Friday Flashback: Sly Speaks: Me Too: The Workplace Edition

Copyright Tara O'Brien

This post was originally published on 13 December 2018. It was penned by my political alter-ego, Sly Fawkes.

I was thinking back to a "wonderful" incident which happened while I was working as an assistant district manager at the Denver Post in 1986. One of the carriers became friendly with me, initially in a perfectly acceptable and professional way, and I enjoyed our little chats. But then one day he said to me: "I'd like it if I could give you a hug sometime and maybe a kiss."

A lot of you ladies, particularly of my generation or older, will be able to relate when I say that I was trained from a young age to "be a lady" when a situation like this arises and to "not hurt his feelings," so rather than asking him in what the hell universe hitting on his supervisor was appropriate, my first response was to say "I'm married," so I wouldn't hurt his feelings. As if doing this sort of creepy thing would have been appropriate if his target wasn't married.

My initial reaction is to think what a doormat I was for reacting this way. Plus I never even told my supervisor, because I didn't want to get the guy in trouble. But my next reaction is to be angry that I believed his feelings were more important than mine, which was disgust and betrayal.

So, yeah, not going to be angry at my younger self for being taken aback and not behaving in a more assertive fashion in this lurid situation. The guy displayed not only gross sexism in having zero respect for my position of albeit mild authority just because I was a young woman, but he displayed zero respect for me as a human being in seeing me as an object that he could potentially grope and slobber on.

For some reason, when I was younger I seemed to draw a lot of creepers like this to me, probably because I tried to be nice. I'm honestly not at all sorry that my current age tends to render me invisible to this breed of asshole most of the time.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Graphic copyright Juliahenze @123rf.com

Crappy Fucking Birthday to Me

Copyright Prettysleepy

You know what I don't get?

Shaming people because they don't care for a particular season.

Now, I'd have plenty of company if I did things like normal people and got depressed in the winter but loved the spring. 

Newp. Like always, I'm ass-backwards.

 I'm fine in the winter. My most severe depression hits at the beginning of spring. It probably doesn't help that my birthday is here and I have one more year of being a crappy, unaccomplished, broke-ass loser under my belt. Another year to suck at everything is ahead of me. 

But I am supposed to pull sunshine out of my ass and fucking love the god damn springtime regardless of how I actually feel, or I am a BAD PERSON on top of being screwy as all fuck.

I can remember the first year that the spring depression hit like a ton of bricks and I started really hating who I was. I was ten years old. I had hit puberty a year before, and that is what triggered the onset of my bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. The OCD was already firmly in place, but I didn't know it at the time, of course. 

I didn't want puberty. I was well aware of how women were looked at, and I didn't want to be looked at that way. I became a feminist when I was 8 years old because it made me angry that women were seen as lesser and not allowed to do the "cool" jobs like astronaut or pilot. When I was 10, I knew how I would be looked at the rest of my life, and I tried to hide the body I didn't want.

Like a prophecy of what the rest of my stupid life was going to be like, my stupid birthday cake fell apart. I pretended I didn't care. I laughed. I spent the rest of the school year pretending I was fine when I wasn't at all. There was something screaming inside me. Something was wrong. I was wrong, and I needed to hide it so I wouldn't be "put away" somewhere.

I'd like it if no other kid ever had to feel the way  I did. Pretending  I was okay when I wasn't and believing that I was bad and wrong and broken. Well, I am broken. Bad or wrong, maybe not so much, but I've always felt like I was.

So, no, I am not "evil" or "bad" or just a big meanie mean because I dislike seeing spring come on. Spring tends to mean several months of wanting to crawl into a fucking mausoleum and sleep forever. If I'm lucky, April will be rainy and I can get back to being a salty asshole who gives no fucks sooner. 

I hate summer because of the heat, but I don't tend to be depressed to the point of having no fight left in me at all.

I'd love to like spring with all the pretty plants. But spring made it clear to me long ago that this is an unrequited affair, so spring can go fuck itself.

~Cie~

Sly Speaks: Me Too: The Work Edition

Copyright Tara O'Brien

I was thinking back to a "wonderful" incident which happened while I was working as an assistant district manager at the Denver Post in 1986. One of the carriers became friendly with me, initially in a perfectly acceptable and professional way, and I enjoyed our little chats. But then one day he said to me: "I'd like it if I could give you a hug sometime and maybe a kiss."

A lot of you ladies, particularly of my generation or older, will be able to relate when I say that I was trained from a young age to "be a lady" when a situation like this arises and to "not hurt his feelings," so rather than asking him in what the hell universe hitting on his supervisor was appropriate, my first response was to say "I'm married," so I wouldn't hurt his feelings. As if doing this sort of creepy thing would have been appropriate if his target wasn't married.

My initial reaction is to think what a doormat I was for reacting this way. Plus I never even told my supervisor, because I didn't want to get the guy in trouble. But my next reaction is to be angry that I believed his feelings were more important than mine, which was disgust and betrayal.

So, yeah, not going to be angry at my younger self for being taken aback and not behaving in a more assertive fashion in this lurid situation. The guy displayed not only gross sexism in having zero respect for my position of albeit mild authority just because I was a young woman, but he displayed zero respect for me as a human being in seeing me as an object that he could potentially grope and slobber on.

For some reason, when I was younger I seemed to draw a lot of creepers like this to me, probably because I tried to be nice. I'm honestly not at all sorry that my current age tends to render me invisible to this breed of asshole most of the time.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Graphic copyright Juliahenze @123rf.com