restaurants

Rosanne

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As a 30 year old female who has travelled a lot and and who has led a very out-going and social life, I have experienced sexism literally, a thousand times or more: – I have been drugged at a concert once by the group (Wu-Tang Killa Beez) giving the concert. Young and naive as I was, I thought being invited back-stage was super cool. Luckily, nothing happened as as soon as I realized something was up and that I felt really weird, I left and went home (acting all kinds of crazy when I got home); – I’ve been followed home in the dark twice. I live in Amsterdam, so I cycle home. Once a man came and cycled next to me, staring at me, not answering my demands of what he wanted. Just cycling next to me and staring. Very intimidating. I stopped at the first night shop that was open and called a friend. The man waited on the corner for ten minutes, looking at me. He finally left. I cycled home in terror. Another time, I was picking up a bike at a station with a friend. It was dusk. The fastest way back to town was via some Industrial areas. We were followed by a pack of howling boys, getting closer and closer. Scared the shit out of me. Luckily we were back on the main road before they caught up to us. – My latest employer said to me ‘You were wearing this coat when you walked in for your interview. I was so surprised, you look like someone who should be on the arm of a millionaire at a fair, not like an archaeologist’; – During university and fieldwork, professors have said about me (multiple times): no, she doesn”t look like the typical archaeology student, kind of smothering a smile; – Female students/professors have asked me why I put on mascara for fieldwork – since when do I have to justify myself because, as opposed to many other female archaeologists, I DO choose to shave my legs and armpits and put on mascara? I’m not judging, totally down for whatever, why are you putting me down?’; – When I was 17 and at a party (I worked in a restaurant), the elderly bosses’ son (the son was almost 40), got very drunk and incessantly followed me and kept on groping my ass and breasts. A colleague of mine, a gay man, kept on protecting me and pushing him away. I finally just decided to leave as he wouldn’t stop; – Once again at field work, the professor saw a cockroach and looked to see my reaction (I was the first to arrive). I didn’t blink an eye. His response: ‘Oh, I thought you’re the type to have made a fuss’; – My ex’s dad once told me: You’re looking worse than normal at the moment, you should wear more make-up; – In a club, my friend and I were dancing next to what was apparently the VIP area. A guy leaned out of the area towards us and said: My friend here is an investment banker’. Thanks man, cool, I totally want to fuck you now, we women can’t earn our own money of course; – My ex boyfriend blamed me for being groped in the ass. The tram was very full, some guy kept pushing his dick against my butt. I kept on moving place, but as the tram was very busy there wasn’t much room to move. He kept on moving also, so that he could keep pressing up against me. Later that day, I told my boyfriend this, fuming. He said yeah, but you can see the outline of your butt through that sweater so it’s provocative. I was wearing flowery leggings, flats and a baggy sweater that reached to my knees, how provocative. And even if I had been wearing hotpants and a tank top, that guy wouldnt have the right to touch me; – this same ex also told me that I walked like a hooker when I wore heals, so that the catcalling was my own fault; – yet another ex told me that I was attention-horny, that it was my fault when men looked at me. A friend of his once tried to rub his dick (recurring theme, ladies?) against me and this was also my fault as I had been egging him on? Until it had happened, I handn’t the slightest clue there was anything going on as we were standing in a jostling, busy queue. – Luckily my boyfriend now is incredibly supportive and notices that I frequently look down to avoid eye contact. He notices that as soon as I walk down another aisle in a supermarket (without him), men will give me dirty looks. He noticed the guy that,last week at a bar, had his hand on his girlfriends’ back, but turned around and practically undressed me with his eyes. My first reaction was to immediatly put my arm around my boyfriends’ shoulders and give him a kiss, also because I was scared that my boyfriend would blame me. He doesn’t. He notices the sexism and objectivication that I’m subjected to on nearly a daily basis and he thinks it’s terrible. Unlike my previous two boyrfriends who somehow couldn’t deal with the totally unwanted objectivication and who would then proceeded to blame me, also sexist; – A guy I once slept with (I so wish I hadn’t as the memory horrifies me, I was 18, he was 33), told me 7 years down the line, looking me up and down very appreciatively: ‘Wow, you dried up well.’ Which means that at the time it happened, he knew damned well that I was still a little girl in his eyes; – My brother once told me, after not having seen him for a while: ‘Shit, I forgot how big your biceps are for a girl’. – I have felt like a piece of meat so, so, so, so often. I’m blond and blue-eyed and have been to Italy, Greece and Turkey alone several times and just felt like I constantly had to look down at the ground. I have mutilated male genitals in my head hundreds of, fuming, feeling so unfairly treated, yet being forced to go inside because the grossly overtly sexual looks just make you feel so cheap; _ -I have had numerous facebook messages that were completely sketchy, disgusting and gross and very inappropriate from men I didn’t know; – I have been approached by some old seedy guy at the beach, asking what kind of cream I rub on my body’; I could continue. I’m getting worked up writing this, especially as, prior to reading an article on the gaurdian that discussed this platform, I read the many comments saying that a) Women should stop complaining about trivia and focus on helping women out in other countries, like Saodi Arabia, as they have it way worse; b) women should stop complaining, it’s so much better thatn 30 years ago c) The hundreds of thousands of experiences on this site are just that, experiences, which don’t say anything about the actual frequency that women are subject to sexism as the data is not controlled; d) that men, too, are subject to abuse, and so feminism is unfair. All these responses only serve to paint women as hysterious toddlers fighting for a cause that is already won. The cause is not won. We need to fight for women’s rights all over the world. We also need to make sure that we do not accept any form of feminism, how slight it might seem. Because that only works to embellish and strengthen the still unequal role of women, everywhere. It doesn’t mean that men have no right to address issues in which they feel discriminated, only that their discrimination doesn’t make femism unvalid.

