DISTURBING HEADSETS

I have a pretty cool mobile phone. I got one that has a GPS function on it so I can look up maps and figure out where I am and get directions and all that good stuff. So, probably because it's a fairly cool and somewhat expensive phone, it came with one of those bluetooth headsets.

I've never used it before, mostly because the only people I've ever seen using them were the worst kinds of salespeople. You know, the ones who give salespeople a bad name. Self-important people who drive BMWs and think they're really cool. I never really saw a reason for one.

But then, of course, I noticed that they wear them a lot on, say, 24. Or Chuck. Or whatever spy-type show you watch.

Still didn't think much of it.

However, I have a really long commute home from the office, and occasionally I think it would be good to talk to someone on the phone for one reason or another. And I've had moments where I thought, hmm, I should go dig up that headset.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting up with some people. I'll be driving to pick them up. So all of a sudden the headset seems like a good idea. So I charged it up, and just called someone to test it out.

Here's the thing: using it is really disturbing.

When you talk to a person, you see the person, and you're talking to them. When you talk on the phone, you still have the feeling of talking to an object, which is a surrogate "them." Conference calls, calls coming through the radio of your car, whatever--still, the voice is coming out of an object, and you are directing your voice toward that object, so you still have that sensation of a two-way conversation with an object.

Put an earpiece in, and suddenly, the feeling of having an object you're communicating with is removed. I'm not looking at a phone and talking to it. I don't really feel the earpiece, it just seems like the voice is inside my head.

Now I know how crazy people feel.

I AM HORRIFIED

I thought I couldn't get more horrified with the state of politics in the U.S. I really thought I couldn't. But this business of McCain saying that if women really want to be paid the same as men they should get more education and training and not have it written into law is just appalling.

The fact that the Supreme Court overruled in the case of one of the most blatant cases of gender-based pay inequity is stupefying.

And the fact that we couldn't get the law modified into something reasonable is mind-numbing.

Up until recently, I was referring to McCain as not so bad. I think it is now safe to say that not only will he never, ever, ever get a vote from me, but I will do my best to ensure that everyone I know who has a vote knows just how I feel about him, and how he feels about women.

Just for the record, my general political views are as follows: I'm an independent. I currently lean more toward Democratic or Green Party candidates and policies. I have been voting for a very long time, and I have placed at least one vote for a Republican who was the best candidate. As time goes by, this is becoming less and less likely to be repeated.

I was a child prodigy. The last time my IQ was tested, it was measured at 168. I work in a traditionally male field. For the most part, I have found my gender irrelevant when it comes to work and school. I have occasionally had to "prove myself" to other team members based on the fact that I can look people in the eye and converse with them, and people tend to believe that if you can do this, you must not be a truly smart geek, but this doesn't bother me and has nothing to do with gender.

I've only been on the receiving end of sexism in a work or educational environment, oh, four or five times. If anything, people like having a girl on the geek team, which is nice. I don't scream "sexism" if I am the only woman in the group, because there are fewer women in the candidate pool, and obviously anyone who has hired me has hired a woman and is therefore less likely to be sexist. I am not in any way subject to sexism in my current job.

However.

Sexism f-ing exists. It's not a thing of the past. There are more and less overt examples of it.

On the very very mild side is someone making an inappropriate comment. Don't get me wrong--I think it harms feminism more than helps when you get all bent out of shape over a gender generalization. If someone says to me, "Pah, women and their shopping," I don't take issue with that, because it's meant teasingly, and I will very likely say, "Pah, men and their [[fill in the blank]]" in the same kind of joking fashion.

The kinds of inappropriate comments I mean are not ones that are paraphrases of "women tend to have different tastes". They're of the "women have lesser abilities" variety. While I have no objection to someone making a comment about women liking shoes, I will take issue with anyone who says that women are not as good at math or can't read a map. Inappropriate sexual comments can also fall into this category.

99.9% of these are just unthinking, and if you have a quiet word with the person in question, and let them know how you feel, they will feel terrible because offending was not their intention, they will apologize, and it will never happen again. Most of the people have just not identified it as gender biased, and if you're not a jerk about it, they'll start thinking about it in the future.

I experience this kind of thing all the time, and I don't think much of it, because I've never experienced it in the extreme. I've been on the mild end of the scale: yeah, I get "women can't read maps" all the time (which is rubbish), but I haven't been in an environment where I was working as a mathematician and had to hear people, all day, every day, make comments about how they should double-check my work because chicks can't add.

Higher up the scale are actions that relate to work, and these also run the gamut from mild to outrageous. Here are a couple of mild ones that I've run into:

1. I worked as a customer service representative for a while, and at the company I was at, the manager of our department would occasionally go out after work with the men in the department and visit a strip club. Because this was after hours, at first I thought, no biggie, it's his business. However, when it came promotion time, who are you going to promote? The random women in the department that you have little interaction with, or your drinking buddies? In the end, it DID affect work.

