by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline:

Normal women have got to start pushing back against the FemiNazis in #MeToo era, because if a man does it they are accused of everything from misogyny to sexism, even when they are 100 percent spot on, so we must stand by their side.

The attacks on men these days for just about anything they say or do has just hit the height of absurdity, when a male political theory professor at King’s College London, Ned Lebow, while attending an annual meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA), entered an elevator with other men and women, one of which was Professor Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College in Massachusetts and a feminist activist, and when someone asked what floor he needed, he joked “ladies’ lingerie” department.

I’m old enough to have heard that joke before, and even laughed at it a couple times. Then again, I am a normal woman, and not a FemiNazi as Ms. Sharoni, the feminist activist apparently is, because rather than just shrugging it off if she didn’t find it funny, she immediately ran back to her hotel room and pulled up the association’s code of conduct, then filed a complaint with the association’s executive director, who forwarded it to the group’s Committee on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which somehow decided his harmless, old joke, “violated” the conduct code.

Evidentally a silly old joke, one dubbed a “dad” joke by some, is treated as “sexual harassment.”

When Mr. Lebow heard they had initiated an investigation, he followed the same code of conduct rules and attempted to address it with Ms. Sharoni, by emailing her.

Via Chronicle.com:

Lebow insists it never should have gotten to that point because he tried to resolve the problem informally, as the association’s conduct code recommends. After being informed that his conduct was under investigation, Lebow wrote Sharoni an email assuring her that “I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable.” He suggested that Sharoni, who was born in Romania and raised in Israel, might have misinterpreted his remark. When he was young, in the 1950s, he said, it was a “standard gag line” to ask the elevator operator for the hardware or lingerie floor as though one were in a department store.

“Like you, I am strongly opposed to the exploitation, coercion, or humiliation of women,” Lebow wrote. “As such evils continue, it seems to me to make sense to direct our attention to real offenses, not those that are imagined or marginal. By making a complaint to ISA that I consider frivolous — and I expect, will be judged this way by the ethics committee — you may be directing time and effort away from the real offenses that trouble us both.”

It turns out, that’s not the way the association read the matter. Boyer informed Lebow that his remarks had been deemed “offensive and inappropriate.” An even “more serious violation,” than the elevator remarks, Boyer wrote, was “that you chose to reach out to Prof. Sharoni, and termed her complaint ‘frivolous.’”

The association then demanded Lebow write an “unequivocal apology” to Sharoni and submit it to them by May 15. He is refusing to do so, calling this whole episode a “a horrifying and chilling example of political correctness.”

Note: Lebow was the 2014 recipient of ISA’s distinguished scholar award.

THE BIGGER PICTURE – ATTENTION WHORES, VICTIMHOOD & THE WAR ON MEN

As to the association, he is right, it is political correctness gone wild and an appeasement mindset. Appease the perpetually offended feminists or they will sic a mob of other FemiNazis on you.

As for Ms. Sharoni, it is not about political correctness, it is about the constant need to attack men for anything and everything they say, do, how they sit (man-spreading), how they speak (man-splaining,) and the need by today’s radical feminists to be offended, or to find offense in everything around them.

The need for attention over manufactured outrage, which is why I call her an attention whore, is shown on her Twitter account, where until this was reported by the Washington Post, she hadn’t been active since October 2017, then wham, there she is, sharing news reports about this idiocy, and of course, she is also claiming she is a “victim” because people are now criticizing her for her frivolous complaint that could potentially ruin a man’s career.

Notice the pattern? Radical feminists like Sharoni attack someone, file formal complaints over an innocuous joke that is older than I am, then cry and claim victimhood status when others push back against her. That is their modus operandi.

NORMAL WOMEN ARE STARTING TO PUSH BACK AGAINST THESE FEMINAZIS

Via Sharoni’s Twitter feed, she has shared two stories seemingly sympathetic to her, but I find it very interesting that the initial story by Washington Post, by Ruth Marcus, is not one of those articles regarding this that she chose to share.

I do not link to Wapo often, but credit where it is due. The reason Sharoni most likely did not share that article is because Marcus sides with Lebow, and is pretty critical towards Sharoni, as the concluding paragraphs of her piece make clear:

Nonetheless, count me with Lebow. The days of women feeling compelled to stay silent in the face of sexist remarks or conduct are thankfully on the way out. Hear something, say something, by all means.

But for goodness’ sake, let’s maintain some sense of proportion and civility as we figure out how to pick our way through the minefield of modern gender relations. Not every comment that offends was intended that way, and intent matters. Maybe check in with the speaker before going nuclear? Maybe consider that there is a spectrum of offensiveness? That not every stray statement by a 76-year-old man warrants a resort to disciplinary procedures?

Because making a federal case, or even a disciplinary one, over a stray elevator remark is not only, well, frivolous — it’s also counterproductive. Take a culture of eggshell fragility. Pair it with a hypersensitive disciplinary mechanism. What you get is a result that serves only to diminish real, and continuing, instances of truly offensive behavior.

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