Brian, could you create a poll asking men if they've been dissuaded from asking out a colleague for fear of a sexual harassment lawsuit, or employer policies implemented to avoid lawsuits? I suspect the problem (less wanted attention) is less severe then you imply. Are people really so paranoid?
The fact that the decline in meeting "at work" looks almost *identical* to the decline in meeting "through friends, "school/college," and "through family" should have made you rethink this entire post. Instead of asking if workplace sexual harassment laws have some unique, unwanted impact, you could have asked what those 4 categories have in common.
Playing devil’s advocate here: Say you’re a woman who prefers to meet men via online dating apps, friends, or anything other than work. In that case, a strong presumption against workplace dating and strong laws against sexual harassment will help you avoid embarrassing and tricky workplace issues. You don’t have to ask men to back off all day long since the law will keep them at bay and they won’t be bothering you in the first place.
If you’re a woman who does prefer to meet men at work, now it will happen on your terms and not his, since men won’t be the ones to initiate (unless they’re the kind that are willing to risk a lawsuit, and some women like that bravado but others don’t).
Actually, I've always been confused about some women's loud complaining about excess attention. I consider myself an attractive woman (well, when I was young, not now) and I always got my mood elevated by any polite male attention. (Impolite attention, e.g. "hey slut, come here" of course made me angry, but I'm talking about nice and honest attention here.) Was it because I lived in a society (Northern Europe) where men tend to be shy and attention was rare? But no, when I visited Southern parts, where they were not shy at all and where I got a lot of attention, I was even happier!
So I've always suspected these girls who complain about attention, thinking, maybe they are reaching for high status, making themselves sound blindingly beautiful by pretending to have so much attention by men that it gets annoying (while secretly enjoying it like I did). However, I know that trying to guess other people's motivations usually leads to wrong and uncharitable conclusions.
Then again, the other day, I heared my over-40 female friend bragging about how she always gets hit on by much younger guys when dancing at nightclubs, and has to fend them off, making it sound tedious. And I wander, why then does she always wear her sexiest clothes to the clubs (a practice that I absolutely support; she looks good)? I find it very hard to believe that she doesn't want male attention. Tell me, other girls, what's going on? Why do you complain? Are you all pretending?
Kind of fun to see so far, men commenting here! In my first marriage, I married a co worker. We divorced. His second wife was an administrative assistant, so was his third and fourth. This bit of history was all before 2010. Not sure if he has a fifth, lost track. I can’t imagine the dating scene today, I feel for you! I happily married again. We met online!
I agree that sexual harassment law, as written and perceived now, has the effect of reducing both wanted and unwanted attention.
Could the law be made more nuanced and/or precisely targeted so as to actually affect only (or primarily) unwanted attention? I could imagine rules along the lines of the following, albeit with lots of ornamentation:
*Complemeting a coworker's appearance, on its own, is not harassment. If the coworker does not want such complements, they should say so.
*Asking a coworker on a date is not harassment. If the coworker is not interested, they should say so.
*If a coworker has previously made clear that they are not interested in romance with the asker, then *continued* asking for a date or romance is harassment.
Is there hope that such a code could distinguish well enough between wanted and unwated attention to squelch most of the latter while having a tolerably limited effect on the former? Or is this a doomed Quixotic quest from the start due to the natural ambiguity in human communication, particular around romance?
I would love to find a solution that dignified both parties in a workplace situation: allow an asker to make an offer to someone they are attracted to; allow a receiver of attention to freely accept or decline such invitations and to make clear when they aren't interested. Maybe satisfying both sides is impossible.
"The law goes to every workplace and turns everyone over a 5 into a 5. Which virtually no one claims to want." - nitpicky but: they claim to want to be highly attractive *given* current legal norms. It's possible that under "laissez faire", unwanted attention could become so much more common that many more people (especially women) would prefer to be average. You might ask "what would you prefer your appearance to be out of 10, conditional on a blanket repeal of all sexual harassment (but not assault) laws, and the uptick in unwanted attention you believe would ensue."
The issue with your logic is that sexual harassment laws don't need to stop wanted and unwanted attention proportionally. Stopping 100% of unwanted attention will require stopping 100% of wanted attention. But I could easily imagine a narrower, precisely-defined law which stops 90% of serious unwanted attention (no dick picks, no asking someone out 20+ times, etc.) while only stopping a tiny amount of wanted attention.
I don’t think a ban on all workplace sexual attention is anything like setting people to a 5. Many of the things people want out of attractiveness have nothing to do with people approaching them sexually - I bet you would get the same result id you asked people to imagine a world where no one else ever sees you and you get to pick how attractive you are. Self-appreciation is relevant, as is the general positive feeling people have for attractive people regardless of whether they ever interact in a romantic or sexual way.
I do think that blanket bans on workplace romance are problematic but I don’t think this thought experiment does much to show that.
(Also, note that bar/restaurant is the only category other than online that is rising - I think a lot of social ills would be improved if we had better “third places” for people to socialize outside of work and home - especially as work moves online for many.)
