The space industry has a big, ugly sexual harassment problem

[Admin]

Humanity is making a giant leap back to the moon and to Mars. But one giant obstacle continues to plague the humans making this progress possible: sexual harassment.

The space industry has a big, ugly sexual harassment problem : Read more

 

[billslugg]

I work for a Fortune 20 company, been there on and off for 48 years. Sexual harrassment training occurs during new hire training and is reinforced frequently. Yet it still happens. Just found out about a guy who got terminated, I knew him for many years, never would have thought he would have done it. He had two separate incidents, one right after the other. A woman who complained to a supervisor and then he hit on the supervisor as she was preparing to confront him on the first instance. Led him straight out the gate. He'd been around for probably 20 years. Hard to believe.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

It has reached the point that complaining and claiming victimhood is a path to advancement, sometimes more than achievement. And that has resulted in a lot of false accusations, which makes it difficult to adequately deal with individual instances of real harassment.

I have myself been falsely accused of both sexual and racial harassment simply because I found errors in other people's work or office behaviors, and that was their defense tactic. Fortunately, for those 2 instances, I had witnesses who could verify that the accusations were BS. But, it does prove to me that some accusations are false. So, I am never sure what to think when somebody who is accused of "sexual harassment" does not seem like "the type" to me.

I have been "hit on" by women at work, both from "above" and "below" my "rank", but long ago realized to not take that bait, as well as to not try to date anybody I work with. That is a shame, because the work environment is where professionals tend to meet the members of the opposite sex who are most similar to themselves. So, I can understand someone who is not married simply seeking to find out if another single person they are attracted to is also interested in them. To me, that is not "harassment" until the other party says "not interested" and the person keeps trying, anyway. But, expressing interest in someone at work is definitely risky in today's work place environment if you are male. On the other hand, I see far too many females who dress in fashions that are intended to attract that type of attention, and that too often seems to be "OK" with management.

And, in politics, it has reached the point where accusing a nominee of sexual and or racial harassment decades ago is a routine tactic by the opposing party.

All of this makes it hard to effectively deal with real instances of actual harassment.

Articles like this one actually have a negative effect, because they clearly come from an "activist" agenda. Without any real specifics for readers to use to make value judgements, this article claims that sexual harassment is rampant in the space industry, and then says that is not unusual in industry of all types. I will add that it is not unusual in non-industrial human interactions, too. So, it is not really a "space industry" issue so much as a human behavior issue, just like murder, larceny, etc. Not acceptable, but still happens and is not trivial to deal with.

So, a headline that screams "The space industry has a big, ugly sexual harassment problem" starts to look like an activist propaganda statement, rather than an issue that is actually an unusually large problem for that particular segment of industry. Too much of that, and people tend to "turn it off" instead of really paying attention.