the disturbing thing is that once one person steps forward it starts this roll down effect, and then you hear people that were in a position of authority saying, we head rumbles but did nothing.
Its starting to sound like a lot of people knew that Kent Hehr was a creep, but stood by, so they basically were ok with his behavior because he was their path to better salaries and power.
Its the same with Brown and Weinsteen and all of these other people.
__________________
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the disturbing thing is that once one person steps forward it starts this roll down effect, and then you hear people that were in a position of authority saying, we head rumbles but did nothing.
Its starting to sound like a lot of people knew that Kent Hehr was a creep, but stood by, so they basically were ok with his behavior because he was their path to better salaries and power.
Its the same with Brown and Weinsteen and all of these other people.
Where are you seeing this? I would be interested for sure. It seems people think he’s a creep or things like that, and some people don’t like him. I have only seen the singular accusation though, but it could be I just missed the others?
Kristin Raworth @JC4ever Replying to @JC4ever
There is literally no woman who worked in the annex who didn’t experience this. He made verbally sexually suggestive comments to all of us , who In an elevator with me and only me said “you’re yummy”. Seems nothing but ask me how many woman share stores about him?
Sarah Browning Retweeted Kristin Raworth
Warnings of Kent Hehr have been circulating the halls of Parliament Hill for over a year: "Stay away from him at receptions." "Don't let his hands get close to you." "Don't get close to him when he drinks." Expect more. The floodgates are open.
Some of you seem to be operating under the naive belief that the HR department is there to protect employees.
Maybe it should be handled under OH&S policies where the executive can be held responsible if they don't enforce and maintain safe work polices. If like in OHS violation an executive could be criminally charged for failure to maintain a safe work environment.
As a result you have policies where an employee or contractor can be kicked off of site for not tying off when working at site on a first offense. If you want real change you need to punish those who are in charge who allow the behaviour in addition to those who perpetrate it.
I'm amazed how many people totally miss the point in this way. Lordy.
I do get the point.
I also think if you're being harassed by someone who's paralyzed, you have free reign to start ####ing with his wheelchair. Put #### in his way around the office. Park in his space. Conspicuously talk about all the hikes you go on. Regale him with tales of eating cereal found only on the top shelf.
However much a creep Kent Hehr is, he's very clearly no physical threat to anyone.
__________________ ”All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.”
I also think if you're being harassed by someone who's paralyzed, you have free reign to start ####ing with his wheelchair. Put #### in his way around the office. Park in his space. Conspicuously talk about all the hikes you go on. Regale him with tales of eating cereal found only on the top shelf.
However much a creep Kent Hehr is, he's very clearly no physical threat to anyone.
Psychological threat. Equal to but not the same as a pphysical threat.
I also think if you're being harassed by someone who's paralyzed, you have free reign to start ####ing with his wheelchair. Put #### in his way around the office. Park in his space. Conspicuously talk about all the hikes you go on. Regale him with tales of eating cereal found only on the top shelf.
However much a creep Kent Hehr is, he's very clearly no physical threat to anyone.
Let's say you have a great job that you love in a career that is your dream. One day your boss or director gets in the elevator but he's in a wheelchair. Suddenly he makes sexually suggestive comments at you with a lot of pressure and other implications.
How do you feel about going back to work tomorrow? What do you do about your job? You can run away from the elevator but now you have to deal with facing that man at work and potential impact on your career if you don't play along.
You've escaped the physical threat but your career and livelihood is now threatened. Your boss could ruin your life, your reputation, your career. You could feel psychologically threatened or uncomfortable. Your relationship with your coworkers could be impacted if he did said anything against you. Your career could be impact if again he took any actions against you.
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Many large employers have anonymous ethics lines for reporting violations. I would really encourage people to use them if they are seriously worried about reprisal. It will never be the same as coming forward, but it can help.
Kristin Raworth @JC4ever Replying to @JC4ever
There is literally no woman who worked in the annex who didn’t experience this. He made verbally sexually suggestive comments to all of us , who In an elevator with me and only me said “you’re yummy”. Seems nothing but ask me how many woman share stores about him?
If his allegations were as frequent as some are claiming they were at parliament, how come they didn't make a case against him earlier? If it was so well known, and it bothered them so much, why not act then as a group? They could've yielded the same result as today by doing so. Considering his position, it's not like if they did this before the whole #metoo movement, people would've responded "so what? Deal with it."
These would be elected officials. Or even if it wasn't to them, the fact that a MP - in cabinet at that - was doing this, and brought forth to the media, would be a tough situation for him and the party to navigate through. Why wasn't it such a problem then, but now is?
Makes me think two possibilities.
One, for whatever reason women didn't want to go forward then, but feel like doing it now. It could be that they didn't want to come off as a snitch, and risk damaging the parties images. Although you figure opponents would catch wind, and use this as ammo. Although you would still have that snitch persona.
Could also be the case that along with legit claims of sexual harassment, that they could be reprimanding him for awkward encounters with how extreme the movement has become. Not necessarily big enough to bring forward earlier, but now the commentary environment on this subject has made it convenient to let it be known now.
A second possibility I'm considering it this is more commonplace on parliament hill than just Hehr. If it's this, then how come the other ones aren't getting heat? Or is this just the beginning?
(Wrote this last night right before going to bed, forgot to send it, discussion has moved on somewhat but...)
