It seems to me that human resources has become one of those gender-specific jobs, like logger or cocktail waitress. In my experience, HR is overwhelmingly female, and these are the people who have the power to hire or fire you.
In my limited experience working with female supervisors, I have found them to be less forgiving and less considerate, possibly because they think that men only respond well to abusive slave-driver types. I have also noticed that they are far less likely to directly warn workers or inform them in plain terms that they are dissatisfied. This tends to make male workers feel that their authority is capricious and cruel, and that they can be terminated for anything at any time.
The end result is that men – and particularly men of a certain type – are being pushed out of certain occupations and organizations, and find themselves driven to more exclusively male lines of work, such as construction, driving and law enforcement, and this may explain why men’s unemployment is so much higher than women’s in the current recession. In fact, I would say that the increasing domination of the corporate world by women in middle management – especially HR – has greatly restricted occupational options for younger men, even as senior male managers go out of their way to foster and accommodate women.
What I’d like to know if this corresponds with greater productivity. I suspect that it does not, but I’d have to see the numbers.
One theory I have heard is that senior male managers use females in middle management to keep workers in line and more easily fire people, because they have less of a sense of responsibility for those who work under them. This leads to a more humble and frightened work force, and despite warm and fuzzy talk about wanting “satisfied” workers, perhaps corporate bosses (almost all male) actually want the people working for them to live in fear. A scared and humble work force will go the extra mile to avoid being fired, and will work for less compensation.
I am curious as to whether readers have observed the same. Has the introduction of women into management fundamentally changed the way we work? If so, has their arrival been accompanied by fear and insecurity in the workplace, or has it been positive on the balance? We ought to have these discussions, because women are not going to leave the workforce any time soon, and perhaps it’s time to figure out how we might mitigate some of the negative effects.
Given that there has been a lot of speculation recently about how women will dominate the economy (or what’s left of it) in the future, these are perfectly reasonable concerns for men.
46 responses so far ↓
1 miles // Jul 24, 2009 at 7:19 am
3 things have hurt men economically badly since about 1990.
1) Outsourcing of factories to China. Loads of jobs lost here.
2) The takeover of construction labor by illegals. Loads of jobs for white and black men lost here, that used to pay decent money.
3)H1B visas for cheap tech labor, and outsourcing of tech jobs in general. This one realy irks me because so many men were told that “computers” were the thing to go into by our establishment all through the eighties and nineties, only to be stabbed in the back by corporate America with insourced cheaper labor than the labor market here would have provided.
If you add all the jobs that -would- be out there for men if these three events had not happened, there would be no “mancession”.
Men were not adequately warned about these things happeing either. Thats what, above all else, pisses me off about it. No president ever came on television and told our nation, “look folks, the donors to the congresscritters and I have made it clear that they want us to allow in 20 million Mexicans to do construction work slightly more than half of what you do it for, and to allow them to ship close to half our factories to China, and to allow them to bring in foreigners with IT and engineering degrees from all over the world to take your jobs, but since our donors want it, we will start this process and in twenty years time all those things will have taken place, so prepare yourselves accordingly”. That at least would have given Joe Sixpack a heads-up.
At the same time, we have put more teachers (usually female) in schools to shrink class-sizes, put more nurses on floors, and expanded office girl jobs ad nauseum, giving loads of women employment. Once the head of HR is a female, she typically will try and hire as many women as possible in the offices (they have no qualms about which side they are on). I once knew a woman that worked in a suburban mortgage retail location. Out of 10 people in the office, 9 were females. Only one was not white. The head of the office was a white female and thats all she wanted to hire. She was a resentful divorced woman to the nines.
Women look at this stuff as “empowering’ and then wonder, Maureen Dowd-like, where are all the “acceptable” men for themselves……..and why so many are having to put off having a family for so long?
