Feminist Pub 14: The Bluestocking, a place for feminist chat and feminists to chat

Bleah... looks like it's open mic night for douche bags on MN tonight.

Hellothatstoast, welcome to the pub. It's a great place to calm down after dealing with sexist crap.

Looks like my evening tonight was much better than yours yesterday! I cuddled up to the dog and watched Maleficent, which turned out to be a fabulous feminist film.

Hello all! Semi Lurker here, just having a wander round the feminism section after reading something where everyone is throwing around the word bossy and making my teeth itch. Hopefully some nice feminist threads will calm me down

Some work rantings:

I've just taken part in a 2-day meeting where the Sales Director flew in some of the senior sales people to the head office to participate. The meetings were a complete farce - it was a cover-up to get these people into this city for the Xmas party we had last night. I presented on the second day, and spent a whole working day compiling the background information and stressing out about my presentation, as I have only been in the company a short while, and the hand-over was absolute crap. The good thing to come out of it was that my meeting was chockers with the senior managers who could really give my career a lift - although I am on a contract atm, I think I am being scoped out for a permanent role.

I have figured out 'The Most Sexist/Misogynistic Employee' in this company. This is the guy everyone gets warned about when they join the company (I wonder if he knows that???). He swears constantly, plays the boys club game, and constantly, constantly comments on the women and tells them what to do. He tried it on me during the meeting, when I was working on my laptop during a break because I said "Crap" under my breath at the program I was working on.

Him: "Don't say crap to your computer screen"

Me: "What? Have you got the ears of a rabbit or something?"

Him: "Just don't say crap to your computer, it might have feelings"

Me: "Its.an.inanimate.object. It.doesn't.have.feelings."

Him: "Just don't do it. It could have feelings."

Me (reiterates more strongly): "Its.An.Inanimate.Object."

I hope I left him with a lasting impression of . He didn't try to challenge me again for the rest of the meeting.

Lastly, I went to company Xmas party last night, just for a few hours. There was 'entertainment', and it was predictably sexist. The first act was a couple of female contortionists, using predictably titillating sexual poses to delight and arouse the men . It was like being transported back to the corporate 1980's, where shit like this went down all the time. At one stage I said to a colleague "How is this even permissible in this day and age???" She just smiled and shook her head knowingly. Later on in the evening there was a male performer whose act of course had nothing sexual about it. I could only stand a few hours of this, as it started very early in the evening, with only canapes for food, and a shitload of alcohol. I was at home and in bed by 10pm . When people ask me how I am enjoying my time at the company, I just smile and nod.

I have cravings for celtic winter boots ever since I saw it on one of the lists of things MN made people buy.

Nothing to add to work thing apart from confirmation there are inept managers out there. This positive discrimination business is getting out of hand. It's time we have fairness.

I had a job that was too much for one person and what do I get when I brought this up? Well, everyone is working quite hard too, you know. Fuck them all, is all I can say. >

Well done Puffin's DS2!

Oh Buffy! Hope you feel better now, hot and cold compresses might help.

Just wanted to pop in and say that DS2 is 100% amazing. He played at his first public gig tonight and had complete strangers moshing away to his band's music. I am disturbingly proud of how fabulous he is.

Over the years I gained responsibility by sometimes taking it, when it was unclear who was responsible, and sometimes just asking for it outright.

Me too. I was running one team, because git manager clearly had no idea how much work was involved, else he wouldn't have given it to me. (He proved over the next couple of years that he didn't understand the work involved, despite offers of training, showing him all the documentation on the processes involved, and all the metrics on what work was covered.) I was very good at it.

We are expected to have development discussions with our managers on a regular basis, and you are meant to ask for things and show some ambition and so on. IME, you'll get on more if you ask people outside your department for mentoring, even if it's only for something limited - "Please can you explain to me how to handle this situation?" Helps with networking, too.

EilisCitron - would you be in a position to speak to your boss and make it known that you share his excitement about the big new plans, and could he please start to tailor your job now; get you the relevant experience and mentoring to get you in position to do the cool stuff later? Make sure he knows you have your eye on it and expect it to go to you? Both for men and women, you don't get if you don't ask in most industries. Though of course this applies even more so to women.

I will tell it in the next Femimist Pub Meet, promise!

What about going to your bosses now and saying that you want in the game, and how can they make sure it happens? Over the years I gained responsibility by sometimes taking it, when it was unclear who was responsible, and sometimes just asking for it outright.

Fibonacci, if you don't mind me asking, I am curious about what you said upthread about missing out on a promotion due to a women's group. Can you say any more about this?

Well done on anger as will-to-power.

