So... I just had an interesting encounter with one of the Tulane maintenance workers (I feel like I say that a lot..). Basically someone sent in a request to have lights changed somewhere in the building and as a student worker, they never tell me so I'm always confused when they come to the front desk and ask. So I told him "I have no idea which lights need to be changed, no one mentioned anything to me about it."
In which he responded, "Oh, must be the other one who sits there who requested it."
The other one who sits there...
The other what? Woman? Person? Secretary??
It made me recall a prior experience I had with a maintenance worker who was coming to fix something else (they fix a lot of shit here because there's a million events for white alum who will complain if they see the money they shell out isn't being use, whatever). As per usual I'm sitting at the front desk and he and this other worker asked me where the location of whatever was being fixed was. I was like I don't know, I just answer the phone. This man walked behind my GINORMOUS desk to show me this small slip of paper that said what he had just said.
It took all the goddesses and strength from my ancestors for me to not flip out on this man...
SIR, WHY ARE YOU BEHIND MY DESK?!
It made me think about my thesis I just wrote for my last gender studies course. I talked about the construction and socialization of space as it relates to identity. Basically who has what space, what goes on in that space and how that dictates to who has voice which seems to be the most important thing people aim for in life.
I used a lot of information for my thesis from Daphne Spain's book "Gendered spaces" where she looks at the construction of space from a social and architectural perspective describing how we come to understand gender roles and peoples "places" in society. One thing she talked about is, which is relevant to my interests as this is my job, is how secretarial positions tend to be occupied by people who identify as woman in desks in open spaces for patrons to question and observe while the decision making happens behind closed doors in spaces unseen to the public and usually occupied by individuals who identify as men. When you walk into my job it's divided as such. I'm at a desk in the front of the building in an open room. The man over the entire building is in a office upstairs where you couldn't call him is you yelled his name.
It immediately made me question: would he have walked back here if I were more masculine presenting? Or if my boss was sitting her instead? Would the other man know the other woman's name if she were a man? A white woman? There's people who sit in the back in cubicles who are known by name and not my boss who sits here everyday. I've encountered another maintenance worker coming in and asking for a person that sits in the far back but couldn't name the woman who sits here regularly and they've all been working here the same amount of time. Some people even know the names of the men who work upstairs in their private sectors.
This man totally violated my personal space. Maybe I'm over exaggarating but allow me to emphasize the size of the desk this dude had to walk around in oder to get to me when he could've presented the paper to my face... Considering how he already SAID IT TO ME I don't inderstand why he even thought to step behind my desk in the first place. I understood what he said, I heard him and I answered. Just not with the answer he was expecting. Either way, I took that to mean he felt he had some sort of dminion over that space and that I should sutomatically be ok with him stepping across the personal bounds of what I consider to be personal and professional space.
Think about it, secretaries out in the open spaces to be questioned and observed. Visible open to recieve critque on anything. I can't name all the times I was sitting at work and someone came in to ask a question and while I was calling people to come collect their folk, they sit up front watching me answer calls and genderally work. But boss man gets to conduct business privately where no one can judge or question his authourity. I don't have a clear cut answer as to how to change the dynamics of these job titles because even if there was a swap in me being the VP of operations and a man sitting at the front desk, there will still be apparent sexism. I just think it's interesting how sexism and gender norms are so ingrained that they effect everyday life.
And by interesting I mean frustrting... I want to exist in a world where a woman who works at my job isn't referred as "the other one who sits there' or where I can feel secure sitting behind my desk knowing that soneone isn't going to step in my fucking bubble.
But I'm a wishful thinker.
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