In an effort to enlighten ourselves, we searched the term “sexist” on several stock photography sites, and we came up with some fairly resolute results. First of all, almost all sexism occurs in the office. Second, coffee and ties are often unwitting accomplices to sexism. Third, there’s a guy out there somewhere who has a shirt with little pigs all over it and the word “Sexy” in big letters. Watch out for him: he’s clearly very sexist and dangerous.

It’s hard to put humor aside when looking at some of the photos. They’re more ridiculous than sexist.

As they pointed out, many of the photos chosen by the companies (or maybe just by HuffPost) take place in an office. It’s at work where there’s an obvious imbalance of power. It wasn’t always men, though, who were the perpetrators of sexism (or ridiculousness).

But what makes this fascinating isn’t that these photos are ironclad definitions of sexist behavior. Some of them clearly aren’t. But they are what someone, somewhere – specifically, researchers at these stock photo companies - perceive as sexist. Because two people won’t perceive a situation in exactly the same way, discussing perceptions usually lead to interesting conversations.

So, take a look at the slideshow at the Huffington Post and tell me what you think.

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