Over at Prudence, she seems to tone it down on a poor fool who’s gotten in over his head.
The specific situation: guy works in a workplace with “impact not intent” rules about what is “inappropriate” discussions and attitude-wise. His bosses are as he describes: “One of them is an outspoken radical anarchist vegan ultra-feminist who refers to herself as a dyke. The other is just a feminist.”
He’s been reprimanded for referring to someone as a “wonderful lady”, and discussing his “girlfriend” with another co-worker.
Prudie advises him to look for a job, saying:
Prudie’s been known to toss the odd mean statement (as Will notes here), but in this case I think she’s sugarcoating.Your office sounds like as much fun as an impacted tooth. I don’t see anything “positive and progressive” about older women with more power using the young male in the office as their personal piņata.
The guy had to know going in what his two bosses were. Chances are, it’s the self-described “dyke” who’s been doing the majority of the dressing-down. The attack on the word “girlfriend”, a commonly understood word in normal society to refer to a female one is dating or literally a female friend, without commonly understood connotations of prepubescent age, is fairly transparent - and I don’t think I’m out of line in surmising that perhaps the real “impact” was the discussion of hetero relationships around a woman who’s a self-professed “dyke”, which is a common word for a militantly homosexual woman.
As for the hatred of the word “lady”… again, the umbrage over a compliment and a word that would ordinarily be innocuous. Frankly, while Prudie has the right of it, I have to wonder at the common sense of a young man who walks into an office to work under “an outspoken radical anarchist vegan ultra-feminist who refers to herself as a dyke” and “just a feminist” and doesn’t think it’s going to be open season on anything with a Y chromosome.
Reading about these two women - or “womyn” as they probably prefer - makes me think that maybe, just maybe, the Taliban really weren’t such bad guys after all.
Comment by Peter — January 21, 2008 @ 8:23 am
That’s not an appropriate thing to even contemplate, Peter.
Comment by trumwill — January 21, 2008 @ 8:57 am
I’ve never run across this kind of blatant political correctness run amok in real life - I’d almost like to watch it for real from some distance. Almost like a zoo. Or an aquarium.
Comment by Barry — January 21, 2008 @ 12:55 pm
Will, we don’t always get to choose the politics of our bosses. Women take jobs with sexist men all the time — this guy is in the equivalent position.
He’s probably in a career heavily dominated by women and liberals, right?
Comment by Spungen — January 21, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
Prudie’s correspondent’s experience illustrates a major difference between gay men and lesbians. Gay men may not be sexually interested in women, but except in very unusual cases they don’t dislike women. Quite the opposite, in fact, with many gay men being close friends with women (hence the fag hag phenomenon). Yet by all appearances a non-trivial percentage of lesbians actively dislike men. Why that is so, I just don’t understand.
Comment by Peter — January 21, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
Spungen,
This wasn’t my post. It was written by my webmaster who periodically writes posts for the site. I will actually be adding my own comments in a post sometime within the next couple of days.
Comment by trumwill — January 21, 2008 @ 2:49 pm
Yet by all appearances a non-trivial percentage of lesbians actively dislike men.
Probably a quite worthy subject of analysis on its own.
Comment by Webmaster — January 22, 2008 @ 7:24 am
It’s no secret that many men are quite turned on by lesbians, or more precisely by lesbian sex. Hence the obligatory girl-on-girl scene in almost every porno movie. Just speculating a bit, but it’s possible that some lesbians think that men are trying to “convert” them rather than accepting them for what they are, and this leads to resentment toward men.
It’s different with women and gay men. As far as I know not too many women are excited by the idea of gay male sex, and they don’t try to convert gay men. Because women are more accepting of gay men, there’s no reason for gay men to dislike or resent them.
Comment by Peter — January 22, 2008 @ 8:19 am
A lot of men are flat-out nasty to and about lesbians. On the other hand, very few women are nasty to or about gay men. Even women who oppose gayness don’t actively sneer at them.
Comment by Spungen — January 22, 2008 @ 6:48 pm