I, as a male, try to avoid staring at another female because I fear someone like Horvath accuses me of sexism.
This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.
PS: To avoid looking one-sided and narrow (which I believe I'm not) I really feel bad about this whole situation and the lady who had to go through that. Personally liked a github as a company.
> This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.
Then excessive avoidance gets reinterpreted as snobbishness, sexism, not wanting to be inclusive, and so on. "Men actively avoid me and sit father away during meetings, they don't invite me for beers after works, it is a hostile environment". Anyway it is a fine line. And one can interpret a lot of behaviors as stemming from sexism or misogynism even if they are not.
No, it's not a fine line at all. There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity and excessively avoiding them. You probably behave toward your male colleagues in a way that would fit neatly somewhere between these two extremes. Is it particularly a US issue, this inability to behave like a grown-up at work? In the UK, in my experience, men and women tend to work together, on an equal footing, with no problem whatsoever.
> There is a huge chasm between ogling someone undertaking physical activity
If anyone -- attractive man, unattractive man, attractive woman, unattractive woman -- started hula-hooping in the middle of the office I would expect people to stare. Not because it's sexual, but because it's peculiar. The gap between "stare" and "ogle" is hardly objective, let alone a "chasm."
Julie described the group of men as 'gawking'; as far as I'm aware, this is more or less interchangeable with the term 'ogling', in common use here in the UK. This is significantly different from just staring - it implies a sexual undercurrent, i.e. paying particular attention to someone's physical characteristics. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but the clear implication in the original report was that the staring/ogling was inappropriate, particularly because it was undertaken by a group solely consisting of men.
Ogling is defined as "stare at in a lecherous manner."
The hard part here is defining "lecherous" but it would seem to imply that he is watching in a way that signals sexual intent.
It's worth noting that women are generally much better at interpreting body language than men are, so it's possible that a guy is watching the woman dance and getting some sort of erotic enjoyment from it, tries his best to hide it but some subconscious subtle clue gives him away.
Having said that, hoop dancing would seem like an inappropriate thing to do in most offices to begin with but I would say the same thing about nerf gun fights.
Try getting sternly lectured for 10 minutes because because you held the door open for a stranger to be polite. That's when you know shit gotten real.
For the record, I routinely hold open doors for people that I know are behind me and are leaving/entering a building. It surprised me to know end to get yelled at for it.
I had that happen, so I laughed. Then she got really angry... doesn't stop me, though. I hold the door for everyone, because it's polite, not because someone is whatever gender.
First time I had that happen I quickly shut the door in the young lady’s face. Didn’t hit her, but it fell in place and she had to open it again herself.
She was pretty unhappy about that as well, incidentally.
Wearing regular day clothes. I dont drink. No, my current girlfriend (who identifies as a feminist) thinks the idea of yelling at someone for adhering to the social niceties is strange after I told her about the incident.
> This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.
I know you mean well, but your sadness to me belies some ignorance about what it's like to be a woman working in a male dominated field. You'd like to live in a world where you can casually watch beautiful people doing beautiful things. I don't begrudge you that, and I wouldn't accuse you of sexism.
That said, I have zero interest in watching women hula hoop at work. None. Not because I am incapable of enjoying a show like that, but because I desire so deeply to work in an environment where woman can just kick ass at their jobs without having to deal with sexual politics. We're nowhere near that point as a culture, but that's where I want to be.
So I'm not sad that I can't watch women hula hoop at work. I'm really excited to have positive, professional interactions with women at work about their actual jobs.
The part that bothers me about this is that we're talking about a one-sided account of events where the terminology being used, "ogling," is entirely subjective.
At my work, there is a woman who brings hula hoops to company events. When there's music, she likes to dance and do tricks with them and she obviously practices a lot. When she's doing it, people (including me) stare. But, at least for me, it has nothing to do with any sexual aspect of what she's doing...I'm watching it because I like appreciating the skill and practice that's gone into her performance. And similar things happen at other company functions. For example, we have an employee who majored in music and is an amazing pianist. There's a bar we go to with a piano that he's played a few times. Guess what...everyone stares at him while he's playing. Hell, we've even got a couple of people who are amazing beer pong players that gather a crowd whenever the ping pong balls come out at events with a keg.
So when does staring and admiring a skill cross the line to ogling? That depends entirely on the person making the determination and often says more about them and their perspective/past experiences than it does about the people doing the staring.
The bottom line is that for those of us who weren't there, nothing in the account we've been provided gives us any information to judge the appropriateness of what went on. We have only one fact: the author of the account, who, rightly or wrongly, has an axe to grind with the company, felt that it crossed some line. It's bad PR, but it's not proof that anything untoward happened.
