So – vendors are no problem. I sometimes have difficulty with my bosses or clients, but usually I am a favourite. My real challenge is people who are my equal, usually women, who attack me. In my corporate life they were co-workers, in my client life they are usually indirect people within organizations that I deal with. I will tell my story here, keeping everything anonymous. Here are some challenges I have had in the past:

• Miss J: Miss J was a co-worker that I used to work with. I was not her direct boss, but I was a senior member of the team charged with guiding the newer staff. This was Miss J’s first job, and she made an amazing impression in the interview making everyone say “she is the one”. At first, we were all impressed with her work ethic and quality of jobs. After a while, she started to accuse me of doing strange things I did not do, such as telling her to work overtime. In each case, the things I said could have theoretically been construed as what she said, but they weren’t. Things were a bit tense with my boss at the time, so she sided with Miss J, leading me to resent both of them very much. Things escalated with her, and eventually I just kept myself in the protected shell of my cubical. Later, she started targeting my boss with the same behaviour with the HR department. If I was to do it again, I would have sided with my boss, and we could have repaired our relationship. But, stupidly, I sided with Miss J. She eventually got fired, and embarrassingly, my boss found e-mails where Miss J and I were making fun of her. I left the company, regretting the toll that this took – especially hurting my boss who was a nice woman.
• Madame K: Madame K was someone I worked with since I started my own business. By the time I met her, I had dealt with this situation a few times with different women. She joined the organization I was working with about 6 months after I did. The team was very excited since she had a unique set of technical skills that were really helpful to the organization. I was also interested, since I am always excited to meet cool, strong women. When we first met, my heart sunk, and my stomach started to feel sick. From the beginning, she was spouting off wrong facts about my field, with no knowledge. I did not speak up, since I did not want to embarrass her, but if I was to do it again, I would have likely said something. She got demoted from leading the project, and I took the leadership role. She would nit-pick everything that I did afterwards, copying everyone, which made me crazy. I tried to escalate the nit-picking, but the client’s philosophy was that emotions were childish, and the whole thing was. I think he saw me as as much of a contributor as she was. Eventually I left the client – Madame K is still there but in a further diminished role.
• Lady B: Lady B was a young, new person I worked with who was on a client site. She was beautiful, personable, positive and effective in her client-facing role. I helped her with various projects, and trained her on others. She and I eventually went out for coffees to talk about life, and when I had a birthday party with work friends, she was invited. Things started to get a bit hectic with this particular client, and I was ready to leave. The boss had information that he could only have gotten through the conversations with her, and used it against me even clawing back revenue. She also went behind my back and betrayed me in the worst way since I started my business. If I was to do it again, I would never have trusted Lady B and I would never have confided in her.

So – essentially, I think that since these things keep happening, there must be something that I bring to the table as well. In each situation I made mistakes for sure, but I think there must be some larger, umbrella-mistake I am making to be a target for these people. I was the target of “mean girl” behaviour from some family members growing up, so maybe it is Freud’s repetition compulsion – I have to keep repeating this situation until it is resolved. Or perhaps I was just unhappy for other reasons in the situations above, and was looking for excuses to leave. Or – maybe it is just me seeking chaos in m life, right when the storm has calmed a bit.

Some of it, I believe, is a really toxic dynamic of women in the workplace, but I don’t believe it happens to all women. So – I am going to try to work through it in my current situation, and journal it here, using the advice from various experts. I hope this can help others as well. Here is the background on my current situation:

Soccer Mom: Soccer Mom is on the management team of one of my current clients. She is well-respected in the organization, and has played a key role in building the business. She is determined and warm and really loves her kids, and was very congratulatory when my son was born in January. However, she keeps coming in and trying to manage my projects. She will manage on top of me, telling my vendors what to do and causing a lot of confusion. She will also source new vendors without my knowing, with a brief that does not make sense for the project. Unfortunately, she does not have the technical background or experience to be able to do this work, so it always ends up being a mess. I wish she would simply stick to what she knows and is good at, rather than encroaching on what I am doing.

So – rather than this turning into another situation that drives me crazy at the time, and leads to regret, I am going to try a few different things. First, I will follow Bob Sutton’s advice. He is the author of The No Asshole Rule and has a lot to say in his article: Latest Tips for Surviving Workplace Assholes. Here is my plan:

Limit Contact: Although it is hard to avoid her, I can minimize my contact. I have tried that in the past, and that has worked so I will continue.

