What kind of fucking reaction is this ?

[Mosman]

A guy at work has been systematically bullying and harassing me since I started in the company 10 months ago.
Before I joined he did the same to a lady we will call L
Before she joined it was a young graduate called A

So I've finally had the balls to stand up to him, raised the matter with our employer and the reaction of L who could help me ensure this never happens to anyone else ? He won't loose his job over this will he, he's got a family ?

WTF
Has anyone come across this before ? I am fucking furious with her now as well as him.

ifeelloved - I am sorry if I have offended you. I was just giving you my opinion, not personally attacking you

While I understand your frustration with L keep in mind how bullies work, often are very manipulative and turning it round to make the one bullied feel responsible.

Keep your anger directed at the only person who deserves it and remember she is a victim who he has sadly beaten down :(

OP good for you for doing something to stop this bully. I hope that 'L' takes heart from your firm stance.

I'm not sure If it will add to either side of the argument but wanted to give you an example of my own experience as I have found the debate on this thread very interesting.

I'm generally considered to be a confident, feisty woman. I'm certainly not someone who avoids conflict at all but I was sexually assulted (in a pub full of people) while at uni and experienced an incident of sexual harassment at work in my early twenties and I did nothing about them.

At the time I felt that I didn't want the burden of the men concerned thrown out of uni or having their contracts cancelled. Although I would say I'm not usually subject to peer pressure I dodn't want to be judged by everyone else for damaging these mens' prospects when it was made very clear to me that neither incident was considered in any way seriously by anyone else.

I understood that these were serious incidents but sadly my peers didn't not even the women.

My mother is a wonderful women, in no way down trodden. She brough me up to be strong and undependant. My Dad treats women with utmost repect and I have never heard him utter a sexist word in my life.

What I'm trying to say (in a rather inelegant way) is that it wasn't my socialisation that was the problem. It was everyone elses. I knew that if I had officially reported either incident the proper procedures would have been applied but I would have found it difficult to lose the social stigma attached to being the "silly girl who made a big fuss over a joke".

Both those incidents still upset and anger me today over 15 years later. I hope that I'm never in such a situation again but if I am I will report and be damned because I look back on those incidents with shame that I didn't stand up for myself.

Apologies - shocking number of typos in my last post.

It is part of the culture, when the HR woman was present the male senior colleague was very supportive had she not been present it would I believe have been an entirely different matter.
Such a shame IMO

Perhaps she just doesn't want to go through the hassle.

Years ago I suffered a strange sort of harassment at work - sort of sexual but more implied than anything overt (he wrote me some very strange letters and sent me a Valentine's card, despite knowing I had a long-term boyfriend). When I "rejected his advances" he first ignored me completely and then turned to outright bullying. I was the 3rd female in the company he had done this to. The second one was only 18 and was between school and University - it was horrible for her. The first one was older - 30ish at the time.

So - I decided that this behaviour at work was unacceptable, which I may not have done if it was just me but the 18yo was in a state over it - and we started all sorts of kerfuffle about it. The reaction we got was pretty poor, tbh - a lot of "I suffered worse than that when I was training" (from our female Director) and "Well it's not like he's really done anything bad to you, is it" from the Regional HQ people. Internally, we were both put in the same dept as him as "damage limitation".

I had asked the first involved girl if she would back us up and she refused. She didn't want to turn it into a witch hunt, she didn't want to go over it, she was out of the line of fire now (different dept) and so didn't feel the need to rake it all up again. I wasn't impressed at her seeming lack of backbone but hey, it was her choice.

None of it stopped until I got the police involved, when his bullying extended to loudly declaring that he had a Death List, that I was no. 1 target and he had a baseball bat ready. He knew where I lived (had sent the letters etc. to my home address - still don't know how he got that!) and work didn't take it seriously - so I called in the police. Got a very bad name for myself for doing so - but it stopped it. Also ruined my chances of promotion there - and I ended up leaving a year or so later but due to change in personal circumstances rather than because of him.

So I suppose what I was trying to say (and didn't manage to explicitly say it) is that sometimes it IS an awful lot of hassle for a very poor outcome, especially for you personally. Sad and crap but often true.

Although I have to say I particularly DID enjoy the police coming into see my Manager and telling him that I had a good case for a Grievance proceeding against the company for their abysmal handling of the problem...

What a crap experience Too Many Bubbles, but I'm glad you shared it here as it illustrates another important facet in the socialisation concept.

You are right that sometimes women (and men) can resist the socialisation, refuse to co-operate it wherever they can. But, because other people are subject to that socialisation and are still playing by those rules, it can constrain what people are able to do, even if they want to. So, you can be as assertive as you like, but that won't protect you from institutionalised discrimination.

EatsBrains - funnily enough, despite other people (women) agreeing with me on here, I am the only one who you feel should be singled out as having a pretty basic knowledge of feminism. Would you level that accusation at ifeel as well? If so, why didn't you?

Perhaps I can see what you are getting at, but feel that the theory is incorrect. That is a valid view too. It doesn't mean I don't understand. It is just that I disagree. We are all here to have a polite discourse, not to put each other down (I hope).

