https://www.dividedstatesofwomen.com/2017/12/28/16826194/end-sexual-harassment-workplace
As I entered
my parents’ home one evening, I was immediately greeted by the hearty tones of
my father’s booming voice critiquing the
contestants on one of his favorite game shows. “Stupido! Madonna, what a dumb!” I hear him belting out from
downstairs. The language he employs is a variable amalgam of Italian,
his mother tongue, and English. This is how I often describe my father’s
parlance, for I always wince at the common phrase “broken English, ” and I try to avoid it for three reasons: firstly, it implies that his language
has been shattered or damaged in some way. Secondly, it grossly belies and
causes one to greatly underestimate how intelligent he is. Thirdly, “broken
English” has a pejorative connotation that undermines the endearing effect that the language has on the speaker’s loved ones as well as the ability to make them smile.
Following his boisterous voice down the stairs into the family room, I encountered an
always quaint and familiar scene. My father, after a long and cold day, was
nestled in his favorite chair beneath his sauna of blankets enjoying the
popular game show Family Feud. I
quietly took a seat in the family room and heard the ever charismatic host,
Steve Harvey, asking the following question: “Name something that a woman would
lie about on a first date.” Immediately after, one contestant beamed as she
excitedly buzzed in with the number one answer, which was, of course, “her
age.”
On hearing
her response, my father slowly turned around in his chair to face me, which
surprised me a bit as I didn’t realize that he had heard me come in. He looked
at me pensively for a moment and said, “You have to explain me why the women in
this country they can’t tell you how old they are.” His question caused me to
smile to myself as I recalled my mother telling me of the various awkward encounters that resulted from my father innocently and unabashedly asking women
their age many years ago when he had just transferred here from Italy. Indeed,
my father meant no harm, for he didn’t understand (as he still doesn’t now) why
anyone should be embarrassed to reveal how many years one has been alive.
I chuckled gently
and shrugged my shoulders at what I believed to be a purely rhetorical
question, but then, I noticed that he was still looking at me rather intently.
Also, I saw that he had put the DVR on Pause, so obviously, he was waiting for
an answer. I hesitated for a moment, for truthfully, I couldn’t come up with a
logical response. After a pause, I cleared my throat and heard myself reply, “Well … here in America … sometimes women are made to feel … like we
lose value as we get older.” I started at the sound of these words coming from
my own mouth.
My father was
quiet for a moment, and as I looked at his face, I could see his eyes narrowing
slightly as if he were mulling over what I had said. He then took in a breath
and made this cynical vocalization that I have been hearing him make for years:
“Ppfffffftt.” The only way that I can describe this monosyllabic utterance
would be by comparing it to the noise of gas being let out of a tire,
“Ppfffffftt.” I have come to understand this to be his own blunt way of saying,
“That’s so ridiculous!” He instantly turned around, took the DVR off of Pause,
and continued to quietly watch his show.
As the show
progressed, I heard the other contestants proceed to fire off their guesses,
many of which were correct; a woman would lie about her weight, how many
romantic relationships she’s had, how much money she makes, etc. Quite frankly,
none of these responses were particularly shocking as many people would assume
that a woman would lie about each of these things, always to make these numbers appear
to be smaller than those of her male counterparts. As I listened to these
contestants’ responses in this moment, though, I just couldn’t stop thinking
about my father’s question, and I began to really reflect on the absurdity of
this concept. Think about it: we live in a society that would indirectly tell a
woman that she should be ashamed of the number of years that she has existed,
the amount of space that her body mass is taking up on this Earth, the number
of meaningful experiences or accomplishments that she has had in this lifetime,
and the list goes on and on. Women are often instructed to keep their voices
down, to avoid confrontation, and to avoid throwing their weight around, and in
all of this, the message is very clear: women should strive to be as inconspicuous
and unobtrusive as humanly possible. This is a hazardous message.
The acclaimed writer and speaker, Jean Kilbourne, who has
spent much of her distinguished career examining the effects of the media,
particularly advertising, on gender identity, has explored the ways in which the media perpetuates these harmful gender stereotypes. In her 2012 book, Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes
the Way We Think and Feel, Kilbourne discusses how, encoded in the rhetoric
used by advertising and the media, there is a mode of speaking that, quite
literally, belittles women: "‘We cut Judy down to size,’ says an ad for a
health club. ‘Soon, you'll both be taking up less space,’ says an ad for a
collapsible treadmill, referring both to the product and to the young woman
exercising on it.’” According to Kilbourne, in utilizing this kind of verbiage
that encourages women to be as unobtrusive and invisible as possible, it
becomes much easier to strip them of their power.
Somehow, the
notion that women should remain inconspicuous, and thusly, powerless, has
always called to mind a line from Robert Browning’s poem "Andrea del
Sarto" that I remember reading in college. The line reads simply, "Less
is more.” The phrase frustrated me to no end when I first read it,
for I just could not wrap my mind around what Browning was saying. Having never
been a fan of the understated myself, to me, more has always been … well …
more. Today, as I contemplate this platitude, I can’t help but notice how
similar this concept is to our modern society’s ideology regarding women. In essence,
women are being told that the less
obtrusive and visible they make themselves, the more desirable they will be.