I had a sickening thought on the train on the way home. If all the great plans of my bosses succeed then maybe in 2 or 3 years there will be expansion, more staff in my dept and a deeper structure ie a senior post of sorts. It just came into my head how I will feel if I hang on, keep hacking through this insane quantity of work, and they recruit someone else (probably a man) to do the cool stuff. I think I have to start looking for another job before that happens to me. I think I could actually go mad if that happens and I think, given the fact that I am getting no encouragement and have no chance to prove myself, that it is quite likely.

Ellis, I have just started a book that I saw mentioned on here (I think on the coding thread, so thanks whoever that was!) called "Nice Girls Still Don't Get the Corner Office". It addresses exactly the kind of thing you are talking about and flies in the face of what people tell me I need to say and how they tell me to act at work, so it's really interesting. I've only started it so not sure what the conclusions will be but I have been nodding along so far.

Sorry to hear about your fall, buffy. Hope it wasn't caused by not-student heels?

Am interested in Ellis' post, but don't have time to post much atm. There is a very, very old business adage that says "Women have to be twice as good as men to get the same recognition." Seems very true in my experience.

Ellis, I so shared your pain.

My biggest professional success happened on the wake of being put up for redundancy. It's a long story that I still get angry about (the redundancy bit) so I'm not going to dwell on it, but the funny thing is that I was so angry about it that when I managed to secure an internal move, even though it was to a group that just needed a warm body in a certain location, I worked so hard and cared so little about what anyone else thought (why would I, when I had almost being kicked out when trying to conform) that I eventually ended up taking over the team. True story.

I am not sure I want to advocate anger as a strategy to move up at work, but it certainly worked for me.

Ellis and buffy Just what I want to write.

Oh no penguin and buffy! Hope you both recover soon.

I had random chats with random people and am angry at certain people for making them so upset. (Sorry not very informative but don't want to out myself and other people. Suffice to say it's the same people who make me angry.)

Ow Buffy! I have a random self-inflicted injury too, but I've been moaning about it so much I will out myself if I divulge! Hope you feel better soon.

Lurcio, thanks for posting the TED talk, it was really interesting.

Paraphrase: "personal greatness" (your manner) is only a third of what you need.
Advice to women is skewed towards this. A man who mentored a woman and a man admitted later that he had helped the woman with her confidence and manner and taught the man the business.

Men can't stop seeing women as people-people. All the advice they are given is about their manner, about how to make the people around them feel comfortable.

I find this fascinating. Is this because the role of women (at work, at home) has traditionally been about taking care of people, their relationships to people, and a successful woman has always traditionally a woman who makes the people around her feel good, by being attractive, warm, and generally nice to have around? (I remember the time I asked for feedback after not getting a job after 3 interviews and was told about 3 times "it was very close between you and the other candidate." I asked: ok so what was the difference that decided it, or what should I work on? no answer, no answer, no answer, until finally "we all thought you were a lovely girl but we decided to give it to the other candidate." I was about 32 at this point when I was a "lovely girl".) Is it just impossible for the world to see women as instrumental to their feelings; as either "makes me feel nice" or "doesn't make me feel nice"; as either "a lovely girl" or "DO NOT WANT"?

Is it because on some some level men don't want to "let women into the secret"?

Is it because on some level men don't believe women can handle the hard stuff?

I find it really interesting and it has really only tweaked my thinking about my own stagnant career a notch.

Where my thinking was: I have potential but I have not persuaded the people around me to give me opportunities, training, go for the big stuff. This is a failure of my persona (within a context of systemically ingrained sexism); had I been a man, or managed my persona better as a woman, I could have done more; to some extent my good work has not been recognised

Where my thinking is now: I have (or had) potential but I have never really done anything excellent. I have not been trusted or mentored to try. There is not enough difference between my work and that of the next person and that is just a fact however I might complain about why that is. At the moment the volume of mundane work that I am saddled with is so great, so stressful, and so boring, that I simply do not have time to challenge anything or change anything; this is structurally deliberate, I am sitting within a relatively new structure that has been set up on the basis that the person sitting at my desk will be a work horse without aspiration, or time to have any

Those things are subtly different but not different enough to make any difference to me

Has any non-medical PhD ever been strongarmed into helping in a medical emergency in a plane? >

When I was growing up Japanese soap operas were terribly popular, and always there was a woman who gets a terminal illness, and always there was a medical emergency in a plane and somebody has to operate with a penknife. Then either the woman dies or something miraculous happened. The aim of the thing was to allow you a good sob at early evening time, I think.

My mum is a GP and is an honorary doctor

My dad has an MD (unusual for UK medical doctors) but was a surgeon, so both Dr and Mr correct there