2 novaseeker // Jul 24, 2009 at 8:47 am
From what I have seen working in corporate America for almost two decades now there are a few “types” of women in the workplace, both in terms of working style *and* personality type:
Working Style
===========
1. Die-hard careerists. This type sacrifices everything to advance her career. She often has never been married, or if she was married, was only married briefly. She almost never has children. She works long hours like the men do. Women like this advance well in the workplace, but are sometimes capped depending on personality type.
2. Mommy Trackers. This type works far fewer hours than the die-hards and most men. Often they arrive late and/or leave early without comment. Many are on flexible work arrangements like working from home or job shares, and quite a few are on part time. These people take up slots without adding much productivity.
3. Normal workers. 9 to 5 types, mostly in non-career-advancement positions.
Personality Types
=============
1. Corporate ballbuster. This type thinks she needs to act exactly like a man to advance. Often the die-hards are this personality type – mannish in demeanor and dress, verbally aggressive and pushy – are uncomfortable for men and women alike to work with. Typically I have seen many women with this personality type get “capped” in middle management. They are smart enough and hard working enough to advance further, but their personality issues prevent them from doing so. Often they get very bitter about this and, being stuck in middle management, take that out on their direct reports (men and women alike).
2. Soft-touch tomboy. This type is assertive without being aggressive. She is comfortable around “the boys”, and not alienated by them, but she doesn’t try to act like a man. She comes across as a confident woman. This type, if they are careerists, tends to advance the furthest the fastest.
3. Girly-girl. This type is overtly feminine, spends a lot of time gossiping with other women and flirting with the more desirable men, and dresses in a sexy way. More of these women are in non-advancement positions, like secretaries, HR functionaries and the like.
The impact issue of all of this on the workforce has been huge.
The bottlenecking of the careerist ballbusters in middle management has created a hostile work environment for men and women alike as these bitter women, angry at men in particular for what they consider to be a double standard (wrongly, as they often underestimate the soft people skills of the men who advance beyond them, assuming that anyone with a penis has bad people skills), and lashing out at their underlings. Women hate bosses like this as much as men, in fact. They are presently a corporate nuisance.
The mommy trackers, which are distributed among all three personality types, but mostly slide towards more girly girls over time, are a mixed bag. Some of them are simply riding the gravy train, and feel entitled to do so because they are mothers. That creates resentment among other workers – men, yes, but also women who decide to work full time or not have kids – the mommy wars issue. Others of them are resentful that they have to cut corners on their career – in other words they are ballbusting careerists who decided to have kids and hate the way their kids make inroads into their career advancement pacing. They tend to be full of anger and resentment, and have an air of desperation about them as well – a good number of those end up divorced, probably because they resent their husbands for allowing them to decide to have kids.
The girly girls, although often not very career-advancement oriented, are basically the sexual side of the hostile work environment. These are the women who are sexually provocative and flirty even though there are workplace rules against harassment – essentially a good number of them are a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen. The ballbusters and tomboys generally hate these women and do not treat them well at all. The angst is returned in kind.
Sprinkled in amongst all of this is the group of women – small, but there – who are girly-girl careerists who will use their sexuality to advance their careers – aka sleeping to the top. This is more common in some industries than in others, and of course this creates a lot of tension and resentment among coworkers.
So on balance, I’d have to say that while the women who are soft-touch tomboys have been a tremendous advantage to the workforce, the rest of them (which vastly outnumbers the soft-touch tomboys) are a net drag, either because they are working in non-productive jobs, or working in a less productive way at career positions, or filled with anger and resentment at the “system” for capping them because no-one can get along with their bitchiness. The female fantasy about “bitches get things done” (see: Tina Fey) is mostly a fantasy – bitches get capped in their advancement, often, outside of a handful of pink collar ghettos and women-owned businesses.
3 Welmer // Jul 24, 2009 at 9:10 am
Good point about the immigration and outsourcing, Miles. For some reason, I never really thought about the fact that the vast majority of decent jobs that have disappeared overseas or been “insourced” here at home have been men’s jobs.
