Not the same.
A closer analogy would be that it was yelled out in front of most of the workplace in the victims presence.
Making a politically incorrect statement quietly to one or two workmates,is not comparable.
I agree with the initial assesment. If it is true that the text was mistakenly sent to patston, then your illustration does not work. It show how much of a complete idiot beale is if he sends it to patston.
All this talk of sexual harrassment, how can it be if she was never intended to receive it?, ie be harassed?
Not for one second would I believe anyone here if they tried to claim they have never derogatorily spoken about someone else to another person. At best I would call them deluded (as in completely insane and out of touch with personal reality indicating very deep, real psychological issues if they truly believed that).
INTENT is what I am looking at. (if true) that it was mistakenly sent to here then the INTENT is clear. It was NOT therefore an intent to harrass or victimise.
Sexist? Well yes, in that the method of denigration was to concentrate on her sex, or the gender involved (to depersonalise it).
Is that truly indicative? No, not really. Why? Because of basic human nature. What do we do when we have a go at someone?
In almost every case we would go for the point of difference.
He's aboriginal? Black fluffybunny. From South Africa? Bloody south effrican bastard. Whinging pom, poofta, fucking rabbitohs supporter.
Fat, ugly, skinny beanpole. Whatever it is when lashing out we instinctively tend toward the
point of difference.
It should not be too hard to make the point that being female in a predominantly male cohort would be particularly obvious.
Take another example to hopefully make my thoughts clearer, ex couples etc. You bump into your ex at the supermarket, bit of a row maybe, but you could hardly be charged with
stalking. Similarly here, an accidently sent text cannot be called harrasment of any description, sexual or not, even if for only that it is ONE text.
NONE of this addresses past actions, simply all of this talk about sexual harrasment and the content of the text and how utterly vile it was. Sure, it would hurt Di when she found out. the point is she was never meant to find out. I mean we all agree pfitzy is an arsehole, but as long as we don't tell him he won't be upset right? So keep that under your hats.
I too, if I were Kurtley, be completely and absolutely mortified if Di found out about the text. I do not find that hard to grasp. For all we might bag our workmate, and maybe even actually hate him, that does not always equate to pleasure if he found out about it.
All this noble talk at times about 'no I am different, I would never make a comment about that in the first place' I call complete bullshit on. What I completely accept however is that you would never say it to the person
out of basic human decency, even if you said it behind their back. And I understand how distraught you would be if the person found out how you felt.
Would we be still disbelieving kurtley when he said how upset he was she found out if it was not HIS clumsiness or stupidity that sent the text to her, but
someone else sent it? That too backs up my thoughts that it cannot be harrassment as it again re-inforces that it was
never intended to go to her.
Call him an arsehole for his action if you want, your call. But it ain't harrassment sexual or otherwise.
It certainly highlights another basic human facet, vigilantilism. All based on prior decisions, and all of that founded on rumour and innuendo for some weeks earlier.
For mine, it simply re-inforces 'thank god we have a legal system'. Yes, I am damned sure it ain't perfect, too right it probably fucks up badly and often, but by jesus imagine how we would go if we did not have it eh?
Ok, grumble and rumble about the leniancy, have your little points of disagreement wherever you want. But accept that a qualified, external, independent judge with assistants viewing data and facts we know nothing about assessed and came to a decision.
What point is there in going thru this if 'we will only accept what we want and reject what we don't like?' How does that even work? WHICH party will we apply that rule to?
Which IS why we use impartial people in these things. Which of us here would be able to call themselves impartial on this topic?
