Not one of the boys
Jan. 16th, 2003 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beetiger(Several days of stress, panic, fatigue and other not-so-pleasantness omitted for your convenience.)
This office has some of the oddest, most conventional gender politics I’ve ever seen. For one thing, the men and women eat lunch separately. When I’m not eating lunch at my desk, I sit at a big oval table in the lab, with a largish collection of the female lab folks. We talk about kids, diets, exercise, and food, mostly. Over in the cafeteria, there’s a big table of men that always eat together. I sat there one of the first days I was here, trying to check out various social groups. I was welcomed, but it was quickly obvious that there was something weird going on. They talk about politics, weapons, cars, and sports.
The person who delivers packages here calls me (and all of the women here) “lady”. One of the men I’ve been working with in the pilot plant calls me “girly girl”. Last night, I was having trouble hammering the lid on to a pail, so I grabbed a strong looking passer-by to help. I meantioned to another coworker that I’d gotten someone with a better swing to help me. She smiled and quipped. “Oh, good. You found someone male.”
The weird thing is, I get absolutely no vibe of any sort of disrespect here. It’s as if a “separate but equal” style of diversity training had taken effect, where everyone really believes in the competence of all of their colleagues while not having adjusted their personal schema of gender in the slightest. Part of me wants to stand up and protest, that knee-jerk feminist in me. But part of me wants to recognize it for what it really seems to be, an odd sort of camraderie. Anyway, I’m not sure if I’d rather be known as “that politically-correct girly girl”.
This office has some of the oddest, most conventional gender politics I’ve ever seen. For one thing, the men and women eat lunch separately. When I’m not eating lunch at my desk, I sit at a big oval table in the lab, with a largish collection of the female lab folks. We talk about kids, diets, exercise, and food, mostly. Over in the cafeteria, there’s a big table of men that always eat together. I sat there one of the first days I was here, trying to check out various social groups. I was welcomed, but it was quickly obvious that there was something weird going on. They talk about politics, weapons, cars, and sports.
The person who delivers packages here calls me (and all of the women here) “lady”. One of the men I’ve been working with in the pilot plant calls me “girly girl”. Last night, I was having trouble hammering the lid on to a pail, so I grabbed a strong looking passer-by to help. I meantioned to another coworker that I’d gotten someone with a better swing to help me. She smiled and quipped. “Oh, good. You found someone male.”
The weird thing is, I get absolutely no vibe of any sort of disrespect here. It’s as if a “separate but equal” style of diversity training had taken effect, where everyone really believes in the competence of all of their colleagues while not having adjusted their personal schema of gender in the slightest. Part of me wants to stand up and protest, that knee-jerk feminist in me. But part of me wants to recognize it for what it really seems to be, an odd sort of camraderie. Anyway, I’m not sure if I’d rather be known as “that politically-correct girly girl”.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-16 04:33 pm (UTC)But on a serious note.
The thing I have noticed is that people believe in equality until it suits their needs. I have also noticed that from working at the Census Bureau in a office job. How we judge others on how they look. There was this person Ken who was the receptionist and he just so happened to be in wheelchair. He was very friendly and when he was friendly to this one person, this person turned around and accused him of unwanted attention. Yet when I saw another person Harold, also a friend, who bore a resemblence to Will Smith and was an admitted playa basically put the moves on the same person in the office, well it made me wonder about sexual harassment and how if you are charming and good looking, you get a free pass.
I am not saying that sexual harassment laws are wrong. They have a valid place and are needed when a person CLEARLY abuses their position of power over another and if the affections of a person are unwanted and the other person has said NO and the person will not take no for an answer, but they can be abused if the person giving us attention just so happens to be a person we do not like and want to get back at. When does sexual harassment become charming, well it seemed in this case when the person happens to be attractive.