A Guy’s Perspective

Aug 30, 2011 by Virtue

In high school, I had a close friend, albeit a non-member. She was nice to me when few others were (oh, the good old high school days of being an outcast). We ended up at the same community college together, for a semester. We’d walk each other to class and chat in the hallways between classes occasionally. Spring break rolled around, and I saw her by the student lounge. She was dressed inappropriately when she was wonderfully modest before, she didn’t have the same beautiful smile, and it just seemed darker around her. She seemed so different that I had to do a double-take because I wasn’t sure it was her. I tried to talk to her and she fell back, avoiding eye contact and didn’t want to talk to me.

It wasn’t until later that I learned she became a “dancer.” Not the ballet kind. I haven’t seen her in years, but even years later, there’s hardly a day that goes by where I don’t wonder and worry about her and pray for her. Is she okay? Did she get out? Did she get in to drugs? Is she dead, OD’ing on those drugs? My heart aches for her safety.

I had a few female bosses, again, non-members, that liked to order male “dancers” for birthday parties for their friends. They liked to male-bash too, so it’s not hard to see that their opinion of men was very low. On the contrary, all the guys I worked with regularly at this particular job never treated women with the same disrespect that these women treated men. Though they’d never admit it, they had an addiction. They’d post calendars on their walls of male models, tell jokes, and other work-inappropriate stuff. I had the misfortune of being around one of them when they were telling one of their stories.

Oh how I wish I could have spoken with a voice of thunder!

But I’m sad to say I kept quiet.

On a different note, if I may, workplace viewing is increasingly becoming a problem. Where I am employed now there’s several people I work with that very clearly have a problem and openly browse and view throughout the workday. We have clients that are in the porn business so it’s unavoidable that someone is looking at it as that’s part of their job. I’ve made it clear to my boss that I don’t want any part of it and they’ve been very respectful of my stance, making sure to not assign me work with those clients and giving me clients to work with that aren’t in that business. However, some coworkers have desktop backgrounds and browse websites that would otherwise be considered not work-safe, so it’s always something.

It’s a very real problem, and the choices that those of us who are put in those positions have to make are not easy. I’ve often wished I could sit at my desk at work, wrap myself in the Savior’s warm, healing light, separating myself from everything else. I have church music from Voice Male, Reprise Quartet, Michael McLean, etc. and the last couple of conferences playing almost non-stop at work. Fortunately we are allowed to have headphones at work, so that’s good.

I think more needs to be done to recognize and help women with an addiction.

Thanks for reading this, and maybe something I said can be of use to someone.

Regards,

Anonymous