Today’s Working Women Have Learned to Be Tough Guys

At an early age, most boys are taught to defend themselves. It’s a sad state of affairs that many master the art before learning to read, but that’s the way it goes.

My dad had his priorities straight--I did learn to read first--but I also remember his instructions on how to handle perceived “threats” in the world, such as my 8- and 9-year-old school chums. As my dad put it, it was important to know “how to take care of yourself.”

So, he gave me some boxing lessons, none of which I remembered once a real fight started. What did stick with me, though, was the notion of fighting back when threatened.

It was a guy thing. We learned that if someone knocked you on your can, you hit back. If someone said something you didn’t like, you had a retaliatory option. If you didn’t exercise that option, fine. But if you didn’t, you didn’t complain afterward. If you were run over on the football field, about all the sympathy you’d get from the coach was a heartfelt, “Pick up your jock.”

To update the terminology, boys didn’t think of themselves as victims.

Most women have grown up in a different culture. Not equipped physically to even consider taking on a male bully and generally not accustomed to having coaches yell at them, you’d expect their defense mechanisms to be somewhat different than men’s. They’ve had less practice in their youth at being stomped on.

That, at least, was the premise that led me recently to ask a couple of young women friends how they would handle the bullying commonly referred to as sexual harassment.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I borrowed a scenario from the now-defunct allegations made by Paula Corbin Jones against President Clinton. The question to my friends: If a male supervisor had summoned either of them to a hotel room, exposed himself and then made a sexual proposition--but did not touch or otherwise threaten them--how would they react?

Would they feel “victimized”?

To tilt the conversation a bit, I asked if claiming “foul” from such a proposition wouldn’t play into the notion that women are helpless. Would a “strong” woman be traumatized by such an event?

My friends accepted the loaded questions without flinching.

They agreed that such a sexual proposition would be tawdry and not a laughing matter. But neither said they would have felt victimized. Nor would they have pressed charges, they said, assuming that no job repercussions ensued from their refusal to submit to the sexual offer.

To my surprise, they were more dismissive of the situation than I. While I’d been wringing my hands over whether such a proposition automatically constituted an actionable case, their take seemed to be: Sometimes men do disgusting or unwelcome things, but if it doesn’t involve a physical assault or impinge on one’s job, then it is a private matter.

Within days of that conversation, and in a total coincidence, another woman friend with Paula Jones on the brain wrote to me with anecdotes from various stages of her careers.

An elderly ex-boss at her first job routinely kissed women on the cheek when they came to work. Young men made suggestive remarks when she waitressed as a college student. Years later when she was a professional woman with two children, a potential business client attempted to grope her.

What did she do about it?

I found something oddly comforting in her response: “Why am I telling these stories?” she wrote. “Perhaps because they are, on the whole, so inconsequential. They didn’t make me feel that I was a victim or diminished in some way, though it’s true I felt distaste for the men.

“Most men are terrific to work with, respectful and collegial, if occasionally unable to understand the female viewpoint. So what if there are a few creeps out there? Women make unwanted passes too . . .

“For goodness sake,” she wrote, “let’s not turn into a nation of Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey crybabies. . . . I keep wanting to tell these people to get a life, especially when you look at women with real disabilities and disadvantages who nevertheless succeed in the corporate jungle. Let’s reserve sexual harassment for serious offenses, like real sexual assault, threats of recrimination or blackmail. Do we really need paternalistic courts to protect us from blue jokes, clumsy passes and stray hands?”

I’m not claiming these three women’s responses are typical. I have no way to know. I’m considering them, however, as thoughts from soldiers in the front lines of women in the workplace.

The friend who wrote said something else that caught my eye:

“I’m not the victim type and nor, do I believe, are most women in America. I think most of us can take pretty good care of ourselves.” Hey, I recognize that language. In another place, another time, it’s just what dad taught me about tough guys.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com