So I've started this post about 20 different times, and this (brief) thought process always quickly ended in me finding anything else to do, like "clean up my iTunes playlists," or "look at all the facebook pictures of someone i don't actually know or care about," or "do stretches on my floor while listening to Enya." But now here I am, because my self-inflicted guilt trip has started weighing me down too much. Guilt trip, because I believe this is important for me to write about, for MySistahs, the Amplify community, and for myself. It's just hard to bring myself to actually do it. Also this post is on the long side...so I included a Sparknotes version at the end if that works better for you.

Oh yeah -- trigger warning. I give details about my experience with sexual harassment in the workplace.

I graduated this past May and moved to NYC and into The Real World in September. I work at a company where there's a very specific hierarchy and stepladder for moving up. I have to be vague because my company is cranky about privacy, but basically there are Big Shots, their assistants, and the people who are the bottom of the totem pole and fill in where they're needed...that would be me.

So, a few days before we went on our holiday break at the end of December, we had a holiday party. Earlier that day, at work, one of the assistants was out sick, and I filled in for him. He worked directly for a Big Shot, who we'll call Fred. Fred and I didn't talk much or interact all day, we both kind of did our own thing. Then that night we had our holiday party at this place that had an open bar and no food, which clearly was not the greatest combination for anyone.

Also, I wasn't "out" at my workplace for a number of reasons, but the holiday party practically felt like a "coming out" party for me -- I guess the alcohol loosened everyone up, and random friends kept approaching me over the course of the night and telling me they knew I was gay. Then everyone kept telling everyone else, and soon everyone knew. I only actually came out to people myself once it was apparent almost everyone knew. This is definitely NOT what I was expecting to happen at this party, but it was actually a semi positive experience -- everyone seemed really nice and accepting, mostly just amused that I hadn't ever said anything outright about not being 100% straight. Actually I don't necessarily identify the way everyone was labeling me. But that's a topic for another post.

One last bit of background information. Big Shot Fred is a good-looking white guy, probably in his late twenties. I am Japanese and Irish and early twenties. Our workplace is predominately white. 

Anyway, one of my friends, who we'll call Patricia, came up to me partway through the night and said, "Man A, Man B, and Fred are all talking about how hot they think you are," and she pulled me over to where they were. By then everyone had already heard the news about me being queer, so I felt a lot more comfortable talking to them than I would have if they'd thought I was trying to flirt with them. I ended up having a long, fun conversation with Fred (Patricia was there too). Drunken Fred was giving me all these compliments and I was responding in a really over the top, clearly sarcastically flirtatious way -- it was just all in good fun. Like for example, Fred would say, "Kathleen, you are so pretty, I just love Japanese girls." I'm not kidding, he said that. He also said, "My girlfriend even looks Asian from behind." His girlfriend is a blonde Jewish lady. I also don't know what "Asian from behind" means, and I don't want to know. In response to these comments I would fluff my hair and bat my eyes in a really exaggerated way, and be like, "Wow Fred, that's so romantic, there's nothing I love more than a white guy who fetishizes Asian women, especially since I'm not attracted to men." 

So Fred and I were talking for a while, and eventually I went to talk to some other people. But then Fred became kind of obsessed with me. I really don't mean this in an egotistical way, I just don't know how else to explain it. He went around telling people he loved me and that we were going home together. People were coming up to me and saying, "Wow, Fred loves you." I was just having fun with it at this point. For one thing, Big Shots are like "untouchables" at our company, and don't fraternize with people at my level very often, so I felt kind of flattered and special. I also thought that everyone, including him, was on the same page with how ridiculous he was being (he seriously made SO MANY Asian comments). A couple people even come up to me and said, "Fred has a live-in girlfriend, be careful." But I was not concerned, I mean I thought it was pretty clear that nothing was ever going to happen between us, and I was never in a position where I was with him alone, so I just thought it was funny.

