Tag Archives: miehet ja naiset

THB one can’t say anything of a risque nature to women anymore

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Week 19


Flirting or piropo is not prohibited yet.

Motion: THB one can’t say anything of a risque nature to women anymore
Role: MP (opp.)


We have seen how the conversational climate around men and women have narrowed. Men feel that they cannot say anything of a risque nature to women anymore. That is a complete misunderstanding, mostly spread by low-self-esteem males and/or LGBT+ and straight, ordinary women. Men do it out of ignorance and low self-esteem; women do it out of grudge and self-defence as their motives. Not only can a male joke about carnality between men and women to women; he can also try to scrounge it from them. (The proper verb in Finnish is vongata (‘scrounge carnal activities’), while I do not now what its proper colloquial or vernacular equivalent in English is.)

Alpha Males Are the Ones Women Scrounge From
Women are not innocent themselves. They also have their own carnal agenda and they execute it with power and precision. When women approach men, they approach the alpha male. In man-o-sphere parlance, Alpha males are either Chads or Brads. They are the good-looking males to which women flock and whom they propose something naughty, if their characters and upbringing allow them to do that in the first place. The female approach is subtler than the male approach. A woman may unbutton the top clasp of her shirt to signal a willingness to “it”. A male would say something. All the same, not every woman will get a Brad or a Chad, because they are in short supply. This means that the lesser males would still have to talk (dirty) to women to get what they want, as some of women end up as GFs and wives to other men than Brads and Chads. A lesser male needs to navigate this part or seal this deal on his own devices, as if sine cortice natare.

What this means to men of average looks and means in this world is that if and when they have to be active in their dealings with women, they should still pay attention to making it as ethical and straightforward as possible. It is NOT oKaY to approach women in any brutal, clumsy, impolite and rude way. Men are right in their drive to talk (dirty) to women, but the devil is in the details, so details need to be paid attention to.

IRL, Not in Digital, Estranging Ways
Men are supposed to approach women in real life, as an authentic, genuine person and not as some cringy avatar out in cyberspace. Catfishers use the digital realm, as they are a bit cowardly. Men are not supposed to send women dick pics or some other type of digital harassment, because it makes no sense. It is supposed to make the women horny, but where is the male to assuage that horniness. Nowhere. Idle chat revolving around the bed or what one likes to do in one is also pointless. When push came to shove, few of these males would dare to take on the woman on her terms, on real terms in the real world.

It is also recommendable that men think about ways to offer the woman something apart from and beyond the obvious (their dick). The relationship dance between men and women is complicated, and it usually is based on the fact that women bring to the table their beauty, elegance and grace and men bring something else. For all that, the males have to bring SOMETHING. It is often some capital that they have, be it of any nature. In this sense, a relationship between a man and a woman is like a potluck party.

If we think about celebrities, and in this context, celebrity males or male celebrities, their celebrity is the capital that they bring to the table. That is the most obvious barter that there is between a man and a woman, and it needs no further explanation as to why they engage in it, respectively, and what either one of them stands to gain from a brief or long union. At any rate, with ordinary men, the most ordinary of the ordinary, the same principle holds true. They have to offer up something that the woman finds of value. When this happens, women do not accuse men of an abuse of their privileges or harassment, because it may be that these men do NOT HAVE any privileges, or the “harassment” is absolutely necessary for the man and the woman to have that trade-off in the first place.

Why Not Be at the Right Place at the Right Time
As a comical relief, I may still offer up a further angle to approach the plight of men vs. women. Sometimes a man LITERALLY does not have to say anything to get what (s)he wants. Let us imagine that a nubile, young woman is at a metal rock festival. She has set her goals at getting laid that night, at whatever cost. Let’s say she is unsuccessful at the festival but at the train station later on, she will find a male who looks cute, harmless and virile, she grabs hold of him and announces to her friends: “Look, what I’ve found!” (without knowing the male deeper than that). Then the male kisses her as an act of affirmation, to which she responds. And their journey continues. So, it is possible for a male to elude accusations of abuse and harassment in just being at the right place at the right time – and let the girl/woman take care of the harassment.


Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t)Miesten vapautusrintamassa on tärkeää tietää, että kaikki se pintakuohu, mitä lehtiin kirjataan, on vain pintakuohua ja kätkee alleen monimutkaisen merkitysverkon, mikä vallitsee miesten ja naisten välillä. Siihen verkkoon osalliset voivat osallistua täysivaltaisina jäseninä tähän keskusteluun tai väittelyyn, mikä saa tuntemaan huonoa omaatuntoa niiden puolesta, joilla ei ole tarpeeksi kokemusta asiasta. Onneksi lehtiäkin lukemalla voi oppia jotakin.

THC getting a life partner a matter of great discernment

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Week 15


NB. C stands for Considers

Love in old and young age asks for a kindred lover.

Motion: THC getting a life partner just a matter of going out
Role: Leader (opp.)


I was recently at a train pullover spot. I had failed to get out in time for my actual station, so I stayed until the next stop, right in the middle of nowhere, where the conductor let me out and advised me to take the next oncoming, opposite-direction train home – for free, without a punitive charge. At the stop, I eyed a young couple who were about to board that same train. They were between 17 and 27, and they looked much alike. Neither was better looking than the other. Like with a lot of couples, the girl (or woman) made some anxious questions or remarks, and the boy (or man) reassured her with his responses. They were very similar to each other, despite the gender difference.

Anyone Can Get a Partner
One of the delusions that people today have is that they have to pass the bar in terms of some imaginary relationship pole-vaulting competition. They would have to be alike Mr. Armand Duplantis or Ms. Wilma Murto in terms of the challenge. Then they were fit for courtship, engagement and marriage, potentially children. That is so untrue. Just as there are apex specimens of a human being, there are also average people, “losers” and mediocrities. The thing is that an apex specimen is not interested in a plain Jane, and a plain Shane should not set his sights on a unparallelled female. They could go over the fence at its lowest for them.

The first thing to evaluate is this: Evaluate how good-looking you are for real. The face is the most important part of your body in that respect, but the body in itself is not immaterial. Ugly faces are less ugly, if the body shape is great; cute faces are uglier if they come with too much bodily fat and flesh or some other thing that makes the whole less savoury. Do not overestimate or underestimate yourself. Your next goal is that you try to match your body and face with someone who is approximately as average-, bad- or good-looking. Moreover, it needs to be born in mind that women are allowed to be a little better-looking, with longer and stronger hair than men, and they would still be considered equals.

Couples Are a Matter of Pair Formation
It is important that somehow the pair look alike. They should have a kindred body, face, posture and potentially other features, on a granular level. On a graphic level, they can be different, because they also need to complement each other. For instance, if the woman in question is short, it is helpful if the man is taller as he can reach for things that the woman cannot, and this is a matter of pragmatics, not of metaphorics.

Similarity in appearance is important, because it ensures that the constituent parts of the pair a) seem to deserve each other and that b) other people are not going to intervene in their relationship while they are together. When there is greater disparity in terms of looks, the pair would develop self-doubts about their relationship – and also attract “praying mantes” (🕷) who tried to prise the better-looking party apart from the relationship. People leave alone self-secure pairs that look alike while they are together.

Socratic Self-Matching and Self-Reflection Is the Key to Pair Formation
So, it seems that one can get a pair for oneself, if one can discern in a crowd who is the most alike oneself in terms of quality of looks and similarity in other ways. The similarity does not have to be more than skin-deep. Deeper differences may work out for the couple. The woman may be verbally oriented, while the man is visually oriented. The woman may be extroverted, while the man is introverted. And so on, etc. What underlies this is that a person needs to first know herself or himself in order to be able to find someone else. One needs to run a thorough SWOT check on oneself and list one’s parameters. This applies first and foremost to appearance and physicality and secondarily to one’s other characteristics and qualities. One needs to be Socratic in the classic sense of the adjective and live according to “Nosce te ipsum” in order to succeed in pair formation.

