“Are you wearing pants under that dress?”

In the evolving fall-out of Gregg Wallace -all (some) of the times men Said Stuff to me in the office, and how I dealt with them.

One of the things which happens when an episode like Gregg-Wallace-Gate erupts, is that women start thinking about all the times men Said Stuff to them. We measure what was said to us, against the things Wallace denies saying to the women accusing him.

We wonder why we’re not more traumatised.

Or we wonder if we are traumatised, we’re just suppressing.

Or we ARE traumatised.

Or we laugh about how outrageous it was in retrospect. Or we think (but never say out loud) “Erm, yeah, no biggie, babes,”. Or we wonder why we didn't go to HR. Or we think about how we did, but HR shut us down. Or we can’t believe the fuss created around one definitely bald, allegedly handsie boor with (allegedly) no boundaries and (allegedly) no filter on his (allegedly) unfunny sexualised flow of consciousness; cos that level of chat? That was an unremarkable Tuesday morning of office bantz for me, back in the day.

This, I think, is part of the problem with situations like these. Women do not all respond in the same way, to the same affront. One woman’s deeply traumatising violation at the hands of a predator, is another woman’s fleeting irritation at the hands of a dick. And how do we legislate for that? So that we honour the concerns of those who are reduced, ashamed, belittled and scared by this grade of conduct, while not patronising those who are not, those who feel far more reduced and belittled by the idea they couldn’t despatch dipshits like that before they’ve sent their first email?

I don’t know.

But - look - forgive me, Vastly Superior Feminists of SubStack, because: I lean toward the latter category, the despatch the dipshits category. When I encountered that grade of poor behaviour in the men with whom I worked - it never really bothered me. Irritated me, bored me, faintly depressed me: sure! But: threatened me? Reduced me? Made me ashamed? Made me call HR? No.

Was I wrong? Did I feel the wrong things? Did my not feeling the right things, enable those men (all of whom are still working, all of whom will, I imagine, have completely forgotten the things they said and did)? Did they say, DID THEY DO worse things to other women, because I didn't especially care when they did it to me? Didn't care enough to make a fuss?
Maybe.

Unless - by even thinking that: am I victim-blaming myself when no one bares any responsibility for what was said and done to me in a professional environment, but the men who said and did it (sorry again, Superior Feminists of SubStack. Forgive me, for I have sinned. I just do; I just will)?

For whatever reason, through whatever quirk of my character, whatever instruction I gained from my personal life experience; I always found those nobbos too pathetic, to be predatory.

EG

The one who asked me every morning what my “numbers” were (he did this - for months - after I wrote an article about “body count”, the amount of people women sleep with in their lives, and the pertinence or otherwise of this figure)?
Pathetic.

The one who slid up to me and asked if I was wearing any pants “under that dress”?
Pathetic.

The time the tables and chairs in an office were reconfigured, so I started walking a slightly different way to my desk, a route which took me past a man of whose existence I was unaware, who nevertheless became quite convinced I fancied him because why else would I go to such lengths to be in his physical proximity? Which is why he told everyone else of my presumed affection, and the office (apparently) spoke of little else for days, until the rumour came to the attention of a female colleague, a friend.

“**** ********** has told everyone you fancy him,” she sighed.

“I don’t even know who he is!” I protested. She pointed him out. Now: I am very much of the opinion we all have a different capacity for shallowness within us, when it comes to attraction. Some of us are shallow about money, some, power, or status or fame - but me? My kind of shallow is the pretty kind. My head is very easily turned by a strong jaw, a high cheekbone, a ferocious eyebrow, a buff bod (which possibly makes ME the predatory one, honestly) but: this chap? This chap was not, as they say, A Bit Of Me.

“WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUCK?” I raged.

“I know,” my colleague-mate said stroking my shoulder, soothingly. “I know.”

News spread, this man quickly learned he’d wildly misjudged the nature of my interest in him; by way of apology, he took me to the pub.

At 11.30 in the morning.

Pathetic

(Though also quite funny?)

The one who said to me, once this whole situation had been “resolved”:

“As if you’d fancy ****! You’re, like, the third best-looking bird in the building!”?

Pathetic.

The one who used to text me, drunk, at 2am because he “just wanted [me] to be happy,”?

Pathet… No, actually - he was the one I filed under “faintly depressing”.

So yeah, like I say, it never really bothered me. I found them ridiculous. Absurd. It helped, for sure, that they never touched me. We never got into groping territory (though an interview subject once tongue-kissed me. And all I thought, was: “Oh! Great end to the piece!”).

They never humiliated me - though perhaps they intended to? I always thought the humiliation was theirs’.

Or perhaps I was by that point, too old, too professionally established, to be adversely impacted by their behaviour anyway; maybe that’s why I feel unbothered, and maybe they knew they were picking on someone (almost) their own size?

Or maybe not.

Actually, definitely not, if I follow my own logic for why their behaviour never bothered me.

