Could I ask your advice?

[Xeneth88]

I'm the only female in the company I work in. I've had run ins with one colleague for refusing to stop calling me "love/darling" and for talking over me to my junior male colleague. I get paid less than this junior colleague but since I've been there 8 months ACAS seem uninterested.

Anyway, this afternoon a woman was talking in front of our office, junior colleague leaned back on his chair and was learing at her, I said "oh is she saying something interesting", he said "no she's a MILF". I lost my cool a bit, said this was disrespectful, how does he know shes a mother (she looks like one apparently) and as a mother I find it unprofessional to say in the workplace. He got very defensive and said it was a complement. Was I wrong? Maybe I shouldn't have over reacted.

It's not an overreaction. It's not appropriate who talk about which colleagues or clients/customers they'd like to fuck. It's not a compliment, it's an offensive and inappropriate comment.

Thank you, I thought, well was made to feel like I was being ridiculous and pathetic as "it's a compliment".

It's immaterial whether they actually fulfil the criteria of the M in MILF (an incredibly degrading & misogynistic term; it is not the reclaiming of post natal sexuality, it is a pornographic category). It is absolutely unacceptable for someone to refer to how fuckable they think someone is in the workplace.

Seek out your HR and make a formal complaint regarding their utter lack of professionalism.

Even if he'd said she was very attractive and that she was the kind of woman he would be attracted to, it's still inappropriate in the workplace. The leering and crudeness make it offensive and unpleasant.

I don't know enough about employment law to know whether ACAS are right or wrong to be uninterested. I thought that even recent employees had some fundamental rights regardless of time employed? Maybe someone with more knowledge might come along and clarify.

Sadly we have no HR, we have the CEO, his business partner, my colleague, sales director (Mr Love/Darling) and me. It's a very new business and the rest of the staffing is outsourced to agencies. I am on the hunt for something else, which is ashame as I enjoy the actual roll.

I complained to the CEO before about the sales directors comments and was told its "lad talk" and that as he's mostly out of office I should just take it with a pinch of salt.

Writing this down had been a bit of an eye opener, actually.

I should have added:

This type of harassment is discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.

"Harassment is unwanted or unwelcome behaviour which is meant to or has the effect of either:

violating your dignity, or
creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment"

If you don't have HR, or there you don't feel like you can speak to the person responsible for the HR aspects of the business then I would recommend speaking to ACAS again on their helpline - this is exactly within their remit. The comments from your CEO are deplorable as well; yes this is lad talk, which is the candy coated colloquialism for sexism and misogyny.

I am sorry that you are experiencing this. In my first graduate job, I had contractors make blow job gestures up against the window to my desk. When I complained to my MD, he said I could have made a choice not to wear that dress that morning.

www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1864
www.gov.uk/workplace-bullying-and-harassment
www.gov.uk/workplace-bullying-and-harassment

@rhodanunn thank you for your advice and the links and @AssassinatedBeauty thank you to.

I will contact ACAS again. I feel silly, I'm well educated, I have been a manager and know how things work but yet am made to feel wingey and "rude" when I stand up for myself.

Please don't be so hard on yourself Xeneth (I am a 88er as well). I'm talking the talk, but in practice, trying to remove yourself from the entrenched learned behaviours of placating others, meekness and/or the utter shock at hearing this utter claptrap make it very difficult to know what to do or seek out help. I was sexually assaulted on a train last year and I didn't even know whether I could call the police about it. Beyond ridiculous when I got a couple of hours on from the incident and was almost completely consumed with outrage!

Oh I am so sorry that happened to you. That's dispicable. I hope you are as ok as you can be after something so vile! Thank you for your support to day. You have all made me feel slightly less "ridiculous/rude"

xeneth good for you for challenging the MILF comment

"lad talk". Ask him if that's the same as "locker room talk".

Sadly we have no HR, we have the CEO, his business partner, my colleague, sales director (Mr Love/Darling) and me

Have you posted before about your employers? If so, the company sounds even more dreadful than last time.

Most definately inappropriate terms in the workplace and depending on your sensibilities somewhat eyebrow raising wherever you are . MILF lol he sounds like a schoolboy ( no disrespect or generalisation meant to those with DS's)

Xeneth88

I can imagine some twit saying this to their mates. But to a female co-worker, not so much.

To a female co-worker who is his senior, it's even worse. If you were a man, and his senior, he would have been far more likely to have respected your objection.

But then to also go on and justify why he said it and make out that you were just being prissy, is further evidence of his rank sexism.

Some people don't unpick the term MILF. They should.

I've even seen it on a T-shirt for a baby. "I'm with the MILF". So, I'm with the mother I'd like to fuck?!!!

There's also something about it that encapsulates the feeling that despite someone being a mother she's still fuckable. It's all kinds of objectification.

It is shocking just how much this goes on and they are getting away with it. YANBU.