It was a lot more innocent than in this picture. He was telling a story about an old restaurant job and how people would always grab his butt. And then he demonstrated on my female coworker. It wasn’t aggressive or predatory, he just cupped her cheek to enhance his story.
He walked away and I said, “That was inappropriate.” I just said it instinctively, not because I was truly incensed, but hearing myself say it I then had to ask myself, “Wait? That was inappropriate wasn’t it?” My first thought was that my coworkers and I make suggestive jokes on a daily basis–and respectfulness is just a matter of reading people’s comfort levels appropriately–so this wasn’t offensive. But I quickly realized I had been fooled by the nonchalance of the action and the general goodwill of the offender. He is her male supervisor. This was inappropriate.
My confusion became vigilance, and I decided to say something. The entire point of this post and the most interesting thing is, as soon as I decided I was going to confront this man, I began to doubt myself. I knew with certainty that what he did, regardless of his harmless intentions, was wrong, and wrong for so many reasons. There’s already a male-female power dynamic in most situations, and unsolicited touching is a form of objectification which reinforces the notion that men have entitlement over women’s bodies. Touching a woman’s butt at work is a long, long way from, say, date rape, but the rationale is essentially the same. Exacerbating this already clear incident of harassment was the additional presence of the manager-subordinate power dynamic. A female employee has a hundred reasons to not speak up to a male supervisor, and goes on to feel guarded and uncomfortable in the work place.
Clearly wrong! But as time passed I found myself rationalizing and trying to escape from confronting my manager. Why? He was in the wrong, and I was perfectly capable of calling him out respectfully, so why the fear?
At the end of the day I called him aside and tactfully expressed my opinion that he was out of line, and that I felt compelled to speak up since women sometimes struggle to find their voice in the workplace. He apologized immediately and made assurances that it wouldn’t happen again. It was a 30 second conversation, and I was glad I found the courage to speak up.
Most poignant about this experience was just that–it took courage for me to confront him. I was completely sure he was wrong, sure I needed to say something, and sure that I could express this to him tactfully, and I still struggled. If that’s how much difficulty I had as a confident male with little regard for job security, I cannot imagine the courage it takes women to confront men in the workplace.
So, my respect to those women who have found that courage and my support to those still looking. You do have allies here and there; let us know what we can do.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Thank You…
April 16th, 2008 at 10:00 am
My roommate’s friend, a woman in law school at Hamline, joined the national guard with the expressed intention of discovering and exposing any possible sexual harassment in the armed forces. As she had suspected she might be, she was harassed, so she filed formal complaints, went to court, and won.
That takes some cojones.
. . . well, I mean, not technically *cojones* as such, but-
oh, fuck it.
Tenacious woman, in any case.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
This has got me thinking a little about how confused the liberal side of our generation has become about feminism. Most of the brilliant, independent, self-assured women that I know shy away from anything that would make them look irrational, crazy, or militant with regards to anything that could be construed as ‘feminist’. It is almost as if this silence is our show of strength - we rise above the frequent offenses, knowing that speaking out will just decrease our credibility as women and cause us to be written off as being overly-sensitive and unable to take a joke, making attempts to speak up against the occasional very serious affront completely futile. And while getting worked up about every sexist joke or comment will do nothing but decrease my credibility as a woman, an unfortunate byproduct is often silence at times when something really should be said.
While courage is definitely a component of speaking up, for women I think that an even bigger deterrent to action is the knowledge of the probable futility of our actions. As a man, you will be probably taken seriously when you call out other men on their sexism. As women, we run the risk of being written off as overreacting, bitchy or menstrual, and experience has taught us that, 9 times out of 10, speaking out results in a loss of respect rather than any sort of triumph.
Just a few thoughts - thanks for writing this, I don’t know many guys who would have done what you did.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:16 am
You raise important points.
