She said the study supported the theory that sexual harassment was motivated by a desire to punish “gender-role deviants” rather than by sexual desire.

I mean, the latter ought to be a “duh;” most of us knew that harassment is not, in fact, about Dagwood chasing the coy hotsy Blondie secretary around a table with his tongue out because she’s just so damn irresistible;

but the “gender role deviant” thing: yeah. well in the case of women in traditionally “male” jobs, there’s the “keep her out of the treehouse” thing; there’s “shit she might be better at me or take my job and that would be a death blow to my fragile sense of identity” thing; and there’s also punishing her for not conforming and thus upsetting the binary.

Yup, that’s probably it.

I agree with Polymath that while the results of the study are unsurprising, the spin the local paper chose to put on those results is appalling.

When people who reported unfavorable views were asked the open-ended question “Tell me what you dislike or don’t admire…?”, people volunteered the following:

14% say they don’t trust her.
11% say she’s an opportunist.
6% say she’s too aggressive and overbearing.
6% say they “just don’t like her.”
5% say she lacks morals and ethics.
4% say she’s arrogant.
3% say she lacks sufficient experience and knowledge to be president.
2% say she’s cold and unfeeling.
3% say we’re just not ready for a girl president.
7% say they object to everything about her, and (more inexplicably)
4% of those with unfavorable views acknowledge that they object to NOTHING about her.
3% declined to offer a reason.

To be sure, people also identified policy reasons for objecting to Hillary. But I wonder how many people will express objection to male candidates for being opportunistic, inexperienced, aggressive, cold or unfeeling.

[Please resist the urge to turn this entire discussion into a Hillary blog or Maia will ban me for sure!]

but i don’t think the study itself blames women, or at least not the part you quoted. it seems to be targeting the behavior of the harassers by identifying what it is they seem to pick on. knowing that sexual harassers (and harassers of gay people, for that matter) focus on “gender-role deviants” may make us more likely to identify future harassers early so we can send “that’s not okay” messages earlier.

but you’re absolutely right that the headline has to go.

I’m curious about the “one of the boys” and “acting like a man” comments. What does that mean? If what’s meant is that the simple act of taking and performing a job in a predominantly male environment is doing that, it seems quite ridiculous to me. With a few obvious exceptions (priest, stripper) (there’s a combination, eh?) the gender of a professional doesn’t matter. Does taking a job in a predominantly male profession make one an “alpha” female?

OTOH, I’m in a predominantly male environment at work. I do network support. Routers, hubs, switches, firewalls, load balancers, etc., etc. As I sit here there’s about 15 people here, 3 of whom are women. Now, when you have a bunch of guys together, you get “guy” humor. Insults, pranks (I left my cell phone on my desk and it took me an hour to find it when I got back yesterday), etc. Not everyone plays the game, mind you, and non-participants are left alone. But if you join in, you’re fair game. And sometimes feelings can be hurt if someone goes too far. It’s a thin line. It wouldn’t be hard to intrepret some of the remarks in the give-and-take as harassment. And I can see where a woman might end up joining in because she would feel excluded otherwise. In that limited circumstance, I’d say that both men and women have to understand the situation and adjust their behavior accordingly.

And to think I dared to believe we were past the stone age.

And yes, of course, let’s blame the women for being…assertive? smart? good in business? saavy? profit-making? aggressive…which of course are traits SOLELY found in the male of the species, rather, than, oh, the people harassing these “deviants”?

Beautiful, really (add sarcasam to taste)