It happened to me when I was in the corporate world long long time ago. A girl colleague of mine and I would text in a friendly banter with like sexual stuff for a long time. She was smoking hot dayum. I was married so I should not have been doing it in the first place lol. She eventually threw me under the bus when another colleague (another woman) said I said something I didn’t say to upper management. Looking back it was the best thing that ever happened to me work wise. But it was a difficult time when going through it as they fired me and I had lots of splaining to do ...lol. Never ever ever ever post, tweet or text anything that can come bite you in the ass. 24 hour rule works when you are heated up.
My sister is a Senior VP at a major multinational Medical Device Company ($133B). I sent her the OP Bloomberg article and she replied that she has definitely noticed executive males being very reserved, cautious, and PC these days. And they are laying off social media big time. In her opinion this is NOT a good development for career professional women - especially the younger ones.
So true. Men are now weaponizing victimization, like being born into privilege can come close to the experience of being treated like a second class person throughout life regardless of profession. https://qz.com/quartzy/1477709/oglivys-smart-dress-shows-how-often-women-are-groped-at-clubs/ The experiment to pretty fascinating, especially the reactions of men when they showed them whom did the 'unintentional' groping.
I think it's being exposed, and how such behaviours are used for power-games and hostage-taking as well. Though in older times women needed chaperon and in less mature cultures women can't go out alone, have to cover themselves, cannot become priests, etc. Similar power-games are being used on both genders though. What do you say when your priest secretly just groped you? Of course, all this has been under the lid for centuries. It's really about some people feeling above rules and law, and living by separate standards themselves. That may well be OK perhaps, but perhaps not when the fist pierces through your nose. Current leadership in the world is misaligned with survival.
I am glad you acknowledge that the same power-games are being played by both genders. Yes now the priest that has secretly groped you and that is NEVER ok true and is now being exposed to the light and made to face the music but what do you do when someone accuses someone of groping when nothing of that sort ever happened and that person is just doing that to get ahead? That is equally not ok but does that come to light now? Do we go through a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it and find out the truth? And if the man is really innocent, do we actually apologize to the man for wrongfully accusing him, reinstating his position and recognition? That's the problem. Men are not afraid of #MeToo per se. If it really helps us to build a better society and foster healthier corporate culture then that's an absolutely good thing because we all have our daughters, grand-daughters, sisters, mom that we want to see work in a safe and respectful working environment and succeed but it doesn't. What they are afraid of is that they can lose everything that they've worked their whole life for in a whim just because of something that they didn't even realize that they did and they have no way to prove his innocence. It's his word against hers just like in that movie "Disclosure". Imagine in that movie she was the one who was actually raping him and yet she had the audacity to accuse him of "sexual harassment". Imagine that she didn't. I mean guys pat each other on the back all the time as a friendly gesture, so if it's a woman, is that friendly pat on the pat sexual harassment? Just saying "hi" and smile, is that sexual harassment? That accidental bump by the knee when meeting with the woman alone in the office, is that sexual harassment? What if it was once? What if it was twice? Where do you draw the line? At that time, that woman might not say anything but she felt "humiliated" and "violated" but after twenty years, when the man has given his whole life and ready to retire with pension, all of sudden the woman comes out with the "allegation" and the man gets fired and since it's cause, no pension. The woman just saved the company $millions and gets to break through the "glass ceiling" and gets the man's job. Those Wall Street guys are nervous? Imagine the male gynecologist who has to give the female patient the physical exam after this #MeToo!!!
It takes two to tango. If she was sexting with you too, why wasn't she fired? She was sexually harassing you too, no?
I didn’t keep my text, she showed only text that came from me not hers and HR already had it in their mind that it was my fault. They didn’t want to hear anything.
I get where the "victimized man" thing comes from, I was falsely accused of sexual harassment early in my career so I have some first hand experience, although in my experience if you're a stand-up guy it's pretty certain even in government that you'll be quickly cleared and your accuser punished in this type of situation. On the flip side, the cases of men falsely accused of harassment are so rare that nearly every one of them makes national news where as the number of cases of women who are full on raped in the workplace is more or less common place. Twenty percent of women will be raped in their lifetime, twenty freaking percent! So at some point I have a hard time feeling sorry for us men in general cowering in a corner crying about the unfairness of it all, which is frankly pretty damn rampant in this thread. In the vein of turning lemons into lemonade, all of you with your phobia of women have created a great opportunity for entrepreneurs like me. I'm generally able to hire far more qualified and harder working women than a startup like mine would normally be able to rate and that in turn engenders a high degree of loyalty. So I'm a little torn. All you sniveling cowards who are afraid to meet at Starbucks for coffee with a female coworker gives me a much better workforce than I'd otherwise have, but from a societal standpoint its really not good for any of us.
It was consensual banter back and forth which she made appear to be one way. I was married and should had not been doing that, hence the deleted texts. I was dumb and she was smoooooooking hot. What can I say I learned my lesson.