ON AMBIGUITY AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT

I have been subject to inappropriate sexual treatment in the workplace more times than I care to recall, all when I was temping or working in retail in a large metropolis between ages 18 and 23.  All my life up to that point, I had been an advocate of girls and women standing up for themselves.  I also considered myself to be a jaded and savvy person.  But these incidents were unnerving even for me, in large part due to the possible amibiguity of the conduct (and also due to my own youth and inexperience at the time).

The first disturbing series of incidents occurred when I was 18 and working in a large store of second hand books.  My job was to shelve and alphabetize endless copies of “review” books that came in for resale, and I found myself often standing in very narrow passage ways among shelves of books, and high stacks of books piled on the floor.  There was another employee who invariably managed to rub the entire front of his crotch on my rear end whenever he passed by me.  He would then say, “Oh, oh, excuse me, oh I’m so sorry,” with seeming sincerity.  The first time I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  By the time this had happened two or three times, however, I had privately concluded that the guy was a major perv.

But what to do about it?  I was a staunch feminist and I knew, even before Anita Hill, all about the evils of sexual harassment.  But I had never imagined myself in this particular situation.  I felt that I had an obligation to myself and to others to call this guy on his crap.  I imagined the situation possibly escalating and people saying to me, “How could you have let this go on for so long?”  But I was also worried about (a) overreacting, (b) accusing this guy unjustly (maybe he was just clumsy) and (c) making a fool of myself.

While I dithered, the situation did escalate.  The inappropriate touching occurred again and with greater frequency. There was also an occasion when the guy’s hand accidentally-on-purpose brushed down the entire length of my breast.

My mother was out of town so I approached my dad for advice.  For all his faults, my dad has always told me “not to take any crap” and he generally has pretty decent advice for handling confrontations, power struggles, and professional issues.  In this instance, however, he blew it off and told me that it was all in my head.  In retrospect and with the wisdom of 17 more years under my belt, it’s hard for me to understand all the self-doubt I had -- the guy was blatantly groping me.  But for some reason, I bought into the notion that I could be misconstruing the situation. And the thought of possibly embarrassing this guy without cause seemed worse than continuing to be sexually groped on a daily basis!

I dithered some more and of course it kept happening.   Finally, I decided to take action.  I had always believed that when someone keeps pushing you, you have to do something about it.  You have to stand up for yourself. But I decided against reporting him to my boss.  I concluded that my boss would likely have the same reaction my father did -- and how could I possibly establish to a third party (I wondered) that this was intentional groping rather than accidental touching resulting from the close quarters in which we all worked.  So I opted to possibly make a fool of myself by taking matters into my own hands.

I worried about my co-workers turning on me.  I worried about being deemed an uptight nutjob.  I worried that I would be mocked for being a prude or for the impotence of my response.  (After all, what power did I really have in the situation?)  But the next time it happened, my heart pounding, I immediately confronted the guy.  I spoke in what felt to me to be an unnaturally loud voice.  I didn’t feel particularly confident or particularly intimidating.  Physically, I was a lot smaller than the perv and I had the high squeaky voice of a teenage girl.  I can’t remember exactly what I yelled, but it was something along the lines of: “STOP GROPING ME.  I WON’T HAVE IT."

I knew how easily I could be mocked for this outburst.  But the guy basically said, “Hey, hey, hey.  Take it easy.  I’m really sorry.  It was an accident.”  And I said something like: “Well, you’re the only one that has these accidents ALL THE TIME.  You’re the only one whose CROTCH keeps GRINDING into me.” He kind of shuffled away muttering something about how I shouldn’t flatter myself.

After that, he tried it one more time.  And this time, I made a threat.  Heart still pounding, I said, “That's it. If you GROPE me one more time, I will TAKE ACTION.”  Of course, I had no idea what action I would take.  But he said, “What? You going to call the cops on me?”  And I said, “Yeah.”  Of course, I didn’t actually think the cops would do anything, but from that time onward, the guy stayed away from me.

So I accomplished my objective -- but only after being groped repeatedly, undergoing a lot of  angst, and self-doubt, and only because I had all the tools of self-confidence, an independent means of financial support, a strong feminist sensibility, and some rudimentary knowledge about sexual harassment.

I suppose many would say that I did the right thing by taking matters into my own hands rather than reporting the guy to my boss.  But I absolutely cannot stress enough how absolutely contrary that confrontation was to my upbringing as an American and as a female.  It totally went against the grain to be confrontational, to be loud, to make a fuss, to state out loud and in crude detail what the guy had done, and to refuse to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. (And, of course, in retrospect, I don’t think there was any real doubt.)

While I certainly advocate that women stand up for themselves in these situations when feasible (obviously every situation is different), I also think it is crucially important to understand why women often do not.  All too often in sexual harassment and rape cases, people assume consent due to a failure by the woman to put a stop to sexually inappropriate behavior earlier in the game.  As a prosecutor, I had one case of a teenage girl whose much older co-worker continually asked her graphic and very personal questions about her sexual proclivities and experiences.  She didn’t know what to do so she answered his questions!  Eventually, he forcibly raped her (and was convicted).  But the defense had a field day with the fact that she had engaged this guy in sex talk prior to the sexual assault and a number of the jurors were, in fact, troubled by her failure to put an end to the guy’s intrusive questioning.  From her perspective though, she didn’t want to overreact or seem like a prude. She wasn’t sure if this guy had any evil intent or if he was just being friendly.  She testified that it felt “rude” not to answer his questions. Refusing to answer seemed too confrontational and was utterly outside the scope of her experience and utterly outside the scope of how we socialize young girls to behave.

