Senator Harry Reid referred to his colleague, Senator Kristen Gillibrand, as ‘hot’ at a recent fundraiser. Since Reid’s the majority leader, he could be seen as Gillibrand’s boss. So CNN went to the street to ask people how they’d feel if their boss called them hot.
Tag Archive for 'sexual harassment'
In one of the more fucked-up things I’ve ever come across while running this site, today Steven Seagal was accused of sex trafficking. A woman named Kayden Nguyen is suing the former action star, claiming that she applied for a job as his executive assistant only to find out that Steven defined “assistant” a little bit more like most people define “escort.” From her lawsuit:
Upon arriving to the job, she claims that Steven was also keeping” two young female Russian ‘Attendants’ on staff who were available for his sexual needs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Kayden alleges in her suit that though he had these two girls, on the first night of the job, Steven treated her “as his sex toy”, allegedly pushing his hands under her skirt, fondling her breasts and forcing his hand down her pants. Though she complained about the indecency the next morning, it happened again the following day. Along with the sexual assault, she claims Steven forced her to “consume illegal pulls.” [I assume this is "pills."] She is now suing him for over $1 million.
Um, wow. I really have no words. Well, except “gross.” That is one word.
In a totally depressing article, the Daily Mail reports that one third of women in the UK claim they have experienced sexual harassment at the workplace. Some lowlights:
- 14 percent are “dreading” going to their holiday party because they’ll have to dodge a drunk and/or handsy coworker
- 20 percent say they have had to fend off a coworker’s sexual advances
- 5 percent report that they have quit a job because the office harassment was so bad
- 32 percent say that they have experienced harassment in the form of lewd “humor” or inappropriate jokes
However, that’s not the only disheartening thing about this article. The recommended reading link in the middle of the article links to something entitled “Moody, indecisive, and trying to act like a man, why ladies make truly lousy bosses.” Seriously? I have two things to say to the author of that piece: one, it’s called a colon and you should try using one, and two, shut up.
Cracked.com has a hilarious article about some of the worst workplace safety videos ever. They feature everything from vintage mullets (the non-ironic kind) to superthick Canadian accents to people being impaled. Here’s my favorite, which is about how to handle those dames in the office who just walk around in their skirts asking to be sexually harrassed.
You can see the others – plus entertaining commentary and carefully analyzed screenshots – here.
As I’ve said before, women have it way harder than men when it comes to appropriate office dressing, especially in the summer. In addition to figuring out hemline length and strap thickness, there’s one more element to summertime business casual: cleavage.
If you’re on the flatter side, like me, it’s a lot easier to get away with wearing lower cut tops at work, since it’s incredibly unlikely you’ll have anything to expose. But if you’ve been blessed with a fuller figure, you have to be extra careful about what you wear. It’s sad but true – even though you didn’t ask for your boobs or ask everyone to base their opinions of you on said boobs, they will. People will talk to your breasts instead of your face and, at work, when you’re doing everything you can to be taken seriously, a button coming loose at an inopportune moment could be the kiss of death. Depending what industry you’re in, cleavage can go either way – I’ve known women who work at restaurants and get better tips if they show more skin, as well as women in fashion who hide their breasts when the gamine look is back in style.
Based on my own entirely unscientific survey, cleavage was fine if you had a male boss and totally verboten if you had a female one. Do any of you have such stories to report about your own boobs or someone else’s in the office?
An employee of Margarete Steiff GmbH, a German-based toymaker (whose best-known product are cute, cuddly teddy bears like the one at right) is suing her former boss, CEO Martin Frechen, of rape. Jane Collins, who used to be Frechen’s personal assistant and has since been promoted to assistant US marketing manager, is suing Frechen and the company for $80 million. She alleges that while she was Frechen’s assistant, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her over a five year period.
While this story is horrible and I commend Ms. Collins for coming out about what happened to her, my first question was why does she still work for the company? Sadly, she, like many others, felt trapped in her job and desperately needed the money.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Collins, a 32-year-old mother of two, said she didn’t go to the police about the alleged rape “because I was afraid I would lose my job if I did.” She said she has continued to work at Steiff because she needs the job, and because it pays better than similar positions elsewhere.
In the interview, Ms. Collins claimed that she wasn’t able to escape. “He’s six four and very strong, and I’m five seven,” she said. The complaint alleges that during the assault, Ms. Collins repeatedly told Mr. Frechen to stop and he responded by saying that this would be their “last time together,” and that “it is OK.”
This story absolutely disgusts me, and I am willing to bet that for every Jane Collins who has the courage to speak out there are many more who still say nothing because they’re afraid for their jobs. Another defendant named in the suit is another executive who Collins says she went to about the harrassment and who did nothing. Perhaps that’s the scariest part of all – when she finally did go to someone in a position of authority at the company, that person did nothing.
I wish Jane Collins all the best of luck with her suit and hope that justice will be served.
Hell hath no fury like an assistant scorned, and Bernie Madoff’s ex-secretary Eleanor Squillari is pissed. She coauthored a 20,000-word piece (!) in this month’s Vanity Fair about what it was like working for the man who ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Among the highlights:
- The way Madoff handled stress was “by saying something nasty: You look terrible. You’re gaining weight. You’re stupid. I never took anything he said to me personally, because I knew it wasn’t about me, it was about him.”
- Madoff was flirtatious and had a habit of making sexually suggestive remarks: “‘Oh, you know you’re crazy about me,’ he would say to me. Sometimes when he came out of his bathroom, which was diagonal to my desk, he would still be zipping up his pants. If he saw me shaking my head disapprovingly, he would say, ‘Oh, you know it excites you.’ If a pretty young woman came in, he’d say, ‘Do you remember when you used to look like that?’ I’d tell him, ‘Knock it off, Bernie,’ and he’d go, ‘Ah, you still look good.’ Then he’d try to pat me on the ass.”
- Squillari once caught him perusing the escort ads in the back of a magazine, and he frequently visited massage parlors. “Once, I looked in his address book and found, under M, about a dozen phone numbers for his masseuses. ‘If you ever lose your address book and somebody finds it, they’re going to think you’re a pervert,’ I said.”
- In the days after her husband’s arrest, Ruth Madoff called Squillari multiple times and encouraged the secretary to provide her with certain information without notifying the bankruptcy trustees, which Squillari said she couldn’t do. “Instead, I told the F.B.I. what had just happened. I was working for them now, not for Ruth and Bernie Madoff.”
It continues to get awesomer and more fucked up. Squillari has a video on Vanity Fair’s website where she tells more stories. It’s absolutely worth checking out.
China is doing whatever they can to clean up their international image just before the Olympics start. One of their very welcome changes is a brand-new law against sexual harassment at work. A startling (and saddening) 79 percent of Chinese working women reported having been victim of some kind of harassment at the office. Before the law was passed, the very few women who were brave enough to press charges had their cases filed in civil court, where they were arbitrated quietly.
The first person convicted under the new anti-harassment law is a male office manager who came onto a female employee.
The man, a manager surnamed Liu from Sichuan province, invited a new female colleague to “discuss work matters” in his office but then told her he wanted to be her boyfriend, the Beijing News, citing a local newspaper, reported.
When she turned him down, he held her by the neck and kissed her. Colleagues called police after hearing her scream.
The man has been sentenced to five months in prison.
