It all started in my mid to late thirties when I had to write a two page response document because my company required that everyone be given annual reviews and in my annual review, my male boss failed me in eight out of eleven categories even though they were documented things a male co-worker had done, not me.
No, let me take you back to my early thirties when I had to turn in information about my male boss putting me in an ethically compromising position because he'd asked me to use my influence with a family member to try to hack someone's work emails and then started making comments that showed he had been following me and was aware of things I was doing in my personal life.
Wait, let me take you back to my late twenties when I was working as a cashier at a big box retailer. One day, those of us who had scored 100% on our quarterly tobacco and alcohol secret shops were being treated to lunch. We were divvied up into various cars and I got put in the car with the head honcho of my store. On the way back from that luncheon, Head Honcho's hand "accidentally" fell to my knee from where it had been on the center console automatic gear shift of his ginormous high end Buick, twice.
That's not far enough. Let me take you back to my early twenties when I'd gone back to MSU for the second time and was living in the dorms. The guys on brother floor had given all us girls 'beer goggle' ratings. And when I complained I was told, "Oh, you're just jealous because you were rated 'two kegs'. Ha ha. It's just harmless fun."
How about a few weeks before then and a debate in one of my English classes about whether or not a certain scene was a rape. ENG 202 v. Suz where I heard such illuminating arguments as, "she had been daydreaming about having sex with the guy she was cheating on her husband with so the salesman couldn't have raped her" and "she was already unfaithful to her husband so this was just more faithless sex on her part". The debate took up the whole of the class time. Our professor told us to wrap up our arguments. The nineteen year old spokesman decided to go first repeating the above points with others that were equally as obtuse. My response was one sentence, "I've already said all I have to say so just remind me never to date you."
No, let's try back when I had just graduated from being a teenager and was attending community college and living in an apartment with a friend and her boyfriend who was an MSU athlete. One evening, my male roommate called to let me know that one of his friends, K, (who I didn't like) would be stopping by with a "friend". He'd given this guy his key to the apartment and didn't want me to be surprised. His teammate knocked on my bedroom door to let me know he was there and to introduce me to his "friend" and another teammate, C, who had come along. I'd been hunkered down in my bedroom because the people who lived in the apartment with the controller thermostat for the whole building had very responsibly turned it down to 58* because they weren't going to be around. The owner was vacationing in Florida so the few of us who stayed there we resigned to having a White Christmas in our living rooms. I shed my comforter and came out into the kitchen because it was clear what K and his "friend" had planned after they shut themselves up in my roommates' room and turned the stereo on. I offered C access to the TV if he cared to watch anything, but I was going to take that time to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. He opted to sit at the kitchen counter and talk to me which was all fine and good until I was done and he unceremoniously asked, "So, you wanna have sex?" I blinked hard before I answered with an emphatic NO and I stomped to the other bedroom to beat on the door, "K! C wants to go home now!"
But shortly after that, one of his other teammates picked me up off the living room floor where my roommate and I were folding our laundry. When my roommate the athlete was made aware of the situation, he literally tackled his friend off of me. I remember the conversation that took place. "You saw how she was sitting. She wanted it, man." "Nah, man! She was doing her laundry. She was just doing her laundry, man." Man to man they had this exchange as I shuddered in my roommate's arms, too frightened to even cry.
No, I have to take you back to junior high when I spent an entire semester of 7th grade as the only girl in a floor hockey class of 45 boys. My budding feminist bravado had gotten me back into the class after I'd had to plead my case to the male gym teacher who had decided to take the five girls who had signed up for the class and put them in tumbling. I went to the female teachers saying, "I don't tumble." They thought they could talk me out of making a fuss by telling me that if I could get Mr. Friess to let me back into floor hockey they'd sign off on the transfer slip. They were genuinely surprised when I turned to walk up the stairs from the locker room to the gym floor.
When he came up from the boy's locker room after making sure all the boys were out of there and presumably in their classes, I made an impassioned argument about not being able to skate well and being the descendant of Canadians and having hockey in my blood and floor hockey was as close as I was going to get to playing hockey. That not at all jolly, red-haired giant patiently listened to me and when I was done he said, "Yeah, you just want to be in this class because it has 45 guys in it." My back had been to the boys who had sat in the bleachers closest to the stairs for the boy's locker room on the opposite side of the gym. I took a deep breath, turned to look at the motley crew assembled, and turning back to the gym teacher said, "You dare to call some of them guys?" After he had a good laugh he gave me his blessing, "OK, Hemond, let me sign your slip. You're in."
I was told that no special accommodations would be made for me. When we did push ups, I was not allowed to do "girly" push ups on my knees, but straight legged, like one of the guys. Push ups were used as both a warm up and a punishment. We did ten unless somebody was a doofus and then five were tacked on until everyone's arms had been beaten into submission. Some days we did twenty, but most days we did ten. In the northwest corner, I tried to do my push ups like everyone else, although I can still feel my gym teacher's foot on my butt and hear him saying, "Hemond! Your butt is up so high you're gonna get snow on there." I tried to stay out of the center of attention because it was very clear that I was not wanted there. I had first figured this out on the day the four captains got to choose teams, I was not only picked last, but the captain whose turn it was to pick said, "Bye" as in "I decline to choose this one." Mr. Friess was speechless for a moment before bellowing, "You can't take a bye! This is a gym class and everyone has to play. It's your turn to pick. She's the only one left so you have to take her."
