So ladies. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been the recipient of an unwanted advance from a man or men in any setting or situation in your life. By “unwanted advance”, I mean the gambit — from an unwanted kiss, touch, grope, contact, grab, pinch, caress, comment, question, etc. all the way up to rape. Got it? Ok. Now raise your hand and let me take a look.
Yeah. I thought so.
I’ve always thought so. Outside of my political life and opinions, I’ve always thought that if people were just more open about their negative experiences they would find that many others share similar experiences and therefore, by extraction, are not alone in their experiences and freed to speak more openly about them.
This tweet (below) and the cascade of reporting it generated was a “raise your hand” moment. It’s been diaried here at Daily Kos, obviously, so I won’t go into that angle again. Rather, I want to focus on my own re-post of this tweet on Facebook and the conversations — actual, real conversations — it has sparked.
Here’s the preamble I posted on my own Facebook page:
I'll just leave this here. If you think this isn't a big issue, think again. I am speaking generally. Not solely in the context of this election.
What this sparked was two-fold. The first was a host of other women posting about their first sexual assaults, followed by commentary about how sad it was that so many of us had to sit back and think through our mental files of these incidences to determine which, in fact, was the first. This sad fact was echoed throughout the responses posted to the tweet itself.
The second was a conversation with my husband. We were talking about news coverage in the wake of not only the Trump Access Hollywood tape, but also in the wake of Billy Bush’s indefinite suspension. The conversation started out trying to unpack whether Bush was more a quiet but unwilling “go along to get along” player in the fiasco, or whether he was a material accomplice. I argued strongly for the latter. And in trying to explain my position, I highlighted Kelly Oxford’s tweet and my own personal reaction to it. I’ll paraphrase the conversation, but from my side it went something like this:
ME: What you need to understand is that this practice is so commonplace as to have become somewhat unremarkable. Don’t take that the wrong way — it’s just that this happens. All the time. To women everywhere. It’s commonplace. If we spent all of our time complaining about these infractions — especially the ones that people consider “lesser” infractions — it’s all we would ever do.
He was honestly surprised by that. I told him that I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been touched inappropriately. Of course, his anger flashed at that. But I told him as well — these times were usually subtle. Right on the border of plausible deniability, where the perpetrator could, if confronted, back down, apologize and claim it was incidental, a mistake. Like when my breast was brushed at a crowded bar at an industry event. Or when at a similar event and a similarly crowded bar, I could feel the slight pressure of the man behind me pressing his crotch into my ass. Or when at another similar event a man who I had only met briefly one time prior moved in to hug me fully (full body) and tried to plant a kiss on my lips at our re-introduction.
Hopefully you get the point. This. Happens. All. The. Time. Still. I have an event to go to in a little over a week which will be me and 899 of my closest professional “friends”, and I guaran-damn-tee you that I will witness this happening either to myself or to another woman or women. I’m lucky — I have a small but close circle of trusted male friends who would, for lack of a better phrase, “cockblock” the worst offenders. They have my back. Not all women are so lucky.
And if you’re male and reading this, or even female and reading this and the first thing that popped to your mind was, “why didn’t you say something about it when it happened?”, sit back and get an education.
I am SO much luckier than my mother was with respect to protections against sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. I know this. There are legal protections, should I choose to avail myself of them, that exist for me that didn’t exist for her. But let’s explore that further, and break incidences into two subjective categories, “small” and “large” infractions (I feel ridiculous even saying that, as it qualifies one as less important in deference to another that is more important, and that’s not my intent — but just go with me here).
“Small” infractions are similar to the ones I described above. Don’t get me wrong — they aren’t really small, especially not when they happen to you. And you know what’s happening when they occur. You know. But because they are easily explained away (“Oh I’m sorry — it’s really crowded in here.” “Oh I apologize — I was just really happy to see you.”), they are very difficult to confront. “I didn’t mean it the way tyou interpreted it.” Classic he-said she-said at its most basic level, the way he sees the world and events vs. the way I experienced the world and events. There’s more to say about “small” infractions, but I want to tie it into a “large” personal example that I have.
A “large” infraction is just that — overt, and objectively illegal. Telling a female employee that she will lose her job if she doesn’t provide oral sex, for example, would be an obvious one. Suggesting that a female employee or colleague could/should “wear something low cut” to succeed in business would be another (and yes, that happens, too). And — not sexual specifically as to the act itself — good old sex discrimination in the workplace.
