Democratic Diva

Bitches may get things done…but bitches also derive pleasure from hurting other people, just because they can. No good has ever come from that, whether it originated in an X or a Y chromosome.

I hear ya, but it was more about the perception of the gender bias. If we get stuff done we are a b!it@h, not always. I just thought it was funny and sometimes we need a good laugh.

I understand your response…however…a few years ago I was meeting with a vice president of a local bank who I’d painstakingly been working with for two years. The goal was to get a loan to help my business grow. This particular afternoon he looked at me and said, “You know, I think you’d be better off finding a sugar daddy to finance this idea than you would getting a loan.”
I wasn’t stunned, as being in business as long as I have, I’ve embraced the reality that I have to work harder and smarter than many men to get where I go (I actually love the fact that it makes me smarter and harder working!)
But I did sit there thinking, “I’m screwed here. Because if I speak out, he’s going to say, ‘I was just joking…don’t you have a sense of humor?’ And if I don’t, I invite more of the same behavior and encourage him to be equally as disrespectful to women (and men, and Hispanics, and whatever) who come along behind me.”
I left without saying anything, and I told two male friends and two female friends about it. The women both wanted me to go back in and make a fuss and file a complaint. It was actually the two guys who were most upset, but they both had the most reasonable advice: Take your business elsewhere.
So I did. I wrote the president of the bank a letter and explained that if two years of explaining a business that is about empowering people of all shapes, genders, cultures, etc…did not enlighten his VP, then this bank clearly did not deserve to benefit from my hard work.
Filing a complaint would have allowed the bank to question whether the incident even happened, and it would have been a VP’s word against mine. I chose to say, “When this happened, you lost business.)
I hadn’t even thought about this story in a long time, until today. The comment “we all need a laugh” after the “bitch” comment brought back memories and felt a little too familiar.
We all can do better than that. And on behalf of the people who are influenced by our behavior even when we don’t realize it…we should.