harassed by my sexual harassment classes...

Be lucky you don't also have to take "safety training". Three straight days of that each year. Did you know you shouldn't operate a forklift without training? Or climb to the top of a rickety ladder with missing steps? If you watch these safety training videos you'd be convinced that everyone is a complete moron.

I didn't have to watch the videos and I'm still nearly convinced that everyone is a complete moron, at least when there is a lawyer in the woodpile.

I was once kicked out of a safety meeting on the dangers of walking on ice when I suggested that people needed to also be vigilant of banana peels.
 
Be lucky you don't also have to take "safety training". Three straight days of that each year. Did you know you shouldn't operate a forklift without training? Or climb to the top of a rickety ladder with missing steps? If you watch these safety training videos you'd be convinced that everyone is a complete moron.


If the poor guys at minute 1:55 of this video would have received training about forklifts, step ladders and scaffolds, and the trainer would have insisted on the importance to look ahead for dangers like electric cables, perhaps they could have saved their lives.


I predicted the tragedy as soon as the video started, but at the youtube comments there is people asking what has happened. Even from the perspective of the camera, they cannot see the cause of the accident!


Some people have their own ability and skills to take precautions and be safe, but others need to be reminded constantly of all the dangers.


 
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This is a very disturbing video. Holy shit. The guy at 1:15 was literally vaporized on the spot, protective clothing or not.

I couldn't see what happened in 2:15 due to the low resolution ... they got electrocuted. But how? Did they run the scaffold in an un-isolated cable?

Also... HOLY SHIT the first 30 seconds. These are some terrifying sounds. What happened at 0:45?
 
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The people who make these training materials realize it's all BS. The only reason companies make you take the courses are to protect themselves from litigation. When you take the course and pass you are insulating the company from any liability. If you proceed to grab a secretary's ass after the company will fire you and any lawsuit from the secretary is guaranteed to be dismissed because the company "reasonably engaged in workplace education".

It's all because of lawyers and people trying to exploit a broken legal system. So the people making the training videos are laughing their asses off using stereotypes.

Be lucky you don't also have to take "safety training". Three straight days of that each year. Did you know you shouldn't operate a forklift without training? Or climb to the top of a rickety ladder with missing steps? If you watch these safety training videos you'd be convinced that everyone is a complete moron.

I work for a very large multi-national company and have had to take all manner of this sort of training. Sensitivity training. Ethics training. Security training. Etc. Our training is almost all on-line. There are Q&A things, videos, narrated slide shows, etc. The first year we had the ethics training was hilarious. Every single culprit in the example videos was either a woman or minority. Apparently, an alarming number of people responded similarly to the "what did you learn" open-ended question at the end. Things like "I learned that Spanish people bribe government officials", "women are responsible for sexual harassment", "black people steal", etc. Needless to say the next year all the culprits were white males.
 
This is a very disturbing video. Holy shit. The guy at 1:15 was literally vaporized on the spot, protective clothing or not.

I couldn't see what happened in 2:15 due to the low resolution ... they got electrocuted. But how? Did they run the scaffold in an un-isolated cable?

Also... HOLY SHIT the first 30 seconds. These are some terrifying sounds. What happened at 0:45?
I watched an idiot cut a 450v mains cable once that was live. Prime example of the dangers of drug use and the workplace.
 
Be lucky you don't also have to take "safety training". Three straight days of that each year. Did you know you shouldn't operate a forklift without training? Or climb to the top of a rickety ladder with missing steps? If you watch these safety training videos you'd be convinced that everyone is a complete moron.
You forgot ITAR, Sarbanes-Oxley, insider trading, intellectual property, and corporate security. Annually or it will reflect on your end of year rating.
 
Speaking of sexual assault and harassment training....I drew some dirty looks by making a comment in a class about a year ago. The instructor gave us two stories where a girl was raped by multiple people and in both stories she started out with the fact that the girls were passed out drunk.

Now I would never condone any kind of act like that, but I'm also the type of person that applies risk management strategies to everything and to me common sense was just screaming out so I piped up and asked "well why wouldn't you be talking to women about not allowing themselves to become black out drunk around a bunch of men?" I got gasps. I know how it could have sounded, but if the actual point of the training is to prevent this kind of thing then you have to look at everything or you aren't being pro-active and nearly as effective as you could be.