Polite Confrontation: I will talk to her about the situation and see. She does not seem “crazy” so hopefully a polite confrontation will help her see how much this is bothering me and why.

Practice Indifference and Emotional Detachment: I think obsessing about it is not healthy for me, so I will work on not letting it bother me so much and focus on the positive things (my son/husband, projects in my work I am enjoying, friends, working in the garden etc) – perhaps this will make the confrontation easier as well.

Practice “Small Wins”: I will try to think of ways to practice small wins so she will leave me alone.

So – stay tuned for updates!

1st Place – Female Self-Loathing – Charlotte Allen

Article: We Scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Get?
Published by: The Washington Post
Quotes:
"Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true."
"I am perfectly willing to admit that I myself am a classic case of
female mental deficiencies. I can’t add 2 and 2 (well, I can, but then
what?). I don’t even know how many pairs of shoes I own."
Counterpoint:
Pandagon – Shorter Charlotte Allen
"She might as well have typed, over and over, “Women suck, oh my god,
women suck, I hate women so much, doesn’t everyone hate women, how can
women not just commit suicide they are so intolerable?” I’m sort of
stunned. She can’t actually think this about women so thoroughly—the
cognitive dissonance between hating women so much and being one would
probably send her babbling to the corner, shaking and rocking, unable
to form complete sentences."

2nd Place – Female Self-Loathing – Susan Pinker

Book: The Sexual Paradox
Published by: Scribner
Book Premise:
"The hormones predominant in men lead to action, focus and, often, to
competitive and rigidly hierarchical professions such as law. Women’s
hormones lead them to focus on empathy and social interaction, and
careers as teachers or social workers. Thus, despite their early
advantages—girls have better language skills and discipline, while boys
are more prone to dyslexia, autism and Asperger syndrome and other
difficulties—women tend not to seek out the highest status or the most
lucrative careers."

Counterpoint
The Vancouver Sun
"She is quick to dismiss gender discrimination as a cause of these
disparities, instead giving examples of attempts that non-traditional
industries have been making to attract women. However, study after
study shows that discrimination is still an important factor in women’s
lack of advancement in non-traditional sectors. In fact, a 2007 report
by the UN’s International Labor Organization found that around the
world, women are hampered by labour discrimination that keeps them from
top positions in their fields."

Conclusion:

“The puzzle is why the idea of sex differences continues to be so controversial,” the New York Times quotes Pinker. To me, it is not saying that men and women that are different that is annoying. It is the idea that women are different than men, and should therefore accept lower pay and lower status. It is especially annoying, since this is coming from women themselves! God – we are still in a revolution here – we can’t give up now when we have come this far! So – you can go ahead and hate yourselves Charlotte and Susan. Me and my nieces are going to love ourselves, keep being ambitious, acknowledge and fight discrimination when we see it and keep shooting for more lucrative careers.

Also, my boyfriend and I are pretty affectionate with each other, so it was strange that this guy did not get the hint. As the looks continued, I tried to make it clear that I was not interested in him with body language, but to no avail.

So – I asked my boyfriend to please turn around and glare at the guy, so he would stop. But, it didn’t make a difference. He kept staring and staring all the way through dessert. At the end of the dinner my boyfriend (so I heard second-hand from him, I was around the corner by then) went up to the starer and stood closely to him and stared at him while saying nothing. The starer’s friends started to notice, and he said “can I help you?”, my boyfriend said “let me ask you a question, do you like being stared at?” the guy said no to which he replied “keep that in mind” and he walked out the door. The guy was clearly embarrassed.

I am not making a big deal out of this little vignette – a guy like that is so common that it is not even worth a story (even on a blog !)– except for the sweet and colorful reaction from my boyfriend. But, there have been a few incidents in the past year… a guy not leaving me alone in the 24-hour-grocery-store parking lot then following my car home  after I was picking up cat food for example. Don’t I have the right to go and get cat food after a late night working for god’s sake?

As women, we tend to think that there is this unknown, dangerous presence around as though it was a natural phenomenon… but really, they are just men. And calling them on it and making them feel embarrassed takes the power away from the feeling of helplessness that a woman can feel. Obviously, I could not call the guy in the parking lot for safety reasons – but my boyfriend’s heroic effort at the bar the other night was a good example. But sadly, even when the situation isn’t particularly dangerous, we are just to passive and nice (esp Canadians) to do anything about it.

Disarming that dangerous presence would take a humongous effort and a radical change in our gender roles… but imagine what the world would be like if a woman could feel safe wherever she went… even to a restaurant or a grocery store.   

