authority

celia

I started a new job at Jimmy John’s. It was going alright, but as it often happens I noticed some things that I wasnt sure were strange or not. The manager of the store was very nice, but sort of slow, and turns out he couldn’t read well. I always worked alone with an older man who trained me, and he would make the manager laugh. It seemed that he was the manager instead of him. I was almost always completely alone with him. He started to call me “baby.” I could feel him staring at my ass when I bent down, and was afraid to do so. There was a backdoor to where I would take smoke breaks. One time I went back, and his truck was parked with the car door trapped right next to the door to the smoke area. He was sitting in his car, his body every close to the door I had just opened. He invites me in, and talked about taking a ride sometime. He pointed to me where he kept the booze. I quit after a week, and told the manager over the phone, and he was surprised and very sorry. I started to realize that my trainer most likely had complete control over the store, as the manager was slow and wouldnt be able to read the employee conduct guidelines. He could tell him anything he wanted. The next week when I picked up my last check, terrified, I noticed that there was a new young, pretty teenage girl being taught by him-alone. The cycle continues. If I hadn’t already been sexually harassed at the two other jobs that I’d had previously, I wouldnt have been as quick to quit. Self doubt and fear kept me at the other jobs, and the harrassment had continued to get worse. I dont know what would have happened if it had been my first experience.

Marisa

I had just finished law school, and was working without pay for an assistant public defender. This man’s boss ordered me into his office for “work”, then locked me in, flung me to the wall, groped and kissed me without provocation. I kneed him hard in the crotch, and he collapsed, so I unlocked the foor and escaped. But it changed my life: I went back to university, and worked very little as a lawyer after that event. (24 years later, he forced another young client into sex, and his licence was revoked for three months.) The worst part for me was that two of my male attorney friends advised me not to make a fuss, because my attacker could legally destroy me. I suffered from feelings of terror and helplessness. Both my male friends apologized, 20 years later, for their failure to support me.

Durga

The setting: The entrance to my complex is off of a residential through road that people often use to avoid traffic on the main arteries. Last month, it was closed in one direction, about 50 feet beyond my entrance for a full 30 days, due to construction. Every day, the residents in my complex had to deal with the unnecessary aggravation of the construction workers for this project mistakenly including our entrance in their traffic control routine, blocking us on both our way in and out while traffic on the through road narrowed to a single lane 50 feet beyond us. The sexism: After the first 2 weeks of this, I was over it. Coming home one day, one of the construction workers- a white guy of around Baby Boomer age, stepped in front of me 10 feet above my turn into my complex holding up a stop sign and instructing me to wait. With my windows rolled up (that’s important), I pointed to the complex entrance to indicate that his instruction was irrelevant, as my turn had nothing to do with the construction just beyond. The guy actually stepped up all the way to my car, shouting through my closed window, “Take a Xanax, lady!” then proceeding to mansplain to me that the road ahead is under construction and saying “We’re just trying to protect your safety, “m’aam. You care about your safety don’t you?” I held my composure and said loudly, “I’m turning right THERE.” He stepped out in front of my hood with his stop sign and turned his back until he was good and ready to get out of my way. There were literally no other cars around, from either direction. But here this asshat was wanting to assert his dominance over a county road and a construction project which had no bearing whatsoever on residents of my complex coming and going. There is no doubt in my mind that I would not have been condescended to or dismissed that way if I had been a man. I was furious- but then, when this stuff happens all the time, you have to learn to compartmentalize or you’ll just end up getting your day ruined by every 10th man you encounter.