Girls Just Wanna Have Fairness

Posted by fxckfeelings on August 13, 2009

Sadly, misogyny is a lot like Chlamydia: a lot of men spread it unwittingly until somebody knowledgeable points out the signs and clears it right up. Of course, in a lot of situations, women don’t have the option of pointing out bad male behavior—either because they’re dealing with a superior at work, or because no one will listen to them—and the infected member (the male brain) remains untreated. If you can’t fix a misogynist, however, you can always use your healthier brain to work around him.
–Dr. Lastname

In my particular field, I’m used to being patronized by my superiors because I’m a woman; it’s a male-dominated profession, and you just have to ignore the bullshit and do the work like the rest of the guys, and I’ve never had a problem with that. After getting transferred six months ago, I’ve been working for an especially condescending jerk, and, like usual, I ignored him and did my job. The problem is that a round of evaluations just came in, and he gave me a less-than-stellar assessment because he says I don’t assert myself enough, or speak up in unit meetings, or generally give as much input as everyone else. How am I supposed to do that when every time I open my mouth he pats me on the head and tells me to be a good girl and let the smart men-folk talk? I am good at my job, and this guy’s a pig, and my goal is to keep my job without losing my cool.

It’s always smart to avoid making waves when you’re floating in shit, but don’t stop there. Despite being down in it, you need to keep yourself as clean as possible and ready to move on to a better job at the first opportunity.

Sure, that’s not easy when you’re up against a boss who is hobbling you and criticizing you for moving too slow. But if you get pushed too far and express your anger, you’ll be considered disgruntled and proving his charge of not being a team player.

So your goal is not to get justice, because that just fans your rage, and you’re right to want to keep cool. Your goal is to stay focused on keeping this job while seeking a new one, despite the powerful, debilitating, Kafkaesque effect of feeling condemned by authorities for your most selfless sacrifices.

If your company’s Human Resources department encourages you to complain, think twice. If a boss with this kind of problem has been around a long time, it’s because his style, no matter how ethically questionable, is professionally acceptable to his bosses. Your efforts will do nothing but sound a law suit alarm that will get you lots of polite, sympathetic attention while company lawyers check to make sure that your faults have been perfectly documented without apparent prejudice.

If your boss has done a bad job and his written criticism of you looks undeserved, the company lawyers will recommend that you get paid a settlement. But no one in the company will talk to you again without being very, very careful, and, in the end, you will be just as happy to leave as they will be to see you leave. So this is not an option to pursue unless you think a settlement is likely and big enough to be worth the trouble.

If you’re the emotional type (what we’d call a “person of feelings”), you need to be extra careful. Being emotional is great when it comes to reaching out and touching someone, but it makes you a patsy in this kind of situation, where your expressiveness is taken as evidence of instability and negativity.

Luckily, you don’t seem like the emotional type—you’ve managed to ignore your boss up to this point—but even the rational can get sucked into the vortex of fighting for what’s logical and fair and then getting demoralized when the system turns on them. Remind yourself, however, that if fairness existed, jerks like this wouldn’t get promoted, and gender wouldn’t be an issue in the workplace.

So let the “smart men-folk” talk up a storm. Meanwhile, you can find a new job where your co-workers are actually smart enough to listen to what you have to say.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect your self-esteem from official condemnation. “It’s hard enough to do a good job at this job, but it’s more than twice as hard when my contribution is discounted and I’m judged unfairly. It’s torture, but I do it because I need the money, and I have extra respect for the fact that I’m doing it while swimming in shit. My pain is not personal, although other people tell me it is. I know this is not happening to me because of my faults or mistakes. It happens. My goal hasn’t changed. I can’t help feeling screwed, but I should also feel proud and use that pride to move on.”

I bought my car new, but I’ve never not had a problem with it, and it makes me furious. Not just because it has a warranty, but because whenever I go to the dealership to get it fixed, the guys there treat me like an hysterical bitch, dismiss me, and do a half-assed job. If I were a man and built like a quarterback, my car would’ve been fixed 100% after the first rattle. Instead, when I go in there they treat me with fond condescension, as if I’m a cranky younger sister who should be kidded—and put a band-aid on whatever’s broken, causing me to have to come in again weeks later and go through the same crap over and over again. My goal is to get these guys to treat me with respect/pretend I’m a giant, scary man and fix my f*cking car!

Even if you were a giant, scary man and your anger intimidated people and got them to treat you with respect, you’d be sorry in the long run. Yes, your car would get fixed and certain guys would suck up to you and you’d be a high draft pick for the NHL.

But you’d also need to deal with the friends and family who couldn’t be themselves with you because they were afraid of your anger, or the lawsuits from people who provoked you and then claimed you traumatized them. Being the Incredible Hulk is lots of fun, but kicks a vicious hangover.

So your goal isn’t to scare people into doing what you want. It’s to learn how to best use the little power you have, which will give you more power in the long run (although that’s not saying much).

It’s tempting to wish for the girl-side of the same coin, and yearn for big tits and drop-dead beauty that would undoubtedly get the car-guys drooling and competing to win your approval by turning your car into a jewel of perfection. Self-respect aside (and no disrespect to sex workers), sexing it up would work….as far as your car’s needs are concerned.

But in the long run, men resent the power of female beauty to stir sexual neediness and compliant behavior, and take their revenge by joking about your body parts and excluding you from the collegial friendship that you need if you want to do serious business.

You will get more of the kind of power you want by shutting out any expression of animal attraction or intimidation. And it’s a relief, for most of us, that you can access this power without being a quick-witted verbal wiz or charismatically persuasive or attractive. All you need to do is to offer the other guy incentives while avoiding emotions that would threaten or humiliate.

So don’t let these car repair bozos know how irritated you are, or they’ll try to neutralize your irritation with condescending charm. Your goal isn’t to control them. It’s to do what you can to get your car fixed.

And remember, without fists or tits, you can always threaten to hit ’em where it really hurts; with a lawyer, in their wallets.

STATEMENT:
Here’s what you can say to your mechanics. “I know you guys want these warranty repair problems out of your way, but the sheer number of them probably makes it hard for you to get them done in a timely way. But you can understand that, from my point of view, it costs me less time and money if I can make it worth your while to take care of all these little problems at one time. And, since I’m too poor to bribe you, all I can do is ask my lawyer to write complaints to the usual state and federal consumer oversight agencies, knowing that answering these complaints will tie up your time in the same way that these car problems have tied up mine. I mean no disrespect, but I think you’ll be happier if you have my car totally fixed by the end of today.