Tag: behavior

  • From #MeToo to Action

    From #MeToo to Action

    After reading an article I got in a comment battle with another woman over how women should respond to sexual harassment and assault.  She was very focused on offering empathy and sitting up all night with a woman who has been hurt.  To her offering empathy and understanding is what empowered women do.

    To me, empowered women do a lot more – they also take a stand and pursue justice.   An empowered woman, after sitting up all night listening to her hurt friend, goes out the next morning and starts the process of getting justice.  She is her advocate.  Sher puts her empathy, caring and understanding into action to help her friend get the justice she deserves.

    Statue of Justice at Old Bailey Courthouse with raised scales and sword. Justice isn't blindfolded
    Justice in her womanly form – raised sword and no blindfold.

    The other woman focused on being a victim and creating a lot of energy around those feelings of being a victim.  But putting a lot of energy into that state perpetuates that state.  And as the author of the article also discussed it is hard not to be affected yourself by the story of others and let it drag you down.

    To me, we need to put the energy towards healing and moving beyond the incident so it doesn’t permanently alter our lives in a negative manner.  I think of these incidents as someone pushing you down and infusing you with lots of their negative energy.   Our recovery process has to focus on working our way back up, ejecting their negativity and replacing it with our own positive energy.

    I have always found that standing up for myself and pursuing justice works miracles in speeding up the recovery process.   It gets me and the energy moving in the right direction.  Sometimes the justice process is swift and easy, sometimes it is really hard but you keep moving forward.  If you are lucky enough to have an advocate she ensures you keep taking steps forward, even if they are baby steps.

    When I feel I got the justice I deserve, I feel empowered and strong.   This is why I don’t reflect back on my career and see a long list of harassment, discrimination or unfair incidents.  I see challenges and obstacles that made me stronger and more confident.  They are a reminder that men don’t have power over me.

    The subtext of the other woman’s comments (and what really fired me up) was that it implied that when men act inappropriately, empowered women only respond in an emotional manner with empathy and understanding.  Change can only come when men decide to change their own actions.  Until then, it is women’s duty to keep pouring out the empathy and understanding to other women.

    Doesn’t that sound a lot like the stereotypes?

    Men act. Women are emotional.

    What about women taking action?

    After reading many comments on many posts, it seems that many women don’t believe or don’t want to believe that women have the power to act and influence men to change their actions.

    Our society is conditioned to believe women won’t act.   It believes if we give women their #MeToo moment to vent, appease them emotionally, sacrifice a few men, then eventually women will sit down, shut up and go away.

    We conditioned men to believe they just have to wait it out.  They don’t have to change because women aren’t going to do anything to make them change.  Women aren’t going to impose consequences. 

    If women want real and lasting change in men’s behavior, then women have to stop just talking and empathizing.  We need to act by standing up for ourselves, pursuing justice and imposing consequences.

    But again, from reading through lots of comments, there are a lot of women who don’t want us to see women as actors and doers because it then makes women responsible and accountable for their own actions.  In every incident they want women to be seen as innocent little lambs who are attacked by the big bad wolf in order to put 100% of the focus on men’s actions.

    They don’t want us to ask “Why did you go up to his hotel room?  Why did you get drunk with those guys?  Why did you let him in?”

    I can hear women screaming now “You want to bring back Victim Blaming!”

    No.

    I want women to understand the negative consequences of us denying our action, responsibility and accountability.

    An innocent little lamb is like a dependent child who needs others to protect and take care of it.  That image reinforces the stereotypes, the patriarchy and the subjugation of women.  It is not an image of an empowered woman who exercises her equality to men.

    Empowered women aren’t afraid to admit their mistakes.  Fear of Blame is a guy thing because men are afraid to be vulnerable.  Unfortunately they’ve transferred it to women and use it against us as victim blaming.

    Men use our 10% mistake to intimidate us into not exposing their 90% mistake.

    We need to get wise to this and stop falling for it.

    I’m not afraid to expose my mistake and take my 10% of accountability.  If anyone wants to victim blame me then my response is “I know I’m not perfect.  I am human.  We all make mistakes.”  Then I give them the look that says “Shall we discuss your long list of mistakes?”

    This attitude let me to file an 80 page complaint against a serial abuser in which I included all of my dirty laundry.  Not only was the serial abuser addressed but the company instituted a lot of policy changes to prevent the abuse he doled out.

    I know I keep harping on how important your attitude and perspective are to standing up for  yourself (and others) and getting justice.  This is why you can’t see yourself as a powerless victim.

    Several years ago I was sexually harassed at work and filed a complaint.  My complaint was not kept confidential.  Luckily someone who received it intervened and stopped a subsequent email that would have made it public.

    I was horrified, disgusted and angry.  As I drove home from work, I realized I was victimized – twice.  I got very upset.  After wallowing in my victimization for 20 minutes I thought “What the hell do I have to be ashamed of?  I didn’t do anything wrong.  The man who breached my confidentiality after being instructed to protect it was who was wrong.”  (My harasser was already fired.)

    I realized how thinking of myself as a victim disempowered me.  So I picked up the phone, called the appropriate person and got my justice.

    That was the only time in my career I ever associated myself with “victim.”

    I prefer to be a justice seeker and someone who always stands up for what is right.  I found there is a lot of power in that. 

