I work in an industry (manufacturing equipment for oil rigs) traditionally dominated by men, and I am one of four women (I’m a technical writer, one’s a drafter, one’s an admin, and one’s clerical) in our 30-person engineering department. I’m also in Texas, and my office is located in a small town. In many ways, there is still a very good-ol’-boy attitude around here, which brings me to my dilemma: one of the managers (we’ll call him “K”) has a tendency to make sexist comments.

The clerical woman (we’ll call her “J”) rearranged her office a few months ago, then again about a week ago. Both times, the rearrangement was due to a change in her responsibilities that required additional shelving and filing cabinets. Both times, K made a comment about how women are always changing the furniture arrangements for no reason.

A few days ago, K was looking for something in the office supply catalog and couldn’t find it. He handed it to J and said that she should look it up because women are better at finding things. He proceeded to tell a story about how he can be looking for something in the pantry and can’t find it, but his wife can put her hand on it in a second. My response to him was, “Have you ever considered that it’s not a man/woman thing, but that you’re just not very observant?”

Today, I noticed that the bulletin board outside his office had a new “joke” posted. It says something about due to the recent increase in muggings in parking lots, the mall has instituted a “women-only” parking lot. The picture of the “women-only” parking lot is a photo of a major freeway pileup, with cars and trucks everywhere. Ha-fucking-ha.

Other men in the department also make occasional comments like this, mostly directed at J, who takes it all in stride and occasionally makes remarks about men doing this or that. I’m not comfortable with her attitude, either.

I’m trying to come up with some way to let these guys know that this sort of attitude is not okay without coming off as a screeching harpy. I’ve only worked here for six months and in a lot of ways I’m still an outsider — this company has a tendency to keep employees for a very long time.

Should I just suck it up, or say something? If I do say something, to whom do I say it, and how? I love everything else about the job and the company, so it’s certainly not a big enough deal for me to quit over.

Thanks,
Feminist, not Feminazi

I’m actually considering a non-violent form of vigilante justice, unless you know of more normal channels.

Been living in this apartment in New York for nine years now. I’m down on a street that used to be nowheresville, but has recently become a bit more “hip,” so there’s more of a buzz about — more bars, more restaurants, et cetera. For the most part this isn’t a problem, and I can deal with some noise. But I think a new neighbor is going way above tolerable levels, and so do most people in my building.

Our “backyard” is adjacent to the “backyard” of another building around the corner. And at least twice a month, someone has ENORMOUS parties in the backyard of this building. ENORMOUS, and LOUD, and LENGTHY parties. We’re talking music being blasted in the backyard until 4:30 in the morning, and their speakers go up to eleven. Even worse, their backyard butts up against my side of the building, and I’m on the fourth floor, so they’re basically partying outside my kitchen window. And they like music with lots of bass, which at times has actually shaken things in my apartment.

This has been happening for months now. The cold weather didn’t tone them down. At first I tried just tolerating it — it’s the weekend, people have parties on the weekends, it’s New York anyway so expecting silence is stupid, blah blah blah tolerance-cakes. But this is getting ridiculous — the last party, I shut the window, crossed the apartment into my bedroom, shut my door, and turned on a radio AND a fan, and their music STILL was too loud.

After talking about it with my roommate now and then, and then with neighbors, and then getting fed up with it myself, we’ve all started calling in noise complaints to the police. The police go and tell them to turn it down, and they do, but then they turn it right back up a half hour later. We’ve called in so many noise complaints by now that the precinct fills in their address for us when we start a call: “Yeah, there’s a loud party going on at –” “123 Yakkety Yak Street? Yeah, we’ll send someone.”

So calling the police don’t do much, and they’re clearly not intimidated by this. It also doesn’t look like the cops have much more recourse than just sending a guy to say “hey, turn it down.” We in my building are at a disadvantage because we don’t live in their building, so we don’t have access and so we don’t know who the culprit is, so we can’t do the “look, we REALLY mean it, turn that crap down.”

So I’m considering a somewhat radical step. There’s a gallery in the ground floor of 123 Yakkety Yak Street, and someone in my building has made an educated guess that they’re hosting these parties. I’m very tempted to make up a bunch of fliers that bash the gallery and then just plaster them around the neighborhood, asking people to boycott the gallery because they’re big ol’ schmucks. I’ve also considered a petition signed by everyone in my building brought to the gallery saying basically, “Look, we REALLY want you to turn it down.”

The problems with this are — we don’t know for sure that it IS the gallery responsible, and in this neighborhood, a lot of the people would probably sympathize with the gallery (“They’re trying to suppress the arts and free expression! Bummer!”). But what OTHER options do I have? Every place I’ve called to ask “what do I do about noise complaints” says, “Call the police,” and clearly THAT’S not doing anything. And the petition idea, we can’t do much for an ultimatum because all we got for a threat is “we’ll go to the police,” and we’ve already done that.

At the very least, maybe these fliers would alert the powers that be that “ooh, maybe the neighbors could do something even more radical, maybe they mean it.” Or is there some other authority that maybe has more teeth here?

Thanks,
If You Want Me At The Party Send Me A Damned Invitation

I can’t seem to find any solution to this beyond “snap
out of it and get over it” but I’m hoping you’ll at
least have a hint on how I could go about doing that.

