Churchill

Rob Schaap rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au
Sat Oct 20 22:05:15 PDT 2001


G'day Mina,


>You're coming across as deeply foolish and boorish.

Well, I'm certainly boorish. I hope I am not as consistently foolish.


>The only reason you could possibly not doubt you could live with it just
>fine >is because you haven't the faintest idea what it is like to be
>inappropriately >sexualized in workplace settings.

'Inappropriate' needs elaboration here. As does the implicit proposition that chaps are never 'inappropriately sexualised'. I do suspect women are more likely to be so where men predominate, especially in senior ranks. I just think that, to the degree it's irksome, it's like being foreignly exotic or some such, and hardly intolerable. Of course, if things go beyond being looked at and called 'beautiful', well, things can and do get ghastly, I don't doubt.


>And I think, forgetting the salient fact that such
>behavior exists only to demean someone as a worker and as a woman.

If at all, and this is a theory (ie. I can see how it could be wielded to help demean someone) rather than a 'salient fact', then 'only' is not warranted. People do look at lovely people because they're lovely. It's a rather lovely reason, I think. Australian chaps, except those who are getting drunk in the company of their mates and building up to competitive ostentatious alpha-maleness (and that is, I admit, not a pretty picture - my boorishness does have its limits), tend to opt for the furtive glance. I remember my wife, an Australian, being very uncomfortable in Italy, for instance, where people appreciate each other's charms much more candidly. Perhaps we need to allow for a little cultural variety on this one.

Cheers, Rob.



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