It was "just what you had to do"

What have you put up with that, with hindsight, you wish you hadn't?

Sharon Stone laughing at sexism, because what else you gonna do?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the things Gen-Xers put up with that younger women simply would not tolerate. It’s something that takes up a lot of my headspace, but this particular time was prompted by a video of Sharon Stone (Opens in a new window) that’s been doing the rounds recently. The clip was a couple of years old so I don’t know why it’s suddenly resurfaced (strangely it seems to be unconnected to the shameful slurring of Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner) other than that it’s as relevant today as it was then, and sadly probably will be in five years time. In fact, the way we’re going, possibly more so.

In it, a journalist asks Sharon if she has ever experienced sexual harassment. I know, right? She gives him a wry look and then she bursts out laughing. And laughs. And laughs. For ten seconds. Which might not sound like long, but is very long indeed if you’re an interviewer being laughed at by a guest on national television. The interviewer (White. Male. Middle-aged. Because, of course) truly does not know why Stone is laughing. “Why are you laughing?” he asks plaintively. “Is it because it would never happen or is it because of course you have?” Sharon just laughs harder and then, eventually taking pity on him (like nobody ever took pity on her), says, “I’ve been in this business for 40 years. Can you imagine the business I stepped into? Looking like I look. From nowhere Pennsylvania. I didn’t come here with any protection. I’ve seen it all.”

That came hot on the heels of an interview I did recently with the actor Minnie Driver for an upcoming episode of The Shift with Sam Baker podcast (dropping May 17) where she spoke about the expectation that as a young actress she would sit on Harvey Weinstein’s knee. Whilst it was utterly repugnant, it wasn’t shocking – at the time – it was “just what you had to do”.

Just what you had to do.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that – or a variation on that – since I’ve been interviewing women in their late thirties and beyond for the podcast. Practically every single episode. Not even slightly exaggerating. Just yesterday, I interviewed the legend, actor and #oldbirdrolemodel Sheila Hancock – who is no slouch when it comes to standing up for herself – for an episode coming in June. She recalled the relentless sexist jokes and “bum-pinching” she had to put up with while working on television sitcoms in the 60s and 70s. And she did “have to put up with it”. Calling it out was in no way an option for a young working class woman who, it was made clear, should consider herself lucky to be there at all.

The other thing you just had to do, in my experience, as a young woman starting out in the 90s, was look out for each other. It wasn’t the job of your male boss not to “accidentally” grope you by the photocopier, it was your job to avoid getting caught by the photocopier if he was in the vicinity. Just as it was your job to tip off new staff so they knew to do the same. (A friend of mine who worked in political journalism throughout the noughties tells me it was common knowledge that a certain once-very-senior politician was such a vile lech (code for assaulter obv, along with sleaze) that “everyone knew” you should not stay late in the offices unless there was someone else (preferably male) on the premises, too.

As everyone who’s been subject to harassment or assault knows, the onus was – and to a large extent, shockingly, still is – on you not to “put yourself” in danger. If we had ever suggested that perhaps the onus should have been on them to keep their f*cking hands to themselves we’d have been laughed out of a job, let alone court.

Everyone knew. It’s girl code for "we need to look out for each other because the system won’t look out for us". And it’s been invoked every time a sexual harassment scandal has broken.

Harvey Weinstein? Everyone knew.
Bill Cosby? Everyone knew.
Louis CK? Everyone knew.
R Kelly? Everyone knew.
Chris Noth? Everyone knew.
Jimmy Savile? Everyone knew. (Even small children who were creeped out by Jim'll Fix It. But that's a different essay.)

Everyone knew.
But no-one said a word.

It sounds like the dark ages now, and in many ways it was. Like many people I know, I considered this grim-but-normal, if not acceptable, until the Me Too movement. I remember clearly the day, in a news meeting, I recounted a story from my early magazine days to the young female staff of The Pool. I had been Features Editor on a women’s magazine at the time. A senior member of staff on a men’s magazine owned by the same company was notorious for treating female interns as if they were a perk of his job. 

Everyone knew.

Eventually, rather than just “managing” him and passing the baton of responsibility between female staff, one of the interns (brave, brave woman to speak up in the 90s) eventually complained to HR. The outcome: was he sacked? Reported to the police? Given a final warning? Reprimanded, even? Hahahahahahahahaha. No. But don’t worry, the company did do something. They banned that magazine from having female interns for the foreseeable future. I know. One young woman spoke up – in a company that employed hundreds of young women – and, if indirectly, lost her job, while the offender didn't even get a slapped wrist, to my knowledge.

With my 2022 eyes, it’s shocking. Was there a furore in the press? Did the hundreds of women who worked for that company do anything? Did we down tools? Sign a petition? Walk out in protest? Of course not. (And, today’s recourse of starting a whispering campaign on social media was decades away from being a possibility.)

We just carried on. Why? Because it was no more than we expected. It was normal. And we didn’t want to lose our hard-won jobs. Jobs we felt lucky, grateful – imposterish, even – to have. It was the unspoken price of a seat at the table. Even if that seat came with an expectation that regardless of our seniority we would take the notes and make the tea.

Me, about to start my new job as Editor of Cosmo, 2004 (oh, the innocence!)

Of course, when I told this story to a bunch of young millennial women their response could not have been more different. They were (rightly) disgusted. But not so much with the serial offender. Or even the company that failed to so much as reprimand him. (Although I don’t doubt they were repelled by those, too.) No, their contempt was directed at me and the women like me who clung to our seats by our fingernails and said nothing.

Because to speak up was to lose your job. And it was “just the way things were”.

Much later, when I was an editor myself, I had a boss who openly mocked his fiftysomething female superior for having a “chicken neck”. Quite what that had to do with her ability to do her job I don’t know. But he clearly had little power where she was concerned and this was the only way he knew how to wield it. Another of my bosses (probably the best I’ve ever had, in so many other ways), looked around our company’s 90 per cent female table at an awards do and said with a straight face “you can say one thing for [us] we don’t employ mingers”.

(And those were the comparatively good guys.)

These, and the many other micro aggressions I’ve put up with throughout my career, are anathema to many younger women. Not that they would happen, but that you would allow them to go unremarked. Since Me Too dragged the normalisation of sexually abusive behaviour out from under the rock where it was thriving and into the spotlight of social media and beyond, slowly but surely, things are changing.

I was brought up in a put up or shut up family, steeped in the school of pull yourself together and you’ve made your bed so you can lie in it. Like Sharon, like Minnie, like Sheila. Probably like many of you. (Unless you're young enough to have been brought up by Gen-Xers, in which case you probably don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, and let’s keep it that way.)

A listener messaged me after a recent episode of the podcast and asked, “why do you have to do that? You spoil a perfectly good conversation by making everything about sexism.”

Er, do you want the long answer or the short one? Because pretty much everything is.

But also because every woman I’ve spoken to, be they 39 or 89, has a story to tell, and I believe the only way to put a stop this is to keep telling them. When women stop telling me they “just had to put up with it”, then I’ll stop asking.

Do you have a story to tell? Have you put up with microagressions (or macro ones!) because that was “Just what you had to do?” I’d love to hear about your experience. Please comment below.

I hope you enjoyed this essay. It's my first for The Shift with Sam Baker, so nerve-wracking to say the least. Do feel free to share it with your friends. And if you or they'd like to read more like this, receive weekly newsletters and culture roundups, be able to comment and join The Shift bookclub, why not become a paying member?