Gender Discrimination

I assume others in the APS have by now received the May AP and read the letter that sparked this post. For those who haven't, it is from a Female member, possibly younger, reporting harassment issues from dealers and older collectors at stamp shows. I cannot link to it, you have to be an APS member to view the online edition.

Briefly, she recounts being hit on and subjected to embarrassing comments in these situations, and about how she plans to contact the dealer organizations to ask that such things be considered for disciplinary action. If valid, her concerns seem reasonable.

Probably this is a 'hot potato' topic. Just wondering if others have seen the letter and what your take is on it.

Its a real enough problem in many facets of life.
And in 2017, there are two default responses. Oneis to take every such case extremely seriously and the second is to trivialise every case (claiming over-sensitivity or to complain about "political incorrectness").
Arguably Political Correctness is itself not a politically correct term. If we embraced a term like "Simple Good Manners" then our wives, daughters, sisters would not have to face very real problems in many aspects of their lives.
Certainly Stamp Collecting does have an image problem. A hobby dominated by elderly men like myself with the values of the 1960s.
We can move with the times or become isolated from modern values and reality.
The worst aspect of Collecting is a "group think" of getting too nostalgic about the good old days.

Philately, sadly, has become by default an 'old boys club'. The demographics of shrinking numbers have left our rank welled by clueless old guys. Most of them are decent, really. Just clueless. This is how they relate to women and always have. Yes they often have wives and daughters but behave themselves around them. When they get out and away from that they feel free to be who they really are.

I have in the past posted on here about some of my experiences along these lines. Like the time I attended the meeting of a local club- the leader of the group told an off color Obama joke with the 'N' word. I was the only one there that didn't guffaw. I never went back. Not sure what the solution is, maybe there isn't one. It just is.

Sweeping generalizations such as this are a discourtesy to the hobby and the many good men and women who support our hobby.

Individuals should be taken to task individually for any bad behavior.

The APS as a national philatelic organization can certainly be a force for good by setting the right tone.

The APS already has rules for good conduct. These could easily be expanded to include sanction for misogynistic behavior.

APS group in 1968 (also from the current AP, a bit ironic).


Clearly lacking diversity back in 1968. Has diversity in APS and the hobby in general gotten better now in 2017? I have seen and heard a number of things over the years that made me cringe. Heck, there was a thread in one of the other forums in the last few weeks which seemed to me to be fairly sexist, yet no one said a word about it.
Don

Stamps1962,
I think your experience is a product of the "group think". The Leader of the group made the remark because he assumed that the remark had the support of some, the acquiescence of others and it would alienate anyone who found it offensive. ...in this case you. Quite properly you never went back (I would have done exactly as you did) and this has the unfortunate effect of making such offensive remarks more likely and adding to the "group think" and establish an unenlightened group as a safe haven for stupid people.
An unfortunate side effect in a hobby with an older age profile and that is largely about nostalgia is that people can often (I am avoiding generalisation) that the world was better in unspecified olden days.
Arguably this manifests itself in special interests within collecting. But it is not unique to Stamp Collecting. Certainly a lot of hobbies can reflect a world view.
Nor is it confined to racism or misogyny or homophobia.
It would be wrong of any Leader of a group in a benign world of Stamp Collecting to assume that the rank and file members adhere to a specific view of the world. And probably equally wrong of me to stereotype my fellow collectors. At times, I am uncomfortable with it all.
But let us hope that the individual case you mention in original post is settled on its individual merits. And we all progress.

I saw the letter and was surprised but not overly shocked by it. In the letter the author makes it known that it could be a generational thing. It is definitely not acceptable and I applaud her for speaking up. I don't know what the answer is. I am not that familiar with the ASDA, but maybe they could offer a training module for its participants in terms of harassment.

The Author of the letter specifically asked APS to make non-discrimination (gender and other) part of the Philatelic Code of Ethics. This was a very reasonable request, and APS should add a statement against discrimination ASAP.

Would the intent of the code of ethics change be to actually be able file complaints with specific dealers? I agree discrimination is not good not sure you can do much to change it unless you think it would be policy to enforce.

It's a sad commentary that this is still an issue in 2017. And I think it does explain why some collectors who do not fit the "stereotype" of a stamp collector choose to remain "anonymous" and do their purchases online and, maybe, participate only in online fora rather than join any organized group.

