Matt Lauer, EX-famous news anchor

[Ben]

So, I guess nobody hangs mistletoe at the office Christmas party this year?

Depends on which Christmas party you're going to attend. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdt0MqalPZk

[BlueStarLizzard]

A local radio station was having an interesting conversation about this trend this morning.  It came down to a discussion of the cases where the victim acknowledges that the acts were consensual, but after the fact indicate that the consent was based on fear of retribution/career damage/etc.  This boiled down to a question: is it now unacceptable for a person with authority (real or apparent) to seek or engage in a romantic relationship with someone in the workplace?  IMHO, it is foolish to do so in this day and age, because of the way these situations are playing out.  As I once heard said, don't fish off of the company pier. 

The question of this intrigues me, partially because I'm not entirely certain where I stand on it.

Partially because it has many levels. I don't think Matt Lauer was seeking romantic relationships, but just wanted a grab and tickle with woman he could manipulate. So, you have a question of degrees. I think we can all say that using your position to manipulate someone into giving you sexual favors is wrong, but when it comes to real interest in someone but you happen to be their boss, it does get tricky.

My concern is the other side of the argument and the giving of consent. I want to say that if you give consent, regardless of the situation, you can't take it back later, even if you were manipulated into saying yes out of fear of losing job, position, whatever.
Even before this current witchhunt, for the past 20 or so years, someone who used their position to manipulate someone into giving sexual favors was treading into dangerous territory if their potential victim spoke out and I don't see how any sane adult doesn't know this. Furthermore, if your career is so important to you that you would allow yourself to be manipulated into such things... Well, you have made a choice, you consented and you live with that.
I'm not saying that the person who's doing the manipulating is right. He/She is a rat bastard, but unless the victim speaks up *AT THE TIME IN WHICH THE THREAT IS MADE* I don't see how anything can be done.
At the same time, I can see how in situations were ones job is vitally important to a persons welfare that causes them to be trapped into doing something they really don't want to do.

Ultimately, I think it does boil down to the victim. I'm not victim blaming when I say this. I just don't see any other way to stop such things from happening unless the person who is being cornered speaks up and says no, because once they say yes, there just isn't anything to be done from a legally ethical standpoint.

The current trend of polarizing an issue is strong in this one, but the thing is it's not a black and white, one person is right one person is wrong issue. Once consent is given, unless given under real forced threat (in which case this becomes criminal and actual rape) it's done and if you regret it, well, we all make mistakes and we have to live with them. 

[LadySmith]

Pamela Anderson agrees with Liz:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/pamela-anderson-harvey-weinstein-victims-blame-controversy-should-have-known-a8086996.html

I agree with both Liz and Pam. We don't live in an ideal world where anybody can afford to be in condition white all the time. Sexual assaults happen, and I prefer to let the guy try to explain why he's missing certain body parts.

And grampster has the best love story I've read in years. 

[French G.]

The question of this intrigues me, partially because I'm not entirely certain where I stand on it.

Partially because it has many levels. I don't think Matt Lauer was seeking romantic relationships, but just wanted a grab and tickle with woman he could manipulate. So, you have a question of degrees. I think we can all say that using your position to manipulate someone into giving you sexual favors is wrong, but when it comes to real interest in someone but you happen to be their boss, it does get tricky.

My concern is the other side of the argument and the giving of consent. I want to say that if you give consent, regardless of the situation, you can't take it back later, even if you were manipulated into saying yes out of fear of losing job, position, whatever.
Even before this current witchhunt, for the past 20 or so years, someone who used their position to manipulate someone into giving sexual favors was treading into dangerous territory if their potential victim spoke out and I don't see how any sane adult doesn't know this. Furthermore, if your career is so important to you that you would allow yourself to be manipulated into such things... Well, you have made a choice, you consented and you live with that.
I'm not saying that the person who's doing the manipulating is right. He/She is a rat bastard, but unless the victim speaks up *AT THE TIME IN WHICH THE THREAT IS MADE* I don't see how anything can be done.
At the same time, I can see how in situations were ones job is vitally important to a persons welfare that causes them to be trapped into doing something they really don't want to do.

Ultimately, I think it does boil down to the victim. I'm not victim blaming when I say this. I just don't see any other way to stop such things from happening unless the person who is being cornered speaks up and says no, because once they say yes, there just isn't anything to be done from a legally ethical standpoint.

