Unfit for purpose senior business personnel [Content Warning: discussion on SA and problematic attitudes. Reader discretion is advised]

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

 

Quite a few years ago I heard a senior cisgender female executive at a company slag off at men who had been sexually assaulted by women - which is a real problem, one made worse by social hostility and bigotry of the type exhibited by that exec (and NOT exhibited by any other cisgender female exec I ever met).

That attitude is one of vengeance - “I have suffered, so therefore any/all who is in the group that I perceive as responsible should also suffer”. 

It is a mediaeval, destructive, and quite simply WRONG attitude: all sexual assault is wrong, no matter who commits it. 

In the context of a situation where that person had power over men, it rendered her unfit to hold that position. 

And that is an assessment that needs to be made about other situations as well - racists should NEVER have power over people of colour, LGBTQIASB+ phobes should NEVER have power over LGBTQIASB+ people, and so on.

To fail to make that assessment is to create and continue the risk of harm to people, which is bad enough on its own and suffices to justify that assessment, but it also creates risks for the business - compensation, reputational damage, difficulty hiring decent people in the future. 

PS - I have subsequently realised that, sadly, that person was behaving as if her office/department was a high school clique that she was at the head of, and those in it were expected to ape her mannerisms/likes/etc - much as the character Cordelia was portrayed in the TV series “Buffy” (the character eventually changes for the better in the spin-off series “Angel”). Queen Bee/Wannabe is NOT an appropriate approach to real world management of humans. 

This problem exists as equally in males and nonbinary people, and cis and trans - based on my lived experience.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below. 

Note that, as with my main blog [see here], I am cutting back on aspects of my posts.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/