The Blame Game In The Workplace
Posted by Michelle Moquin on August 26th, 2013
Good Monday morning!
Many of you are probably at work right now. What I want to know is, does your Manager Training Guide have guidelines and suggestions such as this? I thought it was a joke when I read it. But nope – this is true.
From Think Progress:
Manager Training Guide Blames Women For Coworkers Who Come On To Them
BY BRYCE COVERT ON AUGUST 21, 2013 AT 10:35 AM
Jhana, an online resource with articles and tools for managers used by employees at Google, Groupon, Eventbrite, Modcloth, and Ask.com, published an article called “What if a male colleague gets the wrong idea?” to help women deal with unwanted sexual advances in the workplace. Unfortunately, as Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan found, the manual doesn’t offer helpful advice for how to tell men to back off or even report inappropriate behavior, but instead tells women how they can modify their clothes and behavior to avoid it, placing the blame and the solution for the problem with them.
While the article may have been taken down (and is behind a paywall), Ryan took screenshots of the various tips that it gives to working women. Some of the problematic advice (emphasis added):
- If you act the same way — always professional, but also always like yourself — around everyone, the problematic colleague will be less likely to get the idea that you’re coming on to him. One caveat: If you’re touchy-feely or flirtatious by nature, you might want to dial it back around him and any guys from whom you sense discomfort.
- Be highly aware of the signals you’re sending out — both verbal and nonverbal. In a perfect world, women would feel free to dress however they want without being stigmatized for it. But know that revealing clothing and certain verbal tics, such as ending statements with an upward inflection in your voice or struggling to accept a compliment, can affect others’ ability to take you seriously.
- Don’t say or do anything you wouldn’t say or do in the presence of your grandmother. If you sense that you could start unconsciously flirting (you’re human, and sometimes it happens), imagine that your grandmother is in the room. If you’d feel embarrassed saying or doing whatever you’re about to say or do in front of Grandma, don’t go there.
- If he still doesn’t get the message, socialize in groups, especially after hours and outside the office. There’s a greater chance that the guy will misinterpret your behavior in 1-on-1 situations that happen outside the office.
- Always pay attention to your creep-o-meter. Every woman has one. If you get even a faint whiff of creepiness off of the guy or anyone else at work, ask yourself if it’s really worth trying to get to know the person. In most cases, it isn’t.
In short, the advice the guide gives women is to change their clothing, manner of speaking, body language, and even how they socialize outside of work to avoid inappropriate advances from male colleagues. The manual makes one buried mention of just being direct in rejecting the behavior. No where in Ryan’s screencapped version does the manual mention reporting the situation to a boss or higher up or, if that fails, taking legal action against sexual harassment in the workplace. Ryan also wasn’t able to find any articles for men telling them what constitutes inappropriate behavior and how to avoid it. Jhana hasn’t responded to Ryan’s request for comment.
Sexual harassment is a serious issue. One in four women in the U.S. report having experienced it. There were over 11,000 sexual harassment charges filed against employers in 2011. Harassment, which includes unwanted advances, can have severe impacts for victims by increasing their time away from work, decreasing their productivity, resulting in job turnover, and even increasing rates of stress, depression, and other emotional and physical consequences. It also costs employers, who must deal with reduced productivity and morale and potentially legal fees.
*****
Readers: I am just so sick and tired of men blaming women for their inadequacies – their lack of self control - meaning the little head overruling the big head. We have seen and read the atrocities that happen in other countries and where women are blamed for rape. I have to say we are not far behind. They are trying to inch their way closet. If men could get away with rape and blame the woman here in America, believe me they would.
If you compare yourself to so many other women in this world and what they have to endure, you can consider yourselves lucky if you live in America. But that doesn’t mean that we let something like this slide here in America. Oh no – this blame the women game has got to go.
Thoughts? Blog me.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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August 26th, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Michelle, I never read that article. But it is so true at my job.
August 26th, 2013 at 12:49 pm
The arrogance of the white boy never ceases to amaze me. They take over an indigenous peoples island call it America’s territory, force their way into the lives of the OTWs, force them to accept America’s life style and culture and then tell them they cannot be citizens of the USA.
