I’m a female worker on a mine site in Australia, and one of only a handful of females on the site every day, compared to the hundreds of male workers, and I am more than ten years younger than everyone else in my immediate team. Every single day involves a constant barrage of sexism. I could go on forever, but for this post I’ll only list the things that have happened at work in the past week or so.
A male co-worker said that women shouldn’t be allowed on the front lines of the military because “they’re a f***ing liability”. When I challenged this statement, he became aggressive, and raised his voice.
The same person later wore a t-shirt which said ‘your girlfriend’, accompanied by the ‘female’ icon (like on bathroom doors) and ‘my girlfriend’, accompanied by a silhouette of a woman spreading her legs and bending over. While wearing this shirt, he was reading the book Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. I strongly dislike that book for multiple reasons, but I wonder if he had any awareness of how the combination of that t-shirt with a book about how to understand women comes across to other people. I expressed my amusement to another male co-worker, suggesting that if you want to understand women, maybe you should just talk to them. His response was, “they’ll just f***ing lie to you”.
Later on, the t-shirt guy was watching a youtube video about how women are ‘hardwired’ to be attracted to narcissistic men. I was hoping he would ask me how that was going for me, since I’m female and not heterosexual. But he didn’t.
Another male co-worker muttered under his breath “show us your tits” after a female worker walked out of earshot from his desk. If a female worker walks past who is considered unattractive, a senior colleague casually remarks to whoever’s around ‘geez, if you woke up next to that, you’d have to shoot it’. A while ago, another male worker remarked about a female worker ‘I’d rather be hangin’ outa that than me truck window’. Almost every day, I witness a male worker blatantly staring at women walking past them and making sexual comments.
During a shift, I went to talk to another male co-worker and saw that he was watching a video on youtube called “(male name) SCHOOLS DUMB FEMENIST”. I asked him what it was about and he said that it was about how the gender pay gap is a fallacy. I gave him a couple of specific examples where this was not the case, but his reasoning was that all consequences have actions, and when anyone starts work, they voluntarily sign a contract for a specified rate of pay, so if they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t sign it, and if a woman signs a contract for low paying job, it’s her own fault. Similarly, if a woman can’t negotiate a better pay rate, it’s also her own fault. I couldn’t bring myself to continue the conversation, so I left.
A group of four male co-workers were discussing how women are taking over the world now, and how women now want everything for themselves. A comment is made along the lines of ‘men now are being made to pay for what their ancestors did because they didn’t treat women nicely’. Apparently their own sexist views and behaviours are a complete mystery to them. They’ve regularly tried to convince me that straight, white, middle class men are the most discriminated against group of people in the world. The fact that I can’t marry my partner and am still denied a lot of associated legal rights in Australia right now is apparently completely irrelevant. As is all other rational and logical thought on the subject.
A senior colleague openly admits to ‘using’ prostitutes in foreign countries. He calls this his ‘humanitarian work’ because he’s supposedly supporting single mothers and giving them the means to pay for their children’s schooling. He also regularly brags about “stacking them five high” and taking them to breakfast wearing their outfits from the previous night for the sole purpose of making married men jealous.
A male co-worker was complaining about the caliber of people he had to work with, calling them ‘weeping vaginas’. Another male co-worker agreed, stating they ‘have sand in their vaginas’.
The constant barrage of sexist comments was really getting to me one day, so I asked a female worker if she had experienced the same thing in this workplace. Her reply was that it is constant. She told me about one incident that was particularly memorable, and it was in a lunch room, where a group of men were looking at pornographic images. One man held two images up, and asked the entire group, ‘which pussy would taste better?’ with multiple men engaging in the discussion.
The story about the study of sexual assaults on Australian university campuses was on the news, and a senior colleague remarked, ‘that must be from all the ones who aren’t getting enough cock’. One of the other men present laughed, and none of the other men there said anything at all. I really wanted to say something, but I was too angry to be articulate. I wish I did say something at the time, but I doubt it would’ve made any difference to them thinking it’s acceptable to joke about sexual assault. It might have meant that they just wouldn’t say things like that around me anymore, but at this point, I feel like even that small outcome would be enough. I could have brought up parts of my own upbringing and my partner’s experiences with sexual assault and domestic violence. I could have asked them how many cocks I would have to miss out on before I was justifiably a target for rape. But I didn’t have the presence of mind.
I’ve tried so many times to challenge their sexist (and racist, homophobic, islamophobic) views and comments with civilised conversation, and I have never been able to get a good outcome. I’ve walked away plenty of times. Several times, my challenges have been met with anger and aggression, and often result in multiple male workers rallying together to shut down what I’m trying to say. Only twice have I ever received support from a male colleague that was more than just the smug comment ‘everyone’s entitled to their opinion’. I want to find ways that I can fight this kind of sexism that happens every day, but it is SO difficult when the majority of men I try to discuss this with seem SO adamant that women are causing so many problems. I want to keep trying, but sometimes I’m just exhausted, and all I feel I can do is try to isolate myself from them as much as possible.