But I did not think it was appropriate to comment on their tastes, or even on what they thought my tastes were. I do not think that there was one single woman working in any of the warehouses.

Last year, I went through this company’s West Coast warehouses again. Still no women working there, but I guess they did not anymore think that the ‘Eastern European geek’ needed this kind of immersion in ‘American Culture’.

*rolls eyes* Gee, I missed that gem. Ferg, that’s insulting to both straight women and your fellow bisexuals — frex, me. Perhaps you could stop assuming that orientation determines personality.

Also, your oh-so-clever one liners grow wearisome. I hope that you will start contributing to the blog in a more meaningful way.

As a bisexual, I don’t assume that “also likes women” means “immune to sexism”.

Hooters isn’t even a strip bar. It’s a restaurant chain that tries to skirt adult-venue laws by being a slightly dumbed-down version of a strip bar.

Um, my point was, have any activist men even been TRYING to campaign for this issue on TV? Or demonstrating in the streets? Seems to me some funny costumes ought to do the trick when it comes to getting attention. Take that man dressed as Batman who, in 2004, scaled Buckingham Palace to draw attention to father’s rights. That got shown around the world. Who’s bothered to try anything like that regarding male BC?

I’ll believe the interest/market is there when I see it outside of the Net.

Nope. It wouldn’t make as entertaining/conflict-laden TV as some lout trying to duck child support does.

BTW, Miss Manners also pointed out once that even consensual sexual flirtation - or affairs - at the office tend to interfere with work productivity, so “welcome advances” are not truly welcome as far as anyone outside the couple is concerned.

Finally: Ampersand, I tried to use the general contact form but it didn’t pop up. Here’s the question. When are you going to use your brilliant mind to write about the issue of whether American men really want better male birth control methods? That is, if they DID want to protect themselves against unwanted fatherhood, wouldn’t we hear about it on TV at least as much as we hear about men trying to get out of paying child support for kids they never wanted? (I did a search in your blog, and I couldn’t find any columns specifically about that.) Also, here’s a very interesting article about why one of the best methods of male BC may never arrive in the U.S. - UNLESS men start demanding it LOUDLY!
http://www.alternet.org/story/17432/

OTOH, I’d never suggest that we hold a work function there and I’ve never heard anyone do so. My particular group does network support (both internal and outsourced), and we are about 90% male. But if you have some respect for the people you work with you don’t put them into a bad position, which includes putting them in the position of having to either mask their misgivings or making them the “bad guy” by raising an objection.

I feel that. When I was in college, I ended up in a group of friends who were all gay men, and who were almost all misogynistic. I won’t go into details, but what happened was really traumatizing, and eventually led to me leaving college.

Afterward, I had kind of an allergic reaction to visibly gay men [amusingly, since the more flamboyant guys had also been the least jerky, while the more straight-acting ones were the more virulently problematic]… I still respected their rights politically, but I had a hard time trusting visibly gay guys. I knew I was being a jerk, but it still took a couple years for the reaction to go away — but, thankfully, it did. )

Oh, I’m not arguing that coders aren’t a vulgar, mentally unstable (and occasionally hateful) lot. Just never seen it in an _official_ capacity. Only reason I specified coders is because we’re predominantly young, and obviously had a more… modern upbringing. But obviously, like you said, plural of anecdote is not data. I tend to think that most of my workplaces would get similar reactions to what Joe described.

When discussing where to go I lied and said a friend of mine was going to hooters with his group. I asked if anyone wanted to go to Hooters. I wanted to see what the reaction would be. They all looked at me as if I’d farted loudly and now they’re making fun of me for suggesting it! I haven’t tried to say that I just wanted to see the reaction.

It did lead to odd lunch conversation. Apparently the woman likes strip clubs because she doesn’t have to pay cover and usually drinks for free. One of the other guys told me privately to let him know if I wanted to stop with him on my way home from work some time. He apparently didn’t want to make this offer in front of everyone else. Everyone agreed that hooters wasn’t appropriate for ‘group’ lunches and that suggesting it frequently would be a bad thing career wise.

Also, I thought sif was being sarcastic also.

Nope, I’m in the same industry. I’ve often worked as a consultant, but my experience includes both those working for the same company as me & men working for our customers. I’ve seen it in NY & OR &
WA as well as in DE, OH, MA & CA. Wherever I go, there it is. Honestly, some of the most offensive things I’ve heard have come from fellow programmers. IME, industry doesn’t affect the likelihood of crap spouting co-workers. It’s very disturbing.

Could also be a regional thing. I’m in Southern Ontario, which has a rep for obsessively stuffy workplaces (business magazines love to lampoon Toronto for being no-fun to visit). The only time I can remember anything like the “meetings at hooters” type of thing was when working at a hardware company Niagara Falls - most Ontario cities near the border have a reputation as “Sin Cities” in upstate NY - lax stripper laws, lower drinking age, and lax gambling laws all contribute to this. In that case, after work apparently some visiting customers from the South drafted my boss into showing them around the “legendary” local strip clubs.

He was as shocked by it as I was when he told me the story. But he did oblige. Which wasn’t to say that the local guys had never been to the local strip clubs - but it was freaky for it to come up in the context of business (even peripherally, as an after-work “friendly” activity).

Or I could just have some serious blinders on.

For example, a week ago, two guys were lamenting the loss of the “good old days” when you could smoke in the office & slap women on the ass. Neither of those guys are older than 50 (I’d guess they’re in their mid-40s). This is far from the most offensive comment I’ve heard from white collar men at work. So, no, I’m not surprised that office functions would happen at Hooters. Hell, we’ve seen it on the US version of The Office, so I’m guessing a fair number of people have seen it suggested.

(SiF, I can understand how Cath would have that reaction to your statement - whether or not she’s seen other comments of yours. It is an offensive phrase & it’s very difficult to determine intent in plain text - thus the common use of the “sarcasm” faketags. I’ve been known to misinterpret intent, myself.)

Well, you should be happy to hear that this blog was a big part of it. I was in a string of very bad relationships, and was getting very angry at women in general. Not proud of myself. In the process, I ended up running to MRA blogs. I still have sympathy for some of the problems they describe, but I’m also very concerned about how quickly even the most reasonable MRA bloggers (ie. Sacks) latch onto the same kind of false logic they accuse feminists of using.

Either way, I basically am trying to work through my own issues here, trying to find a holistic view of some real, nasty problems of the human condition within this horribly polarized mess of gender-issue blogging…. and probably causing a great deal of collateral damage in the process.

… but I started a liberal and a feminist, and I’d like to think I’ll end in a way that I can once again consider myself a liberal and a feminist.

And thus ends the Silenced Is Foo show/threadjack.

SiF: I, for one, appreciate the change in the tenor of your comments that’s happened since you started posting here.

(Joe, no prob — I’d be shocked to hear someone suggest it, too!)

Thanks. I’ll admit that I’ve made some unpopular comments on this blog and others (many of which I regret - I admit to being taken in by some of the MRAs points that I’ve since reconsidered)… but that fact means that some commenters on feminst blogs have such a knee-jerk reaction to anything I say that they can’t even see when I *agree* with them.