Do you all even begin to see the difference between laughing at yourself and laighing at another person? Or a fictional one?
As far as crossing sexual harrassment barriers just ask yourself; would you make a similar compliment to a man or a child? If not you are probably behaving inappropriately for work.
chickaree wrote: Do you all even begin to see the difference between laughing at yourself and laighing at another person? Or a fictional one?
Does that mean that if you are neither Irish nor Catholic and still found humor in the jokes that you should be chastised for it since you found humor in the stereotypes of the Irish being drunks and thieves?
Instead of asking myself if I would say something to a man, women or child when speaking to any of them and while we are at it, Mexican, Polish, Christian, Black, .... ad nauseum at work, I chose Zombie. Say/do nothing personal and eat flesh.
chickaree wrote: As far as crossing sexual harrassment barriers just ask yourself; would you make a similar compliment to a man or a child? If not you are probably behaving inappropriately for work.
Years ago, I worked in an HR department and we had the thankless duty of conducting sexual harrassment classes for those who were going to be fired if they didn't straighten their acts up. In other words, guys (and yes, they were always guys) who had already had more than one sexual harrassment complaint made against them.
In my experience, these guys never did get it no matter how much it was explained to them why their behavior was unacceptable. They would often keep insisting their boorishness was just having "a good sense of humor". Even when confronted with the fact that multiple women (and sometimes even other men) had complained about their behavior, they would insist it was the fault of the victims of their odiousness.
Somehow, I doubt this has changed. Some people just don't get it and never will.
I suppose it's as pointless as trying to explain why masturbating in a public library to internet porn is similarly tasteless and offensive. Once again, a joke about fictional people ( e.g. Two Irishmen walking into a bar) and an actual person (Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Palin) are two different things.
