"Fear" of men

Do you have evidence of those who were given warnings/sacked? I have suggested that he find such examples as dismissal seems completely disproportionate

Then he needs to sue them missingfriend.

This is like a bad DM or snopes story.

The people I know who have been sacked for gross misconduct also always lie about the reason, or genuinely can't see that what they did was wrong.

Bat sex man is a good example. He thought it was "pc gorn mad". Irrespective of the fact that numerous female colleagues had complained about his creepiness.

Well, seeing as I have been a quasi legal adviser throughout and have seen all the hearing documents, the submissions to the hearings etc, I think I pretty much do know. Answers are:

Final Warning? No
YouTube Policy? Use encouraged as marketing tool
Virus? They didn't even mention viruses.

Do you really think your friend would say "oh no I'm on a final warning at work as I'm a bit shit and they caught me looking at youtube for 6 hours a day and they sacked me"?

The men I know who have been sacked for looking at sexual material have been looking at very definitely sexual material and over a long period of time, and some of them just got a warning.

If he is telling you the whole story I will eat my hat. Tell him to sue them. Go on.

It's like that bloody bat sex bloke all over again...

TBH I think your colleague is unlikely to be telling you the whole story.

Maybe he was on a final warning
Maybe they have a strict "no youtube" policy at work
Maybe he got them a virus into their systems
Who can say.

If they genuinely sacked him for being a pervert based on that, then he would be well placed to sue the pants off them.

Interesting how you compare it to others having photos of their own children. Assuming these are not his children, then why are you making that comparison.

No! The point isn't whether they are his kids or not its that the fear of men cost this guy his job and about two years worth of his life only because he was a man and therefore must only look at children in a sexual way. Its absolutely disgraceful.

sorry en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Bit_My_Finger for wikipedia about the most popular viral video on YouTube that was somehow seen by the an employer as evidence of sexualised interest in children.

Are they his children then, missingfriend? Why did he put them on youtube?

It also bothers me that these courses are not suitable for everyone - the most vulnerable people will remain the most vulnerable. It doesn't help the root cause, it just gives people who are probably not at such risk (being the sort of proactive confident and probably able-bodied types to sign up for a course in the first place) reassurance.

It doesn't do anything to help the people with learning difficulties, the people with physical disabilities, the frail, the people with psychiatric problems and all the rest of it.

I just think that predators should be found out and locked up, and at the moment there is little interest from the lawmakers in doing this.

I'm glad you liked your course exoticfruits

Honestly I think it is good when people do stuff like that, I just genuinely wonder about the efficacy, or whether they just give a sense of reassurance IYSWIM.

Oh god you lot are paranoid - here is the wikipedia entry for 'that video' if you are really going to gip at watching an actual video... jesus.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Bit_My_Finger

Not at the time! At the time you would have to deal with it.
I think that you are being very unfair. It was a whole course lasting several weeks. I took one tiny bit of advice, I have never had to use it but it stuck in my mind. All it really means is it is better to seek a solution, in a busy place than somewhere completely isolated. I think you are nitpicking.
Of course your 1,2 and 3 are useful, but so is thinking how to get of a situation. I have never had to use it- but learning which part of the body to go for in an attack is useful. No one is forcing you to go on a course SardineQueen, but there is no need to belittle it-somepeople might find it useful-I did.

I am also not going to click the link. Why has he put a video of his children on youtube?

Why is a woman being scared when she thinks she is being followed at night, anything to do with people getting sacked?

By the way, a male friend of mine got sacked at work for viewing this: - his employer, the University of Warwick was concerned that 'watching videos with children in' showed a serious 'no smoke without fire' concern of sexualised interest in children. His collegues who watched videos of their kids, grandchildren etc and had photos of children all over their workstations who were female got no such attention.

That is why this fear is so despicable - he will lose nearly £50,000, and his reputation is shot, and he is now paranoid about going to the cinema or theatre alone because he feels that people see him as a paedophile. It has had an astonishing effect and all because of exactly the kind of fear you are talking about here.

