SALT LAKE CITY — As I listened to Carolina quarterback Cam Newton mock a woman for asking a question at a press conference earlier this week, I thought of the men who have treated me this way.
“It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes,” he said, emphasis on routes as if it was some concept that eludes normal people. “It’s funny.”
Actually, it’s not funny.
Her question wasn’t even, in fact, overly technical. It didn’t even really require more than a superficial knowledge of what a wide receiver does to ask the question she did.
So as the controversy erupted, and the debate about "what he meant" began, I relived a few of my favorite "funny" moments.
And while sports journalism is most definitely male-dominated, eight years of covering crime, corrections and government offered me just as many opportunities to deal with gender issues and sexual harassment.
There was the high school student who joked with his friends that I really just wanted his phone number. The assistant principal who introduced me to a classroom full of mostly male students with “I didn’t realize she was so good looking or I’d have signed up for this class.”
The coach who asked, in front of his players, if I needed to know “the difference between man and zone coverage.” Or the coach who said he didn’t have time to help me with my “little feel-good stories” because he had games to win.
There was the player who interrupted my interview with his teammate to ask me “Do you actually write about football? Because that seems weird.”
The players who told me I could go interview their teammate in an adjacent room, which turned out to be a bathroom, where he was in the middle of answering nature’s call. Needless to say, that interview didn’t go well, but hey, the guys had a good laugh.
Being asked not to go into a locker room without an escort, while my male competition had any access he wanted.
There was the source I never wanted to see on any crime scene because he’d critique certain physical attributes in front of and sometimes along with my male colleagues. There was the competitor who spread rumors that the way I beat him on stories was by dating (he used a different verb) my sources.
For the most part, these men were oblivious to their offense. If confronted, which wasn’t often, there were three responses — defensiveness, denial and making my thin skin the issue; silence and a change in our relationship; and acknowledgment and understanding.
I have not always known what to do.
Most of the time, I chose to pretend I didn’t hear, that I didn’t care and that it didn’t undermine my confidence.
As I age, the type of harassment I experience has changed too. It’s still gender-based, but it’s less sexual.
I’ve learned it doesn’t pay to pretend; so, for the most part, I let people know that I hear them, that I understand the inference, and that I see their words for what they’re meant to be — humiliating, belittling and ignorant.
As I listened to the debate the erupted afterward, I thought of the young reporter, Charlotte Observer beat reporter Jourdan Rodrigue.
I’ve been in her shoes.
That uncomfortable silence that followed Newton’s remark, I’ve felt its weight. I’ve been publicly humiliated for no other reason than because I was a woman trying to do my job. I’ve had to defend myself in a fight I never wanted.
I grappled with who is worth confronting, how to address issues in the least confrontational way possible, and I’ve debated whether it was even worth the trouble that would certainly be mine if I dared mention the problem.
After she tweeted about the incident, Rodrigue became the target of people who would rather dismiss a sexist remark than ask why attitudes like this are toxic to any environment.
They highlighted inappropriate and racist tweets she shared several years ago. They preceded her working at the Observer, and they had nothing to do with Newton or the issue of sexual harassment, but they allowed people to dismiss an uncomfortable issue.
Those tweets allowed people to skip conversations that might benefit all of us.
Make no mistake about it, those who brought up the tweets did so in an effort to bully her into submission. And let that be a message to any other woman who might dare address an inequity.
They not-so-subtly dismissed his offense by creating outrage over hers.
Why don’t an estimated 75 percent of sexual assault victims come forward? Why don’t domestic violence victims seek help? Why don’t women pursue discipline against co-workers or bosses for sexual harassment? This is why. Because if you do, be prepared to defend what you do, who you do it with, what you wear and every choice you’ve ever made whether it has anything to do with what happened to you or not. And heaven help you if you’re not the kind of victim that society sees as worthy of our outrage.
Sexual harassment is more than inappropriate jokes or women who can’t take compliments. It’s demeaning, demoralizing and a destructive force to both a work environment and individual human beings. You do not have to be the target, to suffer.
Any environment is made better with variety. Whether you’re talking about nature, a recipe or a business, diverse and unique individual elements create a much more viable, delicious and interesting unit. Add women to your workplace and you may not be able to tell those dirty jokes, but I’ll let you in on a secret. Those were already creating toxicity that carried into other parts of your life. A diverse workforce is as beneficial to us as human beings as it is to a company’s success.
As I listened to Cam Newton’s apology for those sexist comments, I thought of his young daughters.
I thought of how it feels to idolize someone who doesn’t know he’s sending you mixed messages.
If Clint Eastwood had a twin, it would be my dad. From the terrifying stare to the conservative politics to the aversion to conformity, my dad is some combination of every character Eastwood has ever played.
A Vietnam veteran and retired Alaska State Trooper, my dad has always been a human contradiction.
On one hand, he convinced me I could do anything I wanted to do. In fact, his dreams for me were much bigger than my own. To say he encouraged me to chase my dreams would be trivializing the relentless support he’s been in my life.
But he was also the first person I battled with over gender stereotypes. He didn’t think women belonged in combat and said when he first became a police officer, he said he’d refuse to work with a female officer, joking that, she might “fall down and shoot me in the back” under the pressure and chaos of the job.
At the same time, he taught me to defend myself, helped me recognize dangerous situations and discussed ways I could avoid, escape or survive those worst-case scenarios that frame a woman’s reality. He reveled in my unorthodox choices and celebrated my independence.
But it wasn’t my well-thought-out arguments that ever persuaded him to change his opinion of female police officers or soldiers. It was the tough, capable women he worked alongside.
It wasn’t long before he was talking about how they were the most reliable backups and the most capable investigators. They did what his affection for me could not.
His perception shifted even more deeply when my confrontation-avoiding younger sister followed him into the profession. He painfully experienced, through her, just how insidious those gender stereotypes are to tough, capable women.
Newton’s apology was, in my opinion, more sincere than most. Yeah, he didn’t offer the video apology until after he lost sponsors, but sometimes it takes something painful to wake us up to a blind spot.
We all have biases.
I’ve been called out on mine. Instead of jumping in my bunker, I’ve sought to learn and evolve. I’ve even had to ask for forgiveness. Good and intelligent people have biases and even prejudices. I assert that most men don’t understand how demeaning, debilitating and demoralizing sexual harassment or gender bias is, especially in professions almost exclusively male.
My advice is to take Newton, and men like him, at their word. He said he didn’t intend to belittle or offend, and I’m willing to accept that. My advice to him is that if you love those little girls and want a world of endless possibilities for them like I think you do, then find some tough, capable women with whom you can address this issue in a real and ongoing way.
And if you’re a man who thinks having daughters or loving a woman or respecting your mom makes you less sexist, I promise you that it does not. You can have, and even share toxic gender stereotypes while holding the hand of that little girl who thinks you might actually be the real Superman.
So if you aren’t moved to gain insight and understanding into this issue for yourself or the women who work with you, then maybe do it for her.
Because someday, she’s going to run into a man who grew up saturated in the ideas you propagated.
And she’ll have to live and love and be excellent in a world your behavior helped create.