I’m Now a Certified and Legally Responsible Non-Harasser of Women

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Hey, look what I got. That’s right: I’ve completed MoJo’s required course on sexual harassment, no longer limited just to supervisors.

This doesn’t have much practical value, since I work at home and have no one to harass even if I wanted to. Nonetheless, I was eager to take the course. You see, I’m immersed in opinions about PC culture and diversity and the idiocy of it all etc. etc. But I have no personal experience of it. If you’re talking about schools, I graduated 40 years ago and I have no kids. If you’re talking about Silicon Valley or Wall Street, I have no clue about either. If you’re talking about workplace harassment, it never really came up at any of my previous jobs, and I haven’t participated in an actual workplace since 2001.

So how was it? Pretty boring, really. If someone rejects your advances repeatedly, back off. Don’t fire someone for rejecting you. Don’t go into a woman’s cubicle a dozen times a day to take a deep sniff. (Yes, that was a real example.) Don’t spend three hours a day watching hardcore porn in your office. Don’t go around telling black people they’re “articulate” or Asian people that “of course” they’re good at math. Don’t lose your temper. Talk out your problems. Don’t be an asshole.

Of course I, along with almost everyone who reads this blog, is an overeducated know-it-all who finds all of this trivially obvious. That’s not true of everyone by a long way, and stuff like this is probably useful for them. This was also a pretty breezy course, not like the 8-hour sessions that are apparently required at some places. (I guess. How would I know?)

Bottom line: I didn’t learn much, but I suppose plenty of people would. And it really wasn’t very onerous. Mostly just common sense, not lefty indoctrination. So what’s everyone complaining about?

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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