It is so damn easy for a well-off white male to dismiss the concerns of women in the workplace. "Why can't men in power use that power to prey on women? I can't be expected to use an app. The world has gone mad!"
I think this article makes its argument less well than it could, and I'm not sure I buy even the well-made version of the argument. It seems to assume a lot of things that are not necessarily true. For instance, do very attractive people actually receive more romantic/sexual attention in workplace than only moderately attractive people? Also being more attractive probably results in advantages other than just more romantic/sexual attention (if it does result in the latter), meaning people's preference for it might not relate to a preference for more attention.
I don't necessarily think your conclusion is wrong, but I don't think you've justified it very well.
Disclaimer, I am heterosexual cisgender man, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. Would appreciate if women commented on this.
I suspect a large part of women wanting to look attractive is not them wanting to look attractive to men, but to other women; it's a case of intra-female status signalling. Conversely, the "unwanted attention" thing is a bit of a red herring, since this tends to arise when men perceive that a woman is vulnerable or "easy", or it's otherwise about disrespect as much as it is about sexual attraction.
I think there is another way to look at that chart.
We can shift the numbers between categories, but we can't decrease the total number. It's worth asking: if attention at the workplace is reduced via these laws, where does it go instead? And is attention in those places better or worse than attention at work?
There are some parts about workplace attention that are clearly bad. If the attention comes from the wrong person, it could cost you your job. Alternatively the person could just subtly make the workplace less pleasant for you.
It seems from the graph, that attention was instead shifted to online and bars. Both of those involve cold-approaching. Cold approaching has a terrible success rate. 1 in 200. 1 in 300. Something terrible like that. To make up for that, guys have to increase how often they approach women. By a factor of 50 or higher. That means women are going to be receiving attention roughly that much more often as well. I notice a lot of younger women complain on social media that they cannot go online or to a bar without getting hit on. This seems to be the natural result of attention-giving shifting to bars and online.
Additionally, with bars and online the attention is probably coming from someone where you have no mutual acquaintances with the person giving you attention. This means their is no social cost to being impolite in the situation. If a guy at a bar calls you a "dumb slut" after rejecting you at a bar, there will mostly likely be zero repercussions. However if a mutual friend introduces a guy, and he calls you the same thing, he may get ejected from the friend group over it. Likewise if a coworker did the same, they could get fired. It seems "at church" is negligible, but getting kicked out could happen there as well.
If you exclude "on-line" from both columns and recalculate to 100%, Work doesnt change that much, it goes from 18% to 15%.
The only takeaway from that chart is that on-line has become a big thing.
Brian, could you create a poll asking men if they've been dissuaded from asking out a colleague for fear of a sexual harassment lawsuit, or employer policies implemented to avoid lawsuits? I suspect the problem (less wanted attention) is less severe then you imply. Are people really so paranoid?
The fact that the decline in meeting "at work" looks almost *identical* to the decline in meeting "through friends, "school/college," and "through family" should have made you rethink this entire post. Instead of asking if workplace sexual harassment laws have some unique, unwanted impact, you could have asked what those 4 categories have in common.
Playing devil’s advocate here: Say you’re a woman who prefers to meet men via online dating apps, friends, or anything other than work. In that case, a strong presumption against workplace dating and strong laws against sexual harassment will help you avoid embarrassing and tricky workplace issues. You don’t have to ask men to back off all day long since the law will keep them at bay and they won’t be bothering you in the first place.
If you’re a woman who does prefer to meet men at work, now it will happen on your terms and not his, since men won’t be the ones to initiate (unless they’re the kind that are willing to risk a lawsuit, and some women like that bravado but others don’t).
Actually, I've always been confused about some women's loud complaining about excess attention. I consider myself an attractive woman (well, when I was young, not now) and I always got my mood elevated by any polite male attention. (Impolite attention, e.g. "hey slut, come here" of course made me angry, but I'm talking about nice and honest attention here.) Was it because I lived in a society (Northern Europe) where men tend to be shy and attention was rare? But no, when I visited Southern parts, where they were not shy at all and where I got a lot of attention, I was even happier!
So I've always suspected these girls who complain about attention, thinking, maybe they are reaching for high status, making themselves sound blindingly beautiful by pretending to have so much attention by men that it gets annoying (while secretly enjoying it like I did). However, I know that trying to guess other people's motivations usually leads to wrong and uncharitable conclusions.
Then again, the other day, I heared my over-40 female friend bragging about how she always gets hit on by much younger guys when dancing at nightclubs, and has to fend them off, making it sound tedious. And I wander, why then does she always wear her sexiest clothes to the clubs (a practice that I absolutely support; she looks good)? I find it very hard to believe that she doesn't want male attention. Tell me, other girls, what's going on? Why do you complain? Are you all pretending?
Kind of fun to see so far, men commenting here! In my first marriage, I married a co worker. We divorced. His second wife was an administrative assistant, so was his third and fourth. This bit of history was all before 2010. Not sure if he has a fifth, lost track. I can’t imagine the dating scene today, I feel for you! I happily married again. We met online!
I agree that sexual harassment law, as written and perceived now, has the effect of reducing both wanted and unwanted attention.
