. Mary Jackson:

Mark – no, it doesn’t mean that he is “innocent”; it means that the case has not been proven. If the 5% conviction rate proved innocence, that would mean that women were making it up in 95% of cases.

Not even you, not even the commenters on this thread, and not even Mac Donald thinks that.

Aug 24, 2008 - 12:38 pm 194. Mark:

I said “falsely accused person”, Mary.

Falsely accused people are innocent, by definition. Even men …for now.

Aug 24, 2008 - 3:27 pm 195. ddc:

Without an articulate challenger such as Mary Jackson to take on the role of devil’s advocate, Helen’s articles would become nothing more than completely dominated by the circle-jerk mentality.

Either there are not enough women readers of PajamasMedia or they’ve been chased away by the above.

It’s good to see at least one woman take on challenge and do it superbly.

Aug 24, 2008 - 4:08 pm 196. Dan Whittman:

Yes, the war against men (at first only white males over 21 began some years ago, around 1968-69 as I recall) is on and it aint going nowhere any time soon.
68′ was when you found yourself at a party and the nice girl from your class sitting next to you would come on to you and then trap you with leading questions so she could accuse you of being a sexist.
It would be simple to explain if this trend was merely started by ugly, fat female rejects that were out to target white males, but the situation was much more complicated.
So, now it’s 2008, amnesty for illegal aliens is not only on the table, it’s on the way. Micro-chipping of “migrant” workers, senior citizens, company workers and American children for their “safety and security” is being touted by both of our presidential hopefuls, (neither of whom are reported as being American citizens)a super highway is about to divide the United States up into a North American Union and facilitate the end of the American Constitution, and nobody in poo-litics or the media will admit the evidence disproving the government’s official 9/11 report.
In a few words, we’re screwed. Since the wimpy ones are literally begging to be implanted with RFID’s and since most of our population can neither read English or is sober enough to understand even the most simple writing, the New World Order is merilly moving along toward its ultimate goal.
Thus, males of all colors, shapes, ages and religions in the workplace, don’t stress over why you are being treated like third class citizens, for that is what we are about to officially become in a country we will probably still foolishly refer to as America.

Good luck, & God bless America as well as all the others in this world who could use a fair deal from the top of the deck for a change.

Dan

Aug 24, 2008 - 8:54 pm 197. Are men now discriminated against? | Vivre la Difference:

[...] against? There does seem to be some evidence that there is, as this quoted by Dr. Helen shows. According to a 2006 survey commissioned by Kelly Services, a firm that finds temporary and [...]

Aug 25, 2008 - 10:07 am 198. Matthew:

I am in a wheelchair for the past 24 years. I work in a telemarketing co. Owner is a ma and I am in the front office. Three men are packing orders. Over the years i have beome a floater, so I can do any position in the company. Our Sales Manger quit so I had to replace him @ .33% commission. A woman sales rep sandbagged the dept. ccrying because she thought she should manage the office and soon she took over a 1% ? Things did pick up but quote like “He did not have any balls” and “If you want to get antwhere here you hve to have a dick.” I do not have many options to find a new job and nothing was done when I told my employer.

Sep 5, 2008 - 9:26 am 199. n-higher-ed:

I work for a major research university – any kind of lawsuit about discrimination would probably get you blackballed from working at other institutions.

I’m a staff member in the Library, which has slightly more men than women. About 2/3rds of the management and supervisory positions are held by women.

My own boss has gone on in staff meetings about how more women need to be promoted at the university, has given special training opportunities to women on staff not available to male staff members and has consistently told male staff members that they have no opportunity for advancement (”the job is what it is”).

I’m leaving academia altogether – this kind of reverse discrimination is not uncommon, particularly in areas of higher ed that have traditionally had a higher ratio of female staff members.

Oct 22, 2008 - 1:57 pm 200. Reverse Discrimination Against Men « Rantings of mine:

[...] I love Dr. Helen’s column’s and she writes an excellent article on misandry. [...]

Jan 4, 2009 - 8:38 am 201. alexis:

hi i am in the 6th grade and i have to go to the restroom and she wont let me go.

Mar 4, 2009 - 1:49 pm

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