By : Well,
that may be true, but is it systemically aimed at all women? And is it
truly to put you in your place? And is it really misogyny? At what point
does a high levity work environment become directed sexual harassment?
And should one’s delicate feelings dictate the level of tomfoolery in a
workplace that is already naturally serious?
Boys
and men have “blow-off” levels, and when it’s kept bottled up, bad
things tend to happen. These things aren’t always abusive or violent, or
even so much as critical, but can easily escalate preposterously.
I
don’t know, personally, how women operate together within a group,
because I usually avoid gaggles of women and girls. Having been the
victim of gaggles in high school, I have every reason to avoid them now.
Being the only male – or one of a few – makes one a target, having no
recourse but to put up with the objectification, or shaming, or jokes,
or what-have-you, lest you’re accused of sexual harassment for your
unsolicited wit; or worse, a significant other confronts you later for
“hitting on” his girl/woman/wife, and having to either knuckle up or try
to explain that you have no interest in her without making it sound
like she’s not interesting (and I’ve encountered bastards who just want
the excuse to knuckle you down, so talk is pointless). Sexual harassment
works both ways ladies; moving on.
I
am a tradesman, I work for a living; my trade requires both mind and
body, and a certain level of one-on-one social skills. The blue collar
workforce is dominated by men, and point of fact, dominated by men with
more testosterone than your average college geek, coffee shop espresso
latte master mixer, and grocery bagger. The average BCW (blue collar
worker) will find his “better half” at some bar or party, or possibly
some friend of a buddy’s SO. Why the bar? Because after a grueling day
of muscling and measuring and blistered palms and munched fingers, a
brew is a nice way to unwind; extroverts like company to recharge,
introverts like myself, prefer to be alone.
On
a typical construction site, you’re going to find a certain level of
good natured derogatory speech aimed at one another. It’s not to one-up
each other, or to self-ego boost, or even so much as to climb any
imagined social ladder. It’s to keep the mind sharp, help with levity in
a dangerous environment, and to generally enjoy the hard fought
benefits of “free speech”. It can be things as silly as mama jokes, or
as aggravating as finding your tape measure at the bottom of a bucket of
drywall mud (keep track of your shit, or you’re wasting time looking
for it!). Sometimes you’ll find a broom-handle up your ass while you’re
climbing a ladder, not to speed you up, but to raise your awareness in a
precarious predicament; how are you gonna handle a swarm of
yellow-jacket wasps bursting out of a roof when you’re twenty feet up?
Even mocking each other’s vehicles; hint, utility usually wins out over
economy and features. And it’s not just in the work force that men
encounter “trigger warning” speech.
My
stepfather bought a house just as I started high school, and he
regularly commandeered my aid to help him do this that and whatnot
around the place. I was half his size, and had grown up in rentals and
apartments, yet I was expected to suddenly be a man. “Fuck, man, what’d
you do that for? Use what’s between your ears for more than keeping your
skull from collapsing!” “quit pulling like a girl, put your back into
it!” “it’s gonna take you forever to unload that, pack more per trip!”
“is that all you got? Lean into it, PUSH!!!” This might sound like
tyranny, and at the time, it felt like it, but he was there beside me
doing the mule’s share of the work.
When
I began my trade, I was 160 pounds and soft; when you’re over six feet
tall, that is scrawny. I struggled doing things that now I look back on
and laugh. I remember my journeyman telling me to go get a roll of
carpet from the van (The roll was twelve feet long, but it had fifteen
lineal feet rolled up in it); for context, it wasn’t a killer carpet, it
was light weight and rolled up reasonably tight, so even given my own
wiry frame I could pack it into the house if I balanced it properly on
my shoulder. It was bulky, not heavy, and its length made it unwieldy
but not unmanageable; and I was thinking my boss was an asshole – which
he was, but carrying carpet was a lesson I would have to learn
regardless. I’d watched him carry rolls of carpet before so I knew the
basic mechanics of it, but theory and practical are rarely so cut-n-dry.
So
there I was fighting this roll of carpet out of the van, and then
fighting to get it up on my shoulder. With no mental meter to gauge
“half-way,” I found myself thinking this carpet was insanely heavy, and
then I discovered the boss and the homeowner were at the door smoking
and laughing at me and my struggles, and he shouted, “move it forward,
move it back, forward back, whatcha doin?” I was mentally cussing at
him, which meant I wasn’t focusing on what I was physically doing, which
translated to over-compensating and missing the halfway point. That’s
when the worst happened, the roll broke (we call it a break, but really
it just bends over while on your shoulder), and he laughed some more and
said, “there’s nothing for it, that’s how it’s coming in” (meaning,
even if I’d found the mid-point after, the break made the roll
unbalanced and unwieldy. So I moved back and extracted the rest of the
roll from the van, only to discover the heavy end was behind me; so I
had to hunch forward to keep it from snapping my back, while pushing the
“light” end forward to keep it out of the dirt. With my feet spread
wide, and every part of me hyper extended, I quickly realized the
inherent instability of bipeds; every step was a fight against myself. I
couldn’t see where I was going, I could only see the dirt right below
me – so with best guestimate I turned the roll and began trudging. When I
got halfway I heard his voice off-center saying, “you taking that to
the river or what?” Followed by laughter and, “we better go rescue your
carpet.”
