I begin this column wearing sackcloth and ashes. The Keren Sam I so proudly introduced last fortnight as a young male feminist turns out to be a young female feminist instead. I apologise most sincerely to Keren for this error but, as I told her in a subsequent email, it does not take away any of my admiration for her. May her tribe increase. Meanwhile, someone called Vishnu has also mailed me about being a feminist, but I am so terrified it will turn out to be a Vishnupriya, that I will say nothing about it.
On to my piece. In a week when the U.S. did not elect its first woman president, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the glass ceiling. I am personally not heartbroken that Hillary Clinton didn’t win. I don’t think she should have been voted to office because she’s a woman. She should have won because she was a terrific candidate. Sadly, she was not. The downside to her losing is that a batty misogynist like Donald Trump has come to power. But early reports show that one possible reason he won was because the Democrats were so disillusioned with their candidate, a lot of them did not go out to vote.
Against the blatant misogyny of Trump, the Americans had Hillary defending women’s rights. The same Hillary who faces serious allegations of having discredited and threatened women her husband had sexually assaulted or had had affairs with. Even as Monica Lewinsky’s life was being systematically destroyed, Hillary dismissed her as a “narcissistic, loony toon”. She is accused of threatening Juanita Broaddrick, one of her husband’s alleged rape victims, into silence. In another case, she dismissed a 12-year-old alleged rape victim as an emotionally-damaged young girl, who fantasised about older men. For me, misogyny in women is infinitely more menacing and depressing.
In some ways, Hillary comes across as someone playing by men’s locker-room rules. In negotiating what’s still a man’s world, do women feel forced to act more abrasive, more cut-throat? How does this play out in ordinary lives?
At least two women spoke to me recently about facing hostile attitudes and comments from male supervisors in their respective workplaces. Attitudes that appear at face value to be directed at them because they are seen as demanding power or challenging a stand when they are expected only to shut up and sit down. My first reaction to these scenarios usually is that one must respond to the situation rather than the gender. Each boss or colleague is unique and fixing generic labels doesn’t work.
But here is another reality. A woman I know has a reputation of being a disciplinarian. When she recently took on a new role, one of the first things her superior told her was to “go easy” on her team. Many years ago, I remember being told, again by a man, that I must make my emails more ‘gentle’ because people get upset by brisk, businesslike epistles from a woman . Nobody complains about brisk epistles from men because that is just efficiency.
So, in episodes similar to those I mention above, the women are usually counselled to grin and bear it when male bosses act tough. But in a reverse scenario: if a young male worker complains about an aggressive female boss, the fallout is different. The woman is usually asked to tone down her voice and body language. And in private conversations, she is quickly labelled “a b****”, forgive my language.
This is no apology for bad bosses, men or women. There is no call for discourtesy in the workplace, an attitude I find stupid. And neither do female bosses need to be extra hostile to prove a point. But in the ways in which we treat these encounters, we need to be much more even-handed. Mostly, though, we need to drown male rules in those selfsame locker rooms and write new ones.
PS: To loop back to the US elections, please can we stop shaming Melania Trump? If she was a model or posed for a centrefold, it’s her body, her business.
