Tag: control

  • It Isn’t Always About Power

    It Isn’t Always About Power

    The current narrative says that all  unwanted sexual attention and harassment is based in power.  It isn’t.

    Sometimes it is simply about sex.

    Like many women I experienced a lot of unwanted attention and been harassed by outside associates, peers and even the men who report to me.  Most of the time, I was the one with more power.  I knew their advances weren’t intended to diminish me.

    They just saw a woman who was different from most women and decided “I want to try her out.”

    Many men cross the line into unwanted attention simply because they are looking for sex and believe the old saying: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”  If they take their shot, they might get lucky.

    This game gets played a lot when we are out of town.  Men want to know if we are one of those women who also believes “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”   

    Do we transform from serious career woman to party girl?

    Too often women make the mistake of being too polite when we reject these advances because we don’t want to hurt the man’s feelings or come on too strong.  But when we are polite, he interprets it as us leaving the door open.  He again thinks nothing ventured, nothing gained so he tries to open the door some more.

    The  harassment begins.

    So ladies, we can’t be polite in our rejection – we take our shot and send him down in flames.  His ego will recover.

    A propeller airplane going down in flames

    There are also some men who have this weird notion that if he is interested in us, then we want him too.  The idea that we aren’t attracted to him doesn’t even register as a possibility.

    I’ve dealt with this and so have most of the women I’ve work with.  And again, women have to give an absolute “No” and sometimes take action to make these guys leave us alone.

    In one of my workplaces a lower-level man who worked for me developed a crush on me.  One day I walked in on a group of my male colleagues including his supervisor talking about how the man could make some overtures to me.  My angry reaction was:

    “Guys, let me make this really clear.  I GET A SAY IN THIS.  Just because he’s interested doesn’t mean I going to say, ‘Ooohhh I’m so lucky, a man likes me.’”

    “I decide who I date! And I DO NOT want him coming around me.  So, you better get out there and start discouraging him because if I hear you encouraging him, I will come after all of you for sexual harassment.”

    My colleagues did follow through. They made it very clear to him that I was way out of his league, and they intervened whenever he attempted to come near me.

    Then there are the men who don’t believe a woman can be single – she must have a man in her life. She MUST have sex with someone! 

    It’s another strange thought process that only make sense in the male mind.

    These men play match maker and try to set you up with every single man they know, including men you wouldn’t date in a million years. 

    Cartoon of an ugly fat man with long hair in a ponytail wearing a blue t-shirt and red shorts revealing his bellybutton.

    They don’t understand that you have standards for the men you date beyond the possession of male genitalia.

    Since I’m not easily offended by male antics, my approach to dealing with this is to give the guys my list of dating requirements and say, “Find me this guy.” 

    The list of course has very high requirements.  But if they can find him….

    Then there are the weirdos and naturally creepy men.

    The first time I ran across this man was 6 months into my career when I went to a training course.  The last man to enter the classroom was looking for a seat and I motioned that the seat next to me was vacant.  That was my mistake.

    He interpreted my offer of a seat as me saying: “I want you to sit next to me because I want you.”  Two days later, this man, who was the stereotypical geek, professed his love for me and began stalking me.  By the end of the week, he said that he was leaving his wife and child for me.

    At first, I was concerned for my safety but then realized I could break this little geek in half like twig, so I tried to ignore him.

    Ironically his stalking turned out to be helpful. 

    One of our classmates became extremely ill and needed to go to the hospital.  We didn’t have a car to take him, but I knew who did – my stalker. And being a good stalker, he was standing right there.  He gladly gave us a ride. 

    After the course, thankfully, I never saw or heard from him again.

    Unfortunately, he wasn’t the last creeper I dealt with.  However, I took all of the others much more seriously. 

    We must remember that there is a lot about our colleagues that we don’t know. We only have a professional relationship with them and even if we are friendly a lot about them remains hidden.

    We should always listen to our gut instincts. If something feels off, then something probably is off.

    I’ve worked with quite a few men who seemed normal but then their behavior changed. They either developed a mental illness or had one all along that they hid. A few became dangerous.

    As women we will face a variety of situations and incidents. The one size fits all POWER narrative is far too simplistic. We have to recognize situations for what they are, so we deal with them appropriately.

    When we follow the narratives that say every situation is about POWER, we automatically cast ourselves in a weaker, subordinate position. 

    We tell ourselves we have to be afraid. We fear if we say “No” there will be consequences and reprisals.  This makes us less willing to act or fight back – either in the moment or afterwards.

    So, instead of assuming a man wants to assert power over you, consider he may just be looking for sex.  After all, we had a sexual revolution several decades ago and men know women want (good) sex too. And we all know colleagues who got involved.

    By now I’ve written enough articles like this to know there are some women who don’t want to hear anything other than it as all about power and are chomping at the bit to counter and say:

    “Well, what about abuse and assault – that’s about power.”

    I don’t disagree – those are about control and power.  But just because they are, don’t make all incidents about power.

    When we make all incidents about power, we hand men power they don’t have.

    A woman's hand holding a white box tied up with a red bow

    They will gladly take it and use it to their advantage. 

    Some then think, nothing ventured, nothing gained so why not try mixing power with a request for sex.  If we fall for it, they use it again and again and again.  They learn they can harass and abuse and get away with it.

    So, remember, it’s not always about power.

    Sometimes it’s about sex and getting laid.  And we have the power to say “No” and take action if our decision isn’t respected.