The current trend of polarizing an issue is strong in this one, but the thing is it's not a black and white, one person is right one person is wrong issue. Once consent is given, unless given under real forced threat (in which case this becomes criminal and actual rape) it's done and if you regret it, well, we all make mistakes and we have to live with them. 

I like it. There also needs to be a continuum of harm established for these issues and other sex crimes. Such as, it is a skeezy human that is 40 and has sex with a 14-17 year old. But, entirely different class of scum that goes for the 6 year old. We set that one on fire! So, it is one class of creep to be a boss and ask your employees out, and/or comment on them physically or even minor physical contact that is unwanted. It is a whole different class that does a Weinstein or Lauer where you show up to advance your career and suddenly the door locks behind you or is blocked. That is close to a shooting offense to for whatever reason indicate to me that I am detained. And above that is the Weinstein/Congress/Clinton class where we pay off victims or destroy their lives.

In this current hysteria lives of predators will be ruined. My issue is the penalty shouldn't be the same. If you played grab ass with your subordinate co-workers, or were a 25 year old teacher sleeping with the high schooler, lose your job, serve the penalty, but then get on with life. Our treatment of sex crimes in this country is as perverse as the perverts. Lifetime registry and monitoring? No, if they are a true danger to random little kids, keep them locked up. Otherwise, there has to be balance, because it appears that a whole lot of people are heading for the registry.

[Hawkmoon]

I like it. There also needs to be a continuum of harm established for these issues and other sex crimes. Such as, it is a skeezy human that is 40 and has sex with a 14-17 year old. But, entirely different class of scum that goes for the 6 year old. We set that one on fire! So, it is one class of creep to be a boss and ask your employees out, and/or comment on them physically or even minor physical contact that is unwanted. It is a whole different class that does a Weinstein or Lauer where you show up to advance your career and suddenly the door locks behind you or is blocked. That is close to a shooting offense to for whatever reason indicate to me that I am detained. And above that is the Weinstein/Congress/Clinton class where we pay off victims or destroy their lives.

In this current hysteria lives of predators will be ruined. My issue is the penalty shouldn't be the same. If you played grab ass with your subordinate co-workers, or were a 25 year old teacher sleeping with the high schooler, lose your job, serve the penalty, but then get on with life. Our treatment of sex crimes in this country is as perverse as the perverts. Lifetime registry and monitoring? No, if they are a true danger to random little kids, keep them locked up. Otherwise, there has to be balance, because it appears that a whole lot of people are heading for the registry.

^^^ Pretty much agree with the above. There's a huge difference between a boss asking a subordinate out to dinner vs. locking the office door and telling her either puts out or she doesn't have a job or a career.

I confess to being of mixed emotions regarding the teacher thing. My high school French teacher was smokin' hawt, and if she had come on to me (as unlikely as that was to happen ... and it didn't), I don't think I would have felt "victimized." In fact, there were several of us in French class who shared similar fantasies regarding Mademoiselle Cuomo.

Which may explain why, today, about the only complete phrase I remember in French is "Voulez vous couchez avec mois ce sois?"

[French G.]

My Spanish teacher had the run of the football team. I think they survived, for her part no damage other than being an extreme Facebook Christian which is part for the course. Then of course we could be sexist as hell and say a female teacher preying on a teen boy is different than a male teacher preying on a teen girl. World is not fair. None of the situations are right, but we need to recognize the difference in severity and punish accordingly.

[BlueStarLizzard]

*shrug* Too be honest, my bigger issue with this whole fad of sexual assault witchhunting is where are all the female predators? You know they're out there.

Because I do not believe for one solitary second that not *one* high profile female in those circles hasn't pulled a Matt Lauer in her time.

I really dislike the mentality that the issue of sexual assault is one of men vs. woman and I'm getting crankier by the moment that it's becoming more and more so by the minute.

[T.O.M.]

*shrug* Too be honest, my bigger issue with this whole fad of sexual assault witchhunting is where are all the female predators? You know they're out there.

Because I do not believe for one solitary second that not *one* high profile female in those circles hasn't pulled a Matt Lauer in her time.

I really dislike the mentality that the issue of sexual assault is one of men vs. woman and I'm getting crankier by the moment that it's becoming more and more so by the minute.

That double standard was all too evident when I did a bit of work with the personal crimes unit.  Juries saw a male victim of a female as not a victim, but a guy getting lucky, unless the male was exceptionally young.  I remember one case, a 15 year old boy, and a 45 year old teacher at his school.  Several members of the jury that acquitted the woman of sex charges made comments about the boy getting lucky, getting life lessons, etc.