Could the law be made more nuanced and/or precisely targeted so as to actually affect only (or primarily) unwanted attention? I could imagine rules along the lines of the following, albeit with lots of ornamentation:
*Complemeting a coworker's appearance, on its own, is not harassment. If the coworker does not want such complements, they should say so.
*Asking a coworker on a date is not harassment. If the coworker is not interested, they should say so.
*If a coworker has previously made clear that they are not interested in romance with the asker, then *continued* asking for a date or romance is harassment.
Is there hope that such a code could distinguish well enough between wanted and unwated attention to squelch most of the latter while having a tolerably limited effect on the former? Or is this a doomed Quixotic quest from the start due to the natural ambiguity in human communication, particular around romance?
I would love to find a solution that dignified both parties in a workplace situation: allow an asker to make an offer to someone they are attracted to; allow a receiver of attention to freely accept or decline such invitations and to make clear when they aren't interested. Maybe satisfying both sides is impossible.
Aristotle would pick 5, the median!
I'd pick 8. Never be too rich. too famous, or too attractive!
"The law goes to every workplace and turns everyone over a 5 into a 5. Which virtually no one claims to want." - nitpicky but: they claim to want to be highly attractive *given* current legal norms. It's possible that under "laissez faire", unwanted attention could become so much more common that many more people (especially women) would prefer to be average. You might ask "what would you prefer your appearance to be out of 10, conditional on a blanket repeal of all sexual harassment (but not assault) laws, and the uptick in unwanted attention you believe would ensue."
The issue with your logic is that sexual harassment laws don't need to stop wanted and unwanted attention proportionally. Stopping 100% of unwanted attention will require stopping 100% of wanted attention. But I could easily imagine a narrower, precisely-defined law which stops 90% of serious unwanted attention (no dick picks, no asking someone out 20+ times, etc.) while only stopping a tiny amount of wanted attention.
I don’t think a ban on all workplace sexual attention is anything like setting people to a 5. Many of the things people want out of attractiveness have nothing to do with people approaching them sexually - I bet you would get the same result id you asked people to imagine a world where no one else ever sees you and you get to pick how attractive you are. Self-appreciation is relevant, as is the general positive feeling people have for attractive people regardless of whether they ever interact in a romantic or sexual way.
I do think that blanket bans on workplace romance are problematic but I don’t think this thought experiment does much to show that.
(Also, note that bar/restaurant is the only category other than online that is rising - I think a lot of social ills would be improved if we had better “third places” for people to socialize outside of work and home - especially as work moves online for many.)
It is so damn easy for a well-off white male to dismiss the concerns of women in the workplace. "Why can't men in power use that power to prey on women? I can't be expected to use an app. The world has gone mad!"
I say this as an introvert.
True! Also, When the breakdown of social dancing happened during the 70s the level of loneliness rise (look at Sweden).
I think this article makes its argument less well than it could, and I'm not sure I buy even the well-made version of the argument. It seems to assume a lot of things that are not necessarily true. For instance, do very attractive people actually receive more romantic/sexual attention in workplace than only moderately attractive people? Also being more attractive probably results in advantages other than just more romantic/sexual attention (if it does result in the latter), meaning people's preference for it might not relate to a preference for more attention.
I don't necessarily think your conclusion is wrong, but I don't think you've justified it very well.
Disclaimer, I am heterosexual cisgender man, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. Would appreciate if women commented on this.
I suspect a large part of women wanting to look attractive is not them wanting to look attractive to men, but to other women; it's a case of intra-female status signalling. Conversely, the "unwanted attention" thing is a bit of a red herring, since this tends to arise when men perceive that a woman is vulnerable or "easy", or it's otherwise about disrespect as much as it is about sexual attraction.
I think there is another way to look at that chart.
We can shift the numbers between categories, but we can't decrease the total number. It's worth asking: if attention at the workplace is reduced via these laws, where does it go instead? And is attention in those places better or worse than attention at work?
There are some parts about workplace attention that are clearly bad. If the attention comes from the wrong person, it could cost you your job. Alternatively the person could just subtly make the workplace less pleasant for you.
It seems from the graph, that attention was instead shifted to online and bars. Both of those involve cold-approaching. Cold approaching has a terrible success rate. 1 in 200. 1 in 300. Something terrible like that. To make up for that, guys have to increase how often they approach women. By a factor of 50 or higher. That means women are going to be receiving attention roughly that much more often as well. I notice a lot of younger women complain on social media that they cannot go online or to a bar without getting hit on. This seems to be the natural result of attention-giving shifting to bars and online.
Additionally, with bars and online the attention is probably coming from someone where you have no mutual acquaintances with the person giving you attention. This means their is no social cost to being impolite in the situation. If a guy at a bar calls you a "dumb slut" after rejecting you at a bar, there will mostly likely be zero repercussions. However if a mutual friend introduces a guy, and he calls you the same thing, he may get ejected from the friend group over it. Likewise if a coworker did the same, they could get fired. It seems "at church" is negligible, but getting kicked out could happen there as well.