A couple of weeks ago I attended a friend’s office holiday party as his date (we will call this friend Simon for anonymity purposes, and also because Firefly references amuse me). We work in the same industry, so I know many of the people at his company, previously worked for one of the company’s co-founders, and can talk shop with the best of them. Seldom in the history of office Christmas parties has a date actually been legitimately interested in attending — we figured this would work out well.
And for the most part, it did. Simon did a great job of introducing me to his coworkers and mentioning my background, so I had some great conversations with them.
But a handful of people didn’t react so well. There seemed to be a kind of automatic blind spot for their coworker’s dates. They’d brought their dates with them, but after the initial introductions, I was ignored — presumably so we women could chat amongst ourselves. The most egregious situation, though, was one in which a guy I was introduced to had heard of another company I’d worked for and had a ton of questions about it, which he eagerly asked — to Simon. And every time Simon said “You should ask Kaylee — I mean, she’s the one that worked there” and I would speak up, the guy would ignore me and keep asking Simon the questions.
After we walked away from this conversation, Simon and I had a good laugh over what we found to be a classic case of sexism.
But then later, while we were seated with some interns, my former boss came over to say hi. I was a little flustered, since I hadn’t really seen this guy since I’d left his company, so we traded niceties, talked about my new job, he took my picture to send to some friends at his office, and then he got up and left.
As he left and I was congratulating myself on not being THAT flustered, Simon said something like “Wow, he just did not want to talk to me.” I asked what he meant. “Well,” he said, “I kept trying to jump in to the conversation, but he just ignored me and talked to you.” I immediately started kicking myself for not having had the presence of mind to introduce him — as he’d so consistently done for me at the rest of the party — but then he said, “Man. It really sucks to feel like an arm charm.”
Simon is an excellent feminist in his own right so I’ve never felt like he really needed a “told you so!” moment. But generally speaking, I feel like moments like this are really important for our guy friends to have. We can rant and rave all we want, and the good friends will listen, but actually experiencing a crappy feeling from being ignored in a reverse gender dynamic situation is a much more powerful thing. I feel bad that my cluelessness in the situation put Simon in this awkward spot; but in a way, I’m a little glad that he really gets how, even when we can step back and laugh at it, it really does indeed suck to feel like an arm charm.
