What kind of fucking reaction is this ?

Apologies - shocking number of typos in my last post.

OP good for you for doing something to stop this bully. I hope that 'L' takes heart from your firm stance.

I'm not sure If it will add to either side of the argument but wanted to give you an example of my own experience as I have found the debate on this thread very interesting.

I'm generally considered to be a confident, feisty woman. I'm certainly not someone who avoids conflict at all but I was sexually assulted (in a pub full of people) while at uni and experienced an incident of sexual harassment at work in my early twenties and I did nothing about them.

At the time I felt that I didn't want the burden of the men concerned thrown out of uni or having their contracts cancelled. Although I would say I'm not usually subject to peer pressure I dodn't want to be judged by everyone else for damaging these mens' prospects when it was made very clear to me that neither incident was considered in any way seriously by anyone else.

I understood that these were serious incidents but sadly my peers didn't not even the women.

My mother is a wonderful women, in no way down trodden. She brough me up to be strong and undependant. My Dad treats women with utmost repect and I have never heard him utter a sexist word in my life.

What I'm trying to say (in a rather inelegant way) is that it wasn't my socialisation that was the problem. It was everyone elses. I knew that if I had officially reported either incident the proper procedures would have been applied but I would have found it difficult to lose the social stigma attached to being the "silly girl who made a big fuss over a joke".

Both those incidents still upset and anger me today over 15 years later. I hope that I'm never in such a situation again but if I am I will report and be damned because I look back on those incidents with shame that I didn't stand up for myself.

While I understand your frustration with L keep in mind how bullies work, often are very manipulative and turning it round to make the one bullied feel responsible.

Keep your anger directed at the only person who deserves it and remember she is a victim who he has sadly beaten down :(

ifeelloved - I am sorry if I have offended you. I was just giving you my opinion, not personally attacking you

What would happen?

This is why I usually avoid this part of mumsnet

0h ffs. Knew this would happen.

And ifeelloved - Your mum didn't have to teach you this. Children learn loads from what they observe

ifeeloved - You were socialised to put men's needs first. You watched your mum put your dad's needs first. Observing what our parents do is an important part of socilisation. The difference is you rejected that socialisation.

Sanjeev - tbh if you can't see that women are socialised to put men's needs first then I think your understanding of feminism is at a pretty basic level.

Unfortunately I can't copy and paste on this but the comment that I objected to was on basil 1st comment. How women are socialised .... And that we are taught that we are responsible for men's behaviour...

That might be hers and I agree other women's experience but it is not mine and I refuse to accept that I am the only one. I agree that past generations may have been brought up this way but I wasn't and I'm not teaching my girls this either

"if not everything is black-and-white, then to say that all women are socially conditioned to pander to men's needs above their own is also too simplistic"

Nobody is saying that all women, without exception, fall in line with this conditioning. You are misrepresenting the argument.

What is being said as far as I can see is that (a) every person is exposed to the trends that shape our culture, (b) male privilege is built into our culture quite fundamentally, and (c) unsurprisingly, this distortion of priorities is one fairly common outcome.

That there's a lot of it about, in essence, and that it might be worth the OP bearing in mind as a possible explanation for her colleague's response.

None of this strikes me as especially controversial, and to keep misrepresenting it as a baseless, sweeping notion with no room for recognition of the individual is to deliberately ignore all the posts that have explicitly clarified it. Which is rather time-wasting and irksome.

DirtyMartini, I have never hidden the fact the the whole 'patriarchy' subtext sits uneasily with me, but every political movement needs it's bogeyman. And this does not make me anti-feminist. I am quite the opposite. I believe in full equality in every walk of life.

As you say, there is no magic bullet that explains everything, and if not everything is black-and-white, then to say that all women are socially conditioned to pander to men's needs above their own is also too simplistic. We are all individuals, having to deal with our own issues.

If the guy in the OP is a bully, he may be getting away with it because he gets his job done. The fact that he does this by bad behaviour rather than good may matter not a jot to the people above him, until it is called out by colleagues at least. It can also be the culture within some companies, which is harder to challenge, and causes people like L to think that it's best to keep quiet. I'd be interested to know from Mosman whether this is the case.

Basil I have stated quite clearly that I agree that it exists. But i don't think that society as a whole trains women this way. In the same way that I don't think that the whole of society is racist.

Btw it's not just white people who are capable of racism.

Yes me too Kritique.

I feel it's a subtle way of bigging yourself up compared to other women.

"See how silly they are; I'm much better than them".

Some women (and men) are of course silly, and L may be simply one of them. But there could be all sorts of other things going on, some of which may be cultural (or not) which influence her behaviour.