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Appeal Filed in Case Which Seeks to Decide Question of Citizenship in U.S. Territories
Last Updated on Saturday, 24 August 2013 09:51
Written by Kevin Kerrigan
Saturday, 24 August 2013 09:14
Guam News – Guam News
Guam – An appeal has been filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals in a case which seeks to decide the question of whether or not a person born in a U.S. territory has a constitutional right to U.S. Citizenship or whether that right is merely a privilege determined by Congress.
The appeal follows a June 26th decision from the D.C. District Court which dismissed a lawsuit filed by 5 people born in American Samoa who sought U.S. citizenship. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon dismissed Tuaua v. United States concluding: “To date, Congress has not seen fit to bestow birthright citizenship upon American Samoa, and in accordance with the law, this Court must and will respect that choice.”
Attorney Neil Weare is the Lead Counsel in Tuaua and President of the “We the People Project.”
READ the June 26th D.C. District Court Decision which is being appealed HERE
In an email to PNC News, Weare writes that the D.C. district court dismissal “relied on a broad interpretation of the Insular Cases to conclude there is no constitutional right to citizenship in U.S. territories.”
The appeal, says Weare in a release, “challenges the application of the controversial Insular Cases doctrine to present-day U.S. territories.”
“On appeal, the DC Circuit will have the opportunity to follow the words of the Constitution and recent Supreme Court precedent,” says Weare, and “to turn the page on the Insular Cases.”
READ the release from Neil Weare below:
DC Circuit Appeal Filed—Weare: “It is time to turn the page on the Insular Cases.”
Landmark new case in the D.C. Circuit challenges the application of the controversial Insular Cases doctrine to present-day U.S. territories
The question of whether citizenship for people born in U.S. territories is a right guaranteed by the Constitution or a privilege determined by Congress will be taken up by the D.C. Circuit now that plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit Tuaua v. United States have filed an appeal of the district court’s dismissal of their case. Tuaua is brought by people born in American Samoa whom federal statutes label “nationals, but not citizens, of the United States.” Their status as “non-citizen U.S. nationals” mirrors that in other territories before certain acts of Congress recognized statutory citizenship in those places.
The Tuaua plaintiffs carry U.S. passports, but these passports are imprinted with a disclaimer in capital letters: “THE BEARER IS A UNITED STATES NATIONAL AND NOT A UNITED STATES CITIZEN.” (see image below)
“Congress has overstepped its bounds by redefining what ‘born in . . . the United States’ means for purposes of the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship,” said Neil Weare, President of We the People Project and lead counsel in Tuaua. “Citizenship by birth within in the United States is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, not a privilege subject to congressional discretion.”
In June, the D.C. district court dismissed the Tuaua plaintiffs’ case. Setting aside the text and history of the Constitution, the district court instead focused its analysis on the Insular Cases. These controversial Supreme Court decisions from the early 1900s have been compared to Plessy v. Ferguson and criticized by First Circuit Judge Juan Torruella as establishing a “doctrine of separate and unequal” status for territorial residents. While acknowledging that “none of the Insular Cases directly addressed the Citizenship Clause,” the district court nonetheless interpreted those cases broadly to conclude that “citizenship is not guaranteed to people born in unincorporated territories.”
“This decision should raise eyebrows in Guam. If the district court is correct, Congress can turn the Citizenship Clause on and off like a lightbulb in U.S. territories,” Weare cautioned.
Congresswoman Madeleine Bordallo, an honorary member of We the People Project’s Advisory Board, said, “This case presents the opportunity to have a long overdue conversation about the relationship between the federal government and U.S. territories. Clarity on these constitutional issues will help advance the cause of self-determination on Guam.”
“On appeal, the D.C. Circuit will have the opportunity to follow the words of the Constitution and recent guidance by the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page on the Insular Cases. Like Plessy v. Ferguson, these decisions are products of another era that belong in the dustbin of history,” Weare said.
In 2008, the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush cited approvingly to Justice Brennan’s view in an earlier case that “[w]hatever the validity of the [Insular Cases] in the particular historical context in which they were decided, those cases are clearly not authority for questioning the application of [constitutional rights in U.S. territories today].” According to Boumediene, “[t]he Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply.”
