The XX Factor: What women really think.

Why, Exactly, Is Sexual Harassment—er, Sexual Terrorism—OK?

To your point: I am sorry you had such a brutal work environment, and sorry that the sexuality was "the least of it." I understand that low-wage jobs are brutal. Many in my extended family, and from my high school, have worked or do work Nickel-and-Dimed jobs: trucking, waitressing, cashiering, retail, construction. (Although the men's jobs regularly pay more than the women's.) Glad you don't have to live that way now.

But I have to say, reading your post, I'm not exactly sure why you think sexual harassment is OK. Because it's the least of it? Um, not always. And why should anyone have to tolerate the kind of sexual harassment that's brutal, grinding, daily terrorism? Consider the experience of a teen who worked at a Pizza Hut, whose co-worker rubbed his, um, "private parts" (as she put it in the deposition that I read) against her bottom whenever she was at the cash register, who held a knife to her throat when demanding sex and then said he was "just kidding," who threw her to the floor and dry-humped her and would have actually raped her except that the manager walked in. When the teen complained, her manager cut her hours.

Or the Peerless Park, Mo., Burger King workers whom I talked with at length, who were so traumatized by similar daily grindings and attempted assaults that one—call her "Ellen," because she asked me for pseudonymity—told me that whenever she saw a car like that of her former manager, she stopped being able to breathe, and had to go immediately home and lock herself in the house for a day. This was two years later. She'd never heard the term PTSD, and when I gently suggested counseling—although that's not a journalist's place!—she told me she couldn't afford it.  

Or how about the Montgomery, Ill., Dial factory cleaning woman who was assaulted by her manager—by assaulted, I mean an attempted rape that was interrupted when someone else came into the room (I read excerpts of this sworn testimony too)—in a case in which 100 different women went on the record about such horrific harassment as being stalked and threatened; grabbed by the crotch and lifted into the air; or circled by men on the factory floor, grabbed, their heads shoved toward some guy's unzipped crotch. Or was that last one the Ford case? Or Eveleth Taconite? Or Mitsubishi? Sorry, I have talked to so many of these women, and read the depositions and written testimony in so many of these lawsuits, that I get them mixed up. They're brutal. They're designed to keep women in the lower-paying jobs on the ladder. They're inexcusable.

And I haven't even gotten into what happens to women in the financial services industry—it's too gross to post. For the ugly details, check out Susan Antilla's stunning book, Tales from the Boom-Boom Room.

All this should be illegal. Oh wait—it is!—because it alters the "terms and conditions" of keeping a job, based on a woman's sex, making it impossible for her to earn a fair living.

The good news: Rachel Spicuglia got her job back. The bad news: Hundreds of thousands of other women still have to fend off exhausting and dehumanizing sexualized threats if they want to keep bringing home their skinny pink paychecks. And in a bad economy, that's very bad news for women. 

Waitress Loses Job Because She Was Sexually Assaulted. Ho-Hum, Another Day of Working While Female!

While we wonder whether our sensitivity to sexist press coverage of elite women candidates is a good or bad sign—thanks and welcome to XX Factor, Eve—ordinary working women out there are still losing their jobs because some guy thinks their breasts double as doorknobs, available for anyone to squeeze. Check out Rebekah Spicuglia's painfully specific post about how her sister lost her waitressing job at Chili's. Notice the very best part:

When my sister, Rachel Spicuglia, a five-year employee of Chili's Restaurant (owned by Brinker International), reported to her manager the escalating sexual harassment she was receiving from the cooks, which had culminated in an assault that morning in the walk-in refrigerator, the manager asked Rachel if the offending employee had gotten a "full cup" when he had grabbed her breasts.

I post this not because this case is unusual, but precisely because it isn't. This one just happens to be written up publicly. As I found while collaborating on Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even, American companies shell out millions upon millions of dollars each year to make up for truly vile sexual harassment—assault, groping, stalking, and deeply disgusting daily comments. Waitresses in particular should get hazard pay. And the waitress cases aren't as bad as the ones I read involving aspiring electricians, videographers, higher-paid factory workers, women in finance, and other cases in which women try to get "men's" jobs—those stories start reading like terror on the job. 

I'll write more about this another day but reading this just now on HuffPo, I snapped. According to the largest and most credible study—of the federal workforce—approximately 3 percent of women report being sexually assaulted at work. That's millions of women a year. The lower down the food chain you are, the more likely you will be harassed—holding down your earnings significantly while you fight or flee. Which is why sexual harassment is against the law, by the way—because it stops women from earning a fair living.

Why should so many women have to risk their bodily integrity just to feed their families?