Novaseeker, thank you for the info. I’m actually pretty naive when it comes to the corporate environment. The only jobs I have held for a significant amount of time have been in small businesses that were overwhelmingly male.
I don’t know that I could survive in a corporate environment, because I have a tendency to speak my mind, and the impression I get is that women really can’t stand that. The guys I’ve worked with, on the other hand, have usually liked me just fine, except for a few of those bitter old bastards you can’t really avoid anyway.
I wonder what Lukobe would have to say about your categories — he’s got a lot of corporate experience under his belt.
4 Justin // Jul 24, 2009 at 9:42 am
In my experience, it is remarkable how dominant young childless females are in lower/middle management. Upper management loves to exploit them because of their energy to work the longest hours and no family life to compete for their time. And yes, most are very difficult to work for, as they can be almost inhuman in their micromanagement and adherence to rules. The only men who survive in the corporate world today are extremely compliant and adept at dealing with these uppity women.
5 Justin // Jul 24, 2009 at 10:03 am
Have you seen the latest critique of our secretary of state? Sounds to me like an indictment of the type of really bad unprofessional behavior that women get away with here:
“We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said, according to North Korean media. “Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.” The also called her unintelligent.
6 alphadominance // Jul 24, 2009 at 11:03 am
I don’t know that I could survive in a corporate environment, because I have a tendency to speak my mind, and the impression I get is that women really can’t stand that.
Yep, it sucks. Just like in dating they particularly don’t like their logical inconsistencies pointed out.
Also, given women are known for their effective communication, I find female co-workers can be just like women you are dating in that their moods are unpredictable and non-compartmentalized. One day they are cool and moody for no reason, another they are blowing up for no reason, etc. They also don’t seem to be able to come out and say what they mean. On numerous occasions I have had a woman say “well I told you X” when she never did. She merely thought she was implying it. Implications allow each party to assume something different, and if you are the subordinate in a situation, you can’t help but assume wrong. I’ve found minimizing interaction, and forcing the explicit statement of their requests is the only way to get by with a female boss, however the ideal is to get the hell out of there pronto.
7 Derek // Jul 24, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I’ve had 3 female bosses and 2 male bosses at the places I have worked.
My first boss was the soft touch tomboy that Novaseeker described. Easy to work with, productive.
Second was very much the ball buster with mental problems. Was always changing her mind, would go on and on how great she was and generally made very random and often bad decisions. The other thing was you had to be extremely loyal to her, or she would see you fired. It was all friends who people she wanted to take down. She was eventually removed when she was found hiding under her desk complaining about invisible things attacking her… I shit you not.
3ed boss does not really confirm to any category that I know of. She liked to mother the younger geeks and yet had the same demands for absolute loyalty and anything deviation from her line was met with insults and diression. She favored the younger female employees quite openly prompting them, constantly praising them, ect.
She also always had to have a target to harass. She would launch into crazy personal and professional attacks aimed at person during the course of the week. Someone was always on her shit list for weeks and months at a time and everyone but the younger girls always did everything possible to avoid being her target. I end up quitting my job after being harassed for her for a year after working just fine under her for 6 years.
It’s much, much harder to try to prevent a women and in this case a Latina from harassing you. Any complaints you make results in counter complaints of racism and hating women.
Management simply does not want to deal with the lawsuits that would result from doing anything about a person of such a protected class.
Personally I don’t ever want a women as a boss again.
8 Welmer // Jul 24, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Yeah, I saw the NK jabs at Clinton. They’re just saying what everybody else is thinking.
I really can’t believe Obama gave her that job. She is the last person I’d choose to handle foreign affairs, and the North Koreans are right: she really isn’t that smart.
9 BeltainAmerica // Jul 24, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I could write a book on this subject. I have seen the influx of women managers in two different industries and it has been terrible.
