This is a link to a recent happening in Toronto, Canada. An employee of a government owned utility company was fired either because a) he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and behaved in an idiotic fashion or b) he showed blatant disregard for a fellow human being and his behaviour was in direct violation of his company’s code of ethics. You decide after reading the article or my summary below!
For those who don’t want to read the entire article, the story went something like this: at a sporting event a female reporter was heckled by some hooligans using the ever more popular phrase: FHRITP. If you’re curious, please google it as I’m not sure the actual words are appropriate for this site! (Admin note: I’ll spare you the effort…it means “F**k her right in the p**sy”. ) Following this, the offenders began laughing and eventually left. The agitated reporter began interviewing bystanders asking whether they thought it was appropriate and one of said bystanders was the man who was fired. He may have been drunk and he told her he thought it was hilarious and that he was laughing. She kept asking him questions including: “What would your mother say to this?”. The answer was something to the effect that she would also laugh and find it hilarious. At the end of the segment, he added that she was lucky there wasn’t a vibrator on the scene (referring to an old incident in which a male British reporter had a erm…blue vibrator pressed to his ear).
There’s no question that the phrase is derogatory and only funny to idiots but I’m curious about what everyone thinks of the firing. On the one hand, the man in question is a complete jerk but the fact remains that he didn’t start the whole thing, was off the clock and gave his opinion only when asked for it. I will reserve my opinion for the comments in an effort to keep this piece as unbiased as possible! 0513-15
The phrase came about last year when TV reporter John Cain was reporting on the case of a missing 20 year old woman and he thought his mic was not live. Unfortunately for him he was not only caught on camera but live news broadcast saying that he would “f**k her right in the pussy”, referring to the missing young woman. He was promptly fired from his job. Subsequently an anonymous man named “Fred”, having seen the John Cain video clip, interrupted a live news report by a female reporter by jumping in front of her, grabbing the microphone from her hands and saying “FHRITP”. It has since gone viral and the phrase now used to disrupt live news reporting which was what occurred in the Canada to form the basis of this submission .
I don’t see anything remotely humorous about this whatsoever. John Cain deserved to be fired for what appears to be a grotesque reference to a missing young woman who may have been been assaulted or dead. It is a grave indecency to the woman and her family and shows an almost pathological disdain for the feelings of others in a time of crisis. And a burning question I had after watching the John Cain comment was, “What kind of man thinks of sex with a woman who has become newsworthy because she has gone missing?” I mean, shouldn’t there be other more important, pressing issues on the mind than sex?
And “Fred”should be outed by someone so that news media and police have him on their radar during future live news casts. Because what Fred has started is a viral campaign against female reporters thus creating a hostile workplace for them. potentially limiting their exposure on the news, and demeaned their work by ruining the shot. He thinks it’s all a big joke and apparently fired Shawn Simoes thought so, too.
Dear Mr. Simoes, Just because someone asks your opinion does not mean you are obligated to actually give it. Etiquette certainly provides us with a number of suitable ways to demur from answering questions that would be imprudent to respond to. But respond you did and by doing so, you made a choice to validate behavior that any reasonable, civil person views as reprehensible and threatening. There is no doubt as to where you stand on the issue and I do believe there should be consequences for the choices one makes because I would not want to interact with you as a representative of your previous employer knowing that you have such a profound disdain for women and a poor moral compass in regards to what is considered humorous.
Stupid man, you had the opportunity right in your hand to become a viral hero to tens of thousands of women internationally. If only you had responded like this, “I think the phrase is disrespectful to women and indecent. I’m sorry you were the recipient of that verbal insult, Ms. Hunt.” But in a crowd of like-minded men, you went along with the pack mentality lest your man card get revoked and you became the unemployed poster child of insensitive, disrespectful, cretinous men worldwide.
And this isn’t entirely about freedom of speech or the consequences of speech but more so about the disappearance of common decency and respect in the public arena. Why would anyone think a sexually charged phrase is an acceptable joke? Where is the sense of decency that restrains behavior and not bring shame upon oneself? This is another of those “jokes” where if you do not play along with the viral “joke’, you are viewed as a spoil sport so the tables have been turned where the target of the “joke” is under greater social and peer pressure to tolerate indecency than those using the phrase.