hmm.
I have a friend whose husband is a college professor. Some years ago, I remember her saying he had his students submit their work anonymously because he knew or suspected he would subconsciously grade the pretty young women more leniently - or maybe then end up grading them more harshly in an overcompensating effort to second-guess his own subconscious.
I'm not sure how I felt about that then and still not sure how I feel about it now. The guy is not in any way an asshole; at this point his students are almost young enough to be his children, and of course he'd acknowledge that some of them are more attractive to him than others but that doesn't change the fact that they are his students. He'd never do or even want to do anything inappropriate or untoward. So the actual best way to avoid unpleasantness is not to do anything unpleasant, right? But he went the step further and worked to avoid even the appearance of bias. Maybe what makes me uncomfortable is the acknowledgment that his subconscious might lead him in directions he might not even realize as it was happening. :-/
Anyway. The reason I'm thinking of it today is to do with babysitting. Couple of months ago I asked the prince's day care if any of their staff babysit, and the short answer was that they aren't supposed to facilitate any type of side hustle between their employees and the families, but they could put us in touch with one or more of their volunteers. It was a volunteer I was particularly interested in at that time anyway, so they asked him if they could give me his contact information and he came over one afternoon to help out Himself with the prince when I was out of town and that was fine, but he's still never done any child care without supervision and wouldn't feel comfortable on his own at a kid bedtime or similar. More recently, though, I learned from another family that they do sometimes hire actual day care employees to babysit - the office doesn't hook them up, and I guess they take the attitude that what the employees do on their own time is their own business. So today I ran into one of the prince's former teachers in the hallway, whom that other family had specifically named as looking after their son at the time we were talking about it, and asked her if it would be okay to call her some time to look after the prince, and she said sure and gave me her number and I'm frankly delighted at the possibility that we might have a babysitter on the roster who is neither Grandma nor a friend, because of course it's cheaper to have someone do you a favor, but you feel like you can't do it as often as you probably need to be able to get out of the house. :-P
So I mentioned to Himself when I got home from dropoff that I'd spoken to that teacher and got her number for that purpose, and he said "Better you than me." He feels like his soliciting contact info could too easily be seen as a pretext. It wouldn't be, of course, but he's concerned about the appearance. I asked if it was because this particular teacher is young and pretty, which she is - and he thought about it and said he thought maybe he'd be comfortable having that conversation with the prince's first teacher, a lovely grandmotherly lady, but not anyone our age or younger. Because, he said, enough guys are assholes that it's not enough not to be an asshole - he also has to avoid innocently doing a perfectly reasonable thing that an asshole might do not as innocently. To be clear: He doesn't feel like this is any type of punishment for him or that he's suffering in any way. I suppose it's slightly inconvenient, but he's not getting at all not-all-men about anything; he just mentioned that he's glad I was there to initiate the conversation with the potential babysitter because he'd have felt - reasonably or not - like someone observing might have suspected he had ulterior motives.
Hmmm.
I'm not sure how I felt about that then and still not sure how I feel about it now. The guy is not in any way an asshole; at this point his students are almost young enough to be his children, and of course he'd acknowledge that some of them are more attractive to him than others but that doesn't change the fact that they are his students. He'd never do or even want to do anything inappropriate or untoward. So the actual best way to avoid unpleasantness is not to do anything unpleasant, right? But he went the step further and worked to avoid even the appearance of bias. Maybe what makes me uncomfortable is the acknowledgment that his subconscious might lead him in directions he might not even realize as it was happening. :-/
Anyway. The reason I'm thinking of it today is to do with babysitting. Couple of months ago I asked the prince's day care if any of their staff babysit, and the short answer was that they aren't supposed to facilitate any type of side hustle between their employees and the families, but they could put us in touch with one or more of their volunteers. It was a volunteer I was particularly interested in at that time anyway, so they asked him if they could give me his contact information and he came over one afternoon to help out Himself with the prince when I was out of town and that was fine, but he's still never done any child care without supervision and wouldn't feel comfortable on his own at a kid bedtime or similar. More recently, though, I learned from another family that they do sometimes hire actual day care employees to babysit - the office doesn't hook them up, and I guess they take the attitude that what the employees do on their own time is their own business. So today I ran into one of the prince's former teachers in the hallway, whom that other family had specifically named as looking after their son at the time we were talking about it, and asked her if it would be okay to call her some time to look after the prince, and she said sure and gave me her number and I'm frankly delighted at the possibility that we might have a babysitter on the roster who is neither Grandma nor a friend, because of course it's cheaper to have someone do you a favor, but you feel like you can't do it as often as you probably need to be able to get out of the house. :-P
So I mentioned to Himself when I got home from dropoff that I'd spoken to that teacher and got her number for that purpose, and he said "Better you than me." He feels like his soliciting contact info could too easily be seen as a pretext. It wouldn't be, of course, but he's concerned about the appearance. I asked if it was because this particular teacher is young and pretty, which she is - and he thought about it and said he thought maybe he'd be comfortable having that conversation with the prince's first teacher, a lovely grandmotherly lady, but not anyone our age or younger. Because, he said, enough guys are assholes that it's not enough not to be an asshole - he also has to avoid innocently doing a perfectly reasonable thing that an asshole might do not as innocently. To be clear: He doesn't feel like this is any type of punishment for him or that he's suffering in any way. I suppose it's slightly inconvenient, but he's not getting at all not-all-men about anything; he just mentioned that he's glad I was there to initiate the conversation with the potential babysitter because he'd have felt - reasonably or not - like someone observing might have suspected he had ulterior motives.
Hmmm.