This issue
has been on my mind quite a bit in recent days in light of the barrage of women
that have come forth lately to speak out about the sexual harassment and
assault that they have experienced at the hands of powerful men. In fact, the movement
has gained so much momentum that Time
magazine’s coveted title of “Person of the Year” for 2017 was awarded to the “Silence Breakers,” a group of famous, accomplished women who had all been
victims of sexual harassment/assault and who encouraged all other victims to
speak out by employing the simple hashtag “#MeToo” on social media. Although I was certainly elated and greatly
encouraged by the women of this movement receiving this honor, I couldn’t help
but be disheartened by the level of vitriol and hatred for which these women immediately
became a target.
Each day it
seems as though I’ve been deeply disconcerted by the animus that has been
directed at the alleged victims of sexual harassment/assault simply because
they dared to use their voices to speak up about this issue. These women were
met by vicious rancor at all angles. Just recently, Republican Representative from
Illinois, Rodney Davis, even made a statement that he believes that, with all
of the women coming forward as of late, some businesses “… may just take a
shortcut and not hire women as a way to avoid these issues.” On first hearing
his statement, I must admit that I instantly thought that this was simply an
unpopular, fringe opinion by a far-right government official; however, just a
brief glance over the comments sections of a few online articles on this topic
quickly refuted this theory. These sections were full of comments proclaiming
what an excellent idea it would be to stop hiring women as a solution to the
problem. One comment went as far as to suggest that the problem would cease if
employers were to just stop hiring “entitled bitches,” as if a woman not
wanting to encounter sexual harassment/assault in her place of work automatically
marked her as a self-entitled elitist.
In all of
the pernicious attacks meant to malign these alleged victims, the underlying
intimation was very clear: the women themselves are directly to blame for
what has befallen them because they failed to remain inconspicuous, invisible,
and powerless, in accordance with society’s expectations. This past week, an
experiment was conducted by Divided States of Women (Twitter: @DSoWomen ), a media organization
that explores a myriad of controversial issues that women are currently facing.
(The link to the video is at the top of
the article.) In this social experiment, Liz Plank, the Executive Producer of
Divided States of Women, walks a crowded city street claiming that she had discovered
a product that will end all sexual harassment. She then presents a number of
strangers with a large tarp, claiming that if women would only cover themselves
with the tarp while in the workplace, thus rendering themselves invisible, the
problem of sexual harassment in the workplace would be solved. Of course, the strangers
she encountered on the street found this solution to be ludicrous, and
rightfully so, as the experiment was obviously meant to be a satirical
demonstration of the senselessness of punishing women for men’s transgressions.
However, after viewing the video, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether or not covering
women with a tarp to avoid sexual harassment is any more asinine than not
hiring them at all for the same motive.
Although in
these last few months, many such instances of blatant misogyny have been pervading
our society, I believe that the most prominent example of this heinous
disregard for women would be the sequence of events that have surrounded the
special election for the Senate seat in Alabama, on December 12, 2017. This past
November, I listened as at least nine women came forward to accuse Republican
candidate, Roy Moore, of various counts of sexual misconduct, most of which
took place in the late 1970s when Moore was in his thirties, and most of the
women were in their teens, the youngest being only fourteen-years-old. I listened as many
members of the GOP tried to defend Moore’s alleged targeting of young girls, even going as far as to cite the age difference between Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus
Christ, in an attempt to justify this behavior. I listened as right-wing media outlets, as well as Moore himself, used
every opportunity to silence these women by trying to discredit their
allegations through attacking their appearance, their integrity, their intelligence,
and their mental stability in the pettiest, most malicious of ways. I listened
as several polls suggested that a very substantial percentage of conservatives
were even more likely to vote for Moore after the accusations, for they doubted
the stories of the women. I listened as excerpts of a textbook that was co-written
by Moore in 2011, which blatantly stated that women should not be permitted to vote or
run for office, were made public, and this still didn’t sway his most fervid supporters, men and
women alike. In short, I was horrified. On December 12, when Moore lost the
election by a small margin to the Democrat Doug Jones, I felt a plethora of
mixed emotions. On one hand, I was, of course, relieved and happily surprised,
as I did not expect these results at all. At the same time, however, I was
heart-sick and utterly crestfallen that even after the level of palpable misogyny
displayed by this man, at least 650,436 individuals would have still rather seen
him in this position of power than a respectable Democrat.
As I
ruminate on all of these recent events, I must admit that it’s difficult not to
feel disillusionment. While the problem is abundantly simple to define, the
solution is a bit harder to exact. In my living memory, there has never been a
time where resisting society’s expectations of women to be unobtrusive, inconspicuous, frail, invisible, and powerless has been so crucial. In my
opinion, the most efficient method of accomplishing this is by using our voices,
for language is the most powerful tool that we have at our disposal. Melinda
Gates once said, "A woman with a voice is, by
definition, a strong woman." I agree, and in recent days, I’ve learned
that in order to be strong, it is of paramount importance that we speak out in
the face of injustice, and regardless of what the old adage says, when we are
trying to make ourselves heard, less isn’t always more.
-- Daniella Rossi
