A few minutes later, he got up from his desk, walked over to me, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me on the cheek. I was so startled, I froze. Then he tried to kiss me on the lips. I shoved my hand in between our faces and prevented him from doing so. He then tried to kiss me on the neck. I shoved him away. My only exit from the room was to run past him. He easily outweighs me by about 80 lbs. I was scared shitless of what would happen if I fled. I sat at my desk and shook, while he told me repeatedly that I “made” him do it. I “made” him kiss me. It nauseated me. He then told me that we’d keep it between ourselves, and said that the “other guys” won’t take kindly to me being bisexual and that he “has your back, sweetie”. That it would be “our little secret”.

But that’s not the worst part. No, if that was the worst part, it wouldn’t give you the slightest clue what it’s like to be a woman. The worst part is the company’s response:

Finally, today, I called and asked what the hell was going on. He said that they have “substantiated your report”. When I asked what was going to be done, they said that he will remain an employee (zero tolerance policy MY ASS) in my department, but that I will have zero contact with my assailant and any “contact would be accidental”.

There are three of them working in a satellite office. She and this man are two of them. They are to avoid so much as looking at each other, but he will still be allowed to attend meetings and other functions she can’t afford to miss. And – get this – the company says if they have to interact at meetings, to remember “we’re all adults here.”

This is what it’s like to be a woman. To know that if a man chooses to intimidate you, your company won’t understand why that bothers you. Boys will be boys, right? If you don’t like boys being boys, which is often used as a euphemism for straight-up rape and sexual assault, then you should stay home, quash your humanity, and learn to enjoy nothingness. We have drugs to numb you to it – open up and swallow like a good girl, and soon you’ll forget you ever had any feelings about anything.

Meanwhile, men like that keep right on using sex to hurt people. This is not the action of a typical man who’s made a mistake. This is a deliberate, calculated, carefully scripted technique for intimidation. I suspect he’s practiced it a number of times because he seems to have thought of such things as putting himself between her and the exit. He’s someone who makes a habit of using the implied threat of physical/sexual abuse as a form of emotional abuse.

But the company doesn’t see that as a real problem. Just a little misunderstanding.

I encourage you to read the comments at Feministe, because it gets pretty glum. Basically, she has a few options: call the police and have him charged with assault, sue him and/or the company, go to the EEOC, etc. But a number of commenters stress that there’s a fair chance she’ll lose her job if she takes any action. Having rights isn’t much help when your living is held over your head in an economy where jobs are hard to come by.

At no point was this man’s job in jeopardy. The company wants him. They’re probably hoping this woman leaves, since that would make it easier for them.

And that’s one snapshot of what it’s like to be a woman. It’s not just the individual psychos you have to deal with; it’s all the enablers who back him up because it suits their plans and they don’t really see you as a person they way they see men as people.

Related posts:

1. For being effective, you are sentenced to…

I took their advice. I studied the people who had the social standing I wanted, which in my part of the world was white middle to upper class men, ostensibly heterosexual. I learned the vocal tones and pitches they use and avoid (almost the opposite of what most women do). I learned how they stand, how they approach one another, how they negotiate. I learned what they’re allowed (in their social contract as members of the dominant group) to express and how they’re allowed to express it. And I discovered that by merely using these techniques, I got taken about 300% more seriously than far more competent women who didn’t. And all that well before the age of 20. It’s easy hard to learn if you have a natural talent for reading people, which I do.

What’s hard to do is to apply it. Because even though I could walk into a crisis situation, take charge, fix it and win kudos even from the most neurotic misogynists in about five minutes flat, there was always a backlash. The better I performed, the bigger the backlash. During the crisis, all people saw in me was an individual who projected leadership and competence and showed them how we could all work together to fix the situation. Afterwards, many of the men saw an unmistakably female person of unimposing size, and they were ashamed of having “taken orders” from me, so to even that score they’d play tricks on me, or yell abuse at me, or just ignore me (by “ignore” I mean to the extent of mowing me down in a corridor rather than step aside). A lot of the women, too, would have second thoughts about me after the fact and join in with the men.

I’m not looking for sympathy – I got over this bullshit years ago. But the other day on a website, I saw someone saying that women don’t get paid as much as men because women don’t negotiate like men, and it reminded me of all this. When women do negotiate like men, they risk being shunned by a community that doesn’t believe they should negotiate like men, but wants them to stop “whining” when they don’t have what they want. It’s a perfect catch-22.

And of course, a lot of men don’t see it because they’re not even conscious of the way they react when a woman does approach them the way men are trained to do. They think they’re being perfectly fair, and it’s just a coincidence that every woman who successfully commands men calmly and naturally is later realized to be difficult, intimidating, unapproachable or a just plain mean ol’ bitchy man-hater.

Is it any wonder history fails to record any effective women in history? Fails to recognize them now? Is it a surprise that Hillary Clinton can do no right in a society where the only “right” way to be is male/white/etc., and women aren’t allowed to be that? Is it any surprise that when women react well to an effective woman because we don’t have any manhood to feel threatened by them, it’s suspicious, a conspiracy, an illogical emotional malfunction?

Related posts:

1. What it’s like to be a woman

Here’s a response I got today on that post:

I don’t see feminism fighting for real gender equality. It is still common ideology that men are supposed to always defend and die for women. Or that a man is supposed to always be the bread winner and must always have a job or he isn’t a “real” man. After all men are expected to suffer social abuse on the job and outside in order to bring home profit for the family.

Maybe when feminism grows up and focuses on gender issues on both sides of which it aggravates through cultural change then maybe people would embody it more. But so far, it is a one sided blind argument. And yes, many women that call themselves feminist hate men or at least constantly bash men in general in order to simply leverage leadership roles for themselves.

Until feminism starts focusing on gender issues on both sides and including men it will always be seen as attacking and hostile to men, nor inclusive to their suffering or needs.

The irony here, thick as pancake batter, is that he blames feminism for several ideologies that were created centuries ago by patriarchs and neglects to recognize that feminism has actually campaigned against those ideologies. Dead white men decided men should defend women, be the sole breadwinners and suffer abuse to earn a living. Feminists worked hard to open the military and the job force to women, partly because they believed it unfair to put the burdens wholly on men.

There’s no way this guy just kind of missed that chunk of recent history, which means he’ll rationalize a way to blame feminism for the fact that we need oxygen to survive, if it suits him.

It’s easy to dismiss him as just not knowing what he’s talking about. But the problem is he does, and he feels entitled to spout lies. There are tons of forums where men sit around blaming feminists for everything the patriarchy set up (a very popular one is the “man must ask for date” rule which, you know, predates feminism by how many centuries?).

Except when they quote my articles and say how good they are, apparently with no awareness they’re quoting a feminist.

I’m at a loss for words here.

Related posts:

1. Niceness privilege
2. The Baby Boomers: programmed for selfishness
3. We do what we can