The unhappy official looked at me for a long tired moment. He said “I need to speak to the pilot,” in rapid Spanish and then returned his attention to the paperwork in front of him.She writes very expressively. Also with good humour, I don't honestly know how she's able to laugh at being treated so poorly. The linked story ends well, though.
“That’s me!” I tried the bright smile again.
He glanced up with a harassed look.“I mean the person who flew the plane.”
Yeah, no kidding. A bit defensive there, AZ.Astro Zombie: "Can I suggest that any man who would like to take this opportunity to explain how hard it is to be a man, and how the law is somehow against them in divorces, or whatever, just to start a thread on that, rather than turn this thread into a referendum on your issues?"klangklangston: Uh, I'm not really seeing that. I can understand the complain that men are monopolizing the conversation, but given that neither of our comments helped that, I don't think it's something that can be cajoled out of the thread like that.
Ah, I see you aren't fond of having colloquialisms or incidental phrasings focused in on and torn apart as a character flaw.Then again, I suppose you see "aggression and confrontation" as being the tools of masculine hierarchy, so any phrase ("down for the count") would be representative of patriarchal bellicosity.DarlingBri: You know, I don't appreciate that in the least. I'm a feminist not a fucking idiot. I understand perfectly well that "down for the count" is a boxing idiom and not a term of patriarchal bellicosity, although I will be stealing that turn of phrase. I do not think all terms implying supine or inferior relative positioning are sexist. If you wish to take a perfectly valid observation I made and use it to denigrate me as some manner of grammarian feminazi, I think that's a low blow.
If you'd like to ask me why I see agression and confrontation as tools of the patriarchy instead of assuming my views have no basis, then just do that.
jamaro: When I came back from maternity leave, a male coworker came into my cube to chitchat about parenthood. Within two minutes, he took the conversation from "Kids, aren't they great?" to "You should be at home with your baby instead here at work." When I walked away from my cube in an effort to end the conversation, he followed me down the hallway while loudly imitating the cries of an infant.Does the whole work place regularly do things like this? If so, you have quite the lawsuit. If it's just the one guy, I should imagine security will be escorting him out of the building very soon.
So yeah, I don't find the anecdotes at MFIF implausible At. All.
jamaro: Because you did bring this up with your/his boss and/or your company's HR representative, right?Actually, that sounds cool. My hat's off to you (unless that's patriarchal) since that seems like you confronted the situation and resolved it, and your co-workers apologized and hopefully changed his behavior around you and in general. Not cool that this was apparently still commonplace at the work place.
I did not bring it up with HR or my boss. I wrote my coworker an email saying that his behavior was wildly inappropriate. He apologized profusely and we had a good discussion about it. I believe he understood how he had crossed the line, however if he had not, then I would have escalated the issue.
Does the whole work place regularly do things like this?
It was a software games company in the early 90s; I was one of the few women in R&D. So, yes.
Mansplaining isn't just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.Or
Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate "facts" about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.
Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!
also known as the Men Who Know Things phenomenon, whereby some men mistakenly believe that they automatically know more about any given topic than does a woman and will, consequently, proceed to explain to her- correctly or not- things that she already knows.What's so bad about being confrontational when the situation calls for it?
The mansplainer's problem isn't so much that he's trying to teach a woman something, but rather that he takes it as a given that she doesn't already know whatever it is he is going to tell her.
desjardins: languagehat: While I'm here, I'd like to apologize to the women in this thread for the clueless and/or offensive comments of some of my fellow malesDitto. The resentment is that it feels like the implication of these site and these threads- and in some cases explicit comments- that "YOU ARE THE PROBLEM PENIS OWNER, NOW FIX IT". I can no more "fix" these overt sexist anecdotes than I can will away the Tea Party by clapping my hands really hard. I had racist grandparents too, but the solution is I outlived them, I guess.
Argh. I like what you write 99.999% of the time, but this is a misstep. You're not responsible for what other men say, just as I am not responsible for what other women, blue-eyed, or short people say. To apologize for the actions of your "fellow males" reeks of the white knight syndrome mentioned elsewhere. Address them directly.
ROU_Xenophobe: I am surrounded by people who tell me they don't have lung cancer. Really, I actually have never known anyone who suffered from it.Actually, that's an excellent example. "Most" people do not have lung cancer, although if you went to a lung cancer survivors forum you might think otherwise. And I don't know that I can personally do much about those who do have lung cancer. I don't smoke, I don't hang around smokers, so...
Logically, then, it doesn't really exist in any meaningful numbers and the people who tell me that, no, I lost my family member to it are either lying to me or delusional paranoids.
grapefruitmoon: So maybe one thing you can do is share with the guy friends you have about these things, and in doing so they'll be more aware of it as an issue.Um, you're not my friends. You're people on the internet. There is one metafilter member who is a real-life friend of mine, but otherwise no you're not my friends.
Yeah, we are. We're sharing. With you. Our friends.
My SO (male) and I find ourselves standing at a counter, and I say "I'll pay for this" or something like that, because we trade off paying for things and balance it out at the end of the month, or sometimes just buy him an ice cream to be nice.I remember being out with a (male) friend and saying "Oh, I'll get this one" when we stopped at an ice cream stand. The girl at the counter commented about it and I just explained that sometimes he'll pick up the tab and sometimes I will and comes out more or less even.
That thread made me all righteous and pissed off for a week. I bike and take public transportation in a big city, so I get yelled and poked at by strangers every day, and it took reading that thread to realize I would have to deal with much less harassment if I was a man.posted by tzikeh at 6:42 PM on July 21, 2010 [11 favorites]
Somehow I didn't know I had the right (emphasis mine) to just get to the videotheque or the grocery store without men stopping in traffic to open their car doors and shout at me.
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My favorite story of on the job sexist comments is from my sister. She was waiting tables at a restaurant a few years ago, and one of the dish washers said that she "had an ass like two wooden spoons." I'm still not sure if that's a compliment or an insult, but it is one of those things that's too preposterous to be offensive.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 5:48 PM on July 19, 2010 [9 favorites]