After I left the Army as enlisted and went to college I took a job at a hotel as a simple desk clerk. Within 2 years I had moved up through the ranks from desk manager to banquet manager just from being the one who always did his job and got things done. Then the general manager took a more prominent job and they moved the sales manager up to general (a woman) and from that point on it was open season on men period.
By the time I left 2 years later I was the last male hold out and every employee that worked there who wasnt maintenance or a bellboy was female. There were almost daily sexual harrasment charges against a man, not legal ones mind you just inhouse and those men would be gone the next day. They finally got me that way actually when I told a server to go home after she told me she didn’t feel like working. I had ran this same server off the property 2 nights earlier because she had slipped into a wedding reception and was drinking while underage. The next day she submitted a letter saying I had sexually harrassed her. I didn’t even bother to acknowledge it and just walked out throwing my keys in the pool.
About 5 years ago I took a job working in a warehouse since I had custody of my son and needed the better insurance they offered and it was close. When I arrived there they had a few female mid level managers and a new female general manager. Int he space of 5 years they have removed over 15 male mid level and 3 male upper level managers all replaced with you guessed it women.
Even the low level jobs like forklift are filled with women now. Interestingly enough none of these women can fullfill the entire job. They may run a lift but refuse to remove cardboard bails or any of the hard or dangerous or complicated work.
Now every fall they make the few remianing males dress up in traditional womens dress and parade them around to be wooted at by the females. If the male managers refuse they are moved off to a small department and then within a few months never seen again. All this they say is for charity through the United Way.
I have even had 3 sexual harrassment complaints thrown out against me in the warehouse. I denied them all and told them if they had the evidence to fire me and see where it gets them. So far not even an official write up because I am very careful of what I say and make sure it has several different meanings.
Its insane out there and only going to get worse.
10 W // Jul 24, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Word for word this is the most frighteningly accurate post I’ve read in this sphere of blogs in a long time. And has been my exact experience in the work world. My last two jobs, both in marketing , downsized and fired by women (and currently unemployed). In fact the longest and least tenuous white collar job I’ve held was working for a man.
I completely agree with Alpha and Justin’s comments. And I will never ever work under women again. There is absolutely no wining in that situation.
That may not be practical for many guys given the times, but I would still advise that men really try to stay away from companies where the head count is overwhelmingly female.
11 Savvy // Jul 25, 2009 at 12:58 am
I’m not going to mince words. I HAAAATE working for women.
12 BeltainAmerica // Jul 25, 2009 at 12:12 pm
LOL Savvy it is unreal the number of women I work with who say the same thing.
Another thing I notice is that as each female supervisor comes through, and we go through alot of them since they move supervisors constantly. Each one will pick a certain group of women they cater to.
Usually its the very overweight lesbian crowd. These women then in turn can get away with murder and always get the choice jobs while the silent middle age women, especially the thin ones, are just bossed around and picked on.
13 Lukobe // Jul 25, 2009 at 4:05 pm
novaseeker wrote:
1. Die-hard careerists.
Man, you’ve got to read Penelope Trunk, if you haven’t already. http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/
Welmer then said:
I don’t know that I could survive in a corporate environment, because I have a tendency to speak my mind, and the impression I get is that women really can’t stand that. The guys I’ve worked with, on the other hand, have usually liked me just fine, except for a few of those bitter old bastards you can’t really avoid anyway.
Yes, but in the corporate world, it’s not just the women who don’t like you speaking your mind. It’s definitely the men as well. It’s a power thing. Your peers, be they men or women, will generally not mind if you speak your mind. Those above you, regardless of sex, are less likely to like it — and it gets worse the higher you go. This is all a generalization, of course.
Justin wrote:
In my experience, it is remarkable how dominant young childless females are in lower/middle management. Upper management loves to exploit them because of their energy to work the longest hours and no family life to compete for their time.
