From: Meredith Glueck at EDF on 06/17/98 01:41 PM
Subject: Re: Jobs and gender (was: Gender, Race, and Publishing on the
Left)
<<From Wojtek: A male boss harassing a female clerk usually does not intend to exclude in any way females from clerical positions. All he wants is a sexual favor from a particular individual.>>
<<Meredith's comment: I would suggest that this too is not so much about sexual favors but instead about power. No, the male boss is not trying to exclude other women from clerical positions, but in this way of intimidation, is in a sense describing that women in clerical positions have no power and through harassment prevents any sense of mobility. He has the power, she does not.>>
Probably these different "causes" need to be distributed (perhaps in a hierarchy), and more importantly, the ones which operate systematically separated from any which are "merely" characteristic of particular cases.
For your entertainment:
As a purely individual but effective tactic of resistance, one anecdote from a book published around 30 years ago, *I, Bitch* (author not remembered) was quite wonderful. When in an office a manager, being rejected by a woman in the office, spread the rumor that she had slept with him, she retaliated as follows. She began confirming the story, but adding, "Yuck! After he came he pissed all over me." According to the anecdote, said manager shortly after found employment elsewhere.
Carrol