My personal experience with Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is personal issue with me and in the past few weeks, with all the allegations against herman Cain, it has made me think about it again. I have read all over Twitter "where's the proof?" and "why won't the women come forward if it's true?". Not suprising, most have been men asking these questions. I have been a victim of serious sexual harassment at work and I would like to offer my opinions on this subject.

Let me say as briefly as possible what my situation was. I worked at Courtauld's Fibers in 1995, a rayon plant here in Mobile Alabama. It was a dirty, physically exhausting job, running a baling machine that compacted rayon into 550 lb bales and then pulling those bales out of the machine at 4 minute intervals. It was a predominately male environment, as most of my jobs had been, and shift work. I was on "D" which had the rowdiest reputation but also had a particular male who worked side-by-side with me, whose name I will not mention.

If you have never worked in a male-dominated construction or plant environment, it's hard to explain. I was mid-thirties at the time, slim, muscular by working so hard and yes attractive. When you work in this situation where your safety and sometimes your very life are attached to your co-workers as you are working with dangerous machinery, you take a lot. You shut your mouth and get tough. Really tough. A "Fuck you" tough. I hadn't expected to have to get as tough as I did.

The plant was huge, loud, dimly lit, dank. Very much a "Norma Rae" environment except much larger, and dirtier. Workers looked out for each other but the 'good ol' boys" standard ruled. From the first day I was on the floor there, i was harassed. First the looks, the smiles, the dirty joke, and the god-awful conversations in the Number Nine breakroom, a small, squalid space next to Number nine Balepress, the hardest and fastest press in the plant. It was known whoever worked that press was hard-core. I worked that press.

Male friends were all I had there, so trying to embarass me was the fun of the press, especially at night. Mostly it was done in jest, which is no excuse, but I would let it ride, and cover the rage and irritation with appropriate come-backs, and quickly I earned the nic-name "Harley". I earned the "respect" of the males because I could take a joke, they thought.

This was a union job and it paid well with good insurance. i was a single mom of two, I needed that job. So after a couple of years the male who pushed it too far finally got tired, I suppose, of me turning down his constant sexual suggestions, standing against me in corners, following me with lurid requests and decided to take it to the next level. While sitting on break talking to another male friend of mine at another press, this person, let's call him "Dick", came up from behind me, put his arms around me and clasped my breasts. I was shocked as was the other male there. I turned around and told him to fuck off and never do it again and was, apparently, visibly shaken. My friend asked if I was ok and I said yes, not to worry about it, but to make a long story short, the incident soon made it's way to the supervisor and I was called in to make a formal complaint.

I was faced with a choice. The Union rep was there and I had to make a decision fast. I had a witness, would he come forward? I didn't know. And to make a complaint of this kind, in this environment had ramifications. A "shunning" of sorts, of the males in the plant. Which could be dangerous. But as i was known as the hard-core feminist there I had to go thru with it. I made the complaint, "Dick" was called in, he denied it, then they called the rest of the shift in. I still do not know to this day what was said in those meetings, except that my friend said, yes, he had seen it. This is a very abbreviated account of this, nothing could describe the tension and fear.

You see the rest of the shift had seen this guy constantly harass me, heard him when he would yell across the entire floor, above the constnat din of machinery "Hey Harley, when you gonna gimme some that p***y? and worse. They knew. All of them. but I don't know who admitted it except for one.

They put him on a different shift, and finally had to fire him after that, for not working. He began to start riding by my house, honking the horn, stopping in my front yard, sending warnings thru his friends at work, and Human Resources took it seriously enough to put a paid guard outside my house for weeks. "Dick" was known as a fighter; fighting dogs, cocks, men, beating women, you get the drift and was an avid hunter. After about 6 weeks of this I decided to move. And the day after I moved my house was broken into, a sliding glass door broken and the house trashed. This all was documented.

Why do women not come forward? Because it completely disrupts your life. Every move, every trip to the store, every THING comes into play. Retribution is real. What if I had reported all the harassment before the physical harassment? Nothing would have been done and I would have been shunned worse than I was after the report. Oh yes, I was shunned. All but one of my friends would not even look at me, and the friend that stood by me was my gay friend who had hated "Dick" as much as me, because "Dick" had constantly harassed him as well, trying to get him to admit being gay. My friend did not dare "come out" in that environment. It would have meant certain death. Literally.

So when all these people say "Where's the proof?"....what do you want? a film? then the women would be slut and porn trash. What proof will satisfy? FOUR women have come out. WHEN will our women be safe. I know my story is an extreme case, but sexual harassment is the same in any case. It is power. And control. And the fear of the woman she won't be believed. Fear of her reputation being ruined, of past being brought up, very much the same circumstances of rape.

What if one of these women were your sister, your mother, your daughter? Would you believe them then? Think about it. Don't discount them. It happens every day.