When I think of it, my fingers turn to fists January 29, 2009

A week full of reading blogs coded with misogyny and meetings with hiring managers who think it’s acceptable to call and ask for a date after my interview has boiled my brain down to one gluey question: What does it take for me to be taken seriously, both as a woman in general and as myself in particular? Yes, my self is a woman; however, every little bit of nastiness and disrespect towards women that I read has been getting under my skin as of late, and said irritation is both on my own behalf and on behalf of women as a group. I think all that disrespect has an aggregate effect on how I’m presented and interpreted, and it’s not a pretty result.

Is the answer to file harassment complaints against said flirty manager-types? Not likely to have an effect. Wearing a terrible haircut, no makeup, and ill-fitting clothes to an interview? It’s not like I’m going in there with my breasts squeezed together and my hair tousled. Stay quiet, and you’re stuck reflecting the notion that all is well in the world of women’s issues and that equal pay and sexist jokes are dead issues; speak up and you’re labeled as a bitchy militant feminist who seeks refuge in her blog, where she rails against reality and verbalizes her bitterness.

Well, guess what– I am a feminist, and that doesn’t make me militant or bitchy. I cannot overstate how much work there is to be done on behalf of women in the workplace, in medical care, and in the social sphere (just to name a few areas). The thing that set me off today, as opposed to yesterday or the day before, was actually a Facebook interaction. Yes, it’s a social networking site where people post unfiltered thoughts and comments. The Posted Items and Notes features, however, have become increasingly bloggish, with many users even cross-posting from their Delicious and WordPress accounts. So I feel like it’s fair to demand a certain level of accountability from posters.

The blog/note that kicked things off today started off like a joke. It was a rant against the burgeoning culture of mandatory tipping in the service economy, but bubbling to the surface were nasty little bits of contempt against women. Interspersed were gems such as “I know better now. Take your cute little laugh and pathetic attempt to wink and [sic] you’re ‘what can I get for you, dollface?’ little voice and go practice taking caps of bottles. You’re not good enough at it yet to impress me.”

Awkward? For me, the phrasing there crosses that slim line between highlighting the game of the sexes that female bartenders play along with to get ahead and enters the territory of subjugation and misogyny. It has an unmistakable tone of, “I can’t have you, so fuck you; you’re a whore for making me want you.” Once again, can’t have a woman = not her fault. It’s that kind of rape justification logic that suffuses all other discourse about women. She was asking for it, she wanted it, she started it… so it’s her fault. Humorous intent isn’t a good enough reason to circulate content like that.

In retrospect, it could have been any post that set me off; this one just happened to do the trick. It is no longer acceptable to hide misogyny behind a character or comic voice; these images circulate in the collective minds of everyone who reads them and have a cumulative effect on our perception of women. No matter how innocuous the writer claims his intentions were, talking about women with that kind of bitterness and hate is disrespectful and reduces us, among other things, to sex objects and second-class citizens. It is no less serious than this.

Of course, my ire was already stoked by the text message I received the previous evening– from a private cellphone– saying that it was “OK that I didn’t want the job” and we could “still be friends LOL… let me know when you can hang out.” After staring at my phone, open-mouthed, I realized it was from a hiring manager who’d interviewed me the previous week. This on the heels of having to– repeatedly– explain to the big boss at my last place of employment what my policy on inter-office dating would be, should the opportunity present itself. Which was directly preceded by no fewer than three colleagues feeling the need to “confess” to crushes on me. It’s not that I’m excessively desirable or flirtatious; somewhere along the way, the message didn’t get across to these boys that the workplace is not a fertile ground for getting a date.

I don’t bring my sneaky, evil feminine wiles into the workplace; I don’t wink to get the copier fixed; I don’t sidle up to my interview subjects to get them to open up on the record; I didn’t wear a tight skirt to get my edits to newspaper articles approved. Hell, I never even did the pop-and-wink when I bartended– I was objectified enough while captive behind that bar without a push-up bra and mascara.

I thought integrity was what it took to be taken seriously. In September I thought that the dichotomy of ballbreaker vs. ingenue had been shattered by Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Angelina Jolie– women who are neither the angel in the house nor the tough guy, but are women recognized for having talents in their own right. They might be tough– and that toughness even appears novel to some people who, apparently, have never met a working mother– but nobody’s asking them to give up their femininity. I wish I knew how they did it.