[Angel Eyes]

*shrug* Too be honest, my bigger issue with this whole fad of sexual assault witchhunting is where are all the female predators? You know they're out there.

There seem to be plenty of them among high school faculty.

(and sometimes junior-high faculty ...)

[Hawkmoon]

Another discussion of the issue, and one that shares the concerns expressed by some on this forum:

https://www.apnews.com/61132b41eb624f4eb0ebba88a3f6dec9/In-wake-of-Weinstein,-men-wonder-if-hugging-women-still-OK

“Have we gotten to the point now where men can’t say, ‘That’s a nice dress’ or ’Did you do something with your hair?’” says the veteran sales associate for a Los Angeles company. “The potential problem is you can’t even feel safe saying, ‘Good morning’ anymore.”

I reached the point of being afraid to comment on a nice dress several years ago. The way too many women act/react today, if you say "You like really nice today," the response is likely to be, "Oh! and I DIDN'T look nice yesterday?!?!" Either that, or "What's it to you?" I've never understood women who spend a lot of time and money dressing up and trying to look good, and then [claiming they] resent any male noticing.

“What I see in terms of my male friends now is an, ‘Oh, my gosh, I hope I didn’t.’ There’s a sense of shame,” says independent filmmaker Laura Lee Bahr.

She says she has been reassuring male friends that giving her a friendly hug when they greet her isn’t harassment. It’s the flat-out propositions and the unwanted grabbing of body parts that need to stop, she says.

Well, that is what needs to stop but, as usual, once something gets rolling it turns into an uncontrollable juggernaut and God help you if you happen to be in its path when it goes roaring through.

It’s those cases that have everyday guys sweating as they wonder whether they might have leaned in a little too close for that hug. Or if they should have kept that oral sex joke to themselves, or just between them and their male friends.

  Really? Somebody has to ask if it might be inappropriate to make jokes about oral sex in mixed company? I thought I was 73 years old. Maybe I lost count somewhere and I'm really 173 ...


My late wife was from South America. One of the great things about her country is that the everyday mode of greeting women -- even when being introduced in a social context -- is to kiss them (on the cheek). In fact, a friend of ours here in the U.S. who is also from her country was recently hospitalized for a stroke and a heart attack. He's in a rehab facility, and I went to visit him yesterday. There were two women already with him, also from his native country. It was simply expected that I would kiss them on the cheek when we were introduced, and again when they left. Little girls grow up to automatically present a cheek for a kiss when being introduced. It's innocuous, and very nice ... and it would never go over in 21st century United States.

[RoadKingLarry]

One of the benefits of my shift is that I don't work around any women, Or other men for that matter. 
There is on woman on the crew that on rare occasions I have some direct interaction with but I've taken to running the voice recorder on my phone the entire time.
She has a bit of history of making false accusations against male co-workers.

[Ben]

She says she has been reassuring male friends that giving her a friendly hug when they greet her isn’t harassment.

That's exactly the kind of thing I was referring to in my worry on where this is all going, and from personal experience.

I worked where there were a lot of huggers. In the office, if I was out on a field assignment or something for more than a week, there was a line of huggers when I got back. Women from other offices around the country would always initiate hugs (with men and women) whenever they came into town.

I never thought anything of it until one time I was driving with some of the women and they were complaining about how "creepy" it was when one of the guys in the office would hug them whenever he showed up (he worked remotely and only came in every couple of weeks). Yet I had absolutely seen them initiate hugs with him. It's when he initiated the hugs that it apparently became "creepy" to them.

After that,  I went out of my way to avoid hugs, because just because they liked hugging Ben one day, didn't mean they wouldn't turn around and not like it another. I went to either a handshake or just stepping back with a head nod and a "hey, how's it going?" I'd heard talk my last couple of years about how I had gotten "cold", but I didn't care. If I were still working today, I would initiate a "ten foot pole" policy.

Even after all this hysteria dies down over time, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Many guys now know that an innocent hug today can easily be blown into sexual harassment tomorrow, or a year from now, when they get a raise or promotion or something that pisses a female coworker off.

Maybe nine out of ten women in the workplace would never do that, but after all this, who is going to take a chance on their life being ruined over the one who will? And again, it completely takes away from dealing with real harassment on the job.