The bottom line is that if those girls hadn't been blackout drunk chances are that those rapes wouldn't have happened. Not to mention that being blackout drunk isn't exactly like just going to the store; its not healthy, it's dangerous for a whole litany of reasons and it's just stupid. There's a distinct difference between unwinding or even having fun and becoming nearly comatose from your body shutting down because you have poisoned it.

That absolutely does not make what happened to them acceptable or any less horrific...it doesn't. I'm just saying that if I had a daughter we're going to talk about being safe and not getting into dangerous situations. What kind of horrible father would think his daughter should be getting passed out drunk around a bunch of men that are probably drunk as well? It's like driving down the road at 100MPH with your eyes closed and hoping for the best. Be smart.

At a minimum use the buddy system and have a friend look out for you.

Then I turned to the audience and asked them "why do men buy women drinks?" It was like I had just blown the lid on some big cover up that everyone was trying to hide. Its about trying to "loosen up" a girl because guys want to have sex. I mean men just don't buy women drinks with the intent that by 2AM she'll get some puke in her hair. It's to get her to do something that she may not do with 100% of her faculty and decision making capabilities.

More gasps and looks of disdain and I soon become the "creepy, rapey guy" which I found to be extraordinarily amusing. I'm not condoning rape, I'm just saying "don't be stupid". I think that I even made a reference to the old windowless van with "free candy" spray painted on the side as an analogy.

Of course over the next week or so I had about half the class come up to me and say that they saw my point and agreed, but I think that there was some kind of collective or social pressure to act like I was out of my frickin' mind.

As for the other conversation in here, many politicians are lawyers and the best lawyers not only can win the cases where there is overwhelming evidence and facts stacked to the ceiling against them, but they get off on it.

The difference is that in court is that if your argument is based on complete bullshit there are checks and balances in place, laws preventing/protecting from it and potential consequences....not in politics. There simply is no accountability for lying and to be honest it's almost required in today's world. It doesn't matter what the moral, ethical or factual circumstances are; you just say what your constituents want to hear and you don't really care what the results are so long as it gets you re-elected. Even worse their position is basically determined by the people that paid to get them where they are.

So we've basically got highly talented, overly litigious, bought out, lying shills.
 
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Now I would never condone any kind of act like that, but I'm also the type of person that applies risk management strategies to everything and to me common sense was just screaming out so I piped up and asked "well why wouldn't you be talking to women about not allowing themselves to become black out drunk around a bunch of men?" I got gasps. I know how it could have sounded, but if the actual point of the training is to prevent this kind of thing then you have to look at everything or you aren't being pro-active and nearly as effective as you could be.

The bottom line is that if those girls hadn't been blackout drunk chances are that those rapes wouldn't have happened. Not to mention that being blackout drunk isn't exactly like just going to the store; its not healthy, it's dangerous for a whole litany of reasons and it's just stupid. There's a distinct difference between unwinding or even having fun and becoming nearly comatose from your body shutting down because you have poisoned it.
Look, I absolutely get your point here and believe me; I'm at least partially with you on one point that is:
"friends don't let friends get so drunk that they pass out".
Or rather: "friends don't let friends alone when they passed out".

That being said: at a certain level of alcohol (and/or social/private pressure) things like this can happen.
Everyone is a human being after all. Maybe this girl lived through hell the days before the party and just wanted to forget about it. It happens.

Putting *any* blame - no matter how tiny - on the girl who passed out for the resulting rape is just very dangerous argumentative territory.
Don't do it. It's bullshit.
Mistakes happen. Life happens. Taking advantage of anyone who is clearly not able to express any kind of consent is outright disgusting and inexcusable. There is no reason at all to give the victim any kind of partial blame on whatever happened. Same goes for "she clearly wanted it... look at how she was dressed!". Duh. Maybe she just wanted to feel pretty just once after a horrible week?

Seriously, in most countries in the world simply ignoring someone who passed out from alcohol is illegal as denial of assistance.

But I absolutely agree with you on the "buy a girl a drink" thing. I hate it. I always tell girls that I won't do that as I feel it sends the wrong message. Besides, the unfortunate implications are: I'm too boring to get an interesting conversation going, so I need alcohol to be mildly entertaining?
 
