The Alaska Attorney General, Kevin Clarkson, has resigned. He’s a Republican and a religious zealot, so you can guess why: harassment of a woman employee. It’s so predictable at this point.
He wasn’t saying anything explicit, and that’s his defense.
“I engaged in a series of text messages with this employee over approximately one month. The topics of these texts ranged from food, to movies, to books, to family, and all were conversational and positive, were reciprocal, and were, I believed, mutual. I sent her pictures of food that I cooked from time to time. These texts included invitations for this person and her children to come to my home to share a meal, which she politely declined. All of these texts were ‘G’ rated. In our texts we exchanged mutual endearments in words and emojis. On several occasions, this person initiated a friendly hug when I came to her work place, and I reflexively gave her a peck on top of her head.”
That’s sweet, except he sent 588 such texts in a single month, and they were rather too informal to be considered professional. Also, why does he keep commenting on her appearance?
The text messages began in March and continued for 27 days, the Daily News reported. In the texts, Clarkson invited the woman to his home 18 times. He sent her 56 kissing face emoji. He invited her to drink wine with him. He called her “beautiful” and “sweet lady.” And after they had not seen each other for a while told her, “you owe me a number of hugs.”
After the woman asked Clarkson to respect professional boundaries, he replied “OK I won’t bother you more,” the Daily News reported. He told her he had enjoyed talking to her and called the hugs that they had shared “pretty darn special.”
Then he sent her 200 more text messages, the newspaper reported.
I think her case was made at “200 text messages after being asked to stop”. Boundaries, fellow men, boundaries. Learn to respect them.
Jesus that’s creepy. 588 text messages? I had a stalker two years ago and it never got that bad. I can only imagine being stalked by your boss. Ewww, just gross.
Yeah, it is very creepy, even by fundie xian GOP standards.
These 588 text messages all happened in one month.
Doesn’t this guy have a job or something that requires his time and attention?
Doesn’t look like the Attorney General for Alaska has a whole lot to do.
Well, boys will be boys. Because they’re incapable of behaving like men.
I guess that I’m weird, I only texted coworkers about work related things. Well, work or that the cafeteria had edible food for a change.
Nah, it’s hard to guess, there are so many options.
First guess with republican and religious zealot is a sexual harassment of the male coworker.
For most of the story I was thinking – ok, maybe that’s a little too clingy and inappropriate but may well be case of politeness being honestly mistaken for invitation (which would be not so bad if not the boss/subordinate workplace relation) but the 200 texts after is crazy
That’s harassment to the extreme, even if they were talking about tv shows!
Let’s do some quick math to see how he spent his days. To be conservative let’s say he sleeps 8 hours and the month in question has 31 days. Rounding up that equals ~19 messages a day, and since he’s only awake for 16, that more than a message every hour.
That means that BEST CASE he woke up every day for a month, and every single hour he was awake texted her, every day. Assuming he has other things to do, that just means he spent 8 hours a day texting her every half hour.
Frankly how did he even get anything else done in his day, being so obsessed with her?
(yes I know that one can fire off like 10 texts in a few minutes so the math doesn’t average out, but that just means he cluster texted for hours so doesn’t help him any)
Meanwhile Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfield has been suspended for sexual harassment. Apparently he was already writing excuses for why his behaviour isn’t sexual harassment for several years.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/yale-professor-jed-rubenfeld-suspended-for-sexual-harassment.html
Gorzki
No, please, stop that. We must stop letting n been get away with that shit and by “that shit” I m mean “thinking that every woman who is polite and nice and kind to a guy wants to fuck him.
Especially since women are expected to be nice, polite and kind and get punished for not being.
Do you have any idea how it feels to simply have a friendly conversation with some dude or just being polite because you’re that kind of person only to find out that he expects you to fuck him because you laughed at his joke or talked about a movie with him?
It’s only “conversational” and “reciprocal” if she was replying. I get the concept of people who can’t take a hint, but I’m always amazed when they reach positions of power like this.
@9 PaulBC
That’s the real problem right there. He was in a position of power and authority over her. Outright rejection could have resulted in punitive punishment from him. I’ve seen that happen before. She was backed into a corner with no way out. It’s a real shitty place to be.
Why do so many people have so much trouble understanding and respecting boundaries? JFC, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve had a boundary ignored or straight up trampled, I’d be Jeff Bezos rich.
I don’t think I would have made that many text to my ex-girlfriends in a year.
I don’t think I made that many texts to Mr J in a year we weren’t in lock down.
And Giliell is right, being polite isn’t an invitation to fuck, it’s just good manners smoothing social interactions especially with people who have power over you.