Good Morning.
I figure if Claire McCaskill and Gretchen Carlson can talk about sexual assault and discrimination, I can too. Some people have stated that the complaints should have been forthcoming decades ago, but it was a very different time then. I grew up in an era when people didn't discuss anything of a personal or difficult nature. They didn't talk about health matters other than the common cold or a case of poison ivy. They didn't even hint at financial struggles. They didn't reveal any form of abuse that was going on at home or anywhere else. It was the lot of women, particularly, to soldier on, often under dreadful conditions.
I was assaulted by my dentist during a routine checkup during the summer after my junior year in college. I was twenty years old and he was in his fifties, a married man with a couple of kids and someone my father had known for years. I was reclined in the dental chair with freshly cleaned teeth when this jerk suddenly climbed on top of me. I screamed loudly enough to scare him off, bolted out the door, and went home, but I never said a word about it to anyone. Before I was due for another check up, I got married and left town, but here's the thing: if I'd wanted to switch dentists, I would have had to provide my parents with a reason and I'm not sure they would have believed me about what was clearly a sexual assault. It just didn't happen in most people's minds in 1964. The phrase didn't even exist. The word sex wasn't even uttered in polite company.
I am one of the lucky ones. The ambush at the dentist's' office was the only incident of its kind that I ever experienced, but I certainly was discriminated against in the workplace. The most interesting situation involved an unmarried male boss who expected me to travel a great deal for my job, far more than had been presented in my job description. He had hired another woman who was also supposed to travel, but she wasn't good in the field and I had to fill in for her as well, all for a pathetic salary. At the time I was a single parent with a teenage daughter who called me after school to let me know she was home and safe. The call would last less than a minute, but the boss didn't like it. After one two week stretch of being on the road with another week coming up after only one day at home, I informed him that I couldn't continue to maintain that sort of schedule, that I had responsibilities at home. I asked him why the other, childless staff member couldn't travel for her own work and he said that she ticked people off and he couldn't send her to meetings. A week later I had my evaluation and he brought up the phone calls and my reluctance to be gone for weeks at a time. "You have to decide whether you're going to have a career or be a mother," he told me, to which I replied, "No problem, you'll have my resignation in the morning." The career to which he referred never really recovered after that, but it was the correct decision, and fortunately, my daughter has worked for more reasonable men, i.e. she's been able to take time off for a sick child or a doctor's appointment without recrimination. When I had to go to a school meeting on one occasion, I was charged with vacation time. It didn't matter that I often did seminars on weekends; an hour away from my desk on a Thursday was unacceptable. There's no way a male employee would have been treated that way, and anyone who thinks otherwise is cuckoo in the head.
Here's the deal. This sort of atrocious and even criminal behavior needs to stop, but it won't unless people, both male and female, yell about it loudly enough to be heard on the back side of the moon. For starters, that means you don't work for an employer who does it, socialize with someone who does it, or elect someone who does it.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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