Kudos! This is the best article I have seen on this topic. Yes, we are all awful. Too many of us are too far over on the narcissism scale. We use our innate aggression in our own unique ways order to do maximum damage to our “enemies.”
The human ego is boundless and infinitely destructive. The sooner we take off the blinders about the imaginary goodness of human nature, the better. If we just admit that we would do anything to climb up the pecking order, maybe we can disrupt our own worst tendencies a little.
On another note, I hope you retire soon and get started on that reverse handmaid novel. I want to be the first to read it!
Maybe I should start outlining it :) I know it's a three-level society, with one quite hidden :)
I used to write novels several years ago, they're all on Amazon, but I stopped because it was kinda thankless and I sucked at self-promotion. Now I think self-publishing is practically a *requirement* if you want to write anything that isn't super-woke and identity politics-ridden (not to mention insufferably preachy). So the plan would be to be a better self-promoter than I was before, and I got bigger labia now than I had thirteen years ago ;)
That's why power should be as equitably distributed as possible, whether it's racial, cultural, gender, etc.: We can accentuate the best in the others' approaches and temper the worst of same.
Yes, get started! It will flow out of you. Why not start the outline today? We goddess lovers know that the new moon is a great time to start a new project. Just sayin’.
As a woman, I've had my share of terrible male and terrible female bosses. I've also had some great bosses, both male and female. However, one thing that I noticed over the years was that awful male bosses were usually (not always) somewhat easier to deal with than awful female bosses - simply because their awfulness was more *direct* and they seemed to respond better to direct confrontatations.
For example, in my early 20's when I was a cute young thing, I worked for one creep in particular who constantly made inappropriate remarks to me daily, made completely unreasonable demands as far as overtime, and who expected me to manage his rather turbulent personal life in addition to my actual job duties. At first, I was too young and non-assertive and went along with it - but after a few months, I grew some labia and said to him "That is COMPLETELY inappropriate and you need to stop talking to me like that right now," and "No...I will not be able to send flowers to your girlfriend who is angry at you because she caught you sleeping with the landlady. That's a YOU problem and you're going to have to deal with it yourself". He looked shocked for a moment...then laughed and said "hmmm, you've got some spirit!" - and then stopped the behaviors for the most part (and when he forgot, I could give him the stinkeye and he'd be all "oops, sorry - never mind!"). It was almost like he was testing to see how far he could go; and when limits were clearly set, he was OK with it.
I also found with most of my male bosses that they had one or two pet peeves that were hills they clearly were willing to die on; and if you went along with that then you could pretty much do as you liked in everything else. I'm a person who intensely dislikes micro-management, so I'd just figure out the one or two things they were weird about, and then they'd usually let me do my job as I saw fit with a minimum of interference.
On the other hand, I never did figure out how to deal effectively with backstabbing, vindictive female bosses, because the behaviors tended to be underhanded, indirect, and have plausible deniability. It's probably the same reason I tended to not have a lot of female friends in junior high and high school - I'm not really good at picking up on subtext and unspoken social cues. I also noted that the majority of my female bosses (not all of them, but most) were inclined to micromanage, which I found extremely annoying. And there often is a dynamic of a middle-aged or older woman who seems to enjoy being cruel to younger women for no real reason. Now that I'm middle-aged, I try to make a very conscious effort to be kind and to mentor younger colleagues, because I remember being treated so badly by older women when I was in my 20's.
Humans in general are inclined to be awful; and neither sex can claim to be "better" than the other - they just tend to be awful in different ways.
"He looked shocked for a moment...then laughed and said "hmmm, you've got some spirit!" - and then stopped the behaviors for the most part (and when he forgot, I could give him the stinkeye and he'd be all "oops, sorry - never mind!"). It was almost like he was testing to see how far he could go; and when limits were clearly set, he was OK with it.".
Clearly he was, which illustrates something I've commented on in the past: Abusers will test you to see how much crap you're willing to take, and often back off when you set boundaries. It's hard to set those boundaries, though, when you're younger and more clueless. I was around forty when my boss put his hand on my leg and I needed some time to process what I was dealing with first. Today I'd be like, "Sorry, no touching like that."