So, I would say that one cannot get a partner in just going out and grabbing hold of one of the first ten people that one encounters. It is not as easy as that. Most of the avenues have to be tried. Many contacts have to be used. A lot of networks have to be exhausted. Then, if all goes according to plan, one has a life partner who is not going to disappear in the first storm that brews.


Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t)Koska parinetsintä on nyt korkealla agendalla, esitän omasta puolestani oman näkemykseni siitä, miten se onnistuu. Puheessa on lievää huojuntaa, eikä se välttämättä ole täysin vakuuttava. Tämä johtuu siitä, etten itsekään ole varma siitä, riittävätkö vastaavat ulkonäöt parinvalinnan perusteeksi vai pitäisikö vastaavien varakkuuksien kohdata. Siitä voidaan kuitenkin hyvin kiistellä itse väittelyn aikana.

THR female womansplainers besides male mansplainers

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Week 43


Motion: THR female womansplainers besides male mansplainers
Role: Member (gov.)


When the term mansplainer was introduced maybe a little less than 10 years ago (doing a check: it was in the aughts), I was at first a little offended by it, but I little by little began to realise there are indeed mansplainers who usually sermonise to one woman or a group of them about some given thing or technicality. Lately, though, I have arrived at the conclusion that there are womansplainers, too. We are singularly blind to them, because they work in… journalism and mass communication. They write to the masses rather than speak to a few people; there’s the difference.

Often, There Are No <<Chevrons>>
What I am aiming at is a specific type of newspaper or periodical non-feature-length article or column, where some woman is voicing opinions as if advice to people on some health, social, or societal issue, mini-issue or micro-issue. Women are guilty of exactly the same thing as the men they badmouth: they do not know what they are talking about, in the way we think about an expert, guru or pundit. The title or topic can be something like, “Going to the gynaecologist is too expensive” (no shit), “How do I speak about body dysmorphia or couple relationship to a child?”, “I found a cure for my insomnia” or “It is better to be alone and single”. As to more general lay opinions, in the Aughts and Onesies, in particular two topics for a column were rescripted over and over: how mobile technology is amazing and has changed everything and how people should sometimes just be and let go of their scheduled responsibilities. Both in their own right seem a bit naff from today’s more knowledgeable perspective and are too obvious. Many were written by women.

It would be nice if we had a Ph.D. on hand each time we needed someone competent to talk or write to a general audience about something, but that is a tall order, as lower academic degrees are the norm, and there is no need to inflate the value of a doctoral degree. Nor is every doctor competent to explain whatever related, but at least (s)he’d know the terms and a lot of trivia. An ordinate requirement for someone to write about some complex or sensitive issue to the masses could be a B.A. or B.Sc. from a faculty that deals with what she writes of. Another type of acceptable merit would be an association or organisation background as a perennial volunteer.

Women Disregard the Subjectivity
Typically, the woman writer posits that everyone needs to have knowledge or an opinion on what she writes about. And her one woman’s personal experience “is” instantly applicable and universal. What is forgotten is that there are countless issues and topics about which people do not need to know or opine. A person can be blissfully ignorant of certain amorous, behavioral, pathological, psychological, sexual, social, societal and somatic issues as long as (s)he contributes to society through his or her job and work and is happy and healthy. In highly identical or subjective matters, we may have an absent opinion.

Moreover, often we need to do the brainwork and math on our own devices to arrive at a conclusion that is right just for us – we cannot take that opinion from someone else. Choosing a political party or wing to vote for oneself is one example of such a choice or option. It would be wrong to adopt a writer’s subjective agenda hook, line and sinker, because she would have arrived at it from her one-off background, education and growth history.

