.
We have to laugh, or we’d never stop crying. And the Washington Post‘s Alexandra Petri (here, with Christine Emba) remains a national treasure:
The allegations that have brought down powerful men in Congress and Hollywood are making things around the workplace uncomfortable. Men wonder: Is it still okay to hug a woman? Okay, well, is it still okay to hug a woman and whisper in her ear, “I have $5 million for you if you’ll let me put a child in your child-receptacle, whatever your name is?” Some men are looking back over their own past behavior, terrified they may have, unknowingly, made a woman feel uncomfortable. They want to know where the line is…
Some have lost their jobs for grotesque activity spanning decades, others for a simple query such as, “Okay, Rhonda, how MUCH money for me to rent your womb?” or, “What do you mean, you do not want a box of dildos?” It is those latter cases that have men sweating at their desks. Will they lose their jobs? Should they have offered money for sex instead? Or asked a male colleague to bear their offspring?
“My guy friends are all very alarmed,” says Angela, who asked that her last name be withheld on the grounds that she might have to interact with men again in the course of her life, although she hopes not. “They keep saying, ‘If I can’t ask my subordinates to bear my children, then what can I even say to women?’ and I’m like, ‘Literally anything but that is fine.’”
Some young men worry that courtship is dead. What of the tender, delicate dance, that old ritual “where you invite her into your office, push the door-locking button, and let things take their course?” Tim (who asked that his last name not be used) mused: “What of the unsolicited picture-sending that is the first step in any romance?”…
Mocking Laughter Open Thread: “When Will Us Men Feel <em>Safe</em> Again?Post + Comments (306)