Tuesday, February 09, 2010

This makes my head hurt...

If you look on ahead of us down the identity politics turnpike, you can see Sweden, currently pulled over to the side of the road with its hood up...
STOCKHOLM (AP) - Sweden's unemployment agency has been found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman.
So, apparently in largely atheist, egalitarian Sweden, religious discrimination is worserer than sex discrimination. Check.

I am all out of shape for the Oppression Olympics, too; I'd better get my "Oh, my rights are being trampled!" game face on before next season.

All you White Christian Hetero Males are playing with a slight handicap differently-abled score modifier, but you shouldn't let that stop you! Anybody can find their inner Identity and go get someone to Oppress it! Judging from the comments I've seen elsewhere on the internets, some of you have already figured out how to sound like stands-to-pee versions of Germaine Greer. Sack up, already.


(H/T to The Shekel.)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tam,
Based on what I know about you from your blog, you are a fine person.
But I remember the first Sexual Harassment training at my job in which we were told that if a man is accused, he is guilty, because no woman ever makes a false claim.
The second set of training said that a woman didn't have to even mention she didn't like something (anything) for sexual harassment to have happened. She could even decide years later it was harassment and sue then.
Most of us, when told by our female co-workers whose boyfriends had just dumped them that "all men are pigs," just kept our mouths shut and walked away. We did this, not because we were afraid, but because we were realistic and we needed the job to feed our families.
No whine then, and no whine now.
We just kept our thoughts to ourselves around women and most minorities because we knew political correctness ruled.
The people of quality (like yourself) and we were poorer because half or us could not dare speak freely and openly.
I am now retired and I don't have to put up with that crap anymore, Thank the Lord!

David said...

My first mandatory all-hands sexual harassment training at work was basically a 60 minute lecture on what a bunch of horny, out of control, animals every man in the work place is.

They didn't even try to disguise the belief that if we even looked at a co-worker we were guilty of anything she wanted to accuse us of.

Every man in that meeting left so pissed off that they couldn't see straight. But most of us were unwilling to make an issue of it because we had families to provide for. Several younger guys without families filed EEO complaints against the personal department that had put on the training. Most of them, even though they won their complaints, eventually had to change jobs in order to advance their careers.

The only good part was the number of women who also filed complaints because they were angry that they had been portrayed as such helpless victims.

It took several years and the annual training has gotten more balanced and informative and less damning and accusatory.

But the message was sent loud and clear in those early years to most of us - if someone complains about anything we do, the predisposition in our upper management will be to crucify us first, then put us on trial.

Anonymous said...

Come to think of it, I'd already dropped out of organized society before all this silly crap got going. I was therefore able to call bullshit "Bullshit!" without euphemizing with "meadow muffins"--and no fear for my job.

Dunno why, but the militant Libbers always seemed to go silent when I agreed that life was unfair--but their ideas of solutions were so immature as to obviate serious consideration.

Ah, well. Most folks, all they need is a handful of grow-up pills.

Art

og said...

We're all gun owners. We are the last bastion of oppression for dirtbags everywhere, even the fat and smokers have advocates but gun owners are oppressed everywhere we go.

Anonymous said...

Og, ya beat me to it.

Those who would defend what and whom are worth defending, are being shoved into the political cellar of no return.

It is the historical nature of humankind's rulers to brook no competition. I don't see that it has changed all that much, save for a couple century eye-blink on the North American continent --

which deviation from the norm is now being KORRECTED, JA?

JohnM

flave -- a slave with the illusion of freedom

Robert Langham said...

I've got to take some kind of sensitivity training as an Adjunct teacher this year. Looking forward to it.

Always wondered what would happen when the titans clashed....Islam and Women's Rights.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

The last Sexual Harassment training I was forced to attend was, of course, given by a team that included NO Caucasian Males, hetero or otherwise. During the comments session, I pointed out the double standards in their video presentations (essentially identical actions were labeled harassment when done by men, but only questionable when done by women) and suggested they correct the grammar in their printed materials and strive for subject/verb agreement ("we was," and "they has" were frequent and grating).
They denied the obvious double-standard and made no comment about the "Ebonics."
Oh well, now they "has" "they're" politically correct workplace and I am retired and gone and happy to be so.

Anonymous said...

So, apparently in largely atheist, egalitarian Sweden, religious discrimination is worserer than sex discrimination. Check.

Right.

See, they just fired him.

Had they been smart, they'd have written him up for sexual bigotry, and sent him to [strikethrough]>rehab[/strikethrough] training until he quit - or fired him at that point for being incorrigible.

It's all about the system, yaknow.

Tam said...

U-J,

If you refuse to shake someone's hand at a job interview, whether that person is male, female, white, or black, whatever the reason, you are not going to get that job. Not because of bigotry, and not because of political correctness, but because you are a dick who has difficulty comporting oneself in public with other adult human beings and will therefore be no fun to have around the office.

I don't care if you're a dick because you're muslim, a "second wave feminist", or because you leave whiny woman-hating posts on "men's rights" wb sites; the fact remains that you have exchanged being a cool human being for some bullshit "identity" that makes your presence in an office an experience similar to sand in a swimsuit.

Tam said...

...and obviously the "You" in the above comments did not refer to "You, Unix-Jedi", but rather to the hypothetical "You".

I'm know U-J is smart enough to figure that part out, but you never know who else might be reading these things.