Women are indeed more underhanded than men, I think; I haven't had any bad female bosses but most of them have been men. And I've only had a few truly bad bosses, most of them for non-sexual harassment reasons, and actually the hand-on-the-leg guy is something I'm still in touch with; I handled it on my own and he never pulled that shit again and we went on to work well together until I moved to Canada. (The story's somewhere on my Substack but I don't remember where; I'll dig it up on request).
Stupid, bad behaviour is sometimes just that and not necessarily indicative that a guy is just evil, like Weinstein. Oftentimes you can move on without feeding the lawyers. And as an American, I *hate* feeding the lawyers ;)
“It's hard to set those boundaries, though, when you're younger and more clueless.”
It definitely is! Looking back, I was really fortunate that my mom and my aunt were both the sort of women who didn’t put up with any crap from anyone so I had some good role models there.
My mom always taught me that if a guy tried to “get fresh” with me, I was well within my rights to smack him, holler “PERVERT!”, kick him in the nuts, whatever. Being the literal-minded sort, on two separate occasions I bit guys who tried to get handsy with me when I was a teenager 😂. Strangely, it seemed to just make both of them more interested in me and they kept calling me and asking me out; which was confusing. Fortunately, I did not have to bite the jerk boss guy - he responded well enough to verbal correction.
OMG that's hysterical! Yeah, they probably thought you were a really kinky chick :) And I'm glad you didn't bite your boss, that could have bought you a date with HR lol. I'm glad though, that you had two women in your life who taught you not to take crap from anyone when you were growing up. If only today's coddled daughters had been taught this...
I’ve had the exact same type of experience. The worst bosses I had were female. The difficult men could be “handled,” like you described.
That said, the good female bosses, never in top positions, were wonderful. The human propensity for bullying, both inside and outside of the workplace, however, is staggering. As a species, we suck.
Kudos! This is the best article I have seen on this topic. Yes, we are all awful. Too many of us are too far over on the narcissism scale. We use our innate aggression in our own unique ways order to do maximum damage to our “enemies.”
The human ego is boundless and infinitely destructive. The sooner we take off the blinders about the imaginary goodness of human nature, the better. If we just admit that we would do anything to climb up the pecking order, maybe we can disrupt our own worst tendencies a little.
On another note, I hope you retire soon and get started on that reverse handmaid novel. I want to be the first to read it!
Maybe I should start outlining it :) I know it's a three-level society, with one quite hidden :)
I used to write novels several years ago, they're all on Amazon, but I stopped because it was kinda thankless and I sucked at self-promotion. Now I think self-publishing is practically a *requirement* if you want to write anything that isn't super-woke and identity politics-ridden (not to mention insufferably preachy). So the plan would be to be a better self-promoter than I was before, and I got bigger labia now than I had thirteen years ago ;)
That's why power should be as equitably distributed as possible, whether it's racial, cultural, gender, etc.: We can accentuate the best in the others' approaches and temper the worst of same.
Yes, get started! It will flow out of you. Why not start the outline today? We goddess lovers know that the new moon is a great time to start a new project. Just sayin’.
Neither sex has a monopoly on awful behavior!
As a woman, I've had my share of terrible male and terrible female bosses. I've also had some great bosses, both male and female. However, one thing that I noticed over the years was that awful male bosses were usually (not always) somewhat easier to deal with than awful female bosses - simply because their awfulness was more *direct* and they seemed to respond better to direct confrontatations.
For example, in my early 20's when I was a cute young thing, I worked for one creep in particular who constantly made inappropriate remarks to me daily, made completely unreasonable demands as far as overtime, and who expected me to manage his rather turbulent personal life in addition to my actual job duties. At first, I was too young and non-assertive and went along with it - but after a few months, I grew some labia and said to him "That is COMPLETELY inappropriate and you need to stop talking to me like that right now," and "No...I will not be able to send flowers to your girlfriend who is angry at you because she caught you sleeping with the landlady. That's a YOU problem and you're going to have to deal with it yourself". He looked shocked for a moment...then laughed and said "hmmm, you've got some spirit!" - and then stopped the behaviors for the most part (and when he forgot, I could give him the stinkeye and he'd be all "oops, sorry - never mind!"). It was almost like he was testing to see how far he could go; and when limits were clearly set, he was OK with it.
