In November, I had some interactions with this dude at work that left me oddly shaken.
He didn’t assault me or do anything I could even report to HR, but it shows the power that microaggressions (and the patriarchy) can have on our psyche.
Each tiny cut, innocuous on its own, eventually add up to something painful.
I’m sick of being angry about it, so I decided to channel my emotions into a blog post to see if I could put it to rest.
It’s a long one.
As background, I work as an internal communications manager for one of the divisions (~4400 people) of a large (20,000+ people) company. I find business-related stories to write about and interesting people to profile to hopefully make everyone feel more connected to their own jobs. In theory, if I do my job right, they feel happier and more fulfilled.
I am 34 years old. I know my shit and generally like my 10+ year career.
I enjoy that I get to constantly learn about new topics, meet interesting people, and pick up new skills, and there are a lot of real skills and knowledge required: software, editing, video and audio equipment, copyright laws, photography, HTML, grammar, strategy, interviewing, diplomacy.
So, interviewing and people skills. This is where this guy comes in. I’m not going to give him a name because honestly, he could be any dude. He’s not any dude (most dudes are cool), but he could be.
Just like I could be any woman: I don’t have a bangin’ body, a pretty face, or even a dazzling personality. I’m profoundly normal.
Not all men but yes all women.
Okay.
About a year ago, I interviewed this guy about his media consumption habits to improve my team’s messaging techniques. Pretty standard comms stuff. My colleague randomly selected him based on his location, job family, and title.
He was a little hostile at first, but that wasn’t too surprising: his group is large, has its own identity, and overall doesn’t really engage with our content.
By the end of the meeting, I felt like he was hitting on me, but whatever. He said he thought I was going to be this buttoned up marketing tool, but I was a real person. I was flattered by this.
He emailed me a few weeks later to see if I want to get some coffee, but I was pretty busy at the time and didn’t really want to, so I didn’t get back to him.
A year later, I’m running a morale-building event in his building and we reconnect. I see he’s wearing a wedding ring, and he wants to take some of the props home for his kids. Whew, he’s harmless! I say yeah, it would be great to get lunch.
So, death by tiny cuts.
I pretty much eat salad or Chipotle every day (“wow, you need to get out more”) so I let him pick where to go.
We talk, and he has a really interesting, not-your-typical-tech-worker background; I think this is one reason why I kept giving him chances.
Tiny cut 1: It was hot in the restaurant, so I took off my cardigan. He asked me towards the end of the hour to explain every one of the six small tattoos on my upper arms.
I’m trying not to be sheepish about it or let see how uncomfortable him examining my body made me feel. They’re just arms. He’s married. He’s just being nice.
But after one tattoo, he asks me about the next one. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one. And the next one.
One of them is an eye, and he notes that the tattoo is bluer than my eyes, after analysis of both.
Tiny cut 2: I think he paid, though I insisted on getting my own meal, but whatever, let’s not make it awkward. I’ll get the next one, I say.
Tiny cut 3: On the walk back, he was like, you kept ignoring my messages (plural – I only ignored one) so it’s nice that we were able to get lunch. He messaged me later to say he wouldn’t talk about himself so much next time.
Tiny cut 4: I thought it would be one and done, but he starts asking me to lunch every week. Not a big deal, I think – he told me he likes getting out of the office and using lunch to network. I make up reasons not to go but eventually know I’m going to agree.
Tiny cut 5: I met up with a friend in his building one day, and saw him going to lunch with another young woman. Maybe a coincidence, but he seems like like hanging out with the ladies. Hmmm.
Going back to tiny cut 3: I agree to get lunch again, and he teases me about ignoring another invite to do something with him (I did not, because there was no other invite to do something). Gaslighting much?
Going back to tiny cut 2: He paid. “it’s okay, we’re not keeping score!”
Tiny cut 6: My age came up – “oh, I thought you were younger than that!”
Tiny cut 7: He was critical of my long-standing practice of veganism: “just try a bite of lengua” “Are you vegan because of something dumb, like you don’t want to kill animals?”
Tiny cut 8: Even after 10 years of living in Seattle and none of my friends approving, I am loyal to my Bay Area teams. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad listening to 49ers games on the radio in the 80s. I went to school with Joe Montana’s daughter for a bit, and saw Steve Young on the street once, just walking with his son.
He didn’t buy it. “Come to a game with me and I’ll make you a Seahawks fan.”
