The New Workplace Sexism: Thinking Chicks Are Hot

Aug 14, 2010

Last week The American Prospect revealed an unsettling workplace trend. This discovery is completely unanticipated, so prepare to be shocked.
When female coworkers are out of earshot, men sometimes talk about them.  Just awful, right?  And guys aren’t just discussing the work habits of their female colleagues — occasionally they mention their looks!
This is the new “sexual harassment”: not the groping, fondling, and obscene comments of yesteryear, but “what’s said about [women] when their backs are turned.” According to the Prospect‘s Ann Friedman, “behind-their-back comments are also intimidation and bullying of a sexual nature.” And this indirect harassment is even worse than dealing with run-of-the-mill lewdness from male coworkers.

[G]iven that networking and reputation are keys to success in many professions, what people say about you is arguably more important than what they say to your face. If your professional contacts are talking about your legs rather than your résumé, you’re at a disadvantage. I know how to handle direct sexist comments. It’s much harder to think about how to shut down a conversation about me that I may not even be aware of.

Watch out, guys: if you’re hanging out at the bar after work, be sure to limit the leg talk to women who aren’t coworkers. Unless, of course, the owners of said legs are around to “handle” the comments.  Got it?
Friedman describes some of the other conversations that would be off limits in her Utopian vision of a world in which men no longer talk about attractive women:

Some of the guys you talk to about women are our friends — and they tell us what you’re saying. That’s how I found out that a female editor I know had garnered a totally unwarranted reputation as a flirt. How I know that a certain male editor likes to make side comments about the bodies of female interns. How I heard about an older male co-worker who wistfully expressed that he wishes he were 20 years younger so he could hit on the young women at the office.

So, let me get this straight. It’s intimidation and bullying for a man to pine for his youth when he would have had a better chance with young women at the office. It’s harassment for a guy to talk to his office buddies about the way interns look. And gossiping about the flirty personality of a coworker is completely out of bounds (when men do it).
Where exactly is the chauvinism here?
There’s nothing sexist about guys digging chicks and vice versa.  In fact, I’ll let Ann Friedman in on a little secret: it’s kind of how we keep the human species going.  Simply talking about who’s hot (or not) is a common and harmless pastime, even when it involves one’s colleagues.  And if Friedman was honest, she’d admit that talking about how coworkers look is something both sexes engage in. Equally.
But this isn’t about honesty, it’s about grievance mongering. Club Victimhood is open for business and Friedman is on hand to distribute all access passes.  Dreaming up new classes of oppression and new categories of victimhood is how the so-called feminists on the Left build support for their movement.  As with all flavors of Marxism, leftist feminism can’t exist without ginned up resentment among the “oppressed.”  The social revolution will never come if the Left allows people to be content with their lives and secure in their equality as human beings.
And so we have the latest complaint for the perpetually aggrieved to latch onto: indirect sexual harassment.  Have fun at work on Monday, fellas!