While Not Everyone Is Objectively the Same
What these well-meaning writing femmes posit is that her recipient is alike the sender. The sender writes from an atheistic or agnostic, social liberal, urban viewpoint and has a scant concern for any other way of life. The same phenomenon occurs when people in big cities observe the reality there and think that everywhere it is the same as there, when in reality their reality is just the tip of an iceberg. Big cities have big concentrations of services and that’s why people in them behave in a certain way, but elsewhere services are thinner on the ground, with the resulting changes in behaviour.

The challenge here is that one must distinguish between femsplainers and mansplainers and how they differ from an average man and woman. Not everything a woman writes or a man says is automatically (wo)mansplaining. A lot of discourse is blameless. Explanations may be dynamic and interesting, even if they have qualities of a monologue. The Context of “Matronage” is the determiner: if a woman is preaching to the general public in writing or a man to a person or a group of people in speaking and there is a smug sense of nonsense or non sequitur all over it, then it would be a case of womansplaining and mansplaining, respectively.


Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Kaikilla on tästä aiheesta jotain omaa sanottavaa, puolin ja toisin, ja keskustelun kokonaisanti olisikin siinä, miten laajasti aihetta voidaan käsitellä.

THW have some tolerance for harassment among political parties

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Week 30


“Naiseni kanssa eduskuntatalon puistossa…,” or ‘With my woman in the park of the house of the Parliament.’

Date: 20 Jul 2022
Motion: THW have zero tolerance for harassment among political parties
Role: Deputy (opp.)


This summer, a case was brought against a relatively young Coalition-party male politician in his thirties, an MP of a politically time-honoured pedigree, for harassment within his own party. According to the whistleblowers, he had repeatedly seeked out the company of female minors among his own and wined them seemingly hoping for some more intimate dealings. While he had been “unpleasant”, he had refrained from downright criminal actions. First of all, it’s unusual that dirty laundry is being washed in public within a party. It would have been likelier that two parties had been involved. All the same, a new kind of confrontational feminism has become overt.

Cases like his crop up in politics every now and then. Some people may remember the case of Rep. Weiner (Dem.) in the US, where he was charged with similar wrongdoings, somewhere between negligible and massive. The problem is that when it comes to sex, it should be kept under the wraps between consenting adults AT ALL TIMES; otherwise, things are blown out of proportion. In the next, I’ll use another, a theoretical, entirely separate example to illustrate why male defendants are usually at a disadvantage.

Wanting an Image…
Let us assume that an attractive female (high heels, long hair, makeup, pencil skirt) or just a semi-attractive one comes in contact with a male politician who has a bad self-esteem and no regular partner or spouse, only some half-forgotten sexual encounters in the past. Now, this woman asks for a “dick pic” from this man, in her own words, “to make me want you even more….” Subsequently, he takes the pic and sends it to her.

Woman’s Many Options
When the woman in question receives the image, she has several avenues. She can use it in the way she said she would. She can show it to her colleagues to have a giggle. She can show it to the press for them to have a grinning giggle. She can accuse the man of harassment. She can say that the man is a pervert and should be stripped of all of his titles and positions and jobs. And all because they had a fleeting moment of “intimacy”, “passion” and “trust”. Those things in themselves are no crime against anyone.

Why This Is Wrong
The problem is that there is a double standard. Women have sexual capital, and they know it. Also, they tend to leave all initiatives for men to take, so that they can seize upon them in their intended way – when they feel like that – and use them against the initiators, when they are cold or cool to the proposer, but in need of a leg up careerwise, professionally. In both instances, they win. It’s a win–win for them. Men, on the contrary, can very seldom use such tactics.

Permissiveness is here to stay; it should be clear to us by now. Why, it broke the surface in the sixties, established pornography as an industry in the seventies, survived HIV in the eighties getting a boost from the booming market, and produced centerfolds ongoingly in the nineties. As late as 2002, Rolling Stone asked, “Is this the dirtiest year ever?”, which was a reference to how music videos, song lyrics and the industry was baring more skin than ever. Yet, somehow still, a religious woke puritanism runs through the public discourse, in 2022, as if we had not been allowed to be impacted by any of that.

