I have an ongoing conversation with a friend for well over 15 years about men with respect to women.
This conversation is specifically about working closely with women in the workplace. For this post, I’ll address some sensitive topics through my own personal experience and lens.
This is an important topic to me and I am sensitive to this subject. I will also express to you that some of this material may be upsetting or triggering. If you have issues in the workplace as a woman and have had or are having a traumatic experience, please seek help.
Ready?
Yes, We Can &
A long time ago not long after I joined the Navy, I was assigned to a ship that was classified for combat and warfighting. To be fair, I’d say she was one if not the safest ship in the fleet. Our mission and ship had leadership and communications responsibilities for our region (Second Fleet) of the world. We had an Admiral onboard and he even had his own bridge!
At home in Norfolk, Virginia, we sat on a pier directly across from supply ships like the USS Puget Sound. She was what we called a “tender” and she had a very important critical function for the fleet. She also carried women onboard.
Our ships company called her “The Pubic Mound.” I know, but I warned you. I haven’t even gotten started yet.
At the time, women were not allowed to serve on combat ready ships. They were however very experienced and “salty” at sea as well as any other sailor but they were support and supply ships. Some women had served long military careers doing exactly what men did, even at this time.
It was the very early 1990’s, we had been at sea for a while and pulled back into port at home in Norfolk. The “Old man” aka Captain had an important announcement to make but this was different than usual. He had ships company come to the cargo hold and main decks so that he can speak with us face to face.
What he said, was essentially part of recent history and it was a foundation and platform for a challenging future.
He told us that the Navy is changing and evolving. He said that women have an important role to play and that the Navy would now start allowing women to serve on ships with men across the fleet. He told us that it was an exciting time and that the changes would have a dramatic and real impact on our ability to protect our great nation.
At first, they will assign a few women for temporary duty and not long after, women will have a permanent place onboard our ship.
I walked down to DC Central, where all the salt and grit from “this mans Navy” lived. The old Warrant officer, the most senior in the entire fleet serving G-d and country for the bulk of his life sat at the table. His old coffee cup may have never been washed a day. It was sealed with black Navy coffee that seemed to become part of the ceramic cup itself. He had served on the Mount Whitney at least three times and she was his ship through and through, He was a stoic man, mostly quiet and contemplative. I’d seen fire and screaming and chaos with his reaction being not much more than “meh.” He had seen it all I guess, and he was most comfortable in an old grey chair conversing with our Chief Engineer. As I grabbed a cup of shellac, I witnessed something I’d never seen before. He was yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. “Women don’t belong on ships, they don’t belong on my ship, they will bring disaster, they will distract the men, they will…..”.
As a young sailor, there were times I knew to keep my mouth shut but in this case, I asked him “sir, what’s the big deal?” Oh no you didn’t!!!!
“Mr. Cohen, do you have any idea what you are talking about? Do you have any fucking clue about the Navy? You don’t even know how to drop your dick and get out of a rack properly yet, you dumb shit. You don’t know what it is to be a sailor in this mans Navy and you don’t know what women will do to this ship but I do.”
He went on to talk about the court marital on the Pubic Mound. Women bring, gambling, prostitution, pregnancy. They distract men from the work and men can’t work with women at sea, It is a distraction at best and it will disrupt our ability to be a prepared and ready fighting force. It will also be very expensive and costly across the board. It will bring nothing but harm to our great fighting force.
Well, I heard him and I’ll leave it to you to determine whether he was right or wrong. I’ll share what happened next and, we can think about it as it relates to today.
Second Fleet had communications teams that would come on board and sail with us for operations. Now that we were sufficiently warned, the fleet started adding women to the mix. In one case, there was a woman named “Matula” as she onboarded, the young men gathered to see what she looked like. There were conversations in the halls and everyone tried to get a peek at her. The guys called her “Medusa” and said, “nothing to see here, move on, she wasn’t pretty and …”
We went to out to sea for an exercise with ships leaving for combat operations, The first week, we all settled in and Metula would go from a special berthing area up to radio. For the radio teams, women were common place and they were used to her. She was a First class petty officer probably in her 30’s, she’d been in the Navy for a long time.
