IJMC - Dating Don'ts And Don'ts

As if the dating scene wasn't difficult enough for those of us in it (hi 
to all you lucky people in relationships! Now go away! This is for the 
rest of us!). Now we're being told even more that we have to be careful 
about. I think the last one's the worst...but pick your own least 
favorite if you will! Scary world we live in.                      -dave






DATING DON'TS AND DON'TS,
A Handy Checklist for the Politically Correct 90s

Here is a list of things that are now against the rules, according to the
the sex-and-dating police.  Read -- and memorize -- this information to
avoid lawsuits, dismissal from work, expulsion from school -- or worse! 

1) LIP-LICKING, TEETH-LICKING, AND PROVOCATIVE EATING. All of the above
are on a list of unacceptable gestures and behaviors distributed at the
University of Maryland at College Park. 

2) STANDING TOO CLOSE.  Standing too close is one of a long list of
sexually harassing behaviors that Susan Strauss and Pamela Espeland
caution us have been reported in U.S. high schools. (Others are MAKING
VERBAL COMMENTS ABOUT CLOTHING and WEARING AN OBSCENE HAT.)

3) EXCESSIVE EYE CONTACT.  University of Toronto chemistry professor
Richard Hummel was recently prosecuted for prolonged staring at a female
student. 

4) INSUFFICIENT EYE-CONTACT.  A handbook published at Barnard College in
New York warns male professors who fail to make sufficient eye-contact
with their female students that their conduct is contributing to a biased
atmosphere in the classroom which may cause women to feel discouraged
and/or physically threatened. 

5) RECEPTIVE NON-INITIATION.  If a woman makes a pass at her male boss,
and her boss responds, he (not she) is guilty of sexual harassment,
according to Hunter College professor Sue Rosenberg Zalk. Zalk's term for
this underpublicized offense: receptive non-initiation. 

6) FORGETTING A WOMAN'S NAME. A report issued by a committee at the
University of Pennsylvania lists "women's names not remembered" as a
pernicious form of sexual discrimination. 

7) PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION.  The Minnesota Department of Education
discourages "displays of affection in hallways" on the grounds that such
displays may offend others and are heterosexist. 

8) HAMBURGERS.  Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef, notes that "the
statistics linking domestic violence and quarrels over beef are both
revealing and compelling." 

9) SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR.  And finally this, from Robin Morgan, former
editor of Ms.:  If a man's "self-deprecating humor" leads a woman to
initiate sex with him, then that man is -- in a "radical feminist" sense
of the term -- guilty of assault.