The last thing Miss Gabby Burko thought she'd encounter last week was a new memo from the company she worked at that was now requiring female employees to sexually harass the male employees, but let's take a step back and start at the beginning.
Gabby Burko isn't the first woman to experience sexual harassment in the workplace. Most, if not all, woman will or do or have experienced sexual harassment at one time or another, either at work or just walking down the street. One woman, Kathy Turner, in prison for attempted murder, even told us, "I was right in the middle of stabbing him in the neck with a knitting needle and he still tried to hit on me. Like, even while being murdered he couldn't keep it in his pants. Ridiculous." But now, the tables have turned. Female CEOS have decided that they'll make sure men know what it feels like to be harassed so that maybe they themselves won't participate in such behavior. The memo Miss Burko was given gives such ideas as, "Compliment his appearance in an uncomfortable way" or "Tell him how you'd like to do things to him, whether he wants them or not". While some women think this is a ridiculous thing to do, stating that men are already sexually harassed and that this sort of reverse treatment merely hurts the feminist movement, the CEOS are still going ahead with their plan. We spoke with Janet Tillman, the head of a local feminist movement, to get her take on the situation: "I think it's ridiculous. You know, you constantly read articles that're like 'I sent e-mails as a woman for a week and it made me realize how bad they have it!' and for one, it's like okay, why didn't you just, ya know, believe us? But secondly, the entire concept of feminism is that both men and women are hurt by these things. Men are harassed just as often, men are raped, men are victims of spousal abuse. We don't want those things to happen to either group, not just women, and that's where most people lose it I think. They think that feminism is only for women. It's not. Doing this sort of puts us back into toxic traditional gender roles instead of moving us forward." And she's right. I spent the day watching women harass men at Miss Burkos place of work, and the behavior I saw only made things worse. Not only did some men not react well to it, from either going home early to getting actually violent towards their new 'oppressors', but the women in the end felt just as bad for having carried through with said memo. "In the end," Tillman told me, "It just sort of makes everyone look like a piece of shit." So what's the solution? Some suggest even more sensitivity training, while others claim people are far too sensitive to begin with and that sensitivity is the cause of this whole problem to begin with. Some go so far as to suggest separation of the sexes while they're at work, but that doesn't really work. We need to learn to work together, not be so scared that we stay apart, Society isn't going to continue if we don't stop hurting one another. Then again, on my way out, one man stated, "If women just took things as compliments instead of getting offended, we wouldn't even have this problem!" I punched him directly in the face. Hey. If he didn't want that sort of attention, he shouldn't have been asking for it. May Roach, 34, Journalist Writer of the column, "Please Kill Me Already" over at "Healthy Living Magazine"
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May 2018
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