Yes I think Ilove would be the best person to answer that; people are individuals and that's why cultures changes isn't it? Because individuals will get together and reject their culture or change it slightly - otherwise, there would be no progress and cultural norms would never change, because no-one would ever have any free will or questioning capacity.

Imho, in this culture (UK) people are socialised in general to avoid confrontation, even to the point of avoiding some problems all together. It's not the same in all countries and cultures, however. And, that doesn't mean that all people in the UK avoid confrontation, either.

I agree exactly with what Basil says about women being socially conditioned to defer to the needs of men. That doesn't mean that all women do this or do this in all situations, but it is considered the "default setting" for what is considered to be socially acceptable.

What I feel a bit uneasy about is suggesting that because some women don't follow the script they've been given that this makes them somehow better, more capable, less wimpy or whatever than others who don't buck the trend.

"So, what allows some women to throw off the yoke of the patriarchy (like ilove and Mosman), and yet others are unable to see something so apparent? Certainly ilove does not sound like a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, and was even brought up in an environment where she should have just been another downtrodden female pandering to her 'better' half."

I suspect that you have phrased that in an attempt to highlight how unlikely you think it all sounds, Sanjeev; but taking it at face value, I can only point out that there is no single, universal magic bullet, and that nothing in life is as black-and-white as that question implies.

As for what ilove "should" have been: if I dealt in baseless generalizations , maybe I'd be puzzling over the same point. But I don't. ilove is ilove, and other people are other people.

"Of course rasicm exits but not all white people are racist"

Precisely Ifeelloved

That is exactly what I am saying.

Only this time, I'm saying it about women and being socialised to put men's need first.

You appear to be denying that this socialisation exists. While not denying that racism exists. But you understand that the existence of racism, doesn't mean that all white people are racist. I'm not sure why you can't understand that the socialisation men and women undergo about gender roles, doesn't mean that all adhere completely to their gender roles. It's exactly the same as saying that racism exists but not all white people are racist.

At least it is in my mind. But if you want to deny that that socialisation exists for many many women, even though you weren't subject to it, that's your choice of course.

So, what allows some women to throw off the yoke of the patriarchy (like ilove and Mosman), and yet others are unable to see something so apparent? Certainly ilove does not sound like a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, and was even brought up in an environment where she should have just been another downtrodden female pandering to her 'better' half.

It sounds as if you are interpreting Basil as claiming that women are overtly, openly trained on purpose that way, ilove.

I think she is referring, at least in part, to the million insidious ways in which we are all, every one of us, socialised/given messages by our culture. Not just by our families or those looking after us/raising us; not just on a conscious, deliberate level. That's what culture is, right? You can't really argue that some people are unaffected by it. Our culture is a patriarchy.

Fortunately we respond in different ways, as your experience proves. Your story is heartening and worth telling, but that is what it is: one story of one individual's response. Not evidence that socialisation does not exist in the first place.

There are a lot of women, a LOT, whose stories turn out a different way and your story doesn't invalidate theirs any more than theirs invalidate yours, IYSWIM. But statistically when patterns show up, they really are worth noting, worth discussing. Not every generalization is sweeping and baseless.

God I hope that makes sense. It is hard stuff to unpick. I am not trying to flame/tear you down, just to be clear.

Of course rasicm exits but not all white people are racist.

I still don't feel that ALL women are socialised to put men's needs before their own. This is not the way I was raised. You can argue it as much as you want, come up with as many case studies as you like, this is not the way I was raised.

Are you raising your children that men's needs should come first?

People haven't jumped to conclusions Sanjeev, they have offered potential explanations as to why L has responded in such a seemingly unreasonable way, to the OP's situation.

The OP has posted in the FWR section, rather than in employment, or AIBU or chat, so I'm presuming that she wants a feminist perspective on why L may be responding in this way.

So that's what I've tried to contribute.

But women as a group ARE socialised to put men's needs before their own. Just because some invidivual women don't succumb to that socialisation, or some individual men put the needs of the women they live with first, doesn't mean the widespread socialisation is non-existent. Just because lots of white people aren't racist, doesn't mean racism doesn't exist, IYSWIM.

"It is just as likely to be a personality trait as any social conditioning". Personality traits are influenced by social conditioning. Where does one start and the other stop?

Basil, absolutely correct, it is not possible to say in this case, or in general terms. Yet that has not stopped people on here immediately jumping to the conclusion that L is one of the downtrodden female underlings crushed by the male conspiracy. Apart from ifeelloved, I don't see anyone acknowledging that it is even a possibility that L just shies away from conflict generally. It has to be someone's fault.