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Seriously, in most countries in the world simply ignoring someone who passed out from alcohol is illegal as denial of assistance.
Once my friend and I were walking in a busy shopping street and there was a drunk woman lying in the gutter with people stepping/tripping over her. As I went to bend down to check she was breathing ok and at least help her to a safer spot, 3 or 4 passers stopped and formed some sort of kangaroo court and told me to leave her alone or I could be accused of something inappropriate as soon as I touched her ...... pure madness.

( I told them I was from the country and we tend to help people a little when in need ...... my friend's rather more direct to the point statement to them made them move on without further comment :) )
 
Once my friend and I were walking in a busy shopping street and there was a drunk woman lying in the gutter with people stepping/tripping over her. As I went to bend down to check she was breathing ok and at least help her to a safer spot, 3 or 4 passers stopped and formed some sort of kangaroo court and told me to leave her alone or I could be accused of something inappropriate as soon as I touched her ...... pure madness.
This is ... horrible. I suppose "Norn Irn" is urban for ireland?

Seriously, even if they are breathing and "just" unconscious, I'd still call ambulance for two reasons:
- people can suffocate on their own vomit
- even if they reek of alcohol, you don't know if there weren't any drugs involved.
 
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Look, I absolutely get your point here and believe me; I'm at least partially with you on one point that is:
"friends don't let friends get so drunk that they pass out".
Or rather: "friends don't let friends alone when they passed out".

That being said: at a certain level of alcohol (and/or social/private pressure) things like this can happen.
Everyone is a human being after all. Maybe this girl lived through hell the days before the party and just wanted to forget about it. It happens.

Putting *any* blame - no matter how tiny - on the girl who passed out for the resulting rape is just very dangerous argumentative territory.
Don't do it. It's bullshit.
Mistakes happen. Life happens. Taking advantage of anyone who is clearly not able to express any kind of consent is outright disgusting and inexcusable. There is no reason at all to give the victim any kind of partial blame on whatever happened. Same goes for "she clearly wanted it... look at how she was dressed!". Duh. Maybe she just wanted to feel pretty just once after a horrible week?

Seriously, in most countries in the world simply ignoring someone who passed out from alcohol is illegal as denial of assistance.

But I absolutely agree with you on the "buy a girl a drink" thing. I hate it. I always tell girls that I won't do that as I feel it sends the wrong message. Besides, the unfortunate implications are: I'm too boring to get an interesting conversation going, so I need alcohol to be mildly entertaining?
Well that's the thing, there was no shifting of blame to the victims in my comments, but it obviously could have been interpreted that way.

A better way to explain it might be to say that there is a huge difference between being a helpless victim in a circumstance no one cannot control and unwittingly putting yourself into dangerous situations that increase your chances of harm exponentially. As much as we would like to think that talking about the situation and training people can solve the entire problem it just isn't true....there are always going to be horribly ugly people in this world and they are going to hurt other people....hell there are even pretty decent people that have a momentary lapse of reason and hurt people; and a lot of those times alcohol is involved. I'd love to see the numbers on sexual assault with and without alcohol being involved. I am pretty sure that no one would be surprised by the ratio.

So your scenario about the girl having a horrible time prior to the party and finding relief through getting blitzed is exactly the type of scenario that I am talking about. Her innocence is not in question at all; she's a victim, but drinking to the point that she is passed out removes all of her ability to help herself.

My point was simply that we can talk until we are blue in the face about how bad it is to rape someone but I am pretty sure that everyone knows this. Most of this training is exactly what Cliff said; it's to cover the corporation's ass to prevent lawsuits. That's not prevention of the problem and it doesn't help the victims at all as it still leaves them with absolutely no tools to help themselves. Talking about risk mitigation gives them something to use to help themselves. That's why I spoke up and probably why the majority of people roll their eyes in these classes....they aren't telling us anything that we don't already know. Rape is bad; sexual assault is wrong....duhh.

It just doesn't matter who's fault it is after the rape happened....it's always going to be the fault of the offender....the point should be to prevent it from happening in the first place and that isn't going work if we leave that to the offender.

If I was a victim I wouldn't care about guilt or fault after the fact; I wouldn't want it to happen at all. Help me help myself.
 