In the evening, many of us went to the cargo hold, people would smoke down there and play music and sing. She came down there and of course, everyone would be checking her out. She had a few close shipmates and they would try to keep her away from ships company but by the second week, the savages started.
Some sailors would wait for her to come up from berthing and follow her as she walked to her duty station. They pretended they were going that way or they were working on something near there. The truth was they were hungry for attention from the only enlisted women on the ship. Topside there were a few women officers but they never came below decks and they went mostly unseen unless ships company needed to go up for some reason.
A few weeks at sea, you would have thought that men were going mad. The obsession with Metula was becoming problematic. The talk in DC Central from the engineering leadership was that men and women could not and should not be at sea together. Men would follow her and now would harass her and disrupt her, They would try to get close to her at lunch, hang outside of her berthing, talk about her all the time and compare notes about how close they got to this woman that they once found unattractive.
After 6 weeks or so, we got home and the captain got her off the ship right away. As an experienced sailor, she was professional but shaken. I am highly confident the experience was traumatic for her.
As we prepared for another ships movement, the fleet started adding more temporarily assigned women to the ship. One young enlisted woman barely 21 years old came from an engineering activity from another base in Virginia Beach. She was a highly capable young person, excited and wide eyed at the prospect of service at sea. Her rating and training were leaning toward Hull Technician and Damage Control, as a result out of the full complement of the crew, she wound up with me at the back of the ship with the dogs and monsters.
I’ll kindly leave her experience to her but I’ll share with you my perspective both as a young sailor and now reflectively. My view at the time was that she was receiving special treatment because of her gender. Men would hold doors for her, they would carry her equipment, they would bring her gifts. She was a rock star and couldn’t walk or go anywhere without attention. It was also true that I was just as guilty as every other sailor on that ship. In fact, because I worked with her every single day, I had a responsibility to do better than I did in respecting her as a person aside from the mere fact that she was a woman.
All in all she held her own when tested. She was as capable as anyone else in my shop and she managed work better than some of the young men. She handled being chased down very well and while she did allow what we used to call “Deck apes” to carry her equipment around the ship, I’d say, I would have done the same thing in her shoes.
Historically speaking, she was the first of her gender ever to take on this specific role in this way. As a very young woman who had a “Rosie the Riveter” type of mentality, she was proud and a patriot that didn’t allow the noise of young monsters distract her. Truth is that I admired her and I liked her a lot. She was fairly foreign to me based on her history and life. The fact is that she had to deal with the same things as Metula and if we are being honest, I was part of the problem as well. After all, I am a savage monster myself,
While there is another story beyond this one, let’s leave that for another time. The point is that women came to work in this environment to be treated fairly and as equal but were not treated fairly and were not equal in the sense that the Navy could not find reasonable mechanisms to create environmentally safe settings for these women under these conditions,
I’d like to point out that the old Warrant officer in the start of this post was right about a lot of things. Many men got into trouble for their bad behavior. Let me say this again, men who couldn’t deal with being human beings in a normal rational and equitable world could not and did not function well in these settings and they suffered as a result of their inability. It had nothing to do with what women did or didn’t do.
The ship itself could not function properly with women onboard and required changes. The piping was stripped down in port and the sewage systems were reconstructed to accommodate more water usage and the potential for flushing of feminine products. I know it sounds crazy but this is what happened. The berthings were refit, they changed the configuration of the ship, they change the layout and they had to create space and separation where there had been none before.
Women did have sex on the ship with men and did have pregnancies. There were issues with women trying self abort. There were issues with relationships, it wasn’t all men, it was a combination of factors but it was true what he had said. It created complications.
The question of whether or not women belong on ships is irrelevant within itself. Rather then ask that question, I ask myself and now you, how we address the issues associated with the idea of equitable fair treatment of women under these or any other circumstances for that matter.
