What is the best way to respond to sexual harassment disguised as humor?
Let me admit that I collect great responses to bullying remarks the way some women clip coupons. These rejoinders are useful, free, and they can help you save what counts: time, energy and sanity. My current favorites may be apocryphal but they are nonetheless instructive for that. The way that fables are invented and yet contain truth, so do these. So that while it’s true that we can’t always come up with the perfect answer, at least we should set up as possible heroines those women who have.
For example, after Liz Carpenter worked for the Johnson administration she wrote a book about her experiences working at the White House. The book was out for a while, did pretty well. One evening she met Arthur Schlesinger at a cocktail party. He came over to her and smiled and said “Like your book Liz. Who wrote it for you?”
Now, clearly dear Arthur meant this as his little joke. If she had stammered and blushed, he would win the point. He could then say, “see, you just can’t joke around with these women.” If she’d pounded her fist on the table and threatened to call a lawyer, he could say the same thing.
Instead what Carpenter did was to say in response, “Glad you liked it, Arthur. Who read it to you?”
All she did was take his format and adapt it for her own purposes.
Now, joking at the joker’s expense is equivalent to going out to dinner with a con artist who expects to stick you with the bill and refusing to be his victim — whether that means calling him on his game or walking out of the restaurant before he does. When we find ourselves in this sort of situation, someone else has begun a game they expect to win at our expense.
We are allowed to prevent this from happening. We know that. Sort of.
The trouble is, most of us have been brought up to be so concerned with putting the welfare of others before our own that we can’t let ourselves come back with a great comeback. Most of the women I know laugh at Carpenter’s line but then catch themselves staring at the following concerns: What if Arthur Scheslinger is secretly illiterate? What if his father is dyslexic? What if his kid needs Hooked on Phonics? Then we feel like we should volunteer for the Literacy Action committee four nights a week as penance for uncharitable thoughts.
But I firmly believe that the male jokers do not worry about the female jokee’s response. And this doesn’t mean we have to become vicious versions of the worst male stereotypes; but it is an illustration of the expectation embedded in our culture that you can say what you want to a woman because she’s not going to talk back. Freud’s framework for the effectiveness of the smutty joke, for example, rests on the twinning of female shame and silence. If the female onlooker refuses to supply both of these reactions, the jokes fall flat. In the case of nasty stories, this is a good thing.
Then the next round begins. Oh sure, it’s easy for a secure and successful woman who already knows the man baiting her to come up with a snappy response, but what about the rest of us? What if you never even use a word like snappy? What happens if the only response you can think of is one that makes you sound like a whining nerd or a shrill hysteric? Because we fear exactly these two possibilities, we gulp down embarrassment and rage and remain silent. But we wish we hadn’t.
Everyone has a story. Once the subject is raised, usually in an all-woman group, there is an astonishing collective and bottomless desire to recite quite simply and in alphabetical order every instance of intellectual and sexual harassment we’ve ever experienced.
(Brainstorm illustration incorporating photos by Flickr users nyki_m and g-hat)
