Oct 8 2016
NO TITLE.
I try to keep it light and fluffy around here, but I am just too fucking angry right now and ranting to Henry just isn’t cutting it anymore. I need to hear my fingertips murdering the keyboard, so HERE GOES.
It was the year 2000. I was a 20-year-old office manager at my first “real job.” I was learning some basic bookkeeping skills, designing weekly flyers, in charge of handling money brought back by the drivers, printing invoices….
….and being sexually harassed almost daily by my boss’s son.
20 years old and I’m starting to believe that this is a normal thing that happens in the office, being propositioned one minute and then forced to babysit the kids in my office when the wife comes to visit. Society tells me that I should just laugh it off, shrug about it, get some thicker skin. It was just words, right? Just some lewd, perverted comments that I could either cry about, fight about, or ignore. I was too proud to cry, too scared of getting fired to fight, so I chose to just ignore. It becomes part of my unwritten job description, just another duty in order to earn a paycheck.
Just words. Just words. Just words.
One day, I was standing at the filing cabinet, organizing invoices (a/k/a doing my fucking job) when he ran into my office, GRABBED MY CROTCH, giggled hysterically, and ran out.
And I did nothing. Because this was a family-run business. There was no HR. I didn’t want my boss to fire me because I needed that job. I stayed there for FOUR YEARS because I was naive and believed that I could handle it, that I was strong enough, look how thick my skin is. For four years, I was “strong enough.”
Until I wasn’t. Until I realized that I was confusing “strength” with “numbness” and “complacency.”
I quit in 2004. A mediation between me and the owner happened a few months later and there was a settlement. No apology, though. Because in the eyes of these men, it wasn’t rape. It was “just touching,” right? Maybe some lewd innuendos and comments here and there. So that makes it “not as bad,” you know? It never went any further than that so it was “excusable.” The worst part is that I was almost convinced that this was true.
But the truth is that outside of that environment, I realized that it didn’t matter how strong I thought I was, what happened was gross and abhorrent, NOT NORMAL, and something that I’ve had to live with every day since. I have four year’s worth of composition books filled with details of what was said and done to me, all these composition books which I will probably never be able to go back and crack open.
It took me THREE YEARS to get a job after that because I was so scared of putting myself in another situation like that. I didn’t realize just how awful all of this was until I started opening up about it later on, to new co-workers who promised me that it was so far from being OK.
When I see Donald Trump, I see my ex-boss’s son. That could be him—the man who bragged that he was going to cheat on his wife with me, the man who casually asked me in front of a roomful of men which female celebrity I’d most like to fuck, the man who grabbed my crotch—running for president. Same crude ideals, same perverted values, same disgusting entitlement. If someone is the type of person to make those kinds of misogynistic comments, then chances are, they’re the type of person to eventually turn those words into actions.
It makes me think, if it was that hard for me to step forward and tell someone what was happening, imagine what it feels like to be a RAPE VICTIM.
I think about that, and I just feel so fucking angry. Trump is such a trigger to so many women, just FUCK OFF already.
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I can really relate, unfortunately.
I am so angry with you. Something similar, and my final reaction is why I was quietly asked to leave the military. Women asking “do you want a tissue for being too sensitive over something all men think about,” makes me want to go on a spree.
I mean with as in solidarity, not angry at.
I knew what you meant! I hate getting rambly on here but Henry was like “I don’t think ranting to me about this is helping you…” It’s deeply disturbing to me that there are women out there who are ok with him.
I had a similar experience in one of my first jobs. I was 18 years old and the boss reached across the counter where I sat at a cash register, and grabbed my breasts. I was so shocked that I laughed, and never said or did anything about it. There was also a male employee there who grabbed my crotch once. I avoided him after that and made sure we were never alone, but I also never said or did anything about it. I think I figured that I was immature to be reacting so strongly and that more adult women would not take it so seriously. Crazy! I had not grown up in a place where any men acted like that, but in a small town where everyone knew everyone; I think I figured that city people were more sophisticated and I was just a country hick. So, so wrong.
In the last couple years, when there has been a lot of talk in the media about the way many men treat women in the workplace and how we put up with and gloss over it in order to keep our jobs, and our employers don’t insist on changes and our hurt and anger are invalidated, it’s been said that most women and girls have been molested in some way or another at some time. This made me think about my own life and the times men have treated me like they had a right to do what they wanted and say what they wanted, and the times I came close to being raped, or at least was very afraid that was about to happen, and the lucky escapes I had. And how I haven’t thought about those occasions for many years but had put them out of my mind.
Even now I know women who prefer to think of “abuse,” whether verbal or physical, as just “annoyance” that we women should rise above, and carry on. It is really fucking aggravating. I’m pissed off, too.
Ugh I’m so sorry you’ve had experiences with this too. It’s way too common and it makes me so angry! This wave of women boasting about how they’d “never let” something like this happen to them, or if it did, they would just brush it off because it’s “not a big deal” – this is exactly what’s perpetuating this terrible rape culture! And you just know that if a tape came out of Obama saying things, this is the same group of women who’d be fighting to have him impeached. Ugh I’m so furious!!
Thank you. And I’m sorry. And you are awesome.
Dont mean to get all political on here but by chance have you seen this?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ45VLgbe_E&w=560&h=315%5D
She is the definition of CLASS. I love her :)