A Senior Vice-President at a prominent Fortune 500 Los Angeles firm wrote in an email to the L.A. Times that he is “fed up” with sexism in the workplace. The executive, who asked that his company not be named, and signed the email simply as “Howard,” has some extreme examples for what he feels would be a positive step to eliminating sexism in the workplace.
“It’s gotten downright out of control,” Howard writes in his letter to the Times. “Whenever I express myself in an aggressive way, I’m perceived as an ass—-. But when a woman is aggressive, people say she’s just ‘assertive.’”
“What’s worse,” he continues, “is the ‘glass ceiling’ debacle. As a direct result of Janine over in Corporate Finance beating me out of my promotion to CEO, I can’t afford to install the skylight I’ve always wanted on the fourth floor of my Summer estate. It’s so depressing I can’t bring myself to vacation there. Just this once, I wanted a damn glass ceiling.”
Apparently it isn’t just Howard suffering a financial strain as a result of corporate sexism—it’s also his company. He claims that, “It’s one thing for women to take our jobs, but equal pay too? The amount we are paying our female staff has led to budget cuts resulting in my flying business class instead of first class on business trips, and I’m forced to stay in dismal 4-star accommodations that don’t even have a minibar.”
Howard also points out the undue consideration given his female colleagues when it comes to the use of office space, citing as an example the recent conversion of the office billiards room to a breast-feeding room: “Why can’t we just buy a porta-potty for that? Isn’t how they do it at football games?”
He continues, arguing that sexism is forcing men to settle for traditionally “male” roles such as a blacksmith or a shoeshine boy.
The contents of Howard’s email, however, didn’t contain mere complaints—He also proposed a solution to what he deems this “silent epidemic.”
“Simply put,” he states, “all of these issues can be stopped in their tracks and prevented by placing a ban on ‘Bring Your Daughter to Work Day’ in corporate workplaces. If they don’t know about work, they can’t eventually get into the workplace. Easy-peasy.”
Howard says that he plans to start a Facebook page dedicated to the movement he refers to as MESI (Men for the End of Sexual Injustice).