posted on January 15, 2008 09:39:34 AM
Hi, all: A columnist friend of mine (male) asked me this a while back, and we discussed it at length. Of course! not only men are like this, my husband included--and probably the important men in your lives. I thought you'd be interested in this woman's plight while working for the US in Iraq. Also, I'm quoted in the middle of it. I'm sure there's MUCH to be said about the topic, and I love his conclusion at the end. Adele
Men behaving badly: “They know there’s no law.”
Tracy Howland-Barker’s story made me ask, yet again, “Why do men do that?”
Tracy is a former Ogden resident. She was a professional, going to a professional business location, staffed by other professionals all of whom happened to be men but were supposedly, let me repeat, professionals.
As soon as she got there they started acting like schoolyard bullies.
Tracy says she was sexually harassed and assaulted. When she tried to report it, she was locked in her room. When she tried to leave, she was dumped in the desert.
The Iraqi desert.
Tracy worked for Kellogg Brown & Root, a major government contractor supporting troops in Iraq. Most of the men she accuses also worked for KBR, but one works for the United States Department of State.
None of them have been brought to justice, or even charged.
She’s home and suing. She has a web site, www.tracybarker.com, with all the details.
But even she couldn’t tell me why the men she worked with, who one presumes have families and churches and reputations back home, acted as they did.
“They acted like a free-for-all. They acted like the wild, wild west. It’s a ‘Do what you want’ atmosphere,” she said. “They know there’s no law.”
But why? Do some men only behave when forced to?
Not just Iraq. Women know this can happen anywhere.
Example: Weber State University’s newspaper just did an article on new bus shelters on campus.
The design team was four men and one woman. One question they pondered was why women didn’t use the current shelters
The woman pointed out, “There’s only one door.” Go in, you’re trapped. Women won’t take that chance.
The new shelters have three doors.
Adele Smith, former Ogden City Councilwoman, said men who behave the way Tracy describes puzzle her.
“I think a lot of them are emotionally retarded, but what could cause that? When our last baby was a boy, I vowed he'd be different, more sensitive, and I worked on that. And he is. I never laughed when he and I were watching a TV show in which someone falls and hurts himself; I’d express sympathy, and hope that person wasn’t hurt too badly.”
Linda Brady, our music writer, had an interesting observation: Think of men as wolves.
“Men are straightforward. If they’re nice, they’re predictably nice; if they’re jerks, they’re predictably jerks.” But in a bunch, she said, pack behavior takes over.
Linda said Tracy, in Iraq, had men who were in a war stress situation, without military training and no laws. So, they became wolves.
She may have nailed it.
“I thought I would be protected going over there,” Tracy told me last week. “I never thought, working for a U.S. contractor hired by the U.S. government, that anything would happen to me.”
But it did. Her lawsuit describes unremitting sexual harassment and assault while trying to do her job.
When she protested she was told “boys will be boys.”
Tracy’s writing a book about how those red blooded, all-American boys behaved.
The title is “Abandoned.”
Wasatch Rambler is the opinion of Charles Trentelman. You can reach him at 625-4232, or e-mail at [email protected].
posted on January 16, 2008 04:41:31 AM
I believe there are basic differences between men and women that are instinctual. To expect men to respond to situations the same way women do, or vice versa, is not realistic. Every other species on this planet has built in hard wired encoded ways in which it responds to certain stimuli and to imagine that humans are any different is silly.
Having said that, I also believe that these basic instincts can be modified through parenting and experience.
People, not just men, are the way they are because we collectively allow them to be the way they are. We enable them. We make excuses, we say "that's how (insert group, women, teenagers, men) they are".
There is a gradual paradigm shift going on in the way boys are raised, but it is a very slow process. The combat environment is the very last place you'll see any change in men's behavior, maybe because it's the place where instinctual responses to stimuli are the most valuable for survival.
posted on January 17, 2008 11:10:43 PM
Profe: Just one more reason war is hell. When we took student leaders to Lithuania, the situation we encountered was horrible. The country was about to revolt against Russia, and the people were trying to lift themselves up. But the menfolk had been conscripted into the Russian army and had been brutalized there--and brought their changed personalities home with them, beating their wives, etc.
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