Former Governor Carl T.C. Gutierrez, a member of We the People Project’s Advisory Board, said “Turning the page on the Insular Cases would be a real victory in Guam’s quest for self-determination.”
A briefing schedule in the appeal should be announced in the coming weeks.
We the People Project (www.equalrightsnow.org) is a national organization working to achieve equal rights and representation for the nearly 5 million Americans living in U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
Serving as co-counsel in Tuaua v. United States are Arnold & Porter LLP, an international law firm, and Charles V. Ala’ilima, a prominent American Samoan attorney.
More information about Tuaua v. United States, including case materials, is available here.
Image of U.S. Passport for a so-called “non-citizen national” is included below.
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What are we expecting another “Dread Scott” decision by this Supreme Court?
August 26th, 2013 at 1:25 pm
I wanted to share this great read that was reported on Honoree Jeffer’s blog. It’s about her feelings on Women’s Equality Day, which is today
“The Truth About Women’s Equality Day”
(first posted on August 26, 2010)
I was reminded this morning that today is Women’s Equality Day. On August 26, 1920 American women were granted the right to vote, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. And indeed, this is a great day in history.
However, for Black women in this country, it’s not really a day that we can celebrate as a definitive moment. Because actually, to put it bluntly, this day is White Women’s Equality Day, the day they were given the right to vote. But technically, Black women didn’t become “equal” until the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965.
Why? Because Black women were specifically excluded from the U.S. Women’s suffrage movement in the nineteenth century. The early leaders of the movement, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, felt that the inclusion of Black women in their movement would hinder it.
In particular, Stanton was against paralleling voting rights for Black men, the Irish, Germans, and Chinese people with the White women’s struggle. She wrote in The Revolution, a publication in the nineteenth century, “Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a Monarchy and a Republic, who never read the Declaration of Independence . . . making laws for Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott, or Fanny Kemble.”
I hope you know who Sambo is, y’all.
This racism in the movement angered Sojourner Truth, a tireless warrior for racial and gender justice in America; Sister Truth had been working with Anthony and Stanton, but then got ghost when she realized they wanted her to do the work but not reap the profits.
Later, in the early twentieth century, anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett decided to start her own African American Suffragist organization in Chicago called the Alpha Suffrage Club, but at the major Suffragist march on March 3, 1913, the White organizers tried to convince Ida B. Wells-Barnett to march at the back of the procession.
Sister Wells-Barnett replied, “”I shall not march at all unless I can march under the Illinois banner.” Nobody saw her at the march, so they thought she had gone home, but when her delegation started down Pennsylvania avenue, she rolled right in there and marched with the other—White—suffragists from Illinois.
Most of you–of all complexions– reading this already know this history. But for Black women, this history is personal. It’s the major reason that it’s so hard for us to embrace feminism, and to embrace issues identified as feminist. It’s why it’s so hard for us to trust women outside of our community, and sometimes, even within, in the name of “female solidarity.” It’s easier for us to focus on the fight against racism because that’s been a consistent struggle within our fences.
Surely, in the Black community, we Sister have been told to put our own desires and needs—and yes, survival—to the side—because we have to consider Brothers first. But that’s only part of the issue.
The other issue is, nobody in the feminist movement is sincerely looking out for Women of Color, either. There’s been a good game talked, but when the stakes are high and Black women look behind them to see which White feminists have their back, all we hear is the wind. And in that wind, we hear the empty refrain, “Women, women, women.” But, we don’t hear anything acknowledging our specific identity as African American. Let’s not even talk about how the other groups of Women of Color are treated.
For example, recently, during the presidential campaign, we saw Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro take off after Barack Obama in The New York Times and make the campaign a “Black man vs. White Woman” issue; neither woman took the time to consider how hurtful this public discussion would be for us Black women, who had never had a chance to see even one person who looked like us in The White House, let alone two.
By the way, Gloria Steinem is the GODMOTHER of the only child of Alice Walker (the African American author of the The Color Purple).
