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Umm, yes

An IT worker sued for sexual harassment after her “rich and powerful” male boss marked parts of an email where he wanted more information with “xx”, which she thought were kisses.

Karina Gasparova, a project manager, also claimed Aleksander Goulandris’s use of question marks in the same message were code for asking her when she would be “ready to engage in sexual acts”.

‌In a number of other innocent work-related incidents where she would find a “sinister motive”, Ms Gasparova thought his renaming a file with his initials AJG was an acronym for A Jumbo Genital.

‌Ms Gasparova took her employer, the paperless documents firm essDOCS, to the tribunal claiming sexual harassment.

That’s some powerful fantasy there. Or gross stupidity.

If this were actually in Russia (at least the one of old) then I could imagine the boss hitting on the young woman, no problem. In fact, among many companies I knew back then young ladies were employed for just such hitting upon. Although, to be fair to the sexist bastards, the job description was explained before hiring – it wasn’t a surprise sprung upon them in the, ahem, training period.

10 thoughts on “Umm, yes”

  1. Golly, some common sense from an employment tribunal.

    Or alternatively,
    Patriarchy demonstrates men are still free to get away with lewd behaviour by not believing victim of coded sexual advances. #believeallwomen

  2. Hilarious. At least Karina appears to be polylingual. With an imagination like that J K Rowling should be worried…

  3. Polylingual, fnarr, fnarr. Reminds of an old ad for Schweppes Russian (soda with angostura I think?) where the bloke orders in Russian. Barmaid flutters eyelashes and says that’s special.

    “Yes, I’m bilingual”

    “I’m sure that’s very nice for you”

  4. Should have tried for a New York judge and jury.

    Thank God she never had to deal with any files from the BBC.

  5. To be fair Gabriella Gasparova (google image search) is very attractive so I can understand men making advances. Oh wrong woman…

  6. Many years ago I went on a compulsory training course (for everyone) about sexual harassment. The point was made that it wasn’t a matter of what was intended by a comment it was how it was received that mattered. Now this was intended to avoid ‘it was only banter’ defence – but I thought at the time that not all alleged victims were sane and balanced (or not motivated by spite) so false complaints were possible. A small proportion perhaps, but tough to disprove unless obviously disproportionate.

  7. how it was received that mattered
    There’s been a trend of asking women ‘how would you feel if I asked you . . . .’ which has likely developed because of this.
    Find out how a thing will be received before the delivery of that thing.

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