Hmmm...even when I write to agree with you, I still end up feeling like we are disagreeing.

I think you just post my guestbook entries in your journal and respond to them because you know it makes me crazy.

Actually, I didn't know that it made you crazy. Until now.

Anyway, I realize that you weren't disagreeing with me. Nevertheless, I felt it was necessary for me to clarify the fact that I wasn't claiming that women had it easier than men on the whole, lest that fallacious idea come to serve as a convenient straw man for someone to knock down.

To astralounge, I can only say that this

The other type, hostile environment, is trickier. It refers to an environment that is overwhelmingly unfriendly, sexist, and designed to make women feel belittled, uncomfortable, or threatened. (I'm just talking off the cuff here, that's not the legal definition or anything.) One instance of the sort of thing that would constitute a "hostile environment" (e.g., telling a dirty joke) is NOT enough to base a lawsuit on. It's not enough to file a legal complaint about, although of course this happens.

comes dangerously close to trivializing the matter. To imply that lawsuits or legal complaints based on a single, inadvertent instance can be easily dismissed is tantamount to claiming that the lawsuits that large corporations use to silence individuals or small companies are irrelevant -- after all, if the accused party is innocent, the courts will find them so, and no harm will be done.

You could as easily claim that attempted rape is not particularly important unless it succeeds.