It’s been a long time since I worked in the corporate world so my experience is either dated or second hand. But the most consistent complaint I hear from women, whether it’s related to conference calls or meetings in the conference room, is that men interrupt them. The second most common complaint is that male managers cover for low-performing men under their supervision. I don’t know how prevalent these things really are, but I can attest confidently that there is an impression that is shared by many professional women that they happen with great frequency.
So, let’s stick with the impression. How do you think professional women are likely to feel about Senator Rand Paul’s excuse for interrupting female reporters who are trying to interview him?
In an interview with Iowa talk radio host Simon Conway yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul pushed back against claims that he has a pattern of interrupting and acting rudely towards female reporters, saying that the real sexists are the people who criticize his treatment of women journalists.
“The funny thing about it is that it’s kind of a sexist position to think that somehow women announcers are less capable to handle themselves than men,” Paul said when Conway praised his testy response to Savannah Guthrie’s questions about his changing foreign policy positions. “I don’t think that, but everybody that was complaining about it, thinking it had something to do with gender, basically that’s insulting to the people doing the questioning.”
Maybe it is just me, but I don’t think it’s comforting to be told after someone has rudely cut you off while you were trying to talk that your complaint about it is sexist.
If Rand Paul doesn’t care how he is perceived, then there was no need to make an excuse. If he does care, however, this particular excuse will probably only ramp up the rage level.
I see. Sort of like how the NAACP and La Raza are the real racists, because they’re the ones that are always talking about race.
Well, whatever. Rand Paul would make a more convincing feminist if his position on abortion wasn’t identical to Todd Akin’s. And, well, if he wasn’t in denial about being a rude, overbearing, sexist jerk.
Has anyone who is criticizing his actions and attitude actually made a statement or even implied “that somehow women announcers are less capable to handle themselves than men”? My guess would be, “NO”. So that would be a purely Randian straw man, now wouldn’t it? With a little classic projection thrown in for good measure.
My dream Republican nominee. Clinton would win in such a landslide that we might even have a shot at retaking the House. Sadly, na ga ha pen.
Now, now, BooMan.
I’m sure Arthur Gilroy has no problem with this and has a “Is Rand Paul sexist? We shall see” response cued up, followed by a lengthy, condescending, graphics-filled attack on Hitlery Clintoon. Just like his bud, Rand Paul.
Rand Paul, changing the POTUS paradigm!
This complaint is valid: The second most common complaint is that male managers cover for low-performing men under their supervision. Up to a point. Over time, actual performance because clearer to most managers. The divide between high and low performing subordinates because wider. And wider still in comparison with the coddled low performing males that generally respond to that protection by slacking off further. While a pain in the short run, there isn’t any answer but to outperform and outlast the slackers (not all of whom are men).
This is less valid: is that men interrupt them. Managers and senior employees do interrupt subordinates and junior employees. For a variety of legitimate reasons and only insecure managers/seniors do it to pull rank. Those who don’t push back when inappropriately interrupted will continue to experience being interrupted. However, it’s also important for a speaker to recognize when he/she isn’t on point and the interruption is appropriate. Women that haven’t had good role models in how to “maintain the floor” when inappropriately interrupted should watch some recordings of Elizabeth Warren. She’s very good, but not unique. It’s been common among competent, self-assured, and ambition women for decades.
Iunno…
Pretty funny to have such a comical example right on hand
Interestingly enough, my first exposure to women in the workplace that could hold the floor were computer project analysts and managers in the late ’70s and early ’80s. That was in part because there were so few women above clerical positions in the other departments and the managers that existed supervised mostly female staffs. The other part is that corporate computer operations had grown so quickly in the prior decade that many educated women were able to get their foot in the door on the ground floor and ride the escalator up. These were women that had to fight for basic rights — education, credit, abortion, and ERA — during the 1960s and early 1970s. They knew what equal rights was about because they had experienced to some degree what it was like not to have them.
Later I worked with some attorneys that like Warren also didn’t take any patronizing or sexist crap. However, among the women that had by then advanced to line supervisors and managers that authoritative style was rare. Easily confusing strident for assertive. Dismissing feminism as unnecessary for them. Etc. All part of the Backlash. No wonder there weren’t enough of them when the tech revolution hit and the “boys” squeezed them out.
How someone like Megan Smith could sit there on a panel and be continually interrupted by the men without “standing her ground” says as about her and her generational cohort as it does about the men. My peers and predecessors had to be a bit tougher and have tougher skin if we and those that followed us were to succeed. The men we worked for and with had lived their whole lives until then assuming that women belonged in the home or with a steno pad and concentrating on listening to them dictate.
Sexism was so thoroughly bred in them that they were completely unconscious of it. When told that they had to change, they didn’t have a clue as to what they were supposed to do. What they did have were decent manners. They did listen when we spoke. And had a desire not to get labeled as a sexist pig.
It wasn’t easy. In retrospect, I don’t know where I at the age of 23 got the courage to threaten to quit unless I got an apology from a male supervisor that had been incredibly rude to me. (Doubt I had enough in my bank account to get me through more than a couple of weeks.) But I got respect. Later learned how to confront the rare asshole directly and effectively. And when a male boss or peer offered to step in and take care of such a jerk, I declined their assistance and handled it myself.
The relationship of the interviewer and the subject have nothing to do with power dynamics in an organization. NOTHING.
Rand Paul has an agenda, and part of the agenda is making sure that the liberal media is out to get him. In other words, it’s an act. It’s deliberate.
Here’s my experience re: men interrupting women. I am a professional (DVM) with 29 years’ experience, and therefore accustomed to speak with a bit of authority. At work, generally people listen to me, although occasionally I have been known to tell people to get off the cell phone, for pete’s sake. At home, with well over 30 years’ experience, I have finally come to the conclusion that it’s necessary to point out “I started speaking first, so I get to continue right now, not you.” Fortunately, Mr. ixnay seems to be fairly good-humored about it (after some ‘training’), but it does appear that the grade-school rules about letting the first speaker have the floor are being honored less and less frequently. Pointedly falling silent, with a long, long reproachful look, is probably not an option for a TV/radio interviewer, and doesn’t seem to work well in any case. Rude people are, by and large, impervious.
Note that I am a pretty sincere introvert; standing my verbal ground is not easy behavior, so YMMV.