You're right, it is subjective. But to me there's no real cost to using the broadest possible definition I ogling. And the upside (making a wider range of people comfortable) is huge.
>What I did have a problem with is the line of men sitting on one bench facing the hoopers and gawking at them
Gawking and looking are not the same thing. There are also times where even the most socially incompetent will realise that some girls doing things that might be nice to look at is not an invitation to check them out doing it (this is, of course, excepting people who go the reductionist route of thinking that feminists invent their own problems).
'Respect' is a pretty loaded word. Are you saying the guys staring at (fellow employee) girls hula-hooping in the same office should just close their eyes? What if the girls were just sitting, drinking coffee? What about juggling 6 balls on the air? What about picking their noses? What about picking each-others noses?
Where does this nonsense end? If (almost) all my co-workers are staring at me as I adjust my belt, standing in the middle of the lunch room, I will do that activity in the confines of a men's room next time. If the same thing happens as I stretch my leg muscles before a run, I will do that activity outside. Why is it my co-workers' fault if they stare at me if I do something that is not the norm?
If being merely 'looked at' troubles you, then you need to look at yourself before closing others' eyes.
"Why are you uncomfortable?", should not be that hard a question to answer, clearly and succinctly, for something that evokes such a strong response from you.
When your office environment involves hula-hooping but doesn't sell hula-hoops, you've already thrown office decorum in the toilet. I say good luck in getting horrible people to restrain their stupid impulses in an environment like that.
I think it's inappropriate to stare at anyone for long, whether male or female. It's normally not considered polite and a bit weird, so I don't get what the issue is?
I get it, you find someone attractive and you want to gawk at them, cool. I learned to control that impulse when when I was hitting puberty. Seriously, there really isn't an excuse and it's inappropriate in most situations.
If someone is rendering a public performance, aren't you supposed to look at it? When does hula hooping in a public space transfer to a public performance? Is it public immediately because it's in plain sight? Does it only become public after an audience gathers and the hula hooper continues to hula hoop? What if someone sees the gathered audience and joins in so that they won't be considered rude for not taking interest in the public hula hooping performance?
It's not really as clear cut as "staring makes you an asshole." I've found that in a workplace people will have wildly variable interpretations of the same event. The only solution is to work with mature adults who can assume good faith and work out their own issues. This almost never happens, so instead companies create hyper-sanitized environments where everything is against the rules.
I agree with your points, and also I really have a hard time believing that the women hula hooping to music in the middle of the office were not aware of the effect they were having.
While personally I think its creepy to just hang out and leer at them, it's not really against societal norms in any way.
It's not like these guys broke into the girls bathroom to watch this or something.
Well maybe something is wrong with societal norms then? Because honestly if the focus was just watch attractive women hula hoop I would think it's creepy too but I wouldn't just say it's alright because of societal norms.
But I think it's impossible to really judge this situation without the context. Did other people decide to participate or was it really just two girls hula hooping the whole time? It boils down to was the mentality from the males perspective "oh hey, cool, people are hula hooping!" or "oh hey, the two attractive girls are hula hooping and I want to gawk at them!" The first one is fine, the second one is not.
Yeah. I think everything up to that point was inexcusable. Horvath wasn't really doing any justice to an already strong case by feeling offense for the sake of others. If it was just basic hula hooping, I'm not quite sure what would be interesting, but both music and movement are distracting. If it wasn't an attempt to perform, it was probably a distracting display. Hell, I'd probably be on the bench too, waiting for my turn! There's no need to assume this was sexual and I think Horvath may have been projecting her horrible experiences onto these new colleagues.
Don't take this the wrong way. I think hula hooping is a fine activity that probably burns a decent amount of calories. However, I've never worked at a job where employees jumps through these kind of hoops. I will probably look. And then look away. Pretty much everyone I know will think hula hooping at work is weird. If people tend to stare at you when you hula hoop, do hand stands, or pick your nose you may just have to stop doing it. Most people do not do these things at work and are happy nonetheless.
So all people who don't confirm to your social norms are fucking assholes? Btw, did you ever travel to countries like Germany or Czech Republic? People there do stare. A lot. Nations of assholes, I guess.
I wonder what do you think about people who don't speak English or who don't eat their food with a forks but with other ustensils.
I've been to both Germany and the Czech Republic. At no point did I think 'Hmm.. people here appear to be staring at things at an above-average rate'. Maybe where I come from (the UK) we also stare at a particularly high rate (whatever that is) but I'm unaware of this being the case.
This is, sadly, the best thing to do because you don't know who is going to take offense.
PS: To avoid looking one-sided and narrow (which I believe I'm not) I really feel bad about this whole situation and the lady who had to go through that. Personally liked a github as a company.