Blowjob Jokes And Other Exclusionary Tactics In The Workplace

This piece originally appeared on the Good Men Project. Republished with permission.

When I was 18, I waited tables at an Italian restaurant in my hometown. The staff was the typical collection of teenagers, college drop-outs, townies, and single moms you’d expect at a suburban casual dining establishment. Our boss, Jeff, was an outrageous flirt, but his banter was generally accepted as a harmless, occasionally welcome distraction from the frenzy of the dinner rush. One night, at the pre-dinner staff meeting, Jeff lectured us on the proper cleaning technique for the mini-fridges under the counter. You had to kneel down to get at the back corners, he explained. He paused, pointing to one waitress, “Come on, Kari, you know what it’s like to spend plenty of time on your knees….” And then, while the entire staff looked on, he made the classic tongue-in-cheek blowjob gesture.

At the end of the night, I went to Jeff’s office where he was tallying receipts. I politely told him that I’d found his comment at staff meeting to be offensive. I said that, although we worked in a casual, intimate environment, he was the boss and it was his job to set a higher bar for appropriate humor. He rolled his eyes, pointed to a poster on the wall, and said, “There’s the hot line for sexual harassment if you want to call it.” I didn’t, but I wish that I had.

Jeff’s blowjob gag was not directed at me, and I was not the one being disparaged in front of my coworkers. Kari, the target, may even have found it amusing. At the very least, I didn’t bump into her on the way to Jeff’s office to file my complaint. As an employee of Jeff’s, however, the indirect implications of his joke rippled out and created, for me, a hostile work environment. The joke itself was sexually inappropriate, but the real damage it caused was the condoning of a certain type of objectifying humor. In responding to my rebuke with dismissive hostility, he denied me a safe and comfortable process for discussing my concerns. Jeff was supposed to be the guy I turned to if I felt harassed by another employee. He was supposed to be an impartial and fair resource for the whole staff. Instead, his behavior created a space where that kind of commentary was sanctioned by the management.

Many years later I was at a work event sitting at a table with half a dozen male coworkers I’d never met before. One of them, in casual conversation, used the expression “sucking dick.” The remark wasn’t directed at me and it wasn’t even about oral sex; it was merely a turn of phrase he’d chosen to describe some asexual phenomenon. Mid-sentence, he turned directly to me, “Oh man… I’m… uh, I’m really sorry… Was that offensive? Did that bother you? I didn’t mean to… Well, I hope you weren’t… Yeah…..Sorry.” I assured him his language didn’t bother me in the slightest. He sighed with relief, beginning his story anew. “Wait,” he said, whipping back to me one last time, “Are you a lesbian?” I balked. I don’t think anyone, much less a co-worker, has ever asked me my sexual orientation, point-blank. His question put me in the awkward position of revealing personal information to a slew of colleagues or pointedly refusing in front of the table. I let a raised eyebrow convey my discomfort, and he let the question drop.

After the fact, the whole exchange struck me as preposterous. I had never been offended by the language choice, but I didn’t appreciate being singled out as the only person at the table who might have been. Most of all, I really didn’t like being put on the spot about my sexual orientation.

For many professional women, depending on their industry, the feeling of exclusion is much more subtle and potentially damaging than outright sexism. Had this guy made a sexist comment toward me, I know my rights and my options for defending them. This guy, however, was singling me out for specific comment because of my gender. It’s equivalent to a teacher calling on a black student to ask how he feels about reparation politics. From the moment he asked me, and only me, my feelings on his word choice, it was obvious that I was somehow a different type of colleague than the rest of the table. It was as if, since I didn’t a penis, I was an obstacle to the flow of conversation, instead of a contributor to it.

These kind of exclusionary tactics may seem surface deep—and they are—but they often facilitate professional divisions that damage women’s careers in the long run. A friend of mine had a boss who used to send pictures of women in bikinis to all the men on her team. She found herself excluded from email chains with substantive work content because she hadn’t been included on the original raunchy note. He also prefaced conference calls with, “Hey guys, just want to let you know that Becca is on the line… watch your words!” How inappropriate was their conversation if this sort of preemptive warning was necessary? Suddenly Becca was depicted as an impediment to the project instead of a part of it.

The most important distinction between the restaurant experience and my “Are you a lesbian?” interrogation was the quality of management. I later recounted the dinner conversation to my male supervisor. He laughed with me at the absurdity of it, but he also made sure to ask if I wanted him to intervene on my behalf. I assured him that all was well. I had complete confidence in my boss that, should I ever need his support regarding some gender-related colleague issue, he had my back.

It’s a fine line between, “You look nice today,” “You look nice today” with a leering grin and an ogling chest-level stare, and “You look nice today” if you’re worried that not looking nice might cost you your job. Contextualizing a workplace conversation helps us determine what falls on which side of the harassment line, but it’s still a distinction that’s extremely difficult to articulate, and even harder to prove. A company can’t control the actions or words of an individual employee. They can only set policies that create clear expectations of what is acceptable work behavior and provide an easy, hassle-free avenue to address issues.

I wish I had called that hotline five years ago. Kari may have found Jeff’s blowjob joke hilarious, but my personal level of comfort took a tumble. Everyone deserves a workplace where they feel safe, respected, and heard, and, damn, did that man need a refresher course.

Emily Heist Moss is New Englander in love with Chicago, where she works at a tech start-up. She blogs every day at Rosie Says, and writes regular features for The Good Men Project about dating, relationships, sex and gender. She has also been featured on Jezebel and The Frisky. You can reach her at sayhitorosie@gmail.com. Find her on Twitter @rosiesaysblog.

Photo credit Voxphoto/Flickr

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