I was 17 when Clarence Thomas had his confirmation hearing, and I remember the way Anita Hill was torn to shreds for daring to accuse him. I remember how Long Dong Silver became the joke of the day.
I believed her then, and I still believe her. Maybe I even believe her more now that I have 15 years of work experience under my belt. I know what it's like to be harassed. I know what it's like to not be able to say anything because you need the job. I am fortunate in only one aspect, leaving a job where I have been harassed has not hurt my career, only because I have yet to start in one. The best thing about the trap of pink collar employment is that all pink collar jobs are interchangeable.
Shortly after the Anita Hill hearings, I worked at a minimum wage job (I think it was $4.00 an hour) making pizza. I lived in an apartment with 5 room mates in a town with no jobs for a girl who wasn't old enough to be a cocktail waitress or a hooker (legal in Nevada). The troll of a manager had a habit of "accidentally" slipping his hand onto our asses. He did it to me twice and each time he did it he had a smarmy look on his face when he fake apologized with a "whoops, my hand slipped". The third time he did it I told him the next time his hand slipped it was slipping in to a lawsuit. He quit groping me after that, but I left the job anyway. He had put me on an insane schedule where I both opened first thing in the morning and closed at night (leaving work at 1 am to be back at 9am) but sent me home in the middle of the day so he wouldn't have to pay overtime.
Then I went to work as the graveyard cashier of mini-mart. I worked alone from 11pm to 6am and I quit when I started getting threatening phone calls from a creep who had been watching me. The police were called but nothing could be done.
The next hell hole was a job I had been warned about. It was a little more money and it was an office job, so I wasn't spending my days covered in pizza grease or gasoline. But the whole atmosphere of the place was misogyny central. "The girls" as we were called, were not allowed to wear pants- ever. I worked a swing shift and after 5 the only people there were me and a maintenance guy who had worked there forever. He would follow me around the office telling me stories about all the other office girl's he had fucked and how slutty they were. He talk about the blow jobs skills of the black girls who had worked there and how tight the pussy was of the girl who I replaced. He brought in medical books about STDs to show me what the case of herpes one of the girls had given him looked like. No amount of telling him that I wasn't interested would shut him up. My boyfriend started bringing me dinner every night and hanging around after to give me some space from the asshole.
I finally quit and moved to Seattle. The first job I had here I worked with a bunch of gay guys. It was the first time I had ever had a job where I wasn't bugged on a regular basis.
Since then I've had many jobs, some good and some bad. Part of why I stay with my current job at the college (despite the low pay and lack of benefits) is that it is the first time I've been able to complain about harassment and have something good come of it. I had a former student who kept coming back to my lab after graduation and bothering me, asking me out, creeping me out. I merely mentioned that he was bugging me to the office manager and she was required to report it to the administration. He was asked to stay away from the campus after that I have not been bothered since. I also have the freedom to call people out when they say sexist crap without fear of retribution.
I believe Anita Hill because I know how common this shit is. I also know how rare it is to be in a place where people will take you seriously when you complain.
No comments:
Post a Comment