Women can protect themselves in this day and age. If a male politician harasses women, the worst that should happen to him is that women messaged and phoned each other around him and warned each other of his she-nanigans. It is not right to go much further than that if the man goes no further than that. Wanting some reciprocated love is not a casus belli.


Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Vaikka tikun nokassa olisi kuka tahansa henkilö, asiassa on kyse laajemmasta nais- ja miesasialiikkeiden kädenväännöstä, joka sopii hyvin aloitteeksi. Tyhjennän argumenttien pajatson mielestäni puheellani siltä osin, kuin parini ei ole jo tehnyt niin – mutta jälkeeni esiintyvällä on mahdollisuus puhua mm. politiikassa esiintyvistä, eripuolueisista pariskunnista ja eduskunnan pikkujouluista. 

THB the best country to be born in politically for a WOMAN is… Finland

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Week 33


“Soon there won’t be other genders than the Fairer one at the lectern.”

Date: 16 Aug 2021
Motion: THB the best country to be born in politically for a WOMAN is… Finland
Role: Deputy PM (gov.)


As the PM mentioned earlier, the situation in Finland is now such that 7 chairs are chairwomen in the 8 parties that matter the most in voting percentages in Finland. The only exception is the Coalition Party with Petteri Orpo (b. 1969) as their chair. His surname is appropriate, as it means orphan in English, maybe as a reference to the early fate of one of his ancestors, but also as an accidental, sly reference to how he is the “odd one out” in the company of these women. (Cf. this with orphan and widow lines in terms of proofreading.)

We could focus on Ms. Riikka Purra, who has recently been chosen as Chair for the True Finns Party, a much-maligned anti-immigration clique turned into a powerhouse in the parliament that was historically founded in a sauna by four naked men in 1995. Its predecessor had run into the ground and gone bankrupt. Were they burning the documents of the old party in the fireplace on that evening? No-one knows. Maybe the docs did not contain any illicit stuff but only sordid stories. Anyway, together, they decided that they would establish on those ruins, with their combined know-how, a new party. It was not going to have the same sources of income, same membership, same name nor same policies, much in the same way bankrupt LLCs cannot continue in their old tracks. The party chose deliberately “populism” as its platform, combined with immigration critique, but history and media have proven in hindsight that exactly the same thing happened in many European countries simultaneously. And the results have been seen in politics, even to the degree that there is an anti-EU lobby in the European Union Parliament in Brussels.

Education First
The first thing that opened up the path for Riikka Purra is that she could study in Finland the very subject that would help her – for free. In the Finnish tertiary-school system, tuition is free and the state pays to the student a monthly allowance, whose sum total is somewhere between €400 – €1000, depending on the case. The only mandatory fee is the one paid to the Student Union, to uphold its administration, but even that comes with extra health-service benefits. Riikka Purra studied politics or political science as her major, earning a M.P.Sc. degree. That was the first component of her success story. She was given for free many of the mental tools that help her understand local and (inter)national politics better. That’s much more than one can get from e.g. reading merely the newspapers, as “knowledgeable” as they are. The layman could not have that privilege.

New, Open Party With Little to Lose
The second thing that paved the way was the relative openness of the True Finns to new, competent, academic members. It had profiled itself as a blue- or no-collar gang without any appeal to members of high society. It was also starved for female membership, the median member being a low-wage male labourer. Purra just walked into the office of the party one day and presented what was easy for her, some kind of an academic presentation about how immigration dys-functions, and the crowd was impressed. She would not have impressed many of the established, older parties, but she did impress the upstart party’s leadership. She became a member, got responsibilities, helped key people and was finally elected an MP for the national parliament in 2019.

