It’s a sleazy message. Not a compliment. There is a difference.
This week in the UK, a human rights barrister, Charlotte Proudman, sent a message to a senior barrister, Alexander Carter-Silk, to make a connection on LinkedIn.
Instead of accepting the approach with benign politeness, the senior barrister wrote back, “Charlotte, delighted to connect,” he wrote. “I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture!!!
“You definitely win the prize for the best LinkedIn picture I have seen. Always interest (sic) to understant (sic) people’s skills and how we might work together. Alex”
Charlotte Proudman was unimpressed. She responded that she found the message offensive: “I am on linked-in for business purposes not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men.”
After explaining that when men focus on the appearance of women, they are effectively silencing them, she closed with, “Unacceptable and misogynistic behaviour. Think twice before sending another woman (half your age) such a sexist message.”
Sounds like some helpful advice. If a woman contacts you to become a professional contact, don’t assume that she wants to hear about how prize-winningly beautiful you find her. That’s just sleazy.
Also: If you ever start a sentence “This is probably horrendously political incorrect, but”, there’s a very good chance that what you are about to say is VERY ill-advised, unprofessional and otherwise inappropriate. Alexander Carter-Silk was on notice that what he was going to say was inappropriate. But he went for it anyway.
Proudman posted their correspondence to social media and called out Carter-Silk over his remarks.
Quite a few women responded by offering examples of sleazy comments they’d received on LinkedIn. It’s apparently not an isolated incident.
Proudman started to receive messages telling her that her career was over. The human rights lawyer told the Daily Mail: ‘I have received messages saying: “You have ruined your career. You have bitten the hand that feeds you. There go your instructions from solicitors.”
A partner from one of the biggest law firms in London said that Charlotte will be blacklisted by solicitors. Franklin Sinclair, of Tuckers Solicitors, wrote on Twitter: “What an awful thing to do, what kind of world do we live in when a man can’t give a lady a compliment. getalife. Nomorebriefs4u.”
Sarah Vine, a conservative columnist for the Daily Mail, has taken up this cry and has written in defence of a man’s right to ‘give a lady a compliment’.
How does Vine think that Proudman should have responded? Well, she should have just thought he was a nice man: “…Most normal women would have thought: ‘What a nice man.’ Indeed, many of us would be delighted; compliments are few and far between these days.”
Top Comments
If I received this kind of note I would certainly be rolling my eyes, although I do wonder at the need to publicly humiliate this senior member of her industry - eg perhaps the same point could be made without naming and shaming? However, I do think that telling women to "suck it up, and stop being precious, you know you want it" (which is the main undercurrent of what I'm hearing) is really off.
Why is it so bad to want to be noticed for your skills first, not your cup size or perky smile? Perhaps if he'd said something like "great to meet you, great to touch base, lovely picture" it might have been a bit less obvious, but him gushing about her great photo is the whole point of the conversation.
"Picture" is the the subject line, that her picture is hot is repeated and there is no mention that he aware of anything else about her. He's not being polite he's reduced this interaction to the online equivalent to yelling "hey hotstuff" to a passerby. Yuck.
It's all about context. Would he say this to her face in a business meeting? Not likely. He should have kept his opinions to himself.