Sexism - in action

[vetran]

I put the equivalent of gay page 3 on all the guys desks in my department when they used to stick page 3 on my desk every morning.

Also when dragged to a "late night bar" which turned out to be a pretty grimy strip joint ( wouldn't have minded if it was somewhere nice), I waited till one of them put his card behind the bar and then ordered several bottles of champagne.

[Mich the Tester]

I put the equivalent of gay page 3 on all the guys desks in my department when they used to stick page 3 on my desk every morning.

Also when dragged to a "late night bar" which turned out to be a pretty grimy strip joint ( wouldn't have minded if it was somewhere nice), I waited till one of them put his card behind the bar and then ordered several bottles of champagne.

Pick out the guy you want to ridicule then pay one of the girls to lapdance on him for as long as it takes to make him squirt in his pants. About 3 minutes will do if she's good.

[cailin maith]

I have never been that cruel ( not that I can remember).

Is he also the type who will have a conversation with your breasts rather than looking you in the face?

That's also good fodder for embarrassing them, you can converse with him while staring at his crotch if he comes to your desk or pointing out loudly that your breasts don't talk (yet).

Ah I had this a few years ago - an older middle aged partner in a very stuffy firm of accoutants. He used to do it all the time (talk to my boobs, I mean!).

One day in a meeting, full boardroom, when he was up to his trick, I said "David, no matter how hard you try, they won't talk back to you" - the silence was hilarious.

I'd a lovely hour long meeting with HR the next day though, they were very concerned for my well being..... bless.

[Dominic Connor]

Stare at their balls

The advice my (to be) wife got from her mother (chemistry teacher at posh public school) was "Stare at their balls dear", when she said she was getting this sort of crap at IBM

We are of course in the world of your word vs his and frankly the first question that would run through my head if I was both your and his boss would be "is this guy gay ?"

Some gay men say "dear", "sweetie" a lot, in fact I can't recall the last time I heard a straight man use either term, if I was trying to pick up a woman, it certainly would not be in my vocabulary. For whatever reason some gay men do things that superficially look like flirts, some women seem to enjoy this, being neither I have no good explanation.

Contrary to what you might read in the Guardian, this is not standard straight bloke behaviour, this man has issues, else he'd simply just make a proper pass at you, so my call is that something is going wrong in his sex life, maybe he wants to feel that he is more straight than he really is, maybe he's reached an age where youthful vigour doesn't compensate for his poor sexual technique any more or maybe his clearly defective behaviour has so annoyed his wife that she won't sleep with him any more.

Maybe it's a "power" thing, he's a junior manager and feels that is the peak of his career.

All of the above can feed on each other in such a vicious cycle that it is no longer possible to work out a root cause.

So what we have here is not psychology, it's debugging.
The trick in this is to retain the moral high ground and create an audit trail.

As my reassurringly expensive ($1k per hour) lawyer explained to me, you have to work to a discipline that anything you say or write may be read out in court by someone who is skilled at making you look bad.

So an email of the form "I appreciate that you see it as a friendly term, but honey, sweetums, etc make me feel uncomfortable and affects the way the team works together so if you could refer to me as Sarah, that wuill keep the atmosphere in professional".

Note this needs to be on the firms email system and if the balloon goes up creates an audit trail. He will know this and to share something the HR director of a household name firm told me "my job is protecting senior management and the firm from staff", HR's prime directive is to stop them getting sued for real money and embarrassment from tossers like this, and in this case I mean tosser quite literally.


Follow this up with debugging.

You debug people and code by asking questions, so when this buggy system outputs

"you are wearing nice clothes sweetie"

You ask

"why do my clothes interest you so much ?"
or in a nearly helpful tone of voice

"thanks, pop round to my desk later and I'll tell you where you can buy some for yourself"

or for output directed at your breasts
"hi honey can we meet up later ?"

"does you call your wife honey ?"
This can cause embarassment if married, or if he doesn't have a wife/girlfriend he either admits this or lies"
Neither will make him feel good.

[Platypus]

"is this guy gay ?"

Some gay men say "dear", "sweetie" a lot, in fact I can't recall the last time I heard a straight man use either term

Ever been to Manchester or Yorkshire?

[Gibbon]

I'm working in a new role and have regular contact with a bloke whose actions are starting to make it difficult to get my job done, at times. He treats the women in the office hugely different to the men.

Examples of recent stuff:

- Interrupting a meeting between me and one other to lean his head round the door and say 'Mary, sweets, are we still Ok for 2pm?'. I nod and ask if he'd like to have the meeting at my desk. As I've phrased it 'Yes. Would you like to do it at my desk?' he leers in an exaggerated manner and rolls his eyes at the other person in my meeting, saying he wondered when I was going to ask.

- Calling me [and I think, the few other women about the place] 'sweets' constantly.

- Commenting on my clothes, make up, hair, shoes etc in the middle of 1:1 meetings.

None of the above stuff, or the other little things he does, upset me - it just serves to constantly, and subtly undermine me. I suspect his behaviours stem from a combination of inate sexism, and the fact that he's trying to divert me away from how crap he is at his job.

So far the only thing I've done to address it is ask politely in a meeting [between the two of us] that he please stop calling me 'sweets'. I did follow it up with a glare but he simply suggested he swap the nickname to 'honey'. I suggested that I might start to think of nicknames of my own for him, that he might not warm to either.

Advise please, dear posters??

Mary,

Dominic has probably hit on it, he's gay and your radar is down.

Straight men are not interested in clothes and shoes unless it's lingerie and leather boots! Think Graham Norton, does it fit?

[vetran]

Mary,

Dominic has probably hit on it, he's gay and your radar is down.

Straight men are not interested in clothes and shoes unless it's lingerie and leather boots! Think Graham Norton, does it fit?

speak for yourself, if they look nice I sometimes tell colleagues so, but then they know I'm not interested in them - happily married.

[norrahe]

Mary,

Dominic has probably hit on it, he's gay and your radar is down.

Straight men are not interested in clothes and shoes unless it's lingerie and leather boots! Think Graham Norton, does it fit?

Gay????

Straight men not interested in clothes???

Dear lord, I've worked in offices where straight men spend more time talking about clothes, shoes and smell like tarts handbags ( not to mention the fake tan as well), I've shared flats with guys who had more beauty and hair products than I did and spent waaaay too long getting ready.

[Gibbon]

Gay????

Straight men not interested in clothes???

Dear lord, I've worked in offices where straight men spend more time talking about clothes, shoes and smell like tarts handbags ( not to mention the fake tan as well), I've shared flats with guys who had more beauty and hair products than I did and spent waaaay too long getting ready.

Yeah, come to think of it I've spent most of my time in quite macho environments and not had many dealings with those metro types (thankfully).

[OwlHoot]

"you are wearing nice clothes sweetie" ...

Good post, and at this point we can infer beyond doubt that he's gay.

No straight guy gives two hoots or even notices how "nice" or otherwise a woman's clothes are (*), only how revealing

As always, the first and last rule of debugging is "Once you have sufficient relevant data, the reason for the problem becomes obvious".

(*) within reason - They might just about notice if a woman was wearing nothing but a large potato sack with holes for the arms. But that's as far as their powers of observation generally extend.

edit: In fairness, I should point out that there's an outside chance of a straight guy complementing a woman on her clothes, but only because he read somewhere that women like that. So he's either gay or an insincere flatterer.