I was, I remain, of the belief those men were not in the business of gleefully, revoltingly, exploring a power imbalance. While most of them were technically senior to me - theirs wasn't a seniority I recognised. How could anyone be more important than me, when they behaved like that? How could anyone have more worth, if I pitied them so? That did not add up in my brain. (Of course, it might well have added up in HR's brain, had I brought it to their attention, but I wasn't going to, because I wasn't arsed, which meant any technical power over me remained utterly obsolete as far as I was concerned.)

But I really don’t think they were getting off on being predatory. I think, bless their gross, inappropriate little cotton socks, they thought they were flirting with me! They thought that was how you talked to a woman when you fancied them. I’d guess most of them were single sex educated, without any sisters.

I have said it before, and I stand by it; some - if definitely not all - of men’s questionable behaviour towards women is founded in total delusion about how fit they are. It’s not about power abuse. It’s about them totally overestimating the limits of their physical appeal. Of their charisma. Their charm.

Some men think they can talk to women like that - those men thought they could talk to me like that - because those same men genuinely think they’re in with a chance; when any independent observer would be able to tell them, they most certainly are not, because: Sweet pea! That woman is so far out of your league it would be funny, if it weren’t, you know, pathetic!

Some men just think the fact of them being men is enough to make things like how hot they aren’t, neither here not there.

I call this affliction SDOMAM: the Sheer Delusion Of the Middle Aged Man.

It isn’t uniquely the property of Middle Aged Men of course. First: not all middle aged men have it. Some of the sweetest, gentlest, most appropriate, most fun, most attractive, most sensitive, intuitive, silly people I know, are Middle Aged Men. I find the general demonising of them distasteful, lazy and counterproductive. Furthermore, some of the men I’ve observed with SDOMAM are not yet middle aged. HOWEVER, I am calling it SDOMAM, with special reference to Gregg Wallace himself, who, you’ll recall, attempted to discredit the women making allegations about him as just a “handful of middle class women of a certain age”, which…

Well, it doesn't work, does it?

Because: what is Wallace, but a middle class (working class roots become irrelevant three years or more into prime time TV celebrity lyfe, my friend - oh, you’re full blown media class now!) 60 year old man Of A Certain Age, so: if you’re dismissing the perspective and experience of others on those grounds, the grounds of middle agedness, you as a middle aged person, automatically, instantly diminish your own point in the act - which means it never actually existed!

But Wallace, I suspect, doesn't think being a Certain Age is something that happens to men. Wallace, I suspect, thinks being a Certain Age is only something which happens to women.

But IRONY! That’s just his SDOMAM playing up!

Wallace, of course, apologised - for the Certain Age crack, not the other stuff, which he still denies. But too late, because he’d activated a shit-load of online Man Loons who wondered what he was doing, apologising to a group I saw one online Man Loon refer to as “the irrelevant Raisin Hags”. After (only just) resisting replying to the Man Loon in question, pointing out that Raisin Hags appeared to have just terminated a famous man’s telly career, which makes them quite ferociously relevant, wouldn't you say… I did some light Googling, discovered he was in his mid forties.

Middle Aged. Pure Raisin Hag territory in his own right, surely?

But look. I’m happy to consider my own behaviour, confront the part I myself have played in all this. I am prepared to admit to having been somewhat complicit in it. I think we all have. I think we’ve stoked the SDOMAM for far too long.

I think it’s time we stopped.

So: men. Gather closer. Listen up. Apparently, many of your ranks are a bit clueless, that women look upon you critically - just as you look upon us.

Apparently, you think looking and judging and lusting and dismissing, is a thing you do exclusively to us - but never the other way round.

Oh - think again.

Cos we see you.

We see your spare tires, your paunches, your flabby jowls, your pallid, unhealthy, greying, complexions. Your open pores, your poor posture, your terrible taste in clothes.

We know about your flagging erections ( theoretically, if not first hand), oh, we do.

We really do.

And we don’t agree that you’ve got away with another day without a shower. Or that your teeth give you character. Or that you look all that great in cycling lycra - if we’re honest? You look ridic. How you grunt in the gym does not turn us on. While you think you can still get into that suit you’ve had since your twenties - we can’t help but notice the buckling, failing of the fly, the jeopardy on the straining bum seam, tell a very different story.

And while it’s true that we fancy assorted celebrity men of your age - that’s only when their names rhyme with “Rad Ritt” or “Ridriss Relba” or “Reorge Rooney”. (And while we’re on the subject of Reorge Rooney: greying hair does not make you him. It’s the “foxy”, which makes a man a silver fox - not the silver.) (Oh, and it doesn’t make you Rary Rineker, either, sadly.)

And we will overlook this, if you are lovely! If you are good to us, if you make us laugh, if you show us a good time. If you are solid and enduring in your affections, or just your friendship; if you are - you know - not predatory in the work place. If you don’t slip slide up to female colleagues, ask if they’re wearing pants under that dress.

But if you are not lovely, or solid and enduring in your affections; if you insist in dwelling in misplaced complacency, in the conviction that men just Always still have It, while it leeches away from women from the age of 35 on - know that we see every last physical failing in you, and they really give us the ick.

And know that we know, that’s just your SDOMAM acting up.