Privilege affords an ear. Institutionally disadvantaged folks are less likely to be received when they contest their unfair treatment because it’s so easy to discount them. Women are “uppity” and people of color are “just playing the race card” and etcetera. In the same breath, we have to understand how easy it is to ignore racism/sexism/classism when one doesn’t confront it on a daily basis. So yeah one important role of privileged folks is talking to other privileged folks. There are plenty of capable leaders amongst disadvantaged communities, and our job is not to lead their struggle (since that only perpetuates the psyche of inferiority with the implication that they couldn’t do it for themselves), but to create room for them.
Just my elaboration of the things you already said.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
This entry was a difficult one for me to parse- it shows, at least to me, that age old of dichotomy of someone doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Let me preface this response with the fact that, obviously, I was not present during this encounter, and so am not aware of all the details involved. All I have to go on is your retelling of it, so I apologize if there is something I missed.
All that said, while others may find your actions heroic or noble, I find them simply insulting.
The specifics of the situation aside (whether the action in question was meant in a friendly or aggressive manner, whether it was indeed sexual harassment and so on), you took it upon yourself to make a decision for someone else (that person being your female co-worker). When you say “He is her male supervisor. This was inappropriate.” you determine, for her, what the meaning of the action was, and what the appropriate course of remedy is (in a typically masculine way to confront an issue head on, pitting power against power to make a “right”).
Now I fully respect the fact that it is more difficult for a woman to speak up in the workplace than a man. But you didn’t even ask the woman in question if she was offended, or indeed even if she was afraid to speak up about this particular event. Instead, you decided that since women can feel intimidated in a workplace that this woman did, which, to me at least, buys into the bullshit of patriarchy; that this woman couldn’t handle her own problem but instead needed a man to handle it for her. You seem to have done so for the best of reasons (trying to help), but in the end you left her as marginalized as if the superior in questions would have if he had smacked her buttocks and demeaned her for her gender. You allowed a societal understanding of what “gender” is to influence and determine your decision, rather than allowing the person at the heart of the plight their own voice.
This seems to me to be another example of “kid-glove” feminism, when someone wants so desperately to make something right that they behave kinder (or, in this case, more patronizing) to a person who has been discriminated against than they otherwise would. In all these cases you are still treating the person differently because of their gender, and that is still wrong. I mean this quite genuinely: if a similar situation had happened to a male co-worker of yours, would you have confronted his superior without speaking to him first? I highly doubt so.
Again, you motivations seem to be in the right place. Your actions, to me, leave much to be desired.
Be well.
July 20th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
The previous comment by Samuel raised a lot of the same concerns I had with your post, namely where was the woman’s opinion in all this? Did she feel offended? I do applaud you for speaking up when other men and women would have gone about their way, but I think it really should have been her voice that her supervisor heard.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:33 am
I actually did speak with her before I confronted the manager.
She was made uncomfortable by his action, but felt unmotivated to confront him.
I chose to confront him for my own reasons. I was made uncomfortable to think I worked in a place where men had entitlement over female’s bodies. According to the business’s own policies and state laws his actions constituted sexual harassment, and they needed to be checked. It would be best if everyone involved could have confronted him, but me confronting him alone is better than him not being confronted at all. Her confronting him would be better than me confronting him, so the main potential problem of me confronting him is if it made it less likely for her to confront him.
Samuel, your “you are still treating the person differently because of their gender” argument is evocative of the “color-blind society” rubbish that anti-affirmative action activists spout. Gender is a social construction, yes, just as race is, but it still exists in the collective conscience. We have to understand that all humans are inherently equal, but this does not mean ignoring power dynamics or systems of control.
Now, I appreciate the criticism. It’s an important question: by confronting him myself, did I make it less likely that she would speak up and in that way make her feel silenced? Because of the conversation I had with her before I spoke to him, I am convinced that I did not do this. Apparently I did not mention that conversation in this post and I can see how that may have been confusing.
Also, the main point of this post was how this experience forced me to empathize with how difficult it is to confront managers about this sort of stuff. I had no reason to be intimidated, and I was terrified. I have great respect for those women who are able to speak up.
It’s also important for people with privilege to talk about these issues with other privileged folks precisely because the nature of oppression delegitimizes the voices of the oppressed. Yes it’s tricky to find a balance in there, but we do the best we can.