If Jimmy was a woman,,,mildly spoilerish, but nothing we haven't seen in the promo for 3.07

[shino716]

I've been seeing some comments, on Tumblr and elsewhere, to the effect that if Thomas was straight and Jimmy a woman, then there would no question of sympathy for Thomas because his attentions would be seen as sexual harassment, pure and simple. It occurred to me that this a moot point. If Thomas was straight and Jimmy a woman, then he could just *

Comments

[shino716]

"If Jimmy was a woman, sure, Thomas could ask her out, but it doesn't follow that it would be welcome and not harassment."

Hmmm...I'm not sure that asking someone out once would qualify as harassment because of the possibility that the other party might not be interested. If the second person were to say "no" and the first person were to persist after that, then yes, it would be harassment. For instance, when Molesley expressed his interest in Anna in S2 by lending her a book and asking her to spend some time with him, was that harassment? I would say not, since he backed off as soon as she said no. It wasn't particularly classy or sensitive, since the man she loved had only just walked out of her life, but I don't think it was harassment. My point is that if Thomas was straight, he could avail himself of more direct means of expressing interest in someone he liked, and he'd be likely to get a direct yes or no answer to guide his subsequent actions. And while Thomas is certainly no angel, we've had no indication that he's the sort of person who would continue to press his amorous attentions on someone he *knew* wasn't interested. Thus far, he doesn't know that Jimmy is uncomfortable with his advances.

One could argue that since Thomas is a couple of rungs above Jimmy in the downstairs hierarchy, there's an abuse of power issue in play. But again, in Thomas' defense, he doesn't have any say in who is hired or promoted; that's strictly Carson's purview, and as someone else pointed out in last week's reaction post, it might not even occur to Thomas that Jimmy views the situation that way. It's O'Brien who's leading Jimmy to believe that he has to put up with Thomas in order to get ahead.

That said, I agree that to the viewer who, unlike Thomas, can see Jimmy's discomfort, the whole thing has a sort of unsavory vibe. Basically, I'm annoyed with Fellowes for shortchanging Thomas and his struggles with bad writing. As for Jimmy, I'm not sure that Fellowes is attempting to illustrate sexual harassment at all, and I say that because I just don't get the feeling that he thinks things through so thoroughly.