"With all these dark forces swirling around women"

Are women to ignore the things that men do to them, in order to fit in with society's idea of how things are?

Should we be teaching our girls that a stray hand on the bum, a grab at the crotch, having sexually explicit things shouted at them, being followed, grabbed at, wanked at and all the rest of it, are things that they should keep to themselves as they don't fit in with how society wants things to be? Oh wait.... Tell you what, wouldn't it be good if while giving them the message that they shouldn't talk about this stuff, we also tell them that if anything does happen, it is their fault!!! Brilliant!

If a woman who has had a standard bunch of unpleasant experiences in the UK is walking home by herself in a deserted area in the middle of the night, and hears footsteps following her, why should she not feel apprehensive? Why is she hysterical if she does, and falling foul of her silly female over-active imagination. Huh.

Oh come off it the idea of heading for a busy roundabout (which may or may not be there) and then stalling the car on purpose (even though it may well be automatic) when carjacked (as happens so frequently in Carshalton or wherever) is silly!

What would be useful would be:

1. The police and society take all nasty incidents of a sexual nature seriously
2. Women are encouraged to report them (as opposed to laugh it off / blame themselves / be ashamed etc etc as happens at present)
3. Police and CPS pull out all the stops to arrest and prosecute

Now that would be helpful.

If you think hard enough you can convince yourself that you are under threat all the time. Why not add ghosts and demons into the mix as well? With all these dark forces swirling around women, we will have them back in the house twirling rosary beads within a rew decades! Power to the fear factory!

Which takes us right back to the OP. The first one was a woman who knew she was illogical and wanted help- so people were helpful.The second was a woman who was illogical, didn't want help-just for us to say that she was right. Not surprisingly people turned around and told her she was being unreasonable.
My way to help the first post was to mention self defence classes, which I found useful. I have never had to use any of it but it helped to think about it in a group. You seem to find it worthy of ridicule SardineQueen, but you don't have to take my advice, it was merely a suggestion that helped me.

In the second post I told her that I was very saddened that attitudes like that stopped men from making a career in childcare-a great shame because they are much needed and it is ridiculous to have a worker who can't do his job.

In answer to OP, it doesn't surprise me in the least that they got very different responses.

I don't get it at all TBH.

Take the man I mentioned earlier who was masturbating at me on the tube. I didn't feel afraid, I felt angry. Other girls or women might have felt afraid. That doesn't make them "wrong" or silly or any of the other things which people seem to be suggesting.

And yet you felt reassured for being told a way out of a car-jacking, even though it is highly unlikely to happen, and if it did there is no way of telling whether you would be able to follow through with the tactics, whether for practical or emotional reasons.

Pretty illogical, huh.

Quite. Which is why I personally have no worries about male nursery workers.

However I don't think it is at all appropriate for one person to tell another what they should or shouldn't be apprehensive of. Everyone has their own experiences and background, if they feel afraid of something then that is the response they are having. You can't tell them it's "wrong".

Can't do any harm to talk about it ,even though you have no idea how you would react. I am glad that you said car jackings were so rare that you didn't need to worry. I would imagine it is on the same scale of risk as male nursery workers taking DCs to the toilet.

Just made me laugh.

Plus

How many car jackings happen in the UK? Sod all. All of these lists of things and tips and blah just make us more fearful IMO.

Any person who has the wherewithall to act in a clever fashion in one of these situations is pretty much just like that. They will do it whether they have heard the tip about roundabouts or not Some people can remain calm and think of tactics when someone has a knife to their throat. Some can't. Not sure what benefit the tips are TBH.

When I was on the wrong end of an armed robbery, I froze. So did most of the other people there. You don't know how you're going to react until it happens. Some people freeze, some people fight, some people remain calm, some people lose the plot. Sure talk about hypothetical situations, practice them, maybe it will help, a little. But when confronted with a highly dangerous and possibly armed person who is much bigger than you, unfortunately the usual answer is sorry mate you are stuffed. And there's nothing wrong with that.