I will try and not give a huge long background but inevitably, this is the tip of the iceberg.
We're a small team. There is our boss and then I am one of the de facto deputies, as is my counterpart. Counterpart is generally unpleasant and a bully but boss likes them because they get things done. I also get things done but am a nice person at the same time (I think).
There has been an ongoing battle around external comms which is too tedious to go into but counterpart has effectively asked for a social media post that one of the team wrote for our LI account to be removed. The reason giving was that it was an unprofessional picture of '3 girls giggling in front of a sign' (it was three female colleagues, two of whom are in their 30s and two of whom have PhDs, standing in front of a banner for the conference which they were speaking at). Counterpart also made an unpleasant remark about colleagues' judgement when it comes to dressing professionally and saying there was too much cleavage on display. There wasn't. They all looked very smart and professional. The comments were made in a group chat which contained our boss and several junior members of the team (including one of the ones in the picture). I have spent a lot of today fielding complaints from the junior staff about the toxic atmosphere this kind of thing has created and getting very upset about it.
I appreciate maybe this is just the thing that pushes me over the line but that's not cool is it? It's symptomatic of a wider pattern of bullying but that's fairly gross misogyny right?
I have to talk to our shared boss about it tomorrow and I suspect he will come down on counterpart's side as they are very close colleagues. But I just feel like this sort of thing shouldn't go unchallenged.
Also, highly outing to anyone in my team. 👋🏻