    Empowered Women Don’t Give Men Power They Don’t Have

    To learn more, watch these YouTube videos:

  • The HUGE Misperception Women Have About The Male-Dominated Workplace

    www.123rf.com 39546075

    Women have a HUGE misperception about the male-dominated workplace that has done incredible damage to our efforts to advance.

    Women work from a narrative that says men want to climb to the top so they can have power over others.  Many women believe men aspire to control and dominate others – they want to be authoritarians, dictators and the king.

    If you think about it, that makes men sound really dysfunctional and as if all men are inherently insecure with control issues.  But we know most men aren’t that way, they are normal guys.  However, the few that have real control issues – such as the recent list of powerful men who are sexual harassers – get a lot of attention and reinforce the narrative.

    In reality, men don’t aspire to have power over others.

    They aspire to keep others from having power over them.

    Men want to be autonomous – they want to be independent and have self-determination.  They want to exercise their own judgement to do what they want, when they want, how they want.  They don’t want to be treated like a child who has to ask permission or be told what to do.  Therefore they aspire to rise higher in the organization so there are fewer people above them who can tell them what to do.

    If you think about that too, you realize it is why every revolution, rebellion and resistance movement was fought.  It is why there are very few monarchies left.  Men fought for autonomy, self-determination and self-governance.

    So if men aspire to be autonomous then why do so many women believe men want power and are driven to protect their power structures?

    To understand that, we have to go back in time to when women had no legal rights and were completely dependent on men.  Women spent their lives in a precarious and vulnerable state.  Their only means to attain financial security, power and status was to attach themselves, through marriage or family affiliation, to a strong man with those attributes.  Therefore women needed to see the public sphere (the world of government and business) as the male proving ground where survival of the fittest played out and the strongest man rose to the top.  Women used men’s success in the public sphere to measure how good of a marriage prospect he was.

    Women saw the public sphere for what they needed it to be.  Their perceptions about how it functioned were formed by being on the outside looking in through their perspective. They weren’t formed by actually watching and observing how men interact with each other in the workplace.

    When women went into the male-dominated workplace they brought their perceptions with them.  They wrote their own narrative that one had to “tear down to rise up.”  This narrative said women had to fight men for power.  Women had to tear down men’s power structure in order for women to rise and take power for themselves.

    Women weren’t shy about stating they wanted to be the CEO’s, on corporate boards and in top government positions for power.  Once women obtained this power, they believed they could dictate new rules and exercise their control.  (Ironically, women stated that they wanted to be just like the men they wanted to tear down.)

    However, women’s belief in how they thought the male-dominated workplace worked clashed with how it really worked.

    Men who aspired to be autonomous, saw women’s quest for power and control as a threat to the autonomy they valued and the entire structure they built to promote their autonomy.  Faced with this threat, men resisted the advancement of women.

    For 40+ years, men and women have interacted through a huge misunderstanding of what the other wants and values.  Women interpreted men’s resistance to advancing women as men wanting to subjugate women.  Even when men treated women like men – like people who  valued autonomy as much as men – women felt rejected.  To women autonomy feels like you are being left to fend for yourself, no one supports you and you are in a sink or swim situation with no life preserver.  It doesn’t feel like you are being treated equal to your male colleagues – it feels like you are being ostracized.

    So when men treated women as their “equals”, women still saw it as men rejecting women in order to keep power for themselves.  It reinforced the narrative that men work off a power and control structure and that women needed to tear down that structure.  This in turn caused men to believe women worked off a power and control structure and men had to stop women in order to protect their autonomy.

    Even worse for women, men learned how to use women’s perception about the power and control structure against women.  If women want to believe men have all the power and women assume they are in an inferior position, men, especially dysfunctional men,  will take advantage of that.

    I suspect that the increase in harassment and bullying of women is due in large part to this dynamic.  Many men believe they will get away with it because women are taught they are powerless victims who cannot overcome the power structure.  And as I said earlier, these dysfunctional men get all the attention and reinforce the narrative that men are all about power and control.  We create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Today we have a huge mess of misunderstandings and misperceptions we need to fix.

    In order for women to achieve equality and parity with men, they must first change their perspective and stop buying into the power and control narrative.  They have to see the male-dominated workplace for how it really functions and for the huge role AUTONOMY plays in its structure.

    Women need to watch and listen to the men they work with.

    Are they acting to have power and control over others?

    Or, are they acting to preserve their AUTONOMY – to do what they want, when they want, how they want?  Are they being isolationists who want to pretend their actions don’t affect other people and resist other people’s actions affecting them?  Do they resist listening to others, wanting only their voice to be heard?  Do they take autonomy to an extreme by becoming selfish, self-centered and even narcissistic?

    I guarantee that if you look for autonomy in the male-dominated workplace you will be shocked by how much of it you see.  It’s rampant.  As women, tune into all those things that bug you about working with men that don’t seem to come from power and control – they probably come from autonomy.

    Only when women learn to recognize autonomy and understand its power in the male-dominated workplace, will they put themselves on the right path to realizing their own equality.

    One more point.

    I use the Yin-Yang concept to describe the natural and correct interaction of men and women.  Notice in this image there are no power and control mechanisms.  It is about mutual influence and harmony.

    Therefore, for everything men do, women have a balancing, influencing reciprocal action.  We are inherently equal.

    However women will never recognize and exercise their inherent equality if they continue to work off of bogus narratives.  So change your perspective.  See the male-dominated workplace for how it really is.

    Empowered Women See the Male-Dominated Workplace For How It Really Functions

     

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