I think you’re right, which is why I don’t see this as a “women suck to work for” issue. I honestly think in many cases it’s (mostly male) upper management hiring women to do their dirty work for them — they are taking advantage of these women whom they put in middle management, many of whom probably know better, but feel they must “outperform” precisely because they are women and still feel they have something to prove.
The line workers, be they men or women, both end up abused — in my experience being a woman doesn’t save you from poor treatment from middle management, regardless of if middle management is male or female.
alphadominance wrote:
I’ve found minimizing interaction, and forcing the explicit statement of their requests is the only way to get by with a female boss, however the ideal is to get the hell out of there pronto.
I think forcing explicit statements and documenting issues and problems is the way to go no matter whom you work for.
As for my own personal experience, most of it has been for large corporations. I’ve had male bosses and female bosses — more female than male. Simply because of that, women are statistically more likely to come at the bottom of my list of favorite bosses. But a few are also at the top. I won’t generalize. I’ll just say that, from my point of view, it looks to be a trend where male upper management (and upper management still is largely male) hires women into lower management positions to implement policies they, for some reason, are unwilling to implement themselves. Perhaps they think people will take it better from women. I think these women middle managers are being taken advantage of and being asked to do too much, and see why they can’t stand up for their workers as much as they probably feel they should, because they feel they have something to prove and have to go the “extra mile” to impress their own bosses.
But when it comes to messing with their subordinates, it doesn’t really seem to matter whether those subordinates are men or women.
So I don’t see this as an issue of “women suck to work for” or “get women out of the workforce” or anything like that — I see it more of an issue of nefarious practices by upper management.
All that having being said, not all corporations are bad, not all management, even upper management, is bad — I would gladly work for a woman or a man in the future, and will likely do more time at corporations in the future, although for many more reasons than the above it’s not my preferred sort of environment.
I think I have learned over the last decade to recognize what’s going on, though, and am no longer as naive as I once was.
I think eventually this practice of mistreating line workers will backfire. I honestly hope people don’t overreact and start trying to force women out of the workplace, though. Welmer readers should realize that would bring back the days when a man was supposed to support his entire family on his wages. Now, how likely does that sound in the modern American economy?
Hope this makes sense…..
14 Zeta // Jul 26, 2009 at 9:38 pm
So… in sum, the men are to blame (as usual), right Lukobe? Women share no responsibility in their actions, the evil upper management (“mostly males” as you said) made them do it!
By the way guys, can you recommend many vibrant industries that are mostly male? Things seem really hopeless to a young guy like myself when even forklift jobs are apparently being overrun with fems (and a work requirement in some of those jobs is now… crossdressing? nice).
I hate this county and honestly, if I was more motivated, I’d be working on expatriating. Let it burn.
15 Justin // Jul 27, 2009 at 9:25 am
Zeta, learn a trade. Those guys make great money, without having to pass through the feminist meat grinder called college, and they are the most empowered to work for themselves.
16 Lukobe // Jul 27, 2009 at 9:47 am
Zeta, that is not what I’m saying at all. Middle management has a part in it as well. I’m just saying that, as in most cases, it’s those at the top who are ultimately to blame. That doesn’t mean those in the middle aren’t taking advantage of the situation, of course. But it’s not as clear-cut as you seem to think it is. Or do you think the workplace was just hunky-dory before World War II?
As for hating this country, wanting to leave, and wanting it to burn, go ahead and take off — don’t know where you think it’ll be any better.
17 BeltainAmerica // Jul 27, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Lukobe
I don’t know about every company but I know about mine and I wouldn’t say it was the fault of upper management. To be honest the upper boys did cave in and start promoting women. Then it got to the point anytime a woman applied and didn’t get hired for the position she desired there was a complaint and or legal action. Then finally women broke into the upper management and that was the end of men period in supervisory or management roles.
Now the feminist management idea of micro management, total unrealistic numbers and constant threats has taken hold so hard that any man who tries to break into a supervisor position never makes it passed the training period before most of them just say they can’t treat people that way.
