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.on the clock might, in some
ways, actually be less of a land
mine than it was pre-#MeToo.
Linda, 26, a service-industry
employee, feels that more guys
(not all!) are on high alert right
now. “Men know not to pull some
shit or else they might be outed
for exactly who they are,” she
says. And women feel especially
empowered to choose who they
hook up with—or don’t. The
large majority of those who took
our survey—90 percent!—said
they would never date their boss.
And we’re no longer afraid to say
“hell no” if a sleazy supervisor
asks us out for drinks.
Yet companies are still zeroing
i n on t he ve r y t h i n g t h a t we s e e m
to have under control at work:
dating. According to career
transitioning firm Challenger,
Gray & Christmas, 51 percent of
b u s i ne s s e s h ave for ma l of f ic e -
romance protocols, with an
increasing number of employers
currently working on one.“The #MeToo movement gave
women the power to say no to
a hookup—and to say yes.”“A no-dating policy in the
workplace cements in people’s
minds that this is about sexual
desire. But it’s sexual harassment
that’s about people abusing their
power. It’s not, ‘I asked her out.’
When companies get stuck there,
they’re not addressing the real
problem,” explains Marianne
Cooper, PhD, a sociologist at the
Clayman Institute for Gender
Research at Stanford University.
This also assumes that women
don’t know the difference
between an unwanted sexual
advance from an office mate and
a consensual relationship with a
coworker. (Please.)
It wouldn’t be fair to leave out
the monumental progress the
#MeToo movement has had on
the workplace (empty desks
where all the Harveys used
to be) and how it’s promptedcompanies to implement
changes that do benefit women,
like Facebook’s “you can ask
someone out only once” policy.
Women do need—and want—HR
to have their backs when it comes
to the sexism that didn’t just
disappear because of a hashtag.
But “telling people they can’t
have relationships at work
doesn’t get rid of
hypermasculine
cultures or
harassment,” says
Cooper, nor does it
really deter us from
dating. After all, says
Olivia, 22, a nurse, “the #MeToo
movement gave women the
power to say no to a hookup—
and to say yes.”
And anyway, these slightly
sexist “bans” can also come with
a fucked-up side effect: They
may further the false narrative
that any type of fraternizing
with a woman at the office is
risky. In 2019, 27 percent of men
avoided one-on-one meetings
with female colleagues,
according to a survey from the
University of Houston, which
is a really excellent way for
women to get left behind at work.
That seems like a punishment—
not protection. And definitely
not progress.135
Cosmopolitan November 2019