FHRITP

For those of you who are news-averse, FHRITP is an obscenity, and also -- inexplicably -- an obscene trend that started out as a hoax that has since gone viral...and become a real thing.

It stands, pardon me, for "F--k Her Right In The P--y".

I feel dirty even abbreviating that. It's not that I'm a prude (although doubtless some would argue that point); it's that there's a time and a place among consenting adults for that kind of talk, and the time and place it's been happening lately (in public, directed at a total stranger on live television) is as far from appropriate as it's possible to get.

The most recent outburst came from a man I'm not going to bother naming, directed at Shauna Hunt, a reporter for CITY-TV in Toronto. She was covering a professional soccer game when two males taunted her sexually, one of them shouting the phrase.  The other man defended his friend's actions, saying "you're lucky we don't have a vibrator" and "you'll find it funny eventually."

Does anybody find this funny? Can anyone imagine finding it funny in the future? If so, please stop reading this now, slink off to whatever dark corner of the Internet you prefer, and please ensure that the door absolutely wallops your ass on the way out.

The man who actually yelled "FHRITP" is an assistant network management engineer (!) with Hydro One and Wilfrid Laurier University alumnus. I'm not in the least surprised by that last bit. Laurier has come out with a statement disavowing any approval whatsoever of the man's actions, but judging by the behaviour I have all too often been witness to both on and off campus by Laurier students, the words are hollow.

Anyway, he has since been fired. In addition, he faces a year's ban on attending any Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment event. MLSEL is trying to identify some of the people in the crowd who found the mens' actions hilarious: I'm not sure what they'll do if they're successful.

"It happens every day," said Shauna Hunt, the woman who was sexually harassed. "Sometimes multiple times a day." One reporter noted she'd heard sexually offensive remarks from a nine-year-old boy.

WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?

I'll tell you where they are. They're the ones pulling their kids out of school over
Ontario's sexual education curriculum, which is very explicit in its teaching respect for the individual, including the absolute requirement of consent for any sexual behaviour. They're the ones who want to "preserve their child's innocence".  They're also probably the same parents who did things like this when they were young themselves, without a second thought.

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I had second thoughts. Plenty of them.

I'll tell you something: I was once nearly fired from a job because of sexual harassment.

Yes, me.

Adult Ken has a cherished and hard-won reputation as a walking safe space. I have to be exceedingly comfortable with you to even let my mind -- which is dirtier than most, believe me -- out of its confines at all, and I take great pains to ensure all boundaries are known and respected. That's not because I crossed a line once, and almost got burned for it. It's because it's the right way to be.

There are times I wish I wasn't so damned honourable, trust me. But whenever one of those times hits, I think -- hard -- about the possible consequences of dishonourable behaviour. Not so much the possible loss of job. No, I think about loss of  friends, face and faith -- all three of which have that other f-word beaten seven ways to Sunday.

Child Ken--and I was a child into my late twenties, up until I met the woman I would marry--didn't recognize or respect boundaries very well. That's why, more than twenty years ago, I said something to a female co-worker, something mildly crude which was nevertheless gently phrased (certainly much more gentle than "FHRITP")--which she misinterpreted as a sexual come-on.

I didn't intend any such thing at all, and was utterly horrified when I was told how what I had said was perceived. So horrified, so completely shocked and embarrassed, that I was let off with a warning instead of being fired, as I probably should have been. I was able to convince the woman in question that I had never meant any least offense.

It took some convincing.

I can't deny a feeling of righteous indignation when the accusation was levelled: I had been told much cruder things, many times, by the woman who was so mortally offended by my slightly off-colour observation. That feeling dissipated rather quickly as I realized my words had been misinterpreted as me hitting on her...that regardless of anything that had gone before, I had no business saying anything that could be interpreted as suggestive. Not in that setting, not to a co-worker, not ever.

Since then, whenever it came time to actually hit on someone in my life, I've been almost paralyzed by fear. I never make the first move, and rarely the second or third. I met my wife at a job interview--she hired me--and I quit before we started dating not six months later. Ask her if you don't believe me: I was the face of professionalism on the clock. So much so that only the most perceptive people even suspected anything. None of my co-workers, but rather Eva's...two of whom were also friends. "Date him already," they said.

I think you can chalk that up under "lessons learned".
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Does the "gentleman" who yelled "FHRITP"--which, to my mind even still, is ever so much worse than what I once said in ignorance--feel any corresponding remorse, any sense that his actions were wrong?

He doesn't seem to. And there are a whole bunch of people defending him in various online forums. "Boys will be boys" (and so, apparently, will be a lot of middle-aged men). "Lighten up, it's all a big joke". (No, it isn't. Rare indeed is the woman who would find this behaviour even remotely amusing.) "Where's freedom of speech?" (Hey,  nobody stopped these idiots from saying what they said. Freedom of speech has never protected and will never protect people from socially-inflicted consequences of that speech.)

For those who think the man shouldn't have been fired from his job over something he did on his own time, I ask you this: once it became known who employed him, what should his employer have done instead? Leave him in place, and leave the rest of the world wondering why they would ever have hired such an asshole? Condemn the behaviour, but otherwise do nothing, and thereby say to the world that your condemnations mean nothing, that you actually support such rudeness?

I don't really have a problem with people's lives being utterly destroyed when they act in such a patently stupid manner. I'm on the fence over whether or not mine should have been, and my offence really was comparatively trivial, not even directed at anyone in particular, in a small group of friends.  (Which again, doesn''t excuse it one bit: it happened on work time and was not appropriate for that setting. I really can't imagine--couldn't even at my most immature--running up to a camera and yelling that at a reporter. I have a real problem even saying "pussy" to refer to anything other than a kitten, because I happen to think women are more than their genitals. Much, much more.