When I went to talk to some other people, Fred started following Patricia around asking where I was. Patricia told me this part the next day. She told Fred, "I don't think Kathleen is interested in you," and he said, "Yes she is, she was rubbing my cock all day at work today." (I was not.) When Patricia insisted that I wasn't interested, he told her, "I just want to put my cock in her a little bit, I know she will like it." 

A bunch of the people from my company went to another bar after the party ended, and that's where things started to take a turn for the worse. When I arrived, Fred would not leave me alone, and kept pulling me towards him, grabbing my butt when I walked by, and following me around. People started going up to him of their own accord and telling him to leave me alone. I wasn't doing the fun flirtatious thing with him anymore. I was just trying to get away from him because I didn't think it was funny anymore. I went into the bathroom with a couple lady coworkers and asked them to keep him away from me (they knew what had been going on...everyone did). They did a good job -- he mostly stayed away from me after that.

The last time Fred came over to me, I was sitting on a bench with Patricia and a couple other friends. Someone was taking a picture of us. Fred came stumbling over and tried to sit on my lap. Patricia pulled him away so was sitting next to me instead. Then Fred started grabbing at my crotch and my upper thighs/groin area. This is a really gross analogy, but the way he was grabbing at my crotch reminded me of a dog digging for something in the dirt. I know. It's weird thing to say. Anyway this is when I finally felt 100% uncomfortable without any doubt about if it was funny or a joke. Patricia and I literally had to fight him off, and after a few attempts to shove his hands off of me, I got free and we went home.

The next day at work Fred passed me and smiled, waved, and said hello. I was confused...did he not remember what had happened? I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if this was sexual harassment. I felt like a dunce. Was I overreacting? Was I underreacting? I wanted someone to wave a magic wand and give me the right answer for what to do.

The more I thought about it, the weirder I felt. I thought, if this is how aggressive Fred was in public, surrounded by his coworkers, with so much to lose, with so many clear and obvious "no's" and so many people telling him to leave me alone...if this is how aggressive he is in that scenario, how aggressive would he be in private? What if I was attracted to him and went with home and started making out or something? Then I decided I didn't want to go any further? He did not seem like the type who would take no for an answer. I thought, I can't be the first woman he has acted like this towards, and I'm sure I won't be the last. If he ignores consent in a public situation where he has so much to lose, I found it hard to believe that he would listen in the bedroom. 

Then, I found out I was going to be filling in for another assistant the next day, who works right next to Fred, so I would be seeing Fred all day long. I knew that I could not do that. So I went to Human Resources and told them what happened. I had thought I wasn't that upset about it because I hadn't had much of an emotional response, mostly I had just been thinking things through, but when I was talking to HR I surprised myself by being so nervous. I thought I was going to cry but I already felt like such a "weakling" for letting Fred grab at my crotch that I thought I was proving something by holding it together now. It was horrible to talk about what had happened. I was so embarrassed and somehow I felt naked. I also felt like as I talked, I was growing to the size of a grain of sand, while the woman from HR was progressively becoming a larger and larger giantess. She said she'd get back to me the next day.

So the next day, she told me that she'd talked to the head of HR in our Los Angeles office, and the heads of the office in our NYC office. She apologized on behalf of the company and thanked me for coming to talk to her. She said they were all in strong consensus that this was sexual harassment. However, she said, there are two main types of sexual harassment, and mine fit into neither of them. The two main types are (1) quid pro quo -- this for that, if you do this sexual favor for me, I'll do something to advance your career and (2) hostile environment sexual harassment -- this has to be a pattern of inappropriate behavior that is a regular part of the work environment, and a single incident is only considered to fall under this category if it's "extremely outrageous."

