A recent investigation into new policies of financial corporations reacting to the Me Too movement has unearthed a rapidly expanding trend toward discriminatory policy responses designed to segregate workplaces based on sex (more, I mean) and thereby cut women off from plausible access to promotions as punishment for the existence of this movement. In fact, one wealth adviser interviewed went as far as to claim that simply hiring women is "an unknown risk" that should be embarked upon minimally in the future.
The problem with these new policies of imposed isolation for women?
I think this consequence is intentional. It's collective punishment by powerful men for the existence of a climate wherein calling out predatory sexual behavior is now more acceptable than it has been in the past.
It also shows you that once more that, in a capitalist system, people are viewed in monetary terms, not in human terms. This is occurring because women are not being viewed as assets, but now as potential legal, or at least PR, liabilities. Were we thought of as people, then maybe the natural response would be to, you know, just don't demand that a colleague get on the desk and spread her legs for you or threaten to fire a subordinate if she doesn't have sex with you. I don't feel that these are difficult or unreasonable lifestyle changes to make. There is no need for this kind of hyperbolic, juvenile drama.
As people here know by now, I'm a proponent, and defender, of exclusive spaces for women. BUT what I'd point out here is the contrast of logic between this trend on Wall Street and say
the highly popular women-only rail cars that were introduced in Tokyo, Japan back in 2000. The latter is something that was, and is, demanded by women, to which end participation is optional. Single-sex rail cars were introduced in Tokyo to protect women against pervasive groping on rail cars by predatory men and nearly 70% of women who live in Tokyo still support them because having that option makes them feel safer. Wall Street's segregation of financial workplaces by sex right now, by contrast, is occurring for the exact opposite reason: to protect predatory men from women, to which end participation is not optional and is occurring within the framework of almost exclusively male-owned institutions wherein men one-sidedly control the hiring and promotion levers. (e.g. 85% of Wall Street executives and 74% of senior financial managers are male, as are 63% of even just ordinary, low-level managers. These stats can be found in the article at the first link above.)
As the first article above also points out, this trend isn't limited to the financial sector either. It's happening more broadly across corporate America to varying degrees.
During the summer, I pointed to a similar development in a space that I frequent even, gaming, wherein the internet's most prominent profession video game streamer revealed that he refuses to stream with women on the grounds that
"If I have one conversation with one female streamer where we’re playing with one another, and even if there’s a hint of flirting, that is going to be taken and going to be put on every single video and be clickbait forever. The only way to avoid [the rumors] is to not play with them at all." He wants to shield his wife from rumors of infidelity, he explained. Problem is that the effect is the same as it is in the area of finance: female pro gamers are few and far between (too few and low-profile to have the plausible option of gaining visibility and success by only ever playing with other women) and could really use visible platforms like Ninja's, and if other prominent male streamers begin to follow his example and cut off female gamers from gaining more visibility and success in streaming, the consequences for female pro gamers could be significant. So I mean this phenomenon of powerful men shutting off women on the grounds of potential sexual rumors or claims is becoming pervasive, even existing in spaces like professional gaming.
The claim that men are losing their careers (or marriages or whatever applies) over petty things like sexual jokes made in poor taste, complimenting a woman's dress, and bull$#@! like that is exactly that: bull$#@!. And you know it. No one here can produce a single example of that happening. The claims we're talking about in connection to Me Too and such are of real sexual harassment and/or abuse: of stalking, groping, requiring sex as a condition for advancement, occasionally even rape, that sort of thing. It's not difficult to avoid those types of behaviors. That's what people should do. What corporate America should NOT do is react by childishly using the Me Too movement to justify a straightforward, unambiguous power grab by men revolving around cutting women off from the corporate latter systematically for being female.
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Originally Posted by IMPress Polly
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