It became more evident in the daily greeting I got as I entered the gym. I was the only girl coming up from the basement so I was the only girl who got to see the bare asses of my classmates as they mooned me every day. I said nothing because I knew that if I did, I would be taken out of floor hockey and put back in tumbling. And because I was the only girl, I was required to keep my shirt tucked in lest any boy "accidentally" get his hands caught under my shirt during battle. Trash talking was not only allowed, but expected. I accepted to the taunts from the 45 boys with half a smile and head nod that said, "I get it. I know my place."
One day as I was coming off the floor, one of my bottomless greeters who was in the penalty box, which was practically on the not so jolly, red-haired giant's lap, decided to tease me about my appearance. I'm 5'1" and short waisted so when I tuck my shirts in, I tend to look like somebody's grandpa who wears his pants pulled up to his chin. I was twelve, a seventh grader, and very self-conscious about my appearance, a typical pre-teen girl. When this boy kept asking me, "Hey, Suzy (I hate being called Suzy) why do you wear your shorts so high?" I walked past him to the drinking fountain and casually said, "Well, at least I keep mine on." He blanched and the gym teacher reddened in anger. When I got back from getting my drink, the boy was doubled over as if the verbal punch had struck him in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of him. The gym teacher asked, "Is there something you'd like to tell me, Hemond?" I smiled my sweetest smile full of sugar and spice and all that other bullshit girls store up to keep the peace and make sure that some troglodyte won't take out his club and beat her in the cave later and I said, "No, sir. It's just a private joke between the two of us."
But my best friend knew. She was sworn to secrecy because she also knew that my biggest detractor in that class was also my biggest crush. It was obvious to her in that junior high language of saying the opposite of what you meant. "Nuh uh! I so do NOT like him!" And junior high hormones are evil bastards that force you to criticize when you want to compliment. "I really, REALLY like him" comes out as "What a total JERK!" She knew and kept both secrets because, let's face it, had I spoken up, I would have been removed from gym class, but he would have been removed from school.
One day the sub-basement room where the tumblers met was flooded and they were told to bring their books and do homework while the manly men (boys and one girl) had their floor hockey class. The tumbling class had a smattering of boys in it, but the girl to boy ratio was roughly the opposite of floor hockey. I was just one of the guys, the guy the other guys hated, but one of the guys. The tumblers were real live actual girls! Twelve to fourteen year old boys have figured out that not all girls have cooties so there was a lot of manly man posturing taking place. The two female gym teachers were patrolling the bleachers trying to keep their students in check while my gym teacher was piling on the push ups. "Five more." "Five more." "No, you're gonna hurt yourself doing your Rocky hand clap push ups. So stop it and FIVE MORE." My brain had stopped counting because the muscles in my arms were screaming over the top of everything else. I was one of the guys and got no special accommodations; that was the price put upon my pleading to be taken back in the class I'd originally signed up for and was removed from. Then the voice of my best friend shrieked above all the other noise. "OH MY GOD! IN THE BACK CORNER! THAT'S SUZANNE. SHUT UP, YOU GUYS! SHE'S DYING BACK THERE." While the voice of my coach, resonating like a bomb said, 'FIVE MORE!"
I remember doing those last five in silence. We were allowed to get up off the floor and break into our teams so we could play. I walked up to Mr. Friess and for the first time that semester I asked, "Can I not play today?" He looked apologetic, embarrassed as he quietly responded, "OK." I sat apart from my team. My captain had finally realized that I not only had some talent, but I was an aggressive player. He was beginning to play me more, putting me across from the talented guys on the other teams because while I was allowed to take all my aggression out on the shins of my classmates, they were not allowed to retaliate against me. Have to avoid lawsuits, you know.
I remained apart from my team, not a part of it. Just as I was beginning to feel like perhaps I was possibly going to be accepted maybe, the sub-basement flooded and I was caught in the undertow. Junior high, when my body was sculpting out my womanly form, that's when I became "other". All the examples I listed above are the continuation of that "don't tell, just be cool" secret that all girls are required to keep until the day they die. Woe to those of us who speak out. Boys will need two kegs to want to bed us not realizing that some of us will choose to sleep alone rather than be treated like less than,like other, like not good enough, like someone is doing us a favor.
We pick our battles. We keep our secrets because we have to weigh the cost of telling. Sometimes it costs us too much so we put up with the innuendo and the "locker room talk" because we are alone and have no one else to financially support us. Sometimes we brush away the hands laid upon our body without our permission because we need that pay check. It doesn't mean we're OK with it. We speak up because it's a problem and we need other women to know they're not alone. We demand that the conversation be changed to include us, not to talk about us, not to be appraised piecemeal, not to be told that we don't really mean it because we haven't spoken up til now. This is why so many women are appalled and angry by what Donald Trump has said about women lately, well, at least for as long as I've been aware of him. I'm forty- eight. I've been dealing with this I was twelve. I haven't disclosed all the details. I haven't told all my stories. Based on just these few anecdotes and the fact that I am still here, plodding along, knowing that other women have similar stories, some, God forbid, have worse stories, based on this I have to say that women are definitely not the weaker sex. And we're not going to put up with this attitude much longer.
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