The woman from HR said I had two choices. I could let them do what they'd already decided to do, or I could file a formal complaint. What they'd already decided to do was have a serious sit-down talk with Fred. They would tell him that if he ever did anything like this again, he would be fired. If he retaliated in any way, including gossiping, he would be fired. And that he had to leave me alone from then on. They would also put a note in his file about what happened. If I filed a formal complaint, they would go through a fact-finding process to determine if I was telling the truth, and if it was sexual harassment. The HR woman told me that since they already believed me and know it's sexual harassment, that would be kind of pointless. After that, they would either decide to fire him, or give him a serious talk. She said that what would probably happen would be the serious talk -- so filing a formal complaint would most likely have the same end result as the informal process, but take a lot longer. Then she said that she recommended I go the informal way, because it would be basically easier to pretend like nothing had happened. It would be more low-key -- fewer people would be involved and fewer people would have the chance to find out inadvertently. Last year I went through a similar hearing process that was pretty much the worst experience of my life, so I could not bear to go through this again, and told her it was okay to go the informal route. I'm still not sure I made the right decision to choose informal over formal. 
 

Now a surprising part. A couple days later, HR gave me an apology Fred had written to me. Rather than read it, I sat in the bathroom staring at the envelope for 45 minutes while everyone else was at a holiday lunch party. Then I carried it around in my purse obsessively for the next few days without reading it. I guess I didn't read it because the act of writing an apology symbolized something to me that I needed so much -- an acknowledgement that what had happened was wrong and not my fault -- that I didn't want to be disappointed by what it actually said. Finally, I asked one of my best friends to read it first because I deeply trust her judgment and knew that whatever she said would make me feel better. But she seemed surprised and said I should read it, that it was really good. And it was. Fred made no excuses or justifications. He said that what happened had been a wake up call to him, and he realized he had a problem and was going to get help. He said he only wished that I had not been the alarm. He said he was so sorry for doing this to me especially, because he had been impressed by my professionalism on the job and how respected I was among people at the company. I was shocked to read these words. If I had to imagine what I wanted him to say, that would have been it. 

Wish I could end on that note, but unfortunately, one more little thing happened that's worth mentioning. Fred's assistant had been absent from the holiday party, but later found out what happened between me and Fred because everyone had seen it at the party, and someone must have filled him in. I think Fred's assistant felt really embarrassed and awkward about it, but guess how he decided to show it? He grabbed my side in this weird poking/tickling movement and said, "Just giving you a flashback!" What? Are you a real person?? WHO DOES THAT?

Now here I am, a couple weeks away from the whole thing, and I still feel pretty uncomfortable at work. Whenever I accidentally pass Fred, it's super awkward. I also hate this feeling that people are gossiping about what happened. Ugh. 

SPARKNOTES VERSION:

One of my superiors made a lot of flirtatious yet completely inappropriate and racist comments to me. I thought we were joking around so was having fun. Started not thinking it was funny when he wouldn't leave me alone, touched my butt whenever I walked by, and especially when he started grabbing at my crotch and upper thighs. Next day I didn't know what to make of it and was questioning myself. Ended up talking to Human Resources and they pretty much took it out of my hands. Said it was definitely sexual harassment and had a serious sit-down talk with the guy. Guy wrote me a very unexpectedly sincere and meaningful apology. Now I still feel uncomfortable at work.

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If you ever feel like you may have been sexually harassed at your workplace, I encourage you to talk to someone in your company that you trust. I definitely felt better telling HR and I know I would have regretted not saying anything. It's not easy to tell someone but it is also not easy to regret not saying anything. Also, a lot of times your company will give you a number to call if you ever feel harassed, sexually or otherwise, at work, and don't have anyone at work you feel comfortable talking to. It's usually one of those things they give you when you first start that you immediately lose and forget about, but unfortunately you might really need it someday. This site gave me a lot of information about sexual harassment in the workplace and even have stories from other people who have experienced it. Here is a list of resources to find out more about sexual harassment in the workplace, including legal options. 

 

Thanks for reading all of this. I hope that if there is someone out there who has also experienced sexual harassment at work, you know that it is okay and normal to feel confused and unsure of what to do, and you are not alone.