I’ve definitely experienced workplace discrimination on the basis of my gender. It happened about seven years ago. My job performance measurement is pretty simple: being in sales, I am given a sales quota, and I either hit that or I don’t. Pretty straightforward. I worked on a team of six other salespeople, all men (at that time). Every year, our manager would apportion up the territory (who you individually can sell to) and then assign our quota. I didn’t choose to work for this guy — I got moved over to his group when the company I had worked for and the one he had worked for merged — and I knew through the “girl grapevine” in the industry that he was bad news. I knew coming in that female salespeople in his organization got treated one of two ways: they either got hit on, or they got phased out of his group — either let go, or provided an environment so impossible that they left voluntarily. This had happened to seven previous female sales reps by the time I joined his organization in 2008, a year in which one really didn’t want to lose one’s job given the overall state of the economy. At any rate, in the area of sales I am in (Federal), it is really easy to look at the total value of of potential opportunities for a given year. The government budgeting process makes calculating the addressable market pretty easy. So, for 2009, I was given a $36M quota. When I went in to check out the addressable market for my assigned territory, it was $20M. Meaning, if I won 100% of every single opportunity that came out, I still wouldn’t be able to achieve my quota. When I scheduled a meeting with my manager, I presented all of this information — this data — to him. His response? “Well, you’ll just have to figure it out.”
Clearly, I was being put in the “push her out so she leaves voluntarily” category, as 7 other women before me had been. This I knew then, and I know it to this day. Because my male counterparts? They were all given do-able quotas. In fact, the most lucrative part of my territory was stripped away from me and given to a male counterpart. With the exception of two of my male counterparts, none had hit his quota in the preceding two years. To this manager, women were good for one thing, and it wasn’t sales. At least not of anything other than themselves.
The way I knew I was being pushed out and about this guy’s history with female sales professionals was because I had talked to three of the 7 women, who I knew, to get the lay of the land. They all told similar stories, though some were actually propositioned — and not a one of them reported it to HR.
And I didn’t, either. Because even if you’re right, even if you were discriminated against or harassed, the fact of a formal HR complaint will follow you around your entire career. It’s just the way it goes. You have to sit back and make the calculation of whether standing up for your rights is more important than every other job you may or may not get in the future as a result of standing up for your rights. Again — I enjoy many more legal protections than my mother did. But still — I and my female colleagues rarely (if ever) formally invoke those protections. Because it’s ALL (or mostly) he-said she-said. And the stain that follows you can permanently, negatively impact your career. At the end of the day, a phrase my mother loves to use is most apt: This wasn’t the hill I was going to die on.
If you’ll allow me a digression, let me interject a paraphrasing of the conversation that was had between me and him when I resigned after being offered a much better job, one I am still in to this day:
ME (handing boss a short, professional resignation letter): I am providing you with my two week notice.
HIM (with a theatrical look of shock on his face): What? Why? You could have done so well here.
ME: Short of writing “Fuck off please quit” in sharpie on your whiteboard, I got the point. My last day will be Friday November 6.
Heh.
These types of things are why men — good men — have had their eyes opened around the events of this campaign with respect to sexual assault, harassment and discrimination. One of my wonderful male friends both on Facebook and in real life posted this in response to Kelly Oxford’s tweet:
Oh my God. I am astonished, sad, embarrassed for my gender. The age of so many of the women when they were originally assaulted is beyond tragic (not to imply that it's not tragic at any age).
To which I replied:
[Linked name redacted], I posted this because I sat down tonight and talked with [Mr. RenaRF] about it. He thinks Trump's a boob, he thinks his comments were ridiculous and not like anything he has ever heard among his male friends, all that. But what I explained to him is that these things - especially the *smaller* things (if there is such a thing) - are commonplace for women. The reason why so many are telling their stories on that thread is because they had to CHOOSE which encounter they would highlight. Sometimes it's subtle - but it's common. And *that* is why this tape and his comments are especially outrageous.
That exchange occurred on Tuesday evening. Of this week. And here I sit late on Wednesday evening, and it’s just gotten so much worse. The brave women who have come forward to state categorically that Trump’s actions were not just words but actual, real-life actions are, as I type this, being vilified by Trump’s surrogates. The reasons given are thus:
- Why are they just now talking?
- They are Clinton supporters.
- There’s no proof that any of this occurred, and therefore it’s all lies.
For what it’s worth, my answers:
- Because the great personal cost to them is finally worth the expenditure after Trump flatly denied ever doing these things “in real life”, effectively spitting in the eye of these women and their experiences.
- Yeah. And the fact that he assaulted them is probably a big reason why they are Clinton supporters. You expect them to be Trump supporters??
- Of course not. There rarely is. Which is why it’s woefully underreported, and which makes their accounts — at great personal expense and risk — that much more credible.
The victimization of the victim has a long and storied history in the US. Trump’s deplorables are executing against that playbook, and it’s disgusting. If they’re allowed to get away with this, then more women — perhaps your daughter or daughters, who aren’t even teenagers yet — or your young granddaughter or niece — will one day tell the story cataloging all of the times they have been assaulted, harassed and discriminated against. And the men that love them will be appropriately aghast, and the world will turn again until the next time.
Speak up. Raise your hand. Tell others — anyone who will listen — that this is #notokay. And as uncomfortable as it is, call bullshit on those around you who brushes off these behaviors. This is about more than this election — it’s about the women you love.
As always, thanks for reading!