At one dinner before a poetry reading, I was accosted by two young White female graduate students (who I had been having a great time talking to, by the way). They demanded to know who I was supporting for the presidential election. When I replied, “Barack Obama,” they smirked at each other and said to me, they thought so. It was clear that Black women always chose race over gender, they said.
I told them, “First, considering Hilary Clinton’s ‘Hardworking, White Americans’ statement it’s clear she’s choosing race over gender.”
“And second,” I said, “I have breasts and a vagina, but mine are brown, so you know, I can’t choose between race and gender.” (Yes, I actually said that.)
At another reading dinner, an elderly White woman angrily told me what Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro had already argued in The New York Times, that Barack Obama would never have been president if he had been a Black woman. She went on and on, to the point where I thought I would burst into tears. And I wondered, did she even see me? Did she understand just who she was talking to?
Then, I sucked it up, because if I was that angry, I wonder how upset Ida B. Wells-Barnett was, when they tried to make her march at the back of the procession.
In the aftermath of these reopened wounds, there need to be an acknowledgement of racism in the American feminist movement and a concerted effort made by White feminists to self-police. And there needs to be a real gesture toward healing. Notice that Hillary Clinton hasn’t once made an overture toward Black women to try to resolve her hurtful actions. Visiting Black churches and clapping off beat do not constitute healing. And let’s not even start talking about Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro and what they need to do. Where do I begin?.
So, I don’t celebrate Women’s Equality Day today, because contrary to popular mainstream American opinion, Women includes all American women, not just White ladies.
But I do celebrate those women who made this day possible for me, a Black woman. I give the credit to my Sister-ancestors on this day, like Sister Truth and Sister Wells-Barnett—not a day of equality, but a day where I at least have the right to talk about how it’s not equal. And I think that’s a good compromise, considering.
Bravo, Ms. Jeffers.
Can it get any clearer people? We have a lot of work to do before ALL WOMEN are free and equal.
Here’s the link to her blog for those of you interested in more of what she has to say: http://phillisremastered.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/throwback-jam-the-truth-about-womens-equality-day/
/SB
August 26th, 2013 at 9:47 pm
If you have to ‘no’ more than once, sat it twice and then tell your supervisor and HR and leg them have a chat with Mr Manly. This article must’ve been written by someone who’s watched one too many Madmen reruns. (Love the clothes though not on me : ).
/SB, that is one powerful blog, thank you. I’m quite surprised by Gloria Steinem though…
Oh and it seems our blonde from yesterday is joined by another R female who claimed she’s been followed around a boutique, her non acknowledgement racism and of OTW’s being profiled and followed in stores, who are these people and why do they even make it to headline in the HuffPo?! Pretty oblivious behavior and speech. And they were elected. Doesn’t say much for the voting audience either…
Luv, Zen Lill
August 26th, 2013 at 9:48 pm
Typos, sorry, really not a very smart smartphone
August 27th, 2013 at 8:42 pm
LeTa0
“Why can’t people learn to error in favor of the good? It takes the same amount of energy.”
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KadejaLatefah
That’s right…I said it!
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1 hour ago (10:32 PM)
we have a handicapped guy at work and customers in wheelchairs who need those spots. They cannot walk or cannot walk unaided. too many people coerce their doctors (friend of the fam etc) into getting them a placard. So I error in protection of the handicapped – sorry!
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LeTA0
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No, you error in favor of your own opinion and use that explanation as a defense when you get called on your lack of compassion.
Nice try.
August 27th, 2013 at 9:01 pm
Social Butterfly all women will never be free because many women are complicit in their own subjugation. They enjoy giving men the control over their happiness.
My wife is a prime example. I stay with her because I know to her I will always be that man she depends on. But she is so boring I can hardly bear it. That’s why I have a strong woman on the side who says her husband is like me, and that she is fooling him into thinking he is her rock so he won’t suspect that she fucks around on him.
My wife is way more attractive than this woman but the boner this woman’s attitude gives me is surreal. It is not just the sex. Yes, she does have more of an imagination in the sack, but her chief attraction is her attitude. She depends on no man. She has a mouth on her, but it shows she also has a mind.
August 27th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
Why not switch with the Klors they come from a planet which averages 4,000 MPH winds. The winds of Neptune will be a summer vacation to them.