Just that really. I pointed out a minor oversight that my supervisor made at work and his response was to say he had a “blonde moment”. This was all done via teams and in a main group chat. The rest of the team are all women. Four of whom have blonde hair, not that it really matters.
I replied to this saying “implying what?! haha” (my exact words as I was trying to keep it light as is our usually team banter). He replied with “I had a blonde moment”. So I said, “given there are four blondes on this team I’d be careful saying that”. He replied with “oh get real, its just a saying and I was directing it at myself”.
I thought he might respond with “oops, sorry ladies” or something else along those lines but no.
We recently all had to attend a mandatory in-person training course all about challenging inappropriate language and behaviour, following some bad press about the organisation being institutionally mysogynistic so I thought I’d give it a go. He has made similar comments before which I have let slide, but I know affected others in the team as we’ve discussed it in a side chat. No one else ever says anything though as they don’t want to rock the boat. One example is when he implied that I wasn’t a “normal woman” as I said I hated shopping.
As a team we basically carry him through his working day and generally turn a blind eye when he takes his 30 min break and returns over an hour later.
But in all honesty, he makes my working day miserable, often choosing to “mansplain” things to me, which I then have to correct as he’s got it wrong. Or completely ignores me or excludes me from team discussions as I might ask some tricky questions… basically, I think he finds me annoying and doesn’t seem to credit me with any intelligence at all.
I accept that what he said is not the most sexist thing a person can say and there are much bigger problems in the world right now, but for me, it’s these little side comments that often go unchallenged and for whatever reason I decided to take him on today, and subsequently lost.