Often people argue that many social interactions are simply too ambiguous to classify as sexual harassment or even as socially inappropriate.  Often that may be, and where a judge or jury determines a situation to be truly ambiguous, the accused should have the  benefit of the doubt in accordance with applicable legal standards so that we can avoid punishing the innocent or holding them liable.  But what people too often forget is that ambiguity also operates a shield for the guilty and a way to deflect attempts  by women to address and put an end to troubling conduct before it escalates.  We are quick to give the accused the benefit of the doubt, but we are often similarly quick to dismiss claims by women who have not swooped in to correct ambiguous conduct at the very outset before it turns into something worse.

Comments

[Hugo]

Magnificent post, Happy, thank you for sharing. The key feminist task is to stop the mindset in which women are forced to police male behavior, acting as traffic officers. "Self-policing" is vital for men to learn and learn young, and that means not only personal restraint but taking the time to implore vocally for other men to restrain themselves.

[Pete]

Hi happy! I am soooooo happy that i discovered this blog. I've seen it before , but i just avoided it ....I wasn't sure what it was about....
I'm new to your blog. I guess it will take me a while to read all of your fine posts. __But I certainly agree on self-restraint....gosh, I guess I'm not too good at that...but I'll try.

[Joel Monka]

When I was younger, I didn't understand how hard it was for women to speak up in incidents such as you describe. Perhaps it's testosterone poisoning, but it's natural for young men, (at least back then- I was the age you describe in the incident 30 years ago), when told about such an incident, to say "why didn't you speak up?" I'm hoping that today young women are more aggressive in their response.

I also think, however, that more men would have taken your side back then had you spoken up than you suspect- especially if it happened among the crew, rather than as management involvement. Although they shouldn't have to, men often look to the women involved to set the rules- again, especially back then. I imagine that all the guys there knew what the offender was- that type usually has an exeggerated opinion of his standing in the male pecking order.

[The Happy Feminist]

Thank you all for your kind words. I think you are right, Joel, that a lot of the men with whom I worked might well have taken my side. I don't know however that anyone ever overheard my berating this guy. Even though I was quite loud about it, I don't know whether any other employees or supervisers were around. If they were, they never said anything to me about it.

[Sidebar]

That's one of the main difficulties with that situation--figuring out if the conduct is accidental or intentional. And, it's certainly a lot harder to deal with when you're young and inexperienced. Sounds like you did what you could about it once you set your mind to it. It's too bad your dad wasn't more helpful, but maybe he didn't know what to say.

I'm waiting to hear about the other incidents...

[h sofia]

So well put. I've seen this kind of behavior a lot on the part of young women.

[The Happy Feminist]

Sidebar, the other incidents are too tedious and mundane to make an interesting post. Probably the most egregious other thing I endured -- this type in a temp secretarial position -- was endless speculation by the owner of the company and pretty much everyone else as to whether I was a lesbian. The speculation occurred because (a) I was attending a women's college, and (b) I refused to state my sexual orientation when asked. The speculation somehow morphed into a lot of joking about whether I would abandon my lesbianism once I saw the company's "hot" male accountant. When the accountant finally came in, he turned out to be an obese Orthodox Jew. So there was a bit of homophobia and religious/ethnic/anti-fat bigotry to go along with the sexual harassment in that case. Good times.

[Richard]

I think it's great that you handled the situation yourself without feeling the need to run to an authority figure for protection. I once had the pleasure of watching a woman use razor sharp humor and sarcasm to completely annihilate and humiliate a male co-worker who had been making sexual advances toward her and couldn’t understand why she just wasn’t interested. Granted, she was much older (and therefore, I assume, wiser) than you at 17, but I thought it was wonderful how she handled it. She had everyone howling in laughter at her perpetrator, and he had to lamely laugh too, but you could tell he was devastated.

Women who can handle these things themselves gain enormous respect from both men and women alike, and gain, I imagine, a good amount of self-respect from the experience too. Parents shouldn’t be waiting for their daughters to ask them for advice when it’s already happening to them. It’s going to occur somewhere and the skills need to be developed, ingrained, and in place in girls starting at a very young age, so that they instinctively know how to handle that overbearing man when they come across him. Sure, you can wish it wasn’t necessary to teach girls these skills, but that’s a bit pollyannaish and of no practical purpose in this lifetime.

(220 words)

[The Happy Feminist]

Yep, I agree that it IF you can handle harassing or inappropriate conduct yourself, that CAN be an ideal solution. Of course, not everyone is possessed of razor sharp wit or perfect self-command -- and bullies and harassers (regardless of the sex of their victims) are inclined to pick on those least able to defense themselves.

I think even the less elegant, "STOP IT" is a good thing. Another solution I used to employ with "ambiguous" harassment was an ambiguously threatening response: "Ha ha ha, it's all fun and games until I sue you for sexual harassment," uttered in a maybe-I'm-joking-maybe-I'm-not tone of voice. Of course, this only works on people smart enough to take the hint. And, of course, this makes people squirm because there is authority to back it up.

I agree that teaching girls and boys about defending against and not perpetrating sexual harassment is a must! (And both sexes can use both lessons since sexual harassment laws are gender-neutral!)

[Richard]

>>> ...sexual harassment laws are gender-neutral!

True, but men don’t view themselves as being as vulnerable to unwanted sexual attention to the same extent that women seem to. With identical behavior from their harassing perpetrator, and in like circumstances, men are more likely to make light of it, whereas women are more likely to lose sleep over it. I make no judgment about which response in most appropriate, it’s just what I’ve observed.