A woman had to remind a man that LinkedIn is not a dating service, and is she pissed.
https://twitter.com/CRProudman/status/640934811381706752?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwCharlotte Proudman is a barrister (fancy U.K. word for lawyer). In her LinkedIn profile, she writes that she is "researching #FGM #fearlessfeminist because rape, prostitution & pornography are problems of male dominance." She received the following message on the maybe-not-so-professional networking site LinkedIn (I kept the original spelling and punctuation of the email intact):
Charlotte, delighted to connected, I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture !!!
You definitely win the prize for the best Linked in picture I have ever seen
Always interest to understant people's skills and how we might work together
Alex
This is the professional email equivalent of someone burping and blowing it in your face. It was sent by a partner at a law firm in London, who apparently moonlights as a top-notch creeper with sub-par editing skills. Maybe since he used three exclamations in the first line he didn't bother with any further punctuation? Charlotte was not happy, so she responded as follows:
I find your message offensive. I am on linked-in for business purposes not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men. The eroticisation of women's physical appearance is a way of exercising power over women. It silences women's professional attributes as their physical appearance becomes the subject.
Unacceptable and misogynistic behaviour. Think twice before sending another woman (half your age) such a sexist message.
Charlotte
Except for the fact that Charlotte also can't spell "LinkedIn," this is an otherwise perfect feminist response. But not everyone thought so, in fact, The Daily Mail decided on this printing-press troll of a headline:
https://twitter.com/AdamBarnett13/status/641935044337094656Hopefully, this is just the newspaper version of clickbait and not the true sentiment of the publication. Charlotte's email exchange along with the headline above caused her to realize she probably wasn't alone, so she asked if people had similar experiences. The responses poured in.
Here are some of the messages women have received on LinkedIn, not Tinder:
https://twitter.com/michelllec/status/641625213982146560/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/maiia76/status/641641199351300096?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwCharlotte continued encouraging people to call out sexism with the hashtag #calloutsexism, which was met with even more support along with, you guessed it, a whole heaping pile of misogynist tweets. Here are some of the responses:
https://twitter.com/Suffragentleman/status/641889965023055872https://twitter.com/PapaBeats/status/641889485224083457Charlotte told The Independent, "I am prepared to accept the misogynistic backlash that inevitably accompanies taking a stand in the hope that it empowers at least one other woman to feel she doesn't need to sit back and accept sexist 'banter'. I accept that I’m in a more privileged position than most, so I hope to use that to my advantage. At the end of the day, this may be just a drop in the ocean – but we can’t challenge an entire system of sexism without taking issue with its constituent parts."