My
job requires a lot of clean-up before during and after completion.
There were a number of times during my training period that my boss
would look at me and say something like, “well aren’t you a good little
bitch,” “you’ll make a good wife someday.” Different skills required
different positions, activities and, not surprisingly, different
commentary, like, “quit wiggling your ass at me.” Or just outta the
blue, for no real purpose at all, I’d be told, “you know you got blowjob
lips don’tcha.”
I
finally cut myself loose from him and with a single tool box, and a
borrowed work van, struck out on my own. Now, until this point I’d had
to stay clean shaven and have a buzz cut; neither were my choice because
I have a baby face, it’s a hindrance on so many levels, but let’s keep
this professional. I quickly learned that even though I had five years
experience, and was twenty four, I still looked like I should be in high
school, and greeting my customers bore that out, “you’re doing this
job? You seem awful young, are you just doing the prep work?” I grew my
hair and face as quick as I could, being a native half-breed, the hair
grew fast, but not the face (thanks mom); and I noticed a shift in how I
was perceived, I became an adult in people’s eyes, my words carried
weight in regards to my skills.
Around
this time, I had a sales guy who was fun to torment and who took it in
stride and gave back just as good. One day I pulled into the back of the
shop and saw his car sitting there, all by its lonesome (can’t have
that); so with my well trained reversing skills, I backed up beside it
and parked my van with a foot to spare. He came up to me the next
morning saying I’d parked too close to his car, he had to climb in from
the passenger side, to which I grinned and answered, “yeah… that was
kind of the point.” He shook his head laughing and said, “get the fuck
to work.”
I
recently did a job, where the homeowners, general contractor, my boss,
and I were discussing a carpet manufacturing flaw. There was a pattern
bow in the carpet, and it stood out horribly in the hallway… where I’d
had to seam it together. My boss is down on his knees measuring and
taking pictures, I nudged the GC and said covertly, loud enough for all
to hear, “you know what happened eh, I just tucked this part, then I
kicked the piss outta that part, and then got lazy towards the end.”
Followed by more banter between serious talk, like when I looked at the
GC and with a completely serious look on my face, I said, “you know what
the problem is, the house is crooked, fix the house.” Everyone had
finally come to terms and my boss was at the door, the GC was wandering
off, the homeowners looked at me sadly; then I looked towards the
retreating GC and bellowed, “That’s it, I’ve had enough of your crap, I
quit, I’m taking my toys and going home… I’m telling my mom on you!!!”
I
remember a time I showed up at a job site, some construction was going
on, about half a dozen guys were there bustling about. I just needed to
get into the basement and slam in carpet in a bedroom; but the driveway
was all blocked up with trucks. I only really needed one truck moved so I
could get to the basement door, so I got a hold of one of the guys and
let him know, in much less PC but more humorous manner. The guy called
for the site’s “Toby” (the FNG, greenhorn, lackey, etc) and told him to
move the truck, “ok, uhhh… is it an automatic?” The guy looked at the
Toby flabbergasted, “what, you can’t handle a stick?!” Well as I waited
for the guy to move his standard pick-up, I got to hear chorus of
ribbing about sticks and girlfriends and how a man should be able to
handle a stick in sticky situations; one of them going so far as to
describe intimately the motions of shifting, “… if she wiggles or bucks,
you’re in good; if she hops and gags, you’ve done it wrong; you want
her to purr, not choke”. The poor Toby was beat red as he attempted to
go about his job.
My
biological father was telling me a story one day about electrical work.
He was roughing in a house (running wires through a house frame before
the drywall goes on) and he told his Toby how he wanted the ends cut. “I
told him, ‘when you run the wires into the outlets, leave enough
hanging out that I work with when I get back to do the rigging’ he asked
me how much is enough, so I told him, ‘about the length of your cock’
and then I went about rigging up the power box, I thought for sure
there’d be like eighteen inches of wire hanging out of each outlet, but
when I got back to inspect his work, there was more than two inches, man
I tell you, I felt so sorry for his girlfriend.”
If
you don’t understand banter, or levity, or ribbing, or refuse to
acknowledge such communication, then everything a man says will be
construed as sexual harassment. We often use banter to relieve work
stress. It’s pretty sad when banter you’re not even involved in, is
grounds to get a man fired. So the next time you see the office Toby
humping the photocopier, unless his pants are down, ask him about it
before running to HR to file a complaint; I seriously doubt he’s
sexually assaulting the equipment, or sending you telepathic patriarchal
messages about his intentions towards you, or running off copies of his
penis to remind the office gals who’s in charge; perhaps it’s giving
him grief, or maybe he’s bumping it back into place, or maybe, oh I
don’t know, the poor guy IS running off copies of his penis, because the
boss lady told him to or lose his job.
Just some things to think about.
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