Now, I realize I am sharing something about 30 years ago but let me bring into focus the reality. Over the years, I have worked with many women in military and corporate settings. If I am being 100% open about my experience, I’d offer women in military settings have never had a reprieve. For all the years, I have seen women fend off men or deal with predatory men. In corporate, it is there but it doesn’t show itself as crisp and clear. It is much more passive and a bit more sneaky. Unless you just “grab the p&^%”, I mean you can do that too right?
The professional women I have worked with have always had to deal with it. I have known woman to go at length to avoid men, avoid areas and try to find ways to make themselves either less attractive or unattractive. I have seen them suffer and I have done my best to be there for them and advocate for them. When I worked in a closed environment with women, I had observed men coming into the environment for no other reason but to get close to them. Married men, men in relationships it didn’t matter, the lack of women in the environment created a condition for contest. The savages would come out to find a way to compete in the quest for attention. Some women identified this as opportunity and most I’d say identified it as annoying and risky. Not only do women have to deal with the bad behavior, they also get questioned and treated with less respect when it comes to the work. They have to become a known expert or qualified to have their place at the table. Sure, all of us have to do it to some extent but I have seen women have it harder.
I am the oldest of 4, my siblings are all women. While I don’t know what it is like to be a woman, I know that I want to protect my sisters, my wife, my close friends and family. At the same time, the voice track and narrative is not to “protect” but to create conditions where we can for equity, fairness and safety. Women may not require the “protection” of a man but they certainly can benefit from a safe environment.
We have a lot of work to do when it comes to this. We also need to talk about it in a meaningful way. As a man coming from Generation X, I recognize that I have witnessed change over my lifetime when it comes to women in the workplace and women in the military. I have worked for exemplary women. I have also worked with women who were challenged by being pushed or advanced through what seemed to be forced or unnatural means. In my field of technology, I have seen women have to fight and prove their value. I have worked alongside women in very senior roles as C-level executives who have had to compensate or found themselves believing they needed to compensate to advance in their career or hold, manage or lead.
It is also important to recognize the sensitivity of the subject. As men, it is very easy to say the wrong thing and it may very well be actually wrong. I have made mistakes and I have asked for guidance. Additionally, I have also held my ground on certain facets that I believe to be true.
In the world we live in today, even in the United States, or other western civilization, we are not in a place of equity. It is just not there. There may come a day when we are and I believe we are moving slowly and directionally as a society toward equity. Additionally, I want to make the point that creating a victim narrative is not helpful. This is not about the specific actions of men or women, rather an understanding of how we need to lead people by creating safe environments. I realize that we can say this about a lot of different situations and factors but I’ll put this into a perspective.
If we placed 20 people in a room and they were all men coming from different places, religion, culture etc, they would form groups, they would figure out who they related to, they would find out what skills, knowledge, capabilities each other have. It is highly unlikely even if someone in that group was gay that they would try to find a way to get into a “situation” with another man. Now, just saying, if we put an attractive woman in the room, truth is, the monsters will conspire. Even today. This is not about right or wrong, this is about what happens. As a man, I know this to be true.
The responsibility of every person is to know the complexity of human dynamics and relationships and to create respectful boundaries. It is also the responsibility of women to create respectful boundaries. I know some women would disagree but as I mentioned, if we don’t talk about this in a real way, it will be challenging to solve the real problems.
Conclusion
There may be a lot of debate about gender in regard to where women should be in the military, workplace and beyond. This debate over time will find a common evolved solution in the future most likely the next hundred years or so. While equity and the question of roles go unsolved, the question of safety is clear and immutable. All of us must have a safe environment to live and work in.
In professional corporate and military alike, women should be able to go to work without having to think about how to avoid men. They should be treated with respect and without conditions.
Safety is non-negotiable.
A call to action in two parts.
- Advocate for a safe environment.
- Pay attention to what is happening in your environment. Look for social cues and be a beacon for people in need.
- As a man, we can be understanding but we must recognize that we can’t wholly understand. Listening is a key factor. We very well may not be able to solve “the” problem but we can be a safe harbor for those in need.