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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
I was specifically talking about using the language of personal safety to deal with people saying things you don't like (even if, as in this case, you're quite right to object to what was said). There are, surely, some contexts where words can reasonably make a person feel unsafe - if you're standing in an elevator with someone and they say, "I'm going to stab you unless you give me what I want" being a pretty simple example. But, sort of along the same lines as that apparent collective decision not to acknowledge nuance or matters of degree, there's a tendency now to suggest that anything that so much as makes one uncomfortable is tantamount to a safety threat. It's obvious why they do this: safety threats are to be taken more seriously than discomfort, and demand immediate decisive action in response to stop the person in question. So now, vague allegations about "creating an unsafe atmosphere" are everywhere - it's a go-to line to throw in to any complaint about anyone, whether it applies or not.
I strongly agree with the above, but I would like to add that even though I generally hate the whole "microaggression" line of thinking, I do think a lot of small things can add up to an atmosphere that can genuinely feel unsafe.
That said, we desperately need to come to a more common acceptance that we can't criminalize all that's bad and wrong, and not all that's legal is okay. Nor is saying "that's not illegal" the same as saying "that's acceptable".
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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Which is why a lot of older women are concerned about what they call an emerging 'fainting-couch' feminism. They're old enough to remember when women were kept out all sorts of fields of work and social situations because it was believed they were more fragile than men, and couldn't handle uncomfortable or rough language. To these women, feminism meant showing they could be exposed to crass or unpleasant speech without fainting in distress.
The problem is that one of the ways activists tend to fight against injustices is to expand the definition of those injustices. So women aren't only being encouraged not to tolerate harassment and threats (which is good), they're being encouraged to interpret any unpleasantness or discomfort as a threat. Which a) undermines more serious allegations by failing to make distinctions, and b) turns back the clock to when women were regarded as more fragile than men.
Again I strongly agree with the above, but I also feel conflicted about the issue.
On the other hand the old school feminism has mostly managed to change things from "no women allowed" to "women are accepted if they act like guys and put up with harassment", which is still very much the situation in many areas of the society. (Obviously "acting like guys" is a huge simplification for the sake of brevity, but I think the point is obvious enough.) Sure, women are not wilting flowers, but they also often have to tolerate a lot more than men, and I do feel old school feminism seems to have run out of weapons to move things forward from that point.
I also think old school feminism has a tendency to look down on women who "can't stand up for themselves". We might want to change the world, but the actual women living right now are not going to magically all turn to strong-minded independent feminists who are great at standing up for themselves, and it's unfair and just unrealistic to expect it from all of them. Our culture still teaches women to be a lot more submissive than men (and being physically smaller will always factor in here), and I think because of that we as a society need to take responsibility for the imbalance we have created in ways that "women are equal" doesn't cover.
Note that all this is just pondering on how complex this stuff is, I don't pretend to have ultimate answers to any of the stuff I've talked about here.
Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joborule
If his allegations were as frequent as some are claiming they were at parliament, how come they didn't make a case against him earlier? If it was so well known, and it bothered them so much, why not act then as a group? They could've yielded the same result as today by doing so. Considering his position, it's not like if they did this before the whole #metoo movement, people would've responded "so what? Deal with it."
These would be elected officials. Or even if it wasn't to them, the fact that a MP - in cabinet at that - was doing this, and brought forth to the media, would be a tough situation for him and the party to navigate through. Why wasn't it such a problem then, but now is?
Makes me think two possibilities.
One, for whatever reason women didn't want to go forward then, but feel like doing it now. It could be that they didn't want to come off as a snitch, and risk damaging the parties images. Although you figure opponents would catch wind, and use this as ammo. Although you would still have that snitch persona.
Could also be the case that along with legit claims of sexual harassment, that they could be reprimanding him for awkward encounters with how extreme the movement has become. Not necessarily big enough to bring forward earlier, but now the commentary environment on this subject has made it convenient to let it be known now.
A second possibility I'm considering it this is more commonplace on parliament hill than just Hehr. If it's this, then how come the other ones aren't getting heat? Or is this just the beginning?
Just to be clear, the allegations against Hehr that he has resigned over are all to do with when he was an MLA, not yet in Ottawa.
Some things we are hearing now are coming out of his time as MP but are more the "dont be alone with him" type of stuff and not actual physical/verbal abuse. At least that's how I understand it.
I'm actually kind of surprised none of this came up while he was running for mayor.
Not an indictment of the accusers as they are free to speak up when they are comfortable; however I would have imagined that some of the more nefarious war-rooms would have jumped on the chance to break this news.
I'm actually kind of surprised none of this came up while he was running for mayor.
Not an indictment of the accusers as they are free to speak up when they are comfortable; however I would have imagined that some of the more nefarious war-rooms would have jumped on the chance to break this news.
Like many have said, I think its that women now feel empowered by what's happening right now and were more comfortable bringing it forward, whereas back then it might have been more damaging to themselves than him.
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Just to be clear, the allegations against Hehr that he has resigned over are all to do with when he was an MLA, not yet in Ottawa.
Some things we are hearing now are coming out of his time as MP but are more the "dont be alone with him" type of stuff and not actual physical/verbal abuse. At least that's how I understand it.
There were allegations of him being handsy from his time as an MP that surfaced with the Veterans and Thalidomide survivors business late last year. The defense at the time was something along the line of him not having complete control of his limbs.
Similar to Brown though (the bulk of whose allegations date back to his time as a young MP), the elapsed time doesn't matter much. Politically, he's done.
Location: Wondering when # became hashtag and not a number sign.
Exp:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bownesian
There were allegations of him being handsy from his time as an MP that surfaced with the Veterans and Thalidomide survivors business late last year. The defense at the time was something along the line of him not having complete control of his limbs.
Similar to Brown though (the bulk of whose allegations date back to his time as a young MP), the elapsed time doesn't matter much. Politically, he's done.
Without question.
I would be surprised if he is even a Liberal caucus member at the end of whatever investigation they are bringing and ends up beside Darshan Kang.
