Conan O’Brien shakes his fist in anger at sexists in Austin, Texas city government! For the first time in Austin’s city council history women are in the majority. After the Austin city manager hired consultants to conduct a workshop on how to communicate with people who aren’t men- a Texas sized twister broke out!
Conan shows a clip of speaker Jonathan Allen, who is now a ‘former’ city manager from Florida, who was brought in to speak to the city employees. Allen began with the news that men and women do not “speak the same language.”
Allen shared a warning he received from his wife – which he failed to heed. Allen said. “My wife told me, ‘Don’t be going down there telling folks that just because you have an all-female commission, you have to deal with all these emotions, because you’re going to offend me.'”
Conan spoofs the ill-fated workshop with several other ‘speakers’ who may have been hired to replace Allen. The hilariously offensive goofballs are as awful as you would expect, with much ado about ’emotions’ and ‘time of the month’ as well as sexual innuendos. Conan’s speakers don’t miss a single stereotype including female driving and the perceived physical strength of men. Conan’s female speaker is the worst of the lot – a man-hating anti-Semite. More of her real life counterpart in a moment.
From West, we learned that women ask more questions, and aren’t good with numbers. ..But the speaker who ‘went there’ with emotions was a woman.
Dr. Miya Burt-Stewart, a business development consultant didn’t help the case for the ladies with some of her comments. As promised, Burt-Stewart delineated the differences between men and women, whom she says act on their emotions. Burt-Stewart cited an incontrovertible source, the pop-psych oldie, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” (or vice versa).
The Doctor continued, saying: “Men act on facts, women act on emotions. Men have egos, women have wish lists.” She also said; “women want longer conversations about issues, while men want to get straight to the point and alluded women are more demanding.”
The city took the video of the doomed workshop down, but not before the Statesman’s story about the training sparked the #WhatWomenAsk hashtag on social media, where Twitter users voiced their disgust at the viral video. The hashtag trended city-wide on Wednesday.
Here are but a few samples of tweets from disgusted female employees.
@HGerbracht This woman’s asking what decade this is! #whatwomenask
@ameseh “Am I expected to bring food to city council meetings, AND to clear your plates afterwards?” #whatwomenask
@WOWWCampaign I’m great at math AND ask a lot of questions. Shouldn’t everyone that’s in a leadership role ask a lot of things?!
@imwatx @austintexasgov what’re you going to do to make sure that tax $ and staff time aren’t wasted on sexist training in the future