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The Most Shocking Thing About Trevor FitzGibbons Behavior Is How Common It Is
Sexual harassment is a reality for far too many women, even in progressive workplaces.
In the days since one of the countrys most powerful PR firms on the left disintegrated amid allegations that its founder, Trevor FitzGibbon, had sexually harassed and assaulted employees and clients alike, many progressives have been scratching their heads and looking inward. How could someone so enmeshed in the movementwhose clients included the AFL-CIO and MoveOn, and even feminist groups NARAL Pro-choice and UltraViolethimself be such a sexist abuser, as many women are now claiming?
But the news shouldnt be surprising, even at a progressive organization. Its only the latest sign that, while its technically illegal, sexual harassment still permeates the workplaceregardless of its ideology.
The Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, laid the groundwork for outlawing sexual harassment, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the nations watchdog for peoples workplace rights, incorporated protection from sexual harassment into its regulations in 1980, making it officially illegal. Most Americans only became acquainted with the fact that harassment is against the law when Anita Hill testified against Clarence Thomass nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991. Still, its been the law of the land for decades.
Yet, even now, women are regularly victimized by harassers at work. One recent survey of several thousand women by Cosmopolitan magazine found that a third had been sexually harassed at work at some point in their careers. Other polls regularly uncover similar figures; one from 2011 found that a quarter of women had experienced workplace sexual harassment, while another from 2013 found that one in five women had been harassed by a superior and a quarter had been harassed by a coworker.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/the-most-shocking-thing-about-trevor-fitzgibbons-behavior-is-how-common-it-is/
brer cat
(24,578 posts)covered in this article. This is in reference to earlier accusations against FitzGibbon:
This kind of responsean investigation, a rap on the knuckles, and a promise to keep an eye on the problem while allowing an abuser to keep his position, build his success and continue working alongside those who accused himhas one outcome. It emboldens the abuser, and it silences the abused. Its also fairly common. Companies dont have to get lawyers involved and risk any legal fallout. They dont have to hire a new senior employee. Everything gets swept under the rug.
Thanks for posting, niyad.
niyad
(113,348 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)New details have emerged from a bias lawsuit filed by three former employees of Merrill Lynch against the company, which alleges that during training they were instructed to read a book called Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics From a Woman at the Top and emulate its advice.
The tips in the book, published by New York Magazines The Cut, are truly shocking. I play on masculine pride and natural instincts to protect the weaker sex, says a section of the book advising women on how to get men to do their work. Unless he is morbidly obese, there is no man on earth who wont puff up at this sentence: Wow, you look great. Been working out? suggests a portion on diffusing tense situations.
...
These demeaning and rather tragic pieces of advice might well be a reality for many women on male-dominated Wall Street. Its a known Boys Club, and Wall Streeters have a track record of using women as scapegoats, instead of treating them as equals. Women are vastly underrepresented in the finance industry much more so than in other areas and hold only 8.6 percent of executive officer jobs. Women also earn less than men in finance; the top six jobs with the biggest pay gaps are financial.
Yet she keeps their money and goes back for more.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)niyad
(113,348 posts)hunter
(38,317 posts)I'm a white male who has frequent encounters with progressive organizations headed by these sorts.
It's my good fortune to be the child of a matriarchal family where the women don't take any shit. Our family is still like that. A passive- aggressive "shoulder rub" might earn the aggressor a punch in the face. (I don't claim such reactivity is a positive thing, but...)
George W. Bush is a master of this sort of creepiness:
My parents are artists. When I was young, into my early 'twenties, I lived in a very liberal and progressive California arts environment.
But I couldn't help notice the men who still existed within very traditional male dominated family and business structures. Even though they wore the clothes of hippies, listened to rock music, skinny dipped, smoked pot, etc.., proudly proclaiming themselves to be liberals or progressives. Yet aside from the costume, the man was still in charge, the wife was at home cooking dinner, cleaning house, and taking care of the kids, and maybe she had her own arts and activism, which was fine, so long as she didn't make the man of the house, or her "progressive" male bosses look smaller.
I encounter some of these people from my past occasionally, and many remain the misogynistic racist clueless rat-bastards, still believing they are some sort of progressives. Some of them are wealthy too, donating to progressive causes and candidates.
But whenever anyone calls them on their behavior, they have fits.
Even DU reeks of this kind of hypocrisy sometimes.
niyad
(113,348 posts)I remember that disgusting behavior der chimpenfuhrer exhibited to chancellor merkel.