Windy at the Top as the Chair
The True Finns party have got their share of leadership drama. The founder got “ousted” from the party in the summer of 2017 (think of it on the mental magnitude of Steve Jobs first leaving Apple), whereafter the party’s favourite son got to helm the party for about 4 years, one term of a parliament. As he stepped down, without having to, for his own reasons, it was easy for Riikka Purra to joust for a place in the sun, which she ultimately won. As the party is only a few seats shy of dominating general elections, it did not take long from her to declare that she has set her sights on becoming PM in the next general MP elections. In 8 years from a “woke” voting nobody to MP to PM? Is this possible in the real world? Are we living a collective, unreal dream? To be fair, one has to admit that the Messiah road of Barack Obama from rank-and-file lawyer to President was not fundamentally any harder or longer.

There are three things which have enabled Purra to reach this goal without her own merit. If it wasn’t for the country’s free education, she’d probably plumped for some pragmatic vocation instead of the abstract profession she chose for herself. Also, the founder-chair could have stuck to power forever, which he chose not to do. And, the heir-apparent could have stuck to power forever, which he chose not to do. And – conversely – Riikka Purra has managed to succeed in three things that are the product of her own industry or talent. She took part in the late aughts’ alt-right rush to the internet to acquaint herself with the agenda, players, tone and vocabulary on anti-immigration message boards, doing her homework in a way; she managed to gain 6K+ votes at the general election, guaranteeing an MP status, always eliciting the question: HOW? and she has managed to steer clear of diverse lawsuits that are the plague of alt-right right now. So, the proportions of Fortune vs. merit weigh equally much in her equation.

Finland is a model country in terms of how a constituent can become a decision-maker, take the jump from “C” to “D” in one fell swoop. I have used Riikka Purra as a pin-up girl for that, without forgetting that similar success stories have existed in the past, as well, in different political climes and times, with a different agenda and cast. At large, a totalitarian dictatorship (think of Cuba, for one) is probably the best greenhouse environment for a MALE political talent to flourish in, not least because women may be barred from participating, but a geographically distant democracy, such as Finland, IS the best environment, expressly, for a FEMALE to bloom into.


Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Aloite on mielenkiintoinen, koska sen vastustajien pitää valita jompikumpi kahdesta linjasta: todeta, että tämä maa ei ole paras paikka naispuolisille poliitikoille eli löytää vikaa siitä tai kertoa, missä muualla asiat ovat paremmin naispuolisille. Koska väittelyn gasti on kansainvälinen, tällaisia talentteja saattaa eksyä opposition puolelle, mutta on arpapeliä, onko heitä, ovatko he tosiaan oppositiossa ja onko heillä muu optio. (Olemme hall. vahvoilla.) Annan parilleni PM:lle vapaudet vapaasti ruotia 7:ää vallassa olevaa puheenjohtajaa ja retostella heillä. Keskityn vain heistä viimeisimpään, kun olen vara-PM:nä.

THW not reveal details of salaries and their perks even to whom it may concern within a work community

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Week 19


Both of these people are closer to 40 than 4, even if they may not be there quite yet.

Date: 12 May 2021
Motion: THW reveal details of salaries and their perks to whom it may concern within a work community
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)


It has been made known that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (STM) has set up a committee that plans to have a bill passed about making all specifications of salaries known to whom it may concern, colleagues in an equal position, in a controlled way, at a company, office or place of work. The main concern seems to be expressly to prevent men from collecting more pay than their female counterparts at work, even though the clause could be used to put a halt to other kinds of bias as well.

It seems a bit rash to think that only men could oppress women in terms of pay. The white woman is also a very privileged creature, so even without further ado one could ask the follow-up question: Could the white middle-class woman be also getting more pay than her colleague who is of a different ethnic origin, LGBTI or otherwise in a minority position? Regardless of birth gender? And if so, should that prerogation, too, be prevented and subjected to litigation, in accordance with the spirit of the bill?

Employer–Employee-Centric Contracts Are the Wave of the Future
The proposal is at odds with the long-term trend in labour markets, which is a drive toward employer-&-employee and environment-&-employee type of job contracts – steps that are removed from the ways of the past, when labour unions dictated and negotiated what everyone should get and when even their joint drives were co-ordinated under centralised agreements, usually meaning that export-heavy, rich industries got the biggest pay rises and others less in order of importance.

