"Other people in the room were looking at you and thinking that you are beautiful, but when I look at you, I not only see your beauty, but I see that you are an angel".
Ladies and gents, does this seem like a
normal thing for someone to tell you in a work setting? And no, I'm not talking about your snookums smothering you in these *sweet* words, I'm talking about a total stranger. Or perhaps we shall refer back to one of the other winner lines this man slipped into a professional conversation, and which I mentioned in my last post ...
"Your speech was absolutely phenomenal, I'm wondering if I might interest you in adapting it to print form for a journal that I publish regularly and submitting it as a guest editorial for our next edition? Oh, and I also run an on-line dating service?"
Or how about the time when a certain well-known Washington State representative ever so slyly slipped me his business card along with a second, unmarked "personal" card containing only his name and cell phone after I refused his invitation to "chat more up in his room" (we were at the same hotel for a conference) about the people the contacts he could get in touch with to get me an "extremely well paying job" in Washington State politics?
Or perhaps the time when, in the middle of a business meeting where we were supposedly discussing the financial terms for running publicity, the bank CEO begins telling me "what beautiful eyes" I have and how they "match so nicely with my earrings" ... only to be followed by a barrage of half questions-half accusations about how "women like me" shouldn't be in the business world, they should be "at home, raising just as beautiful children and looking after themselves".
Leaving aside American electoral politics, in which so many seem to think that women will quickly switch from one party to the next simply to support a woman (of course there's no logical, intelligent reasoning behind womens' decisions!) ... there's always the age angle to boot.
"So when did
you get out of school?" "How old are you, if I can ask?" Come on, I may be young, but would you really ask this question to anyone else?? I get these questions quite literally at least once a week. I have to wonder, as well ... why is it that the
vast majority of interns in this town are female ... when the
vast majority of top posts in the field are filled by men? My theory after some serious observation, the men are hired on permanent contracts, the women are hired as interns.
Ahhh, and lest we forget that sexism is not soley found in the workplace, I just about turned around and knocked the wind out of a guy that was kissing to me the other day. I'm used to the comments, the whistles, etc, (not that I care at all for it either), but come on,
kissing?? You kiss to your dog to tell it to come, you don't kiss to women walking down the street. Then there was the guy that literally came up and grabbed me by the shoulders at the train station yesterday. I swear to high heaven that I DID punch him good in the chest (ok, so maybe not the most effective target area, but I wasn't really thinking straight either). And then there was the guy who would have done God knows what in the dark tunnels of the catacombs in Paris last year if a group of people hadn't walked up right at that very second. I still shudder when I think how "close of a call" that was ... and wish I would have punched him where it counts and/or reported him ... for my own sake and that of any other women traveling through there on their own.
We talk about gender equality, we talk about equality in the workplace, but I can absolutely guarantee you beyond a shadow of doubt that we are not there yet. I have absolutely nothing against men, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I have something BIG against those, including women, who somehow think that, because of one's gender, because of one's age, they can say, do or ask things that they would never
dream of in the face of someone older and, quite frankly, male.
I, for one, have had enough.