    And that probably explains why women are discouraged from believing in their power to act, their power to influence men and their power to invoke consequences.

    Empowered Women Put Their Empathy into Action

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  • There Was a Time When Men Were Gentlemen in the Workplace

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    We have a lot of impressions of what the professional office was like in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  But our impressions probably miss one important characteristic – its civility.

    When I began working in 1982 I was the first female engineer in a very traditional office.  Men were engineers, designers, draftsmen and managers while women were secretaries.   Contrary to the popular myths, secretaries weren’t subservient, didn’t fetch coffee or do other menial tasks for the men.  They, in spite of their administrative roles, wielded a lot of informal power.

    Secretaries set the rules of conduct for the office.  They were a continuous reminder to men to elevate their behavior and they expected men to conduct themselves as gentlemen in their presence.  Words such as “please” and “thank you” were always used.

    As the female engineer I witnessed how my male colleagues conducted themselves when  they were by themselves versus around women.  For the most part they were the same.  I overheard a few “spirited” discussions in meetings but whenever I was present they watched themselves and toned it down.   Any time a man cursed in my presence he turned to me and apologized.  Even though I wasn’t offended, I acknowledged the apology and accepted it.

    I understood that my presence was also a continuous reminder to men to be their better selves.  It was also a reminder for me to set a higher example so I seldom cursed.

    As part of their gentlemanly behavior men always opened the door for me so I could enter first.  Most of my coworkers were civilians even though I was an Air Force officer so it wasn’t and awkward situation with them or the enlisted force.  However, the situation became awkward when I was with more senior officers.

    According to protocol, the junior ranking officer opens the door for the senior officers.  But since I was a woman the senior officers opened doors for me.  This got especially confusing one day when I went running at lunch at the same time as the three most senior officers on base.  As we entered the gym I went to open the door for them but one of the officers also rushed to open the door for me.  His long arms beat me to the door so I entered first.

    Not knowing if this was proper, I took my concern to the base women’s  group to discuss.  We had an interesting discussion:  were we officers first and women second OR women first and officers second?  We concluded that we were officers first and women second however, the male officers were also an officer and a gentlemen.

    As female officers (all of us very low ranking) we recognized that we were in a more precarious position than our male peers.  We needed the male officers to be gentlemen and chivalrous.  While most men were well behaved we all witnessed the ugly side of men and knew there could be a time we needed a man to be a chivalrous and intervene in a situation on our behalf.  Therefore we concluded that if male officers wanted to elevate Gentleman above Officer we should let them.  We expected that as the number of female officers increased eventually we would be seen as just another officer and normal protocols would take over.

    Little did we know how things would really change.

    For the first 20 years of my career most men acted with the same gentlemanly behavior around me.  They opened doors and apologized for any cursing or off-color comments in my presence.  My language however deteriorated a bit, especially when I was working out on a construction site.  Overall though things were evolving well.

    But then it changed.

    Suddenly, it is politically incorrect to treat women any different than men. Feminism interpreted men’s gentlemanly behavior as men seeing women as inferior. Opening a door for a woman was equivalent to discrimination and sexual harassment.  Women proudly proclaimed “I opened this door myself because I am equal.”

    These women didn’t understand that opening the door ourselves didn’t say anything about our equality – it was about encouraging polite and civil behavior to protect women from abuse and harassment.

    This misunderstanding created unintended consequences.

    Under intense pressure men stopped being gentlemen.

    This is a prime example of what men do to each other as a prank that is not acceptable to do to a woman.

     

    The minimal standard of acceptable behavior was removed.  With chivalry gone more crude behavior set in. Men could get away with anything by simply saying “That’s how I treat the guys. You want me to treat you differently?”

    Women were put in a difficult position.  Complaining about men’s behavior meant you couldn’t cut it as “one of the guys” or be their equal.  A complaint was a sign of weakness and inferiority.

     

    In response women also lowered their behavior and increased their aggressiveness in order to become “one the guys” and fit in.  Our behavior gave men permission to go even lower because in men’s minds, women should act better than men.  Crudeness, aggressiveness, meanness and bullying increased.  Dysfunctional and controlling men became more powerful and got away with more.   Overt sexual behavior towards women became common.

    For my own safety I divided men into two groups – those I trusted and those I didn’t.  Early in my career, the men I didn’t trust were the rare exceptions.  Later in career, they were the majority and the men I trusted were the exceptions.

    Today women are treated far worse in the workplace than they were in the 80’s.  It seems more men have no bottom limit to their behavior and see the workplace as a competition where it isn’t good enough to simply beat a competitor – they also have to demean and hurt them.

    It is up to women to reverse this situation.  We have to go back to asserting ourselves and using the Power of “No” to establish and enforce civil and polite behavior.  For centuries, this was our role in society.  Even without any legal rights we wielded our power and moral authority to better society and fight for social causes including abolition, temperance, children, the working poor and the rights of women.  Unfortunately when we went into the workplace in larger numbers, we left this power behind.  That was our mistake.  But we can correct it.  That’s what our rights and equality are for.

    Empowered Women Demand and Enforce Civil Behavior

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    The Woman In The Room: How I Realized the Unique Value of Women in the Male-dominated Workplace

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