Illuminatas

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When I began working in commercial kitchens as a line cook in my early 20s, I was under the impression that my mother’s generation had corrected the issues of sexism and we had indeed come a long way, Baby. But I was wrong and I took me an embarrassing amount of time to get the realities through my thick skull. I thought that if I worked hard, did my job well, and proved myself I would earn the respect of the men I worked with. Well, of course, I was terribly mistaken. Kitchens are still not a meritocracy. Being the only girl on the line, I did realize I would have to be just as good and even better than my male coworkers. I was surprised by the push-back I encountered. My male bosses and kitchen managers took deep offense if anyone, a waiter, another line-man, or a general manager praised me. However, the offended parties were very subtle in how they then went about undermining me. I would be called into the kitchen office and berated for minor mistakes like not cleaning something as well as I should’ve, not being able to lift the vat of oil back into the fryer after cleaning it without help, not wearing a bra on a few occasions, and even (so they said) not looking happy and chipper enough while working hard. I had to deal with rampant sexual comments and dirty talk by learning to talk like a sailor myself. I had to be self-deprecating when it was uncalled for. I was assigned the dirtiest jobs on the hardest stations while all the men in the kitchen were at the bar having their shift beers. I was hazed and felt up and took it in stride. I was also very confused. If I was doing my job well, why give me “the business”? Why undermine me by talking behind my back to the front of the house? Why make comments about my not wearing enough makeup in a hot kitchen? Why the eye rolling and nastiness? The unkindest cuts of all involved sabotage. In one Italian restaurant, the AC went out and we all labored under sweltering conditions in July. Myself and the other woman on the line were approached by the regional owner ( a big Italian fellow in a shiny suit) and he made a big show of apologizing directly to the two of us for the conditions in front of all the kitchen staff, because he thought we were too sensitive and therefore weak to endure adverse conditions. We were fine. We were doing our jobs well and efficiently. Our stations were meticulously clean. It was insulting. When the general manager at the same restaurant was on his honeymoon, I took over the job of cashier (we didn’t use a computerized system at the time). Exactly $100 went missing from the till. I was blamed and browbeaten and threatened with firing. I later learned that the $100 was taken from the strongbox under the register for which I had no key or access. The manager friend he left in charge had taken it (a banded bunch of ones) straight from the box. He was buying cocaine with it. I was framed as the scapegoat and berated in front of the entire staff. At several other jobs male coworkers let slip how much they were making per hour. Despite having seniority, more experience, and being objectively a better worker and placed on the most demanding stations, I was making far less. When I subsequently spoke with the boss about a 25 cent per hour raise to begin to fix the situation, I was laughed out of the office. My female coworkers (the few that were back there) were also paid significantly less. I was disappointed and flabbergasted. It didn’t make sense from a practical or business standpoint. Why torpedo and alienate valuable staff? Why shoot yourself in the foot? I gave a weeks notice after one refused (and very minor) request for a raise. The two managers and the owner called me to the bar where they were drinking and told me if I didn’t work out a full two weeks notice they would not act as references for me. It was in this way they expressed that they indeed needed me; it would be hard to find an adequate replacement for me even though I offered to leave only after I had trained my replacement. They said I had a bad attitude. I had an ANGRY attitude. I had been wronged, but they clearly didn’t see it that way. While they showed me no appreciation for work they had highly praised only weeks previous, I was the one who was “leaving them high and dry.” I understand now that men use their jobs to reinforce their manhood and when a woman coworker out-cooks them, they are threatened and feel emasculated. Why dies this have to be a zero-sum game? Can’t both male and female cooks be good at their jobs and share praise? Does the presence of a competent woman on the line automatically mean that the men are made lesser by us? The ultimate irony in all this is the pervasive idea that women are valuable and exclusive cooks in the realm of domesticity, but once you pay a woman to cook, men must always feel that they are better at it. Women are valued as cooks as long as they aren’t getting paid for it.