Tiny cut 9: He kept asking me to get a beer with him, so I agreed to an after work beer on a Tuesday. We meet at a bar near work that everyone talks about a lot as a coworker happy hour bar, but when I get there he’s sitting at a small table and it has a date vibe.
Tiny cut 10: “Here’s why I asked you here today: you can do so much more than communications. You could be a technical project manager. You would make more money and make much more of an impact.”
So here I am, sitting across from this dude who barely knows me, who isn’t even a decade older than me, giving me career advice, 10 years into my career. A 42-year-old man unsolicitedly trying to mentor a 34-year-old woman.
I know tech. I grew up in Silicon Valley and used to trick or treat at Steve Jobs’ house. That’s right: Mr. iPod himself has personally given me candy.
I know math and science. My dad is a medical doctor and electrical engineer, and my parents pushed math and science on me from day one. Lots of tears shed over everything from multiplication tables to AB calculus. My mom has told me she wishes I had been a doctor like my dad.
I chose communications because I like storytelling, because it’s what’s best for me.
Further, I have a Master of Communication from a large, respected university. We’re connected on LinkedIn and have had conversations about all of this, so he could know this if he saw me as an actual person instead of someone in need of rescuing.
My boss currently reports to the president of said division, who reports to the CEO of said company, so even though I am low (so very low) on the corporate ladder in terms of income and respect, I am pretty high on the corporate org chart.
An email announcing this had gone out to everyone in the division (including him) literally the day before. It was basically the first thing I said when I sat down when he asked me how I was doing: my manager’s manager just changed yesterday.
This job he’s pushing? Yeah, I may have made more money, probably, because communications is considered women’s work, which means it inherently has less value, but in no way was this a “better” job.
In fact, project managers are a compensation grade below mine. (I did not know this at the time.)
But hey, it’s fine. I continue to brush it off.
Tiny cut 11: He tells me about a woman who, like me, didn’t think she could work in tech, but he convinced her to get a job as a project manager and now she’s thriving.
“I can put you in touch with her.”
I’ll consider it, why not? At the very least, I said, she would make a really interesting person to profile, especially since women in tech is such a hot topic.
“No, I don’t want to see her in one of your stories.”
Fine. But he wouldn’t just put me in touch with her.
“You wait 72 hours, and if you’re still interested, I’ll put you in touch with her.”
So he’s dangling this contact in front of me, this potential career, but wants to make sure I really want it. That I truly desire his help. And he’s going to be upset if I use this lead for my actual job, because my actual job is pointless, and that was not what he wanted from this.
Tiny cut 12: He clearly had this idea of who he thought I am that does not vibe at all with my actual identity. At one point I said I would probably get into a fight if I went to a Seahawks game and he had this sort of stunned look – “no, no I can’t see you doing that at all.”
Tiny cut 13: I had a couple more beers because I am terrible at exits and didn’t want to make things weird and maybe more beer will make it better?, and he asked me questions about my boyfriend. When we’re going to get married. “Do you think your boyfriend would like me?”
Tiny cut 14: What married man with a wife and two children in grade school stays out for three hours after work with a female colleague?
And this part didn’t bother me (he’s married, he has kids, I know he’s had sex at some point in his life) but at one point, he was like, “when I started in tech, it was all just a bunch of virgins.” I GET IT BRO, YOU FUCK.
Also, he paid.
Tiny cut 15: I came in to work on Wednesday feeling a little hungover and a lot icky. He messaged me making casual conversation.
Girl. Again, I am 34 years old.
On Thursday, I had a preplanned work from home day because it was game day and my commute takes me by the stadium.
Tiny cut 16: More Seahawks, via Slack:
Gross?
“You would look happy and cute.” I turned off Slack, the tool my coworkers use to communicate and get work done, for the rest of the day.
I had my weekly touch base with my manager that afternoon, and wanted to tell her that this dude was creeping me out while we were on video chat. But I didn’t.
We hung up, I thought about it more, and messaged her that there was this guy (I didn’t give her his name) and that I felt like I should tell her about it in case anything escalated.
“Do you think he wants a threesome?” she joked.
She told me that since he wasn’t in my direct line of report or even in my group, that I should just ignore him if I didn’t feel comfortable telling him how I felt.
I imagined how that hypothetical conversation with him would go: “you think I’m interested in you? I’m a married father of two! I was just trying to help! You sure are full of yourself! I thought you were cool!”
