Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:31 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]

This is entirely and 100% unrealistic. You put men and women together you WILL get sexual tension. There is absolutely no way to avoid it. It's part of what makes humans humans.

If you truly believe that I feel sorry for you. We might not be able to control what we feel, but we can certainly control how we react to that. Most people are perfectly capable of putting those feelings on the back burner and dealing with them outside of work.

If you think that it is only because you are not paying enough attention. Adult human interaction is very subtle. Either that or you are making yourself oblivious on purpose. This is a common approach that people use to try to avoid stress.

Or I could live in a state where such interaction is not only discouraged but considered highly offensive. Or it could be that being that I work in a career that has direct public interaction (as a government agent) and that such behavior would result in the loss of contract work and would highly damage your career. Speculation is dangerous.

They can't. The definition of professional is that your profession is a major part of your life. It's like trying to make your left arm is separate entity from your body through shear force of will.

You have a very different definition of professional than I do. In fact I think it's a highly fringe definition. My profession is what I do for a living. Being professional means being able to separate emotion and business and focus on what you are paid to do not what is underneath your coworkers clothes or other non work related items. Everyone I know is perfectly capable of segmenting and segregating their personal and professional lives.

Don't be so high and mighty.

I was doing neither, I was stating a fact about my profession. You would be mistaken to believe my profession and your profession have anything to do with each other. Sexism and even things that qualify as harassment do exist in some areas of my profession (primarily the areas where they interface directly with contractors and blue collar workers) because it's highly male dominated profession but I stated a fact when I said it doesn't exist in my office. Part of that is the local culture, part is because all but one or two people are married and the rest is because you won't be long in this career if you can't put your emotions aside and behave like a responsible adult. My profession went through this BS in the 90's when the house was cleaned and those incapable of controlling themselves found new careers.

Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:41 UTC (Wed) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

Posted Aug 16, 2012 14:56 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]