Have the "Rabbanim abandoned us" or have they lost faith?

Hirhurim has a post up titled "Abandoned by the Rabbis". It's about a book he found called, Nine to Five: A Guide to Modest Conduct for Today's Workplace, that gives mostly impractical and unfortunately laughable advice on how to behave in the workplace. According to Nine to Five, making small talk with opposite-sex coworkers borders on giluy arayos, where one should rather die than transgress. Calling a woman by her first name is also inadvisable as it leads to familiarity, which inevitably leads to transgression, etc. My favorite excerpts is:

When conversing with female employees or co-workers, one must be careful not to us the word "we," so that the man and woman are not referred to as one unit. For example, one should not say, "We must talk with the editor," or "We must purchase that software program." Rather, he should say, "The editor must be consulted," or "Please purchase that program." (pp. 10-11)

Hirhurim writes,

When I read a book like this, I feel profoundly sad. It makes me think that the rabbis have abandoned us. There was once a time when rabbis recognized that people struggle to feed and clothe their families. They considered working to be a devar mitzvah and struggled to find leniencies to allow people to earn a living. And what do we get? Don't shake hands.* Don't make small talk. Don't compliment a woman. Etc. etc. Unrealistic advice does not help us get through our challenges. It just leaves us abandoned, trying to figure it out on our own.

It's interesting that when I recently wrote about why I think this generation is disappointed and feels disconnected with it's leaders, I also came up with the reason that it's because of their total lack of understanding of the challenges and requirements of our life, mainly with regard to making a living. An excerpt of my post:

Jewish life is not easy, b’gashmius. It never was. In the past, though, the feeling was that the Rabbanim were in place to alleviate the difficulty. The function of the Rav or Gadol was to use his expertise in hallakha to be able to find leniencies and allowances for people who had every intention of being shomer Torah and mitzvos but also needed to live. [...] Today the situation has flipped on its head... the leaders of the community not only give the impression that they fail to appreciate the great financial disadvantage that their followers willingly take on, but actually do things that make it even more difficult (more here).

In retrospect, it seems that the teachers in my kollel-wife geared high school were huge fans of the book Nine to Five. They often told us horror stories about women who did not heed the words of the gedolim while working. The stories included sexual assault in an elevator, rape in a stock room, an affair with a boss, etc. Our teachers wanted to have us believe that because the woman had said a few more words than just a curt good morning to her male coworker, she in essence extended him the invitation to assault in her in an elevator. Likewise with the woman who was raped by a maintenance worker--she had been lax with yichud laws and did not take enough care to never be alone with a man in a closed off space. The scare tactics didn't stop there. We were repeatedly told that these seemingly ridiculous guidelines, of never making small talk or addressing people by their first names, were for our own good and are only to protect us.

But like anyone who reads the books or hears these threatening stories, we laughed. We laughed at our old-fashioned teachers who thought that every man is a sexual predator, we laughed at the authors of the guidelines who could be so out of touch with the realities of the modern world. Not only were we uninspired, we were totally turned off.

I once confronted a teacher in private and told her that by exaggerating the horrors of the world and being so totally impractical, she is turning a class of otherwise well-meaning girls into cynics. Her response was this, "I know what I say to you girls often sounds like too much, but I think that if I give you 100 you might take 25. If I tell you a lot you might hear a little. I want you to develop a sensitivity and be aware of the issue." This once, I couldn't disagree. Being a good Jew isn't only about cut and dry hallakha; there are many areas that are grey and require that elusive concept of sensitivity. But this was a case of a teacher speaking to teenagers. Why are adults being given the same treatment?

It makes me think that the book that Hirhurim cites is intended as a sensitivity primer, not an actual book of guidelines. The introduction would never tell you so, and the text uses extreme language such as giluy arayos and more, but I'd bet that the Rabbanim who wrote it probably thought that they were safer being extreme and overboard if only to have the reader do a fraction of what they say.

So this is why we live in a generation of cynics, skeptics, and chutzpinyaks. We're simply not being treated with honesty and we're not being given credit for our intellectual capacity to make decisions when confronted with the plain facts of hallakha. Is it so hard for our leaders to believe that we are genuine in our desire to do what's right? Is it so hard to them to have faith in us, enough at least not to resort to bullying or manipulation as a means of teaching? I see no alternative explanation for the things that we hear from Rabbanim these days (e.g. this book, the multiple bans, the closing of women's learning programs, etc). We live in difficult and confusing times, to say the least, but the fact that the Rabbanim have lost faith in us is perhaps the most devastating of all.