I know back in the '90s shortly after I moved to Columbus I went to the store of one dealer. It was truly a treasure trove of philatelic goodies. But the dealer's attitudes towards anyone who was not male, heterosexual and of European extraction made me feel very uncomfortable, especially as he would often listen to conservative talk radio and then pontificate to anyone in the store his agreement with the commentators and rant about all those "others" (not knowing that I myself was one of those "others" who was planning to spend my just-as-green-as his dollars at his store). After a couple visits I never darkened the doors of his shop again and turned increasingly to the internet as a source for philatelic purchases.

Having said that, I know many dealers who are more than welcoming of "non-traditional" collectors and will go out of their way to help them in building their collections, so it is not a completely systemic problem for the hobby. As for the APS adding a "non-discrimination" clause, personally I am not completely in favor as far as something that would be "required" of dealers, I'd much prefer just not spending my money (and encourage others who oppose such behavior to spend their money elsewhere as well) rather than try to "enforce" non-discrimination. In the end all dealers are in business to make money, and as the consumer base for stamps is transformed by the changing demographic of American and global society, the most powerful weapon to fight bigotry among those providing services in the economy is the financial one.

DCJMHOH makes excellent points. It is one of the reasons that until just a few days ago, I was not a "joiner" of clubs. The tragedy is that Stamp Collecting is in such a critical state that we actually need each other. But certainly in the last two years, I have regretted joining two online Stamp Collecting message boards when the "group think" was not to my personal taste. It is actually impossible to leave one of the message boards and my name is there still and that makes me feel tainted by association.
To the credit of the other message board, the Moderator cancelled my membership.

I also agree that some dealer's behavior made shopping on the internet a better alternative. I consider myself more introverted also so more natural. Some dealers do not have great social skills or aware of their actions. For example, I recently went to a dry cleaning place and the owner had a popular conservative talk radio show blaring...it will be the last time I go into that place. As DCJMHOH says, make a difference by where you spend your dollars. My concern is just adding it would mean compliance and do not see how it will change people and filing some complaint to APS would be wasting time. These social ills have always be around and still around despite what the general trend is.

Stamp dealers are like many other groups (including collectors). Some are highly intelligent with PhD's and some barely scraped through high school. Some are liberal and some are conservative. None of which can prevent some from being narrow minded, bigoted, evil or psychotic, or some combination of the four. And unfortunately what year it is has zero to do with it; both good and bad basic human behavior has been unchanged for tens of thousands of years.

We many not be able to stop various dealers from being "narrow minded, bigoted' but we can make it clear that, as a community, we do not condone it.

What kind of statement is the APS making when it members are aware that a member does not treat "anyone who was not male, heterosexual and of European extraction" fairly, or has a shop that is hostile to those same people, and remains silent?

Nor do I think this should be an empty statement. If you cannot treat everybody with decency and respect, then you don't deserve to be a member of APS.

Obviously a person should treat everyone else with respect...the way he or she expects to be treated. People should be aware, though, that there is a fine line between a simple behavior standard and politics.

For me personally, when politics enters the picture I am "out the door"... whether it is a stamp club, a picnic, or anything else.

Why any store owner would be so thoughtless as to think that having a political radio program playing in their store while customers come in is a mystery to me. They're certainly free to listen to whatever they want on their own time, but a store is a public place. The owner deals with the public. We've had laws for 50 years prohibiting discrimination in public places like stores and restaurants. Even if it's your own store, you need to be neutral and tolerant and not play angry political programs while you deal with the public. Play some music if you must, but don't force me to listen to political nonsense or racial or sexual insults.

As for sex discrimination and harassment, far from being about "political correctness," it's really about showing respect for other people and not harassing or insulting them. Women take a lot of insulting from certain kinds of men who think they were put in the world for their pleasure. You wouldn't insult people of another race if people of that race were your customers. Why make offensive remarks about women?

Some of these people seem never to have learned this. Some think it's funny to put down women or other groups of people -- gays, Muslims, liberals, women, environmentalists, "hippies" (whatever that means), conservative Christians, Southerners, Jews, old people, kids, you name it. There's a lot of blaming out there. I wonder how they'd feel is someone made the same remarks about their mother, wife, or daughter?

I've listened to stamp dealers make politically or sexually offensive remarks to other customers as I was planning to buy stamps from them. Instead, I just got up and left. They can go out of business for all I care.

The issue is not that people have such intolerances (it's a free country, and all that), but that they insist you listen to them as though you were their partner or something. And all you wanted to do was do business with them. I think it's a great idea for the APS to add a not insulting others non-discriminatory policy for membership.