Not offended eatsbrains (love your name) just frustrated!

I dn't understand why you're so irate ifeel.

I've acknowledged that you have had the experience of being able to reject all the socialisation that our culture throws at you. Good for you, I think that's great. (Am not being sarcastic, I mean it - the more women reject this shit, the better, the less prevalent it will be and eventually, it will become something that used to happen).)

I just don't understand why you seem so invested in denying that it is a cultural reality. You don't want to deny the existence of racism just because you're not a racist, so why deny other cultural influences which you don't succumb to?

But I don't think we are culturally racist, I think there is a section of society that is. It's the blanket statement that I object to.

But acknowledging that white privilege, or male privilege, or other sorts of privilege are built into society and are a part of our culture, is not the same as saying "everyone is a racist", or "everyone is sexist/all women are downtrodden & sad".

I mean, you can believe (as you do and I think we would all agree) that not every single person is e.g. a racist, but still acknowledge the broader picture. It is not a damaging blanket statement, it's just a fact of life.

KRITIQ thankyou. What's interesting was that no one in the pub understood how upset I was and didn't seem to think I should be really.

Interestingly on the Monday morning when some of the male students were laughingly discussing the subject (the fact that the guy assulted me for a bet apparently made it all the more hilarious ) I lost my temper and mentioned that I had only just restrained my boyfriend (who came to pick me up because I called him in tears) from coming into the bar and beating the shit out of him taking the offender to task, they all thought:

A that my bf would have been completely reasonable to react in that manner.
B that perhaps it was time to stop making jokes about it. (bf was a big lad).

I haven't really thought about it before but it does rather seem that from their point of view my boyfriends anger at having 'his' woman molested was more reasonable and justified than my own anger at having my body assulted.

BTW the only reason I didn't let my bf pound him into dust was from concern that my lovely bf not get charged with assault rather than any concern for the offender.

As I said earlier it's not just white people that can be racists.

And I don't agree re white or male privilege being built into society. I believe it used to be but I think society has changed, it has taken too long but I don't think that as a society we raise children to believe that men or whites are better.

ugh, TMB. What an ugly set of responses you got from those people. :(

I guess men are traditionally seen as the breadwinners and supporting their family, while women traditionally earn less than their DH. So I would agree to some extent that she has been conditioned to see men as more supporters of their family than women, which is very sad.

Nobody is saying that only white people can be racists . I don't even see how that comes into it.

But to deny that there are certain privileges built into society is a massive, massive statement for anyone to make.

http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146

Sorry, messed up the link.

I have been away too long.

Hope this works. It is an excellent post on privilege.

Privilege

TMB - That sounds horrendous and it makes me angry that your bf being upset and angry meant more than your upset and anger. Its like his feelings were valid as a man, but yours could just be disregarded. Although I think you did right to stop bf beating this man up in terms of possible assault charge.

Things are much better for women than they were 100 years ago. But we do not live in an equal society. Men and women are brought up and treated differently. The differences in the UK are not as stark as women not being allowed to vote or drive, but the are still there.

And because things have improved, women are able to work and earn a decent wage, live by themselve if they want to, etc. But there is still discrimination.

They certainly were DirtyMartini the thing is they were normally speaking a very nice, friendly bunch of pretty intelligent men and women. Which I suppose supports the theory that the prejudice being institutionalised.

I was lucky many women have had to suffer much more serious assaults. I put it aside at the time and got my degree. I think that my 20 year old self would be shocked that I still feel so strongly about it 15 years later.

I wish I had told the bastard's girlfriend though, the poor soul married him and according to fb they have a daughter...

i was once in consideration for an extension to a contract alongside a male colleague. i was more experienced, but we were roughly on a par and both equally able to do the job.

he got the extension. fair dos. except that one of the more senior women approached me afterwards and said that she had discussed the contract extension with the boss, and that his decision was to award the contract to the male employee, because he had a wife and baby to support. i was single and so it would not be as catastrophic, i only had myself to look after. she told me fairly and squarely that she would support me if i felt it was worth making a complaint over, as she felt that i would be the better candidate (it was to replace her).

i did nothing. i had already the decided that i was probably best off out of an organisation that could make decisions based on gender roles.

i also had a similar experience to bubbles. i ended up with my shirt pulled over my face in a work bar so i couldn't see and my arms were immobilised, and about four blokes groped me whilst i couldn't fight them off. i left in tears but as there were four involved, and i wasn't sure who had done what, i was too shocked to report. it would have been extremely messy, and although potentially disastrous for their careers, probably not much would have happened except a slap on the wrist and a tightening of regulations for the bar staff.

and with that sort of ethos, i wasn't that keen on having my contract extended.

i am v grateful for the women that do stand up (i'm actually a witness to a complaint that is probably going to tribunal for gender discrimination for a woman who worked at the same place) but on my own behalf I have to weigh up what is worth it. happy to support others.

EatsBrains I have both a daughter and a son, I'm doing my best to bring them up to value and respect both genders.

I think you are correct, we are very fortunate that women in this country have many rights that women all around the globe are denied but that doesn't mean our own journey to equality is finished.

Madwoman that's shocking. I'm appalled on your behalf.