As a male engineer I'd be happy to spend half the time going around and chatting, listening, massaging and organizing games to help colleages / team mates destress and feel energized and motivated.
For hetero orientation pairs, opposite gender, can have added destressing effect, if people are skillful at creating a good mood. Effective way to relax and raise morale.
But because that connotes "sex", the Western moral hysteria / panic mode sets in, and people automatically make it mean "bad"/"abusive"/"counter-progressive". Christian legacy programming? They think that makes them "free" but I think constraining narratives around sex to a limited set of negative connotations, just binds them to endless suffering and frustration.
This moral panic is probably partly a psyop. Sexual drive is such a powerful drive, any group who can manipulate / control / or redirect / re-narrate that en masse holds powerful sway over the population. If you can make people hate themselves for their own gender, skin color or sexuality, you have really succeeded in warping / manipulating them for something that should be so positive / neutral. That frustration for the individual that results can then be directed toward whatever would seem to provide the answer. In effect, this psyop can yoke people to a particular cause, such as "progressive liberal politics" that seem to provide the answer to the invented "axes of evil" of "sexuality / skin color / gender", and pretend to lead the way to a "promised land" of equality (? heh) even while dividing everyone into groups and getting them to fight each other. The ultimate aim of all this is probably just crowd control for the population, by "drawing off" excess frustration into such fruitless causes, you can ensure the activation energy of "revolution" / mass civil unrest is never tipped. Also the frustrated will seek other outlets for their stymied desires, so rise in entertainment / consumer culture offering short-term thrills like sucrose, endorphins, etc.
In light of all this -- the 1980s quest for status ( mirrored by current modern day Chinese quest for status ) is more healthy. But without a totalitarian state, and inundated by new technologies that empower individuals, how are you going to keep a society under control in a democracy? Democracy / politics has to end up being a very compelling reality-tv entertainment, and people must "spend" most of their excess energy on fruitless pursuits, to ensure they don't spend it on something such as "overthrowing the state".
And when you want to take the yoke off people, they fight to keep themselves bound up in it. Insisting they are free. Such is the depth of their manipulation.
> As a male engineer I'd be happy to spend half the time going around and chatting, listening, massaging and organizing games to help colleages / team mates destress and feel energized and motivated.
As a gay engineer, I doubt that if a man came over and started doing those things to you, you would feel energized and motivated. That hopefully gives you an idea why workplace norms in the modern world are the way they are.
You mean assuming he's not gay? Or do shoulder rubs from a hot guy not make you feel good? I'd assume (or at least hope!) they ask your preference before sending you some eye candy.
As an aromantic man, I do feel more energized and motivated after a chat or a card game with my (mostly male) colleagues. I'm somewhat averse to body contact, so I wouldn't make use of a massager, but so long as it's just an extra perk like a Googly ball-bath (they have those, right?), I don't see the problem.
Not being sexually attracted to someone doesn't mean that their company won't be refreshing or even uncomfortable. I think that's much more a matter of personality, and gender is only a secondary factor in whether you'll find someone likable or not.
As a gay woman engineer, I've always had the policy that, while I'm at work, any part of you that touches me, I get to keep.
What ever happened to that fad where an animal shelter would release a flock of puppies in your office for an afternoon? I'd be into that.
Well, you could send a gay person to play games and do massage to programmers who are least productive. I'm sure they will become enough motivated not to fail the next deadline.
> As a male engineer I'd be happy to spend half the time going around and chatting, listening, massaging and organizing games to help colleages / team mates destress and feel energized and motivated.
Well, I can relate to that. Sometime I can really use some massage at work while chatting with my friendly co-workers (about work), which will makes me love my job and maybe increase my productivity.
Sadly, I think ask our company to hire a massager is too much for them :(