I found this to be a very interesting overview of the book that I am listening to Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher. It is about how our popular culture is poisonous to young girls.

I wonder why on one hand, we have this standard of beauty that is unattainable by most of the population (skinny, big boobs, plastic surgery etc) and then we relish seeing these people humiliate themselves? Is it jealousy (we think we see our husbands/boyfriends attracted to these women then are happy that they are so flawed) or some sort of female self-loathing – women hating women?

Why is there, everywhere we go, images of woman humiliating themselves… without balanced images of men doing the same thing? These celebrity news items are on TV, on the internet news sites,  at the check-outs, in the newspapers, and flashed on screens in elevators and subways. Why do we need to see anyone humiliating themselves? I hate that that imagery is such a hallmark of our popular culture… and it bothers me to think about what that does to how young girls see themselves.

Generally I am not against all porn, but I do not like the extreme versions since they are very degrading to women and I worry about my nieces and nephews learning about sex through it. There are also some ugly racial stereotypes shown in porn – the submissive Asian female for example. Some of the men I know have said that since they did not have much guidance from parents or sex education, they thought of porn as a kind of training vehicle for sex… which is scary considering some of the degrading-to-women and racist stuff that is being portrayed. According to Jenson, the fastest growing segment of the porn market is the extreme and violent kind.

There is no doubt that porn affects our sexual imagination. What does this mean for men who are using porn as a ‘training vehicle’? What does this mean to women who see porn? Jenson’s conclusion at the end of the book is to simply "end" being a man, and start focusing on what it means to be human. He says that the whole construct of being a man including the ideas of conquest, control, aggression and violence are too difficult to reform – so instead he wants to start from scratch. Given the gender crisis we are in, he says he wants to do away with the rigid notions of being a man or a women, he wants to focus on being a human being instead. Sounds good to me.

Gerry was a realist – admitting that he worried about the risks that took and about the mistakes that he made. He also mentioned that when assessing a risk, he spent much more of his time weighing the potential pitfalls in the risk, rather than the potential upside, which I found to be very good advice for an entrepreneur.

Perhaps since Heather and Gerry are married, a questioner at the end of the interview said something to the effect that "behind every great man is a great woman", to which Gerry replied:

I don’t think that is true. Some entrepreneurs are single. Some are homosexual. Some are women themselves. But, I will tell you about how great it is to have a partner.

I thought this was a wonderful response, because Gerry as an older, straight man could have taken the traditional route and waxed poetic about his wife and her supporting role in his life. Although his statement did not reflect the reality and questioning the fairness that a woman is ‘behind’ a man, I thought that his answer was a great step in the right direction.

But – a couple of movies I have seen lately have changed that. The first is Stranger than Fiction‘s tax evading Ana Pascal played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Although she is a love interest, she is one full of life and character. She refuses to pay her tax on principle, she is outspoken and rebellious and she has some great tattoos. In short – she is awesome. 

Another interesting female character I saw recently was Rocket Science‘s Ginny Ryerson played by Anna Kendrick. She is a fast-talking debate champion who will do anything to win. This fresh-faced girl is a departure from the way that teenage girls are usually portrayed in movies in so many ways: she is smart, not wearing revealing clothing, focused, talented and has some inner conflict. Wow.

Hopefully next time the producers will make these characters the stars of the movies… because already they shine.

Hey there Eddy
I know times are getting hard
But just believe me boy
Someday I’ll pay the bills with this guitar
We’ll have it good
We’ll have the life we knew we would
My word is good

So – why can’t Delilah pay her own bills? Why does she need someone to rescue her this way?

Hey there Eddy
You be good and don’t you miss me
Two more years and you’ll be done with school
And I’ll be making history like I do
You’ll know it’s all because of you
We can do whatever we want to
Hey there Eddy here’s to you
This ones for you

It looks like Delilah’s highest ambition is to finish school, and the singer’s highest ambition is to make history. Well, it doesn’t sound quite like an equal relationship does it?

I am so tired of hearing so many young girls born in the 80s say that they are just waiting to marry rich… I just want better for them than that. I want them to try at life and pass and fail and feel what it is like to do things their own way. Then relationships can be about love and companionship rather than about how fat the guy’s wallet is.

But hey, I guess lots of people value that Cinderella fantasy more than they value their daughters/nieces/sisters/aunts/mothers/wives/friends/girlfriends/lovers making the most of who they are.