Injustice at an Advanced Age
Injustice is something people become aware of at an early age. I think the thing has even been researched. It turned out that when two 4-year-old toddlers were both given ice cream, one of them could throw the plain-vanilla ice-cream pin to the wall, should the other get a Banana Split with extra fudge sauce. It was glaring injustice; the other was getting more. Even if it might leave the better off with caries and obesity for years to come. This is the basic idea on which labour unions operate. They stick to the life wisdom of 4-year-old toddlers. Even if the toddlers are not wrong about the superficial nature of injustice in its own right, one could expect more maturity when the parties are 40 years old instead of 4. There has to be life-long psychological development, right?

Mechanics of Pay Inconsistencies Without Sugarcoating
Our side is also concerned that the main driving force is misguided. Probably it is not a question of men versus women. Pay differences are not rocket science, and we have to look at them from the POV of the employer. My best guess is that if the employer favoritises some employees over the others, that would most probably be married men with children and debutante pretty girls. I would not be surprised if both had hundreds more in salary or wages than others with similar diplomas. The reason why employers might not want to reward familied women is that they spend so much lost time on maternity leaves and thereafter, always leaving early in order to pick up their children from kindergarten, pre-school and school. Bachelors, similarly, might not get extra hundreds, as they have no obligations of the family kind and could spend their money on whatever – instead of children.

Debutante girls could get that extra money, because they would probably leave the company anyway, after some years there, but provide a PR advantage to the company before that, due to their pretty faces that attract customers. Remember, just how much female faces are used in advertising. Familied, competent men would get more, because they most often have a solid work ethic and don’t cuss and gripe about overtime and stabilise the atmosphere at the workplace, something that works in favour of the company, office or workplace in the long run. Bachelors and married women with children would get less, as outlined above, so it would not be a men-against-women conspiracy.

Because of these reasons, the bill of the committee is a dead hand from the past, harking back to the glory days of labour unions. It should not be passed into law and companies and their HR depts, leaders and managers should be allowed to go their own ways in terms of how and why they want to recruit.


Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Puolellani on useita argumentteja, joita se voi käyttää. Tiimini I puhuja voi käyttää kortin siitä, miten työilmapiiri työpaikalla huononee keskinäisen puhumisen ja mahdollisten oikeudenkäyntien myötä, kun taas oma tärkein antini on näkemys palkkaerojen perimmäisistä syistä, jotka eivät ole yhtä huonoja ja julmia kuin mediassa annetaan ymmärtää. Yritän olla hyvä johtajan sijainen; komppaan johtajaa mutta minulla on myös oma näkemykseni. II tiimin 1. puhujalle jää vuorostaan mahdollisuus keskittyä siihen, että vaikka palkkaerot paljastuisivat ja johtaisivat oikeudenkäynteihin, työntekijä tuskin jäisi voitettuaan firmaan töihin ja muutenkin vain juristit rikastuisivat oikeusjutuista.

THS the notion of workplace harassers #metoo targeted as therapiable

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Week 29


 

With this post, this blog will take a summer hiatus and spend some quality vacation time. The comeback should occur sometime in late August.

🌳 🌼 🌻 🌼 🌳

Date: Jul 15th, 2019
Motion: THR the notion of workplace harassers #metoo targeted as therapiable
Role: MP (opp.)


Sexual harassment and molestation at the workplace has been now in the headlines for some time. It’s not important in its own right who started all of it or how the “headhunting” has gone on, as the issue has been present in Western and Eastern societies since time immemorial. People have always taken a sexual interest in members of their own tribes as well as others; why, the population of the world has risen to 7 billion from 1 billion in 1800 (estimate), a figure that was cemented some time after the French Revolution.