If you want to get your blood boiling, the "hot coffee documentary" is pretty good for that:


 
A better way to explain it might be to say that there is a huge difference between being a helpless victim in a circumstance no one cannot control and unwittingly putting yourself into dangerous situations that increase your chances of harm exponentially. As much as we would like to think that talking about the situation and training people can solve the entire problem it just isn't true....there are always going to be horribly ugly people in this world and they are going to hurt other people....hell there are even pretty decent people that have a momentary lapse of reason and hurt people; and a lot of those times alcohol is involved. I'd love to see the numbers on sexual assault with and without alcohol being involved. I am pretty sure that no one would be surprised by the ratio.
The thing is (and that was one of my points): mistakes happen. Sometimes social pressure is enough to drink more than you intended to. Sometimes your biology simply doesn't cope with your own expectations. And let's not forget that after a certain amount of alcohol your inhibition to drink more also lowers.
I've seen people who clearly knew their limits get absolutely wasted. I've seen people who didn't even drink much to begin with pass out on parties ("pass out" is such a general term... you know that alcohol makes you sleepy, the difference between passing out and having a very deep sleep is vague). It's not done with "know your limit". Your limit varies from day to day. A lot. Stress, sleep deprivation and social dynamics play a huge role here.

A close friend of mine actually got assaulted on a party while she was only "semi-awake". She didn't even pass out; because she could actually remember some things later on. Alcohol + Sleep deprivation is a bad combination. When she knew she wouldn't make it home, she actually asked her friend if she could take a nap in her room a go home later and had the door unlocked. Keep in mind that this was a friend's party.
 
Wait till bullshit like "unconscious bias training" rolls down from the top companies down to everyone else. White straight male? You're a racist, sexist, ageist pig unless you prove otherwise.
 
All that "Sexual Harassment" thing reminded me how few years ago in my company, top management decided to cover their ass so one of the secretaries in my company was appointed as " Sexual Harassment contact person / responsible".
Now, it all sounds pretty usual and I would not laugh so hard if the lady wasnt a real HOT divorced men eater.
I mean god, this women just didn’t had barriers (feel sorry for few guys in my office that fallen in her net), she use to come every week with "stories" from the weekend, going around and telling everybody (mostly men) about how GOOOOOOOD was the weekend.
Ironic at its best.
 
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The thing is (and that was one of my points): mistakes happen. Sometimes social pressure is enough to drink more than you intended to. Sometimes your biology simply doesn't cope with your own expectations. And let's not forget that after a certain amount of alcohol your inhibition to drink more also lowers.
I've seen people who clearly knew their limits get absolutely wasted. I've seen people who didn't even drink much to begin with pass out on parties ("pass out" is such a general term... you know that alcohol makes you sleepy, the difference between passing out and having a very deep sleep is vague). It's not done with "know your limit". Your limit varies from day to day. A lot. Stress, sleep deprivation and social dynamics play a huge role here.

A close friend of mine actually got assaulted on a party while she was only "semi-awake". She didn't even pass out; because she could actually remember some things later on. Alcohol + Sleep deprivation is a bad combination. When she knew she wouldn't make it home, she actually asked her friend if she could take a nap in her room a go home later and had the door unlocked. Keep in mind that this was a friend's party.
That's the exact kind of stuff that would be useful to discuss in these types of classes. That's all I have been saying.

It's not about blame, it's about prevention. Once you start talking about who's fault it is it's already too late because the damage has been done.
 
That's the exact kind of stuff that would be useful to discuss in these types of classes. That's all I have been saying.

It's not about blame, it's about prevention. Once you start talking about who's fault it is it's already too late because the damage has been done.
Then again, harassment classes at work are a legal thing and a legal thing only. They are not there to actually teach you stuff (that you should already know by common sense anyway). They are there because someone someone in charge decided it.

Third wave feminism is stupid. But so is slut-shaming or rape-shaming (pick your flavor). Humans have the tendency to only voice their oppinion if something is not right with them. This means that a vocal minority can make their voice heard, regardless of if their oppinions are laughed at by a majority of their own protégées (people like Sarkeesian like to think that women are some kind of hive-mind with all the same ideas).
But allowing a minority to be heard is what democracy is also about. If we deny that, the cons would outweight the pros on the long run.
 
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