It’s always the woman’s fault…
| May 16th, 2007A reader sent me a link from the local paper the heading said: Don’t want to be harassed? Stop acting like a man
The blurb said
Behaving like “one of the boys” to get ahead at work may not be the best strategy for women. A study had found that alpha-females are more likely to suffer sexual harassment.
The actual research said:
“The more women deviated from traditional gender roles - by occupying a ‘man’s’ job or having a ‘masculine’ personality - the more they were targeted,” Dr Berdahl said. “Although having a masculine personality would seem to help employees fit into male-dominated work environments, having such a personality appears to have hurt the women in this study.”She said the study supported the theory that sexual harassment was motivated by a desire to punish “gender-role deviants” rather than by sexual desire.
May 16th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Why is it always about punishing the gender role deviants? Or just the deviants in general? This post is getting linked along with a lovely one by Kyso over at Punkass Blog which is all about, ahem, someones assertion that a woman’s sole duty in life is to be a mother…
And to think I dared to believe we were past the stone age.
And yes, of course, let’s blame the women for being…assertive? smart? good in business? saavy? profit-making? aggressive…which of course are traits SOLELY found in the male of the species, rather, than, oh, the people harassing these “deviants”?
Beautiful, really (add sarcasam to taste)
This comment was written by RenegadeEvolution.Report this comment to the moderators
May 16th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Hm. Seems to me that when a woman takes a job that have traditionally been “male” jobs, she’s more likely to be in a predominantly male environment than she would be in a “female” job, and thus is more likely to be exposed to that subset of males that are a$$holes. Harassment happens, and the offenders should be disciplined. Not that this is limited to the male sex; I’ve personally seen examples of men being harassed in a predominantly female environment, but never physically.
I’m curious about the “one of the boys” and “acting like a man” comments. What does that mean? If what’s meant is that the simple act of taking and performing a job in a predominantly male environment is doing that, it seems quite ridiculous to me. With a few obvious exceptions (priest, stripper) (there’s a combination, eh?) the gender of a professional doesn’t matter. Does taking a job in a predominantly male profession make one an “alpha” female?
OTOH, I’m in a predominantly male environment at work. I do network support. Routers, hubs, switches, firewalls, load balancers, etc., etc. As I sit here there’s about 15 people here, 3 of whom are women. Now, when you have a bunch of guys together, you get “guy” humor. Insults, pranks (I left my cell phone on my desk and it took me an hour to find it when I got back yesterday), etc. Not everyone plays the game, mind you, and non-participants are left alone. But if you join in, you’re fair game. And sometimes feelings can be hurt if someone goes too far. It’s a thin line. It wouldn’t be hard to intrepret some of the remarks in the give-and-take as harassment. And I can see where a woman might end up joining in because she would feel excluded otherwise. In that limited circumstance, I’d say that both men and women have to understand the situation and adjust their behavior accordingly.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
May 16th, 2007 at 8:57 am
i’ll agree that the header is offensive and blames women because it suggests that the fix is for women to change behavior, not for men to change attitudes.
but i don’t think the study itself blames women, or at least not the part you quoted. it seems to be targeting the behavior of the harassers by identifying what it is they seem to pick on. knowing that sexual harassers (and harassers of gay people, for that matter) focus on “gender-role deviants” may make us more likely to identify future harassers early so we can send “that’s not okay” messages earlier.
but you’re absolutely right that the headline has to go.
This comment was written by Polymath.Report this comment to the moderators
May 16th, 2007 at 10:13 am
And in other news, while 66% of Americans held a favorable view of Bill Clinton’s long-suffering wife at the end of Bill’s presidency,
52% now hold an unfavorable view of Senator (and presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton.
When people who reported unfavorable views were asked the open-ended question “Tell me what you dislike or don’t admire…?”, people volunteered the following:
14% say they don’t trust her.
11% say she’s an opportunist.
6% say she’s too aggressive and overbearing.
