The NYTimes has an article about women in the workplace... no, not women fighting convention and breaking the glass ceilings, or revolutionizing cultures to reach new levels of productivity and worker satisfaction... instead we get:
Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work
Nauseating excerpts include:“I’ve been sabotaged so many times in the workplace by other women, I finally left the corporate world and started my own business,” said Roxy Westphal, who runs the promotional products company Roxy Ventures Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz. She still recalls the sting of an interview she had with a woman 30 years ago that “turned into a one-person firing squad” and led her to leave the building in tears.Because petty fights and employees' lack of maturity really defines an entire gender's worth of workplace dynamics.
Today, about half of Televerde’s corporate office is made up of “graduates” from [her mentor program in Arizona's state prison], including Michelle Cirocco, the director of sales operations. She has seen how women treat one another in other settings and she thinks the root cause is that women are taught to fight with one another for attention at an early age. “We’re competing with our sisters for dad’s attention, or for our brother’s attention,” Ms. Cirocco said. “And then we go on in school and we’re competing for our teachers’ attention. We’re competing to be on the sports team or the cheer squad.”Aaaaack! "Haha, because no WEIRDO would seek out any positive female role models! What, Mom???!!! She's just a housewife, and all she does is fold my shirts wrong and cry all the time after drinking the cooking sherry!" Women BUY INTO THIS! Ladies, really?
Everyone is capable of playing office mind games...meaning everyone has the potential to be a horrible person. Men and woman ALIKE. Why is this about women bullies? Why not ALL office bullies?
Getting down to it, I think attention is only being paid since women have so recently entered the work force en masse. And I understand that. What needs to be acknowledged, though, is that men set up the patriarchal bureaucracies that women have to contend with still today in the working world, private and public sectors alike. When we can't play nice it doesn't merit psychological profiling. It merits an overhaul of the system that does nothing to change its course and instead encourages it, and takes voyeuristic pleasure in exposing these "cat fights." This is nonsense.
Bill Maher did the same thing to me on Real Time this Sunday (meaning make my eyeballs pop out) when he talked about men's predisposition to cheat. Particularly middle aged, white, Washington-ian inclined men. That tiny slice of American culture that is shoved in the public eye on a daily basis, and who's dirty laundry is the bread and butter of our gossip-mongers (sorry, couldn't resist those mixed metaphors). The ones with inflated egos who never face the consequences of their crimes except those that violate their marriage vows - whether they be fiscal or even against humanity.
I knew Maher was a often hilarious jerk, but until now I hadn't realized his disdain for women. At first I thought it was just him playing devil's advocate to his pundits as per usual, but he went on and on as though women just shrivel up and die socially after a certain age, content with nesting and squawking about material possessions and (surprise surprise) attention. And don't get me started about the ha-ha-I'm-not-homophobic-gay-jokes he and Seth MacFarlane were into the whole time (but it's ok we're for gay marriage!). Thank goodness for a bit of help from author Naomi Klein, who chimed in from time to time with the overwhelming task of "representing all women" against these snickering jerks.
That these supposedly liberal media venues are really perpetuating this drivel about women makes me livid. Here, let me pick and choose which human rights to support in my material as they suit my individual needs and wants - and bids for attention.