I also found with most of my male bosses that they had one or two pet peeves that were hills they clearly were willing to die on; and if you went along with that then you could pretty much do as you liked in everything else. I'm a person who intensely dislikes micro-management, so I'd just figure out the one or two things they were weird about, and then they'd usually let me do my job as I saw fit with a minimum of interference.
On the other hand, I never did figure out how to deal effectively with backstabbing, vindictive female bosses, because the behaviors tended to be underhanded, indirect, and have plausible deniability. It's probably the same reason I tended to not have a lot of female friends in junior high and high school - I'm not really good at picking up on subtext and unspoken social cues. I also noted that the majority of my female bosses (not all of them, but most) were inclined to micromanage, which I found extremely annoying. And there often is a dynamic of a middle-aged or older woman who seems to enjoy being cruel to younger women for no real reason. Now that I'm middle-aged, I try to make a very conscious effort to be kind and to mentor younger colleagues, because I remember being treated so badly by older women when I was in my 20's.
Humans in general are inclined to be awful; and neither sex can claim to be "better" than the other - they just tend to be awful in different ways.
"He looked shocked for a moment...then laughed and said "hmmm, you've got some spirit!" - and then stopped the behaviors for the most part (and when he forgot, I could give him the stinkeye and he'd be all "oops, sorry - never mind!"). It was almost like he was testing to see how far he could go; and when limits were clearly set, he was OK with it.".
Clearly he was, which illustrates something I've commented on in the past: Abusers will test you to see how much crap you're willing to take, and often back off when you set boundaries. It's hard to set those boundaries, though, when you're younger and more clueless. I was around forty when my boss put his hand on my leg and I needed some time to process what I was dealing with first. Today I'd be like, "Sorry, no touching like that."
Women are indeed more underhanded than men, I think; I haven't had any bad female bosses but most of them have been men. And I've only had a few truly bad bosses, most of them for non-sexual harassment reasons, and actually the hand-on-the-leg guy is something I'm still in touch with; I handled it on my own and he never pulled that shit again and we went on to work well together until I moved to Canada. (The story's somewhere on my Substack but I don't remember where; I'll dig it up on request).
Stupid, bad behaviour is sometimes just that and not necessarily indicative that a guy is just evil, like Weinstein. Oftentimes you can move on without feeding the lawyers. And as an American, I *hate* feeding the lawyers ;)
“It's hard to set those boundaries, though, when you're younger and more clueless.”
It definitely is! Looking back, I was really fortunate that my mom and my aunt were both the sort of women who didn’t put up with any crap from anyone so I had some good role models there.
My mom always taught me that if a guy tried to “get fresh” with me, I was well within my rights to smack him, holler “PERVERT!”, kick him in the nuts, whatever. Being the literal-minded sort, on two separate occasions I bit guys who tried to get handsy with me when I was a teenager 😂. Strangely, it seemed to just make both of them more interested in me and they kept calling me and asking me out; which was confusing. Fortunately, I did not have to bite the jerk boss guy - he responded well enough to verbal correction.
OMG that's hysterical! Yeah, they probably thought you were a really kinky chick :) And I'm glad you didn't bite your boss, that could have bought you a date with HR lol. I'm glad though, that you had two women in your life who taught you not to take crap from anyone when you were growing up. If only today's coddled daughters had been taught this...
I’ve had the exact same type of experience. The worst bosses I had were female. The difficult men could be “handled,” like you described.
That said, the good female bosses, never in top positions, were wonderful. The human propensity for bullying, both inside and outside of the workplace, however, is staggering. As a species, we suck.
“People! They’re the worst!” Jerry Seinfeld.