Sensitivity and the Hippies' Revenge

The only thing like sensitivity training that we had at the paper mill was that sexual harassment training. We were all making jokes about it beforehand, but I think most of us got some good out of it. I was recruited to do a role playing thing with this lady. Clarence, my boss, took us out in the hall and laid out the scenario for us. The guy was supposed to be coming on to the lady in an inappropriate manner, and the lady was supposed to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that she was not interested. Then, just as we walked through the door back into the room, the boss informed us that the lady was going to play the guy and I was going to play the lady. I remember saying, "I'll get you for this Clarence!", but it was only in jest. It was actually quite an enlightening experience. I don't think I've ever had to turn something like that down, before or since, and it's not as easy as one might think.

Another thing we learned was that any unwanted touching constitutes sexual harassment. I asked if that included guys touching other guys. You know how some guys go around grabbing and goosing other guys? I never went in for that myself, and there were people who I deliberately avoided because they did it a lot. I always suspected there was a sexual component to that stuff, even though the guys who did it insisted that they were just kidding around. It occurred to me that, if it was not okay to touch a woman like that, even if you're just kidding around, it shouldn't be okay to touch a guy like that either. The instructor informed us that the law makes no distinction between heterosexual and homosexual harassment, it's all illegal. I said, "Thank you, that's all I wanted to know." I never said another word about it to anybody, and nobody ever touched me again.

You're right that the Hippies didn't have the opportunity to be intolerant of other people back in the day, but they made up for it once they grew up and took over the country. Truth be known, a lot of the old order needed to be overthrown, but some of the new order goes to the opposite extreme, like  affirmative action and political correctness. By the way, Michigan voted to outlaw racial discrimination in college admissions some years ago, it was challenged in the courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld the law, saying that it was the right of the Michigan people to decide the issue. You win some, you lose some.

Bundy is certainly a loose cannon, the type that makes the rest of us look bad, but he did raise some interesting points along the way. Like, what's the federal government doing owning almost all the land in the State of Nevada? In Michigan and, I suppose, the other Eastern states, the feds transferred ownership of most of their land to the states and/ or to private citizens when the states were admitted to the union. Wiki says that the feds retained ownership of most of Nevada since they got the land from Mexico in 1848. I assume it's a similar case with all the other federal land in the West. I found a couple of maps on Wiki that illustrate this situation. I will try to post them here and see how they come out. Then we can discuss it further if you are so inclined.

The red map shows all the federal land, while the multicolor map breaks it down by what federal agency controls it. That one is too small to read the key, but you can find it on Wiki under "Bundy Standoff" where it is more legible.