[Hawkmoon]

I think I am extraordinarily lucky that I didn't grow up in a touchy-feely-huggy sort of family. Grandma got a kiss on the cheek, Grandpa got a handshake, and everyone else got a nod and a "Hello, ___"

[French G.]

We've been ripping on my dad, named him Mike Pence because he has a decades long policy of arms length for any woman not his wife or daughter. Of course he is also the guy who figures if a woman can't dress herself she must be inviting comment, so he does. Hilarity ensues.

[230RN]

'Twuz quite a while ago I discovered the mental "preloading" some women had about "harassment."

Cute little lady, middleaged, married, at the office.  She came in one day dressed in an elegant long skirt down to her ankles, moderate heels.

I spotted her standing and talking to someone, in bare feet.  I thought it was amusing, as elegantly dressed as she was, but running around the office barefoot, so I took a picture of her that way.

Well, she blew up over it, accusing me of being some kind of pervert, and suggesting that I might put the pictures of her feet all over the internet, blah blah.  She really kind of went off her rocker about it.

Well, it all settled down and I deleted the pix, and she apologized after one of the ladies there said she thought she was over-reacting.

But jeeze, talk about "triggering."

So I'm pretty circumspect around ladies anymore.  Like I said, I'll tip my hat at them and smile, but I ain't raising my eyebrow any more.

In fact, I'm thinking of layin' off the hat-tipping nowadays altogether.  

Sort of like keeping your finger off the trigger.

And every gun is always loaded.

[BlueStarLizzard]

'Twuz quite a while ago I discovered the mental "preloading" some women had about "harassment."

Cute little lady, middleaged, married, at the office.  She came in one day dressed in an elegant long skirt down to her ankles, moderate heels.

I spotted her standing and talking to someone, in bare feet.  I thought it was amusing, as elegantly dressed as she was, but running around the office barefoot, so I took a picture of her that way.

Well, she blew up over it, accusing me of being some kind of pervert, and suggesting that I might put the pictures of her feet all over the internet, blah blah.  She really kind of went off her rocker about it.

Well, it all settled down and I deleted the pix, and she apologized after one of the ladies there said she thought she was over-reacting.

But jeeze, talk about "triggering."

So I'm pretty circumspect around ladies anymore.  Like I said, I'll tip my hat at them and smile, but I ain't raising my eyebrow any more.

In fact, I'm thinking of layin' off the hat-tipping nowadays altogether.  

Sort of like keeping your finger off the trigger.

And every gun is always loaded.

Too be honest, I would find that one a little odd myself. Not worth blowing up over, but politely request that you delete the picture odd.

[Scout26]

My New policy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uGnENk7GUI

[230RN]

Too be honest, I would find that one a little odd myself. Not worth blowing up over, but politely request that you delete the picture odd.

Much later I figured the way she focused on her feet she must have been preloaded with that concept.  At the time I wasn't even aware there was such a thing as a foot fetish, let alone that it was on the net.  Then again, it might have just been one of those 13 deadly days.  No'ffense, but...

[MechAg94]

*shrug* Too be honest, my bigger issue with this whole fad of sexual assault witchhunting is where are all the female predators? You know they're out there.

Because I do not believe for one solitary second that not *one* high profile female in those circles hasn't pulled a Matt Lauer in her time.

I really dislike the mentality that the issue of sexual assault is one of men vs. woman and I'm getting crankier by the moment that it's becoming more and more so by the minute.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587142/Policeman-awarded-567-000-sexual-harassment-suit.html
Here is one I remember from a few years ago that made the local news.  They do come up occasionally, but I would agree not as often.  I would think as a matter of averages, you would see more men doing such things than women, but that may be just a cultural thing.  

[Ben]

Aaaaaand... lets bring the NRA into it.  

https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2017/12/05/trying-way-too-hard-professional-comedienne-likens-nra-members-to-sexual-predators/

[MillCreek]

Aaaaaand... lets bring the NRA into it.  

https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2017/12/05/trying-way-too-hard-professional-comedienne-likens-nra-members-to-sexual-predators/

Well, gun=penis and you must have a penis to be a sexual predator.

[French G.]

They got that all wrong! The gun is good, the penis is evil!

[T.O.M.]

They got that all wrong! The gun is good, the penis is evil!

And the photo appears in
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[Hawkmoon]

They got that all wrong! The gun is good, the penis is evil!

Ask a soldier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kU0XCVey_U

[K Frame]

And the photo appears in
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2
1

Please. No dick picks...