6% say they “just don’t like her.”
5% say she lacks morals and ethics.
4% say she’s arrogant.
3% say she lacks sufficient experience and knowledge to be president.
2% say she’s cold and unfeeling.
3% say we’re just not ready for a girl president.
7% say they object to everything about her, and (more inexplicably)
4% of those with unfavorable views acknowledge that they object to NOTHING about her.
3% declined to offer a reason.
To be sure, people also identified policy reasons for objecting to Hillary. But I wonder how many people will express objection to male candidates for being opportunistic, inexperienced, aggressive, cold or unfeeling.
[Please resist the urge to turn this entire discussion into a Hillary blog or Maia will ban me for sure!]
This comment was written by nobody.really.Report this comment to the moderators
May 16th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
The assumptions at the heart of this study strike me as dubious. How does it define masculine and feminine traits? The complexity of human personality is what I thought of as the drive at the heart of feminism. How on earth could independence be described as masculine? These women are after all described as conforming to their environment, surely those that are supposedly their opposite could be described as truly independent? Are they real Alpha’s, if so don’t they feel twice ‘tough’ therefore twice as able to brush it off as a more sensitive flower? If they are copying or are like men, then they will find out the limitations of ‘male’ traits, they like a lot of men before them will find out that ‘toughness’ is often about blunting your sensitivity, curbing your finer feelings to fit in and get ahead, or least to hold you own or not be driven out. Unfortunately this blunting can end up meaning that you lose touch with the what makes you stand out, IOW it can be self-defeating, as much for men as women. Many radical feminists have made a similar point . I detest sexual harassment in any form, but the point is, is this behaviour in itself seen as ‘Alpha Male’?
This comment was written by B.Adu.Report this comment to the moderators
May 16th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Excuse me, see above.
This comment was written by B.Adu.Report this comment to the moderators
May 16th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Yeah, I don’t know what the hell “alpha-female” is supposed to mean here either. From the context of the article, I rather get the impression that it’s a synonym for “uppity.” Or perhaps for “needs to be put back in her place.”
I agree with Polymath that while the results of the study are unsurprising, the spin the local paper chose to put on those results is appalling.
This comment was written by Elkins.Report this comment to the moderators
May 17th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Alpha is probably sort of like this:
This comment was written by Sailorman.http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/female_boss_walking_around
I.e. “nonsubservient” = “alpha.”
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May 17th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Hee!
Yup, that’s probably it.
This comment was written by Elkins.Report this comment to the moderators
May 18th, 2007 at 8:38 am
What’s kind of beautiful is that the newspaper headline itself is an example of sexually harrassing women who are gender variant. It’s like a perfect circle.
This comment was written by Deborah.Report this comment to the moderators
May 18th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
To be fair, I think that the headline is supposed to be sarcastic, I’m just not sure that the character of women determines the level of sexual harassment at work, or anywhere else as the study concludes. Or am I wrong on this?
This comment was written by B.Adu.Report this comment to the moderators
May 18th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I mean, the latter ought to be a “duh;” most of us knew that harassment is not, in fact, about Dagwood chasing the coy hotsy Blondie secretary around a table with his tongue out because she’s just so damn irresistible;
but the “gender role deviant” thing: yeah. well in the case of women in traditionally “male” jobs, there’s the “keep her out of the treehouse” thing; there’s “shit she might be better at me or take my job and that would be a death blow to my fragile sense of identity” thing; and there’s also punishing her for not conforming and thus upsetting the binary.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
May 19th, 2007 at 10:00 am
I get the points made in No.12 post, but I find it hard to believe that women that are say more in the background are not also harassed just as much, they also by their presence are encroaching into the citadel. I have not found that being more introverted to be any defense against sexual harassment, maybe you just keep your head down and try to ignore it, but you have to remove yourself out of harms way. Is the less harassed thing really that you are just, not there?
This comment was written by B.Adu.Report this comment to the moderators