I had a really rough time when I was in high school
with being bullied so as soon as I graduated basically
ran off to Big City where I wouldn’t have to see
people I knew and I could just forget the whole thing.
Long story short, after about a year and a half I
decided I really needed to go back to school and since
it’s way way cheaper back in my home province, I moved
back to try and save some money before going back.

I’m totally freaking out here, I feel like I’m back in
high school and I never want to even leave the house,
let alone go find a job. I know I need to, really
really need to, that was the entire point of moving,
but I have a bit of savings which I could just sit
around and live off for months even though it’s stupid
stupid stupid and I’ve been here a month, but I can’t
seem to bring myself to actually do much of anything.
It’s like the episode of Buffy where the entire cast
is stuck in the house and constantly gathering around
the door and announcing they’re leaving but then they
just stand there. Except, you know, it’s just me and
I’m not going anywhere near the door.

I just can’t seem to get over the completely
irrational idea that I’ll see “mean people” and
they’ll rip me apart because that’s what they do. And
then of course I think of all the things they could
pick on, so I rip myself apart until I’m a
flaw-obsessed wreck. Never mind that I’m supposedly
intelligent, generally considered attractive, and had
friends in Big City who were way cooler than anyone
who bullied me. Never mind that high school is over,
and those people should have outgrown childish crap by
now. (But since I obviously haven’t…) I can’t stop
obsessing over stupid little things that I know no one
else actually cares about, like persistent but minor
acne, or lint on my pants, or that my forehead looks
weird, or that my hair is bad. Whenever I force myself
out I’m constantly paranoiding about so I can avoid
people if I recognize them. Which is ridiculous (there
is no way they’re going to come over just to rag on me
about a couple pimples even if they did recognize me)
and just makes me feel lamer.

In Big City, I was relaxed because if I made a fool of
myself I could find solace in never having to see the
people involved again. But now I see people I know
everywhere and feel like I’m surrounded by people who
know I’m a waste of space. I’m so depressed I can’t
seem to pull myself together, and applying for work
feels futile when you have no self-esteem. So my
question is, what do I do? Obviously, I need a job but
how can I pull myself together enough to convince
someone I’d be better than any of the other
applicants? Or even enough to talk to someone when
applying instead of just throwing a résumé down and
fleeing, which as my increasingly frustrated mother
has told me often enough, is not exactly an effective
way of getting hired?

Wishing I’d Stayed in the City and Worked On Building
Up Some Major Debt

I have a usage question for you. When does one use “evoke” as opposed to
“invoke”? I’m under the impression that one evokes a mood and invokes a
deity, but first, the OED is a bit vague on the actual difference in the two
terms, and second, the (notoriously unreliable and misused, I know) MS Word
thesaurus cross-lists them. I didn’t find it in the Chicago Manual of
Style. I find myself using one or the other all the time in my writing, and
I’m a bit worried that I’ve been using them incorrectly.

Also, and I think this is a British spelling versus American spelling issue,
can you tell me whether it’s “travelling” or “traveling,” “counselling” or
“counseling,” and so forth? They’re both listed in my dictionary, with the
former coming first, but Word always changes it to the latter.

Thanks loads. You’re awesome.

Reads Chicago Manual of Style for Fun and Still Has Nothing

In a rather gross breach of medical ethics, common sense, and basic human
decency, my psychiatrist informed my boyfriend’s mother (also a
psychiatrist) that I was emotionally unstable, “dangerously manipulative,”
and a slut. I am not really sure why she said these things, but, as far as
I know, they are untrue. My boyfriend’s mother, who has never met me, then
told all of this to my boyfriend, in the context of strongly urging him to
dump my sorry manipulative ass. Thankfully, he did not listen to her.

This was several months ago. When it first happened, I didn’t want to make
a big deal of it. After all, we had just begun to date, more or less, and I
didn’t know if we’d be together for long enough for the fact that his mother
loathes and despises me with every particle of her being to be relevant. But
several months have passed, my relationship with my boyfriend is really
good, I’m not seeing any reason in the near future for which we would break
up, et cetera. His mother still hates me.

If he had a normal relationship with his mother, this wouldn’t be a
problem — I could just avoid her; there wouldn’t be any problems. But she is
rather over-involved in his life. She lives very close to him, she helps
support him financially…I’m not saying all of this is right, but it’s the
way it is. So, she’s over at his house a lot. She is, so I’m told, still
telling him to dump me for his own good. If he brings me up, she will not
listen to whatever he has to say. If I am walking by her house, he expects
me to walk quickly so that she doesn’t see me.

I’m sick of this. I realize that for him to say to his mother, “Look, stop
being such a bitch,” would be extremely unpleasant for him and put him in a
difficult position. I’m not asking him to do that. But I also don’t think
it’s fair for him to be in a position where his mother is sniping about me
all the time and I am trying hard not to snipe about her all the time. It’s
not fun for me; I don’t like sneaking around, and I don’t like to be hated
when I haven’t done anything.

What can I do to end this conflict? I thought that if I just waited around
for a few months and didn’t do anything terrible, she might see that her
informant was incorrect. Hasn’t happened. Should I try to contact her? Is
the best thing to do to continue to slink around until my boyfriend and I
break up or she drops dead? I have no interest in this woman as a person.
I think she and her fellow doctor are scum. But my boyfriend likes his
mother, and I don’t want him to have to remain in this position in the
middle.

Help?

Thanks.

Not (That Much of) a Bitch