What was the most challenging situation you faced as a recipient of a sexist comment, and how did you respond? Back to Answering the Tough Questions.
Cynthia says: I took a year off after high school to save money for college and began interviewing for administrative assistant jobs. During one interview with a well-to-do businessman, he told me that I wasn’t going to get the job but that he was interested in a relationship with me. He went on to say that he would put me up in an apartment and pay my other expenses. In return, he (a married man) would stop by two to three times a week.
To say that I was unprepared to respond to his remark would be an understatement. I obviously declined his offer, collected my belongings, and departed—but I did so politely, as one would during a job interview. So, as extreme an example as this situation was (is), it highlights a few of the challenges that women face in dealing with sexist remarks. First, there is a fine line between a sexist remark and sexual harassment in the workplace. Second, responding to sexist remarks can be difficult in situations where there is an extreme power imbalance (for example, between an 18-year-old unemployed and self-supporting young woman seeking a job and a 50-ish male owner of a corporation). Third, women of my generation simply were not raised to question authority—or to cause a scene even in the face of utterly outrageous behavior—something we need to ensure that all future generations of girls and young women are prepared to do.
Times have changed, and I would love to believe that no young woman is being subjected to an experience like the one described above. But I suspect that even today the reality lies closer to what we witnessed during the 2008 Presidential campaign. The Democratic primary race was full of well-documented, and unchallenged, woman-hating and woman-baiting remarks, which left me wondering what is happening to women behind the scenes.
This sad state of affairs was highlighted again recently when Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist, discussed the beer choices of the Obama/Gates/Crowley “beer summit” on his Mouthpiece Theater video blog (which appeared on the Washington Post web site). Toward the end of the piece, he wondered aloud who might choose Mad Bitch Beer—after which a picture of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flashed across the screen. He and the Post have since apologized and the video has been removed, but isn’t the damage done?
In a culture in which journalists could even consider making such a remark “on-the-air” (and this was not an off-the-cuff remark gone wrong, as they clearly had arranged to post Clinton’s picture), women will continue to face challenges of all sorts in dealing with sexist remarks. Perhaps it is time for a full-court press, in which we challenge all sexist remarks from the outrageous to the more overt (which is another type of remark that I find challenging to deal with). By applying pressure in all arenas, we can send a strong message that we will no longer tolerate sexist remarks in any form—be they full blown sexual harassment or a “slip of the tongue.” While I am now of the age where I am no longer propositioned by older men, I continue to hear sexist remarks and am occasionally rebuked when I respond to those (“Oh that is not what I meant.”). Maybe the next time a grown man suggests that I am just being over sensitive, I will simply respond by saying, “No, you are being overly sexist.”
Steve says: At first glance it might appear that the difficulty of responding to a sexist remark should rise in proportion to the level of overt hostility to women that is expressed. Aren’t men who express their sexism more aggressively harder to confront? I find the opposite. These situations are often the easiest because it’s clear to you (and often others present) that someone has to speak up.
Rather, the hardest situations for me involve expressions of sexism by those with whom I get along well. It’s a common experience that when people begin to feel their most comfortable with someone else, they let slip their prejudices. That seems to happen either because they assume that they are talking with someone who will agree with them or because they are testing the strength of the relationship.
A few years ago, an older man in a group that I was part of (a group in which we were the only men) started to regularly make sexist asides to me. These included “we’re a minority and have to stick together,” “don’t let them get to you,” and “that’s the kind of thing a woman would say.” In each case, I found it awkward to respond, but I did so: “No, I don’t think so,” “I don’t really think about it that way,” and “I don’t think that has anything to do with being a woman.” After a few tries, he stopped making those remarks.
The awkwardness, the difficulty of responding in those situations, came from the fact that he was someone who I otherwise liked and with whom I wanted to preserve a good relationship (especially because I knew I’d need to interact often with him in the future). It would have been fairer to him had I followed up my responses with a private conversation about why I reacted the way I did—he was someone who actually professed to care about issues of gender equality, and I expect that the outcome of such a discussion would have been positive.
So I find the most challenging interactions to be those in which it’s necessary to address a sexist remark in a way that preserves the relationship. Managing those situations is not easy, but in the end, doing so can often strengthen the relationship while helping the other party see the impact of sexist comments.
What do you suggest? Post an answer.