So I’ve been ignoring him.
That’s fine, but I have to go to his building sometimes and it makes me so anxious. I’ve started to think about him when I am getting ready for work in the morning, and find myself getting angry as I drive into the parking garage.
I’m nervous about running into him whenever I go out to lunch or walk through the lobby. I almost skipped our holiday party, but decided not to because a) it’s a big company and b) he doesn’t get to win.
I’ve been doing this my whole life, so am puzzled as to why this experience has creeped me out in such a visceral way. I think I’m just angry whenever I’m reminded that the patriarchy considers me a second-class citizen.
It’s not like this is the first dude who has met me once and started messaging me immediately after. This happened repeatedly when I was more involved in activist causes, but it’s happened a few times at work too.
He’s not the first man who has disrespected my career choices; I had someone fall asleep and start snoring on a conference call years ago. Communications is one of those jobs that everyone thinks they can do, until they actually have to do it.
He’s not the first dude who has seen me as some sort of protege; I’ve had older me treating me like their daughter since I was in my 20s, and a pal my own age had a mental breakdown and messaged me every day for a year because (again, mental breakdown) he thought he was an agent working with the governments of 20 nations and I was his pupil to be tutored in his ways.
He’s not the first man who has made me feel uncomfortable at work; I was interviewing a VP in my group for a podcast, and he got more candid with his family situation than I felt was appropriate (so much that I called his resignation 9 months in advance) and angry when I diplomatically brought up whether there were any topics that we needed to be sensitive to in light of recent layoffs. “I didn’t fire them, so it was the easiest firing ever!”
He’s not the first dude that has questioned my sports fandom. I was wearing my Steve Young jersey and a bartender asked me where Steve went to college. BYU, but why do I have to prove I know this?
He’s not the first dude whose problematic behavior I’ve brushed off. It’s not the first time I’ve responded “haha yeah” instead of “that’s not appropriate.”
He and I only ended up hanging out three times, and it sometimes can that that long to truly judge someone’s character.
Still, I’m mad at myself for continuing conversations when I didn’t want to. I’m mad at myself for not just saying “no.” I’m mad at getting a second, and then a third, beer that night.
And I’m ashamed because the conclusion I’ve come to is that the real reason I am so put off by this all (other than the fact that it happened at work, the place I need to be in order to live) is that he is incredibly physically unattractive, just the textbook definition of repulsive ugly.
Though this certainly doesn’t excuse his behavior. And I’d certainly still be pissed, even if he were handsome.
Anyone who manipulates you by flattery, doesn’t respect your longtime choices, gaslights you into thinking something is your fault, withholds information so that you need them, or patronizes you is not your friend.
So, here are my new rules for myself:
- I will insist on paying for my share in professional settings, even if the other person insists, and will be very firm on this.
- I will not have one-on-one drinks with male colleagues unless I know them really, really well.
- I will say NO. We don’t owe anyone anything, and I need to remember this. As MFM would say, “fuck politeness.”
- I will trust my gut.
Also, I bought a fake wedding ring off Etsy and am going to start wearing it whenever I am not with my boyfriend. I hate buying into the patriarchy like this, to go along with the notion that a woman is only off limits if she belongs to a man, but I’m just so tired of fighting it.
When issues facing women in tech come up at work, I become upset. Why is it up to us to figure this all out when men’s behavior goes unchecked? Women in tech isn’t just a “pipeline” problem – how we’re treated in the workplace drives us away.
So for the dudes: Be. Better.
Read up on microaggressions in the workplace. Being a true ally to women means listening, amplifying our voices, publicly supporting us, including us in “the conversation,” and giving us projects with substance, no matter our role.
Don’t comment on our appearance, or what we would or do look good in.
Never scrutinize our bodies, even the non-sexual parts. Obviously don’t look at our boobs or our butts, but also don’t ask about our tattoos. We didn’t get them for you, and don’t owe anyone an explanation.
Don’t assume that because we’re being nice to you, we’re into it. Women are socially conditioned to be agreeable, to assume the best, and to shrug it all off. We know that if we aren’t, it can have disastrous consequences for our careers and well-being.
Finally, we are not girls: we are grown. ass. women.
We know our shit. Stop treating us like it.
And stop underestimating how much we like sports.
Not Jean-Claude Van Damme. 