I think this end result was forced on the upper management as much as men in general and they didn;t know what to do about it either.
18 BeltainAmerica // Jul 27, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Also I would like to add that having talked to several women who have worked in my company 20 years or more I get the same response.
Things were never like this when the men ran the plant…
So the very abuse of line workers you talk about grew more severe as the women had to “make a name for themselves”.
As for Zeta just find a job that requires physical labor the women NEVER want those jobs.
19 Lukobe // Jul 27, 2009 at 1:30 pm
BeltainAmerica, no doubt. The colleague who I feel was worst done by was herself a woman, with a female manager.
As for your advice to Zeta, though, what if he’s not suited? I could do physical labor if I had to, but it is definitely not where my most valuable skills lie.
20 Zeta // Jul 27, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I’m pretty decently suited towards physical work. The thing is though, Beltain, isn’t forklift usually considered to be more in the “hands on” area of work? It’s certainly closer to that, in my mind, than sitting at an office. If things in that area can be that bad, I have to wonder if there’s any escape. Any job that women want entry into, they’re going to get it. All of that competition from foreign labor isn’t exactly helpful, either.
21 BeltainAmerica // Jul 27, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Zeta well yes but the reality of running a lift is that it takes zero strength or actual labor on the drivers part. Unless they drop a load or get a section that requires palletizing.
The reality is that the women always manage to get put in the sit down lifts and get the sections that require no physical labor or difficult jobs. Running cardboard bales is a good example it takes some physical effort ont he drivers part to get the bale ready and then some pretty good back and forth manuevers to get the bale out without breaking it. I have several times felt like my lift was going to go over while doing it.
The women refuse to do it, yet they sure want the extra money being a lift operator gets them.
It is the same with the actual labor jobs the women want the extra wage but they will only do the “lighter” of the manual jobs. Yet if a man cannot keep up with the full spectrum he can be assigned to he is let go, the women never seem to get assigned to the really heavy spots.
Like Lukobe I am wasted on manual labor, at least I think so. Graduated with a 3.75 GPA and teaching cert with a BA in History and a minor in Political Science I could have went on to be a teacher but was told flat out not to even bother until I was much older by a male principal. In truth I did try and was always mysteriously not hired.
Its been that way for close to 20 years so I just gave up and ran a lift /shrug
22 Lukobe // Jul 27, 2009 at 9:38 pm
It’s a shame the teaching profession lost you.
23 BeltainAmerica // Jul 28, 2009 at 1:27 am
I don’t if it is a shame or my Irish luck watching out for me honestly Lukobe. With my anti-feminism and base hatred of double standards I am sure I would have been arrested and maybe convicted of god only knows what.
Even in my low rated job today I am a high profile target for every fat A$$ed feminist around.
Its better today to stay under the radar as much as possible.
24 Ovid // Jul 28, 2009 at 11:28 am
“Now every fall they make the few remianing males dress up in traditional womens dress and parade them around to be wooted at by the females. If the male managers refuse they are moved off to a small department and then within a few months never seen again. All this they say is for charity through the United Way.”
Where exactly is this place,BeltainAmerica?I’d like to see an expose’ of this.Maybe we can organize an effort to do just that.
25 Lukobe // Jul 28, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I would too. Even if the traditional press won’t touch it, we all know they’re not the only game in town anymore.
26 Ovid // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:32 pm
“I would too. Even if the traditional press won’t touch it, we all know they’re not the only game in town anymore.”
So what do you say,Welmer?Anybody else out there interested in pursuing this?
27 Fidelbogen // Jul 28, 2009 at 9:47 pm
If you mean locating this company, and getting together a detailed story about this abomination. . . .
Then I will certainly help with publicity via my blog.
28 Savvy // Jul 29, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I posted the full story on NovaSeekers blog, so here is one of my I hate women stories.