Later on, this same manager started to call these male employees into his office so he could show them the latest porn that he had downloaded. This is when I decided to say something. This is what is known as "having a quiet word." I just said, "listen, it's really not okay for a manager to be looking at porn in the office with his male suboordinates." I said that I wasn't trying to get anyone in trouble, but I wasn't okay with it, and that he should consider not doing it any more.

He had an absolute fit and made my life uncomfortable after that. Eventually, I just quit. Now I might take it farther--not for myself, but because I don't believe that just quitting rectifies the problem for any women who might work there in the future.

Again, in this case, the reasonable response, I think, would have been, "You know, I hadn't thought of it that way, you're right. It won't happen again." Acknowledging that it is a litigious society, I'm also okay with, "Look, I'm not going to say that it did or did not happen, I'll just say that I'll ensure it doesn't happen in the future," or something along those lines. A flat-out refusal to stop the behavior is not okay.

2. I have worked at more than one company who, in the absence of a receptionist, decided that the solution was to have all of the women in the office (or department) take turns answering the phones. As I mentioned at the time, unless I am actually answering the phone with my vagina, this is not an acceptable policy. In the second case, which was just a few years ago, I had another "quiet word." I knew of one woman who had quit already and had believed the company to be sexist, and I knew this wasn't going to help the image. I said, "Look, I know you didn't intend this to be sexist, but in a company this size, you can't afford any policies that even look sexist. I'd really recommend having at least one man on the list of telephone answerers."

Again, the manager to whom I spoke responded poorly. It turned into a witch-hunt to find out who had TOLD me that there were no men on the list, which seems to me to be fairly beside the point.

In all of the casees above, there are various shades of grays and greater and lesser degrees of sexism. I honestly believe that just asking all of the women to answer the phone is an example of thoughtlessness. I think that answering the phone has become a traditionally female job, and that it's easy for people to just think, oh, we'll have the women take turns. I think that it's our job to, very nicely, just point out that that's an example of gender bias, and that it's the person on the receiving end's job to say, "Huh, I hadn't realised that," and to rectify the situation, and for everyone to move on and think no more of it.

However, there is one more, higher degree of sexism, which is rife in particular industries such as banking and bond trading, and relatively nonexistent in others. Even this has degrees, but I actually believe that it's unacceptable at all levels, and goes beyond simple thoughtlessness.

This has to do with role occupation, promotion, and salary. It's the most egregious by far.

In its mildest and most common form, this type of sexism manifests itself in gender role stereotyping. I will never expect to see a 50/50 balance of women and men in all roles in all companies, because that's not actually representative of the workforce. As I said before, I work in a traditionally male field, and I would be very surprised to see an even gender split.

However, mine is a specialized field for which you pretty much need higher education, and I would expect to see the split to roughly reflect the split at university. When it comes to jobs which require less education/experience, such as secretarial and general sales roles, or management in a general sense, I would expect the gender split to be more even.

Almost every job I have ever had has had primarily women in the support roles, men in the sales departments, and men in management. If a promotion happens from within, nine times out of ten it has been a man whom I have seen promoted. Strangely, the exception to this rule has been in scientific types of roles, including computer science.

I've seen the pools of applicants at various times, and it just doesn't add up. We've been in the work force long enough that this B.S. John McCain is spouting about not having education and experience can be recognized as just that--B.S. We have degrees. We have experience. If we lack the experience in managerial positions, it is because we have been passed up come promotion time because of our gender. Period. We can't get the experience that jerks like you refuse to give us.

If you cannot see that, after being in the workforce for 80 years, things should be a little more equal, then you're blind.

Being paid less salary-wise is even more egregious. I'm sorry, but if a woman worked as a supervisor for Goodyear for 20 years, and at the end of that 20 years was making roughly 15% less than the lowest-paid man in the same position--a man who had less seniority--how DARE you say that the problem is that she lacks seniority.

The law that Goodyear got off on is antiquated. It says that you have to report the abuse from the day it starts, not the day you find out about it. A law that says that you can't file abuse charges because it's been continuous for 20 years and you've just now found out should be changed. Period.

Okay, Mr. McCain. You said that gender-based pay inequity doesn't exist. Fine! Then in what way do you have a problem with saying that if it is found to exist, then a company has to pay?

We're talking here about GENDER-BASED inequity. That means inequity that is based, uh, you know, solely on gender. It's kind of in the name. That means that in the court, we have to prove that the inequity isn't reflective of inequal experience, inequal education, or inequal anything-but-gender.

You have so lost any hope of any kind of vote from me, ever, it's not even funny.