For all that, there seems to be a bit of a moralistic tone in what is being said, and an accusatory, sex-adverse atmosphere has set in in the media, even if sex in its own right is an affirmative activity that pushes the standard of living upward psychologically and physically. In my speech, I’m trying to find “sympathy for the demon”; ie. for the person who is found guilty of sexual harassment. But, we have to remember that sometimes people just misunderstand intentions due to the somewhat erratic nature of language use. If it wasn’t like that, there would not either be disputes about what a certain novel means, etc. etc. etc. We also need to count out some of the more lighthearted flirtation of the evident behaviour.

Let us just concentrate on the egregious cases that are the focus of the motion.

It’s Like a Gambling Addiction
The harasser is like a gambler. He thinks that the end result of his “game” is like hitting the Jackpot: finding at random a person who reacts positively and amenably to sexual advancements, proposals and touches. There are also other similarities with problem gamblers: once one wins, one cannot stop from tryin to win; one is ready to put one’s workplace, house and family at stake in order to win in the love-game; harassment starts off with some innocent experimentation but swells to a vast scope AND harassment usually has nothing or little to do with one’s actual competence in running one’s career, duties, errands and family.

It’s Based on an Oversize Self-Esteem
Very often the harasser begins when (s)he already is in possession of a hefty salary, power and responsibility. When every morning is one of sunshine, compared with one’s subordinates or colleagues, one cannot ground for oneself why there could not also be Love in one’s Life instead of mere money, when love seems to be an infinitely easier “game” and even poor people can have access to it. A person with such a self-esteem forgets that he often has a Special Someone waiting in the wings and that poorer people are very often very loyal to the ones who love them back. But the harasser is oblivious to this and does not spare it a lot of thought. It maybe goes without saying that it is more often men who enjoy or suffer from this kind of an “oversize self-esteem”.

Firing and Trying Is Not the One-Response-Fits-All Solution
It’s a bit ambivalent to determine and decide who should go when a case of sexual harassment occurs on the job during daytime or off duty. The deliberation should be gender-neutral, with an eye on the bottom line (in order that the company, institution or office can continue to operate). The boss should be able to fire also the harassee, with a requisite compensation, of course. To take an arbitrary example, let us imagine that a male CAD draughtsman, who may number one in a thousand (a rare specimen), harasses the telephone exchange of a company that are a dime a dozen (a common animal). It is clear that the boss or executive rather fire the phone exchange. On the other hand, if the gender roles are in reverse, so that a male “grunt” (easy to find) harasses a female “expert” (harder to find), it would be fair to fire the male, on the same grounds.

Harassments and departures from workplaces are employee dramas that should not backfire on the employers on whose premises they happen to happen. This is just textbook utilitarian philosophy that should not surprise anybody with its logic. Also, to follow the principles of something that happens in court decisions all the time without anyone batting an eye is that whoever feels unjustly treated should be allowed to be soothed with a monetary compensation in most cases.

If you change your viewpoint to one acknowledging that the harasser has a “gambling problem” that is not any different from the run-of-the-mill reputable worker who has a similar real gambling problem that no-one knows of, since (s)he can spend all of his or her earnings on whatever (s)he likes, and even borrow some more for the same purpose, you understand that the harasser is ill-advised, reckless and overoptimistic, not knowing his real social net value and worth, instead of being evil — just like a gambler is, deep down. And if people can be cured of gambling, they can be cured of harassment, whether they are victims or perpetrators, can’t they?

Thank you.

“A hand on the bum is as good as a morning rush.”


Arvio: Oletan, että aiempi pari on keskittynyt esimerkiksi a) sättimään me-too-liikkeen ylilyöntejä ja b) terapian huonoa saatavuutta, jolloin minulle jää jäljelle c) mahdollisuus ottaa uhkapeluri-analogia ja korostaa työnantajien viattomuutta tapahtuneissa sotkuissa. Näin oppositiolla on paljon materiaalia solmittavaksi pakettiin ja annettavaksi whipille. 🎁