I haaaaaaated my last female boss (a principal). She used to play with my hair and tell me how pretty I was. She wasn’t a lesbian that I knew of, but if a man had done those things there wouldn’t have even been a question in anyone’s mind as to what was going on or what to do. She was a royal pain. After I had a car accident she actually had the nerve to ask me if I was crying because I was in pain or because I was a cry baby. WTF? I haaaaaaated her. On the other hand, my last male boss was rational and I always felt like I was getting a fair deal. I would so rather hear about football from him than have that b*tch anywhere near me.
But the sht works both ways.
I also had a male boss who would hug me and tell me what a good job I did. One of those time he hugged me way longer than I wanted to be hugged. He was a hugger and hugged the men also, but I was very young and cute at 23–way cuter than his girlfriend. I complained that I didn’t like to be hugged by my boss (he smelled and it was creepy how long he held on that last time) and got demoted, then fired. So on the one hand he told me I was doing a good job, then on the other hand I was demoted. Fing BS!
29 Savvy // Jul 29, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Maybe I just don’t work well for others though I drink well with others.
30 Lukobe // Jul 29, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Savvy, I know it’s not this simple, but why didn’t you file a complaint either time?
31 Ovid // Jul 29, 2009 at 2:51 pm
No response,I see.No wonder MRA-ism is permanently earth-bound.Sad.
32 Fidelbogen // Jul 29, 2009 at 7:08 pm
“No response,I see.”
I see at least a couple of responses. (I think!)
(Scratching my head here. . .)
33 Amateur Strategist // Jul 29, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Where would you like us to start?
This is what I can’t stand about my blogging, I can’t be just thinking of what’s going on and complain about it, I think I need to do something, to be part of Fidelbogen’s e-mail chain to the false rape reporter for instance.
I don’t own a television station or major media, so I assume you want me to spread the word, but where can I start? What would you like me to do? (I’m not being snotty and sarcastic, I really would like a step by step process on how we can beat this particular thing)
Thanks!
34 Welmer // Jul 30, 2009 at 12:40 am
Ovid, sorry, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my kids lately. I have two weeks with them all to myself, and it’s been difficult to be regular about responses and posting for the last few days. They are only three and four, and if you have kids you probably understand why it’s hard to keep up with other things when taking care of such little ones.
Amateur, just keep up with what you’re doing, and keep researching and learning about how things work. I don’t really know how I’m going to make a difference, but I figure that effort will eventually pay off in one way or the other.
What I’d suggest is networking with guys who have some experience with this. Wisdom is seriously underrated these days, and as a fairly young guy (but not that young anymore) I find that the writings of mature men from both days long gone and today can be very helpful in formulating coherent analyses — if not always solutions (those are discovered as well, from time to time, but they can only be recognized in retrospect).
35 Ovid // Jul 30, 2009 at 10:33 am
To all;apologies for my ill-mannered post.
“If you mean locating this company, and getting together a detailed story about this abomination”
Yes, that is what I mean.I was thinking that we might send a team over yonder,preferably with some sort of video device,and conduct interviews,film the shenanigans,take down names ranks and serial numbers,and then distribute our findings far and wide.You know,raise some Hell.Rattle our tin cups against the prison bars.And if all goes well,demand justice for our brothers-and our sisters too-if you know what I mean,heh heh!
We’ll need volunteers to “raid” the joint.So,we’ll need to locate it first,and then locate the “team.”
Thats more or less what I was driving at.Lets not let this opportunity slip by.Blogging is all well and good,but me thinks we need to put some muscle behind our words.Sink our counter-fem teeth in some salty feminist flesh.Whaddaya say,boys?
36 E. Steven Berkimer // Jul 30, 2009 at 11:35 am
I’m on board. Certainly, we can post this type of thing on our site.
BeltainAmerica, can you provide any more info(where, when, etc.)?
37 Fidelbogen // Jul 30, 2009 at 10:30 pm
What’s needed is inside contacts, who can organize a resistance movement amongst the malcontents……..
