When I read this article, I felt like crying. The trauma of the hotel housekeeper after such sexual assaults must be soul crushing. They have to go to the next room. They have to knock and request entry. After such traumatic experiences, going to the next room must take a desperate level of resolve.

While I read this article, I realized it is just more evidence that it is ALL MEN. Men are rapists who are waiting for the perfect storm of sufficiently low levels of empathy and the right situation to commit sexual assault.

ALL MEN have power over some woman. The hotel housekeeper is not the lowest woman on the totem pole, but she’s pretty far down. Almost any man staying at a hotel must feel more powerful than her. Not only are hotel housekeepers down on the social hierarchy, they are a captive audience. They must come to the room because it is their job. They must enter once bidden because it is their job. Even if they were to leave immediately, they’ve still seen and the interaction has taken place. That is complete powerlessness in the situation.

There are two types of men: (1) the kind that do not understand the anguish and pain that their behavior causes, and (2) the kind who want to inflict anguish and pain on their victims. Reading articles like this will help the first type to realize that (a) this is not an effective seduction technique no matter what Clarence Thomas might have led you to believe. Placing a pubic hair on the Coke, bragging about your masturbatory exploits with pornography, or showing someone your dick hard or otherwise has ever caused anyone to be so overcome with sexual desire that they’d actually have sex. Usually the target is so repulsed by such behavior that they want to run screaming from the room but they are frozen with shock, fear, and disbelief. And (b) view women with enough empathy to refrain from such behavior in the future.

Unfortunately, reading such articles probably just encourages the sadistic bastards that want to spread fear and anxiety among women.

I will never look at a housekeeper the same again.

‘He Was Masturbating… I Felt Like Crying’: What Housekeepers Endure To Clean Hotel Rooms

Low-wage workers have been fighting sexual harassment for years. The national conversation is finally catching up with them.

By Dave Jamieson

Cecilia was working as a minibar attendant at a Chicago hotel when she knocked on the guest’s door and announced herself. The man’s response was quick and unequivocal: “You can come in.”

When she opened the door, “He was at the computer, masturbating,” Cecilia recalled. She was overcome with shock and embarrassment. Judging from the satisfied look on the man’s face, that was the whole idea.

“I felt nasty,” recalled Cecilia, who asked that her last name and the hotel not be identified. “You’d expect that to happen to people in a jail but not in regular work. I felt like crying.”

It wasn’t the only time Cecilia had dealt with extreme forms of sexual harassment in her three decades working in downtown hotels. A male guest once answered her knock by opening the door naked. Just a month and a half ago, a younger colleague confided to Cecilia that a male guest had tried to embrace her while she was in his room. Cecilia escorted the shaken housekeeper to the hotel’s security team to report the incident.

Continue reading at the Huffington Post: ‘He Was Masturbating… I Felt Like Crying’: What Housekeepers Endure To Clean Hotel Rooms