And what about a good ol’ fashioned LAWSUIT by some male employee on the ground that he feels affronted, demeaned, or the like.
(When they demote him or whatever, that would be the real dynamite. But of course, he would need to keep good tight records of the whole agony from start to finish. And the ‘insider power bloc’ that I mentioned would ‘have his back’.)
A sufficiently sharp lawyer could work wonders here, methinks. And then, wah-la! A precedent-setting case!
Oh: a nice descriptive, fully fleshed-out “prose painting” of these ‘events’, and how they work, and the ostensive rationale behind it all, etc, etc…. would get everybody oriented.
Just my two bits worth of brainstorming. . . .
38 Savvy // Jul 31, 2009 at 2:40 am
Lukobe–I tired to file a complaint with the male, but at 23, you don’t know jack crap about what to do. They did have to pay me unemployment.
And with the female boss, I was in such trouble for underperforming compared to the last person who had been there for 10 years and for being injured on the job that the only satisfying recourse has been to drain their economy for the work comp disability and unemployment again. The last teacher did everything he could halfway through the year to get his job back and set the kids and parents against me. My complaints would have fallen on deaf ears.
I started keeping a blog about how bad it was:
http://www.ChoirTeacherBlues.blogspot.com
39 Savvy // Jul 31, 2009 at 2:42 am
Fidelbogen–it’s “voila”
In any case, yes, you might be able to find a lawyer to take that kind of case.
40 Fidelbogen // Jul 31, 2009 at 6:13 am
Savvy – yes, but in colloquialese, it’s wa-lah!
41 Ovid // Jul 31, 2009 at 1:26 pm
“What’s needed is inside contacts, who can organize a resistance movement amongst the malcontents……..
A sufficiently sharp lawyer could work wonders here, methinks. And then, wah-la! A precedent-setting case!”
Excellent ideas.Still,I think some outsiders ought to do some snooping around.And I want video confirmation of the little drag festival organized by the “oppressed gender.”Lawsuits can come later.After this becomes a kind of folksy cause celebre’ within the counter-fem community,and beyond.
But Beltainamerica doesnt seem interested.
42 Fidelbogen // Jul 31, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Agreed, that ‘evidence’ is to be gathered first, as the foundation for the main action. Still, having an inside team to pull wires and pave the way sounds like a logical way to go.
(And then there is the question of ACCESS. Insiders are better endowed. . .)
Video evidence can be as simple as somebody’s cell phone.
Having ‘witnesses’ to keep records and corroborate each other, naturally adds swing to the punch.
43 Ovid // Aug 2, 2009 at 4:08 pm
O.K.,we still have to locate this joint.And then locate the “insiders.” So far no info is forthcoming.
44 Fidelbogen // Aug 3, 2009 at 4:01 pm
One can only wait….
This projected video, with suitable editing, could be posted on YouTube. That could get things rolling. . . .
Then, a general web publicity campaign that would drive traffic to YouTube in a snowballing action . . .
I would say, take the basic footage, and embed it into a Flash movie. The Flash part would include some explanatory text, and some cool Flash effects.
I’m not the world’s greatest expert here, but i DO know how to build a basic Flash movie.
But alas, all of this remains a pipe dream without the the “info”.
On the bright side, this activism model (or variation) could be adapted most anywhere, when/if the ducks all line up. . .
45 Ovid // Aug 3, 2009 at 4:58 pm
“This projected video, with suitable editing, could be posted on YouTube. That could get things rolling. ..”
Yes,and on all anti-feminist blogs as well.We can raise quite a ruckus.At some point,chit chat needs to give way to action.Perhaps its too early.
46 Fidelbogen // Aug 3, 2009 at 7:20 pm
If it’s too early, then chit-chat could at least give way to a grade of talk that is superior to chit-chat.
That alone would be a vast improvement. . .
Sigh!
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