Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn and a Hostile Work Environment

Citizens gave testimony about their encounters with porn and those
who consume porn to the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on
December 12, 1983. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.121-124).

Testimony of Ms. B

I used to be a resident of Minneapolis. I am simply going to relate what happened to me about four years ago on the job. I, for the past six years, have been in training to be a plumber. And about four years ago I got stuck on a job that was almost completed but not quite. I don’t know if you understand construction set-ups, but generally in the winter, certain trades will get together and have a little shack inside of a building where they will eat lunch and have coffee and everything else.

When I got on the job, three of the trades had set up a nice little shack and had lunch there. And it was a real shock when I walked in, because three of the four walls in the room were completely decorated with pictures out of various magazines, Hustler, Playboy, Penthouse, Oui, all of those. Some of them I would have considered regular pinups, but some of them were very, very explicit, showing women with their legs spread wide and men and women performing sex acts and women in bondage. It was very uncomfortable for me to go down there and have dinner and lunch with about twenty men, and here is me facing all these pictures and hearing all these men talking about all the wonderful things they did on the weekend with all of these women.

I put up with it for about a week, and it finally got to the point where I could no longer tolerate sitting there and realizing that all of these men were there. I felt totally naked in front of these men. The only thing they talked about during lunch period was women–their old ladies, their girlfriends, and all their conquests of the weekend.

I got to the point where I couldn’t put up with it any more. And being one of the only two women on the job, and being rather new at it and not knowing that I had any alternatives, I got pissed off one day and ripped all the pictures off the wall. Well, it turned out to be a real unpopular move to do. I came back in at lunch time and half the pictures were back up again. They pulled them out of boxes and stuck them on the wall and proceeded to call me names, and just basically call me names or otherwise ignore me.

[Catharine MacKinnon:] Do you recall what names they called you?

There was one electrician that had it in for me. He always said, “Hey, bitch” or some other term that didn’t really sit with me too well. It was very, very hostile.

So after lunch, I went back in and took them all down again, and I came back the next morning and some of them were back up again. At that point I decided that I no longer wanted to eat with these men, and I began to eat my lunch at other places in the building and was totally boycotted at work. The men wouldn’t talk to me. I mean I was treated like I had just done something terrible.

Just by happenstance on that weekend, I was at a meeting and was relating my story to some women, and one of them happened to be a woman who worked for the Affirmative Rights Office in Minneapolis. She said we can help you out. It was an affirmative action job. It was getting federal funds. And she organized three other women and herself to make an unannounced inspection and they did that. And I said, I don’t want them to know that I had anything to do with this because I am scared. And they came and took note of all the pictures that were up–I hadn’t tampered with them any more. They were all on the walls. They wrote letters to each of the companies involved.

And during this time, at some point when I was at work, this one electrician was extremely angry at me. I have no proof that this man did this, but I came out of work one day, my car door was bashed in. It wasn’t parked anywhere near where any other car would have hit it. It was bashed in in a place that wasn’t logical to be hit by another car. I have no proof that this man did it, but I had a sneaky suspicion on that. He was removed from the job, subsequently.

After the LEAP offices and state had written letters to send out to these various employers, my boss, the man who owned the company, called me up one day and said, “Look, I heard you are having a little trouble down there. Why don’t you just kind of calm down a little bit? Don’t make such a mess. We don’t need any trouble down there. Just calm down, just ignore it.” I said, “Hey, I can’t ignore it. I don’t have to, I can’t, it is already done.” A couple days later they got the letter and they were told that this did not comply with the action guidelines. In the meantime, I had asked for a transfer and my transfer came through, which was very fortunate but–

[Catharine MacKinnon:] What part in your transfer did this pornography play?

It came a lot faster, is what happened. They decided I was making too much trouble and had to get me out of there.

[Catharine MacKinnon:] Was it where you wanted to transfer to?

No. I had requested that much earlier and had been waiting on it. But it was really uncomfortable. I felt no support from the men, none of the men at all. In fact, I approached my boss one time and said, “I don’t like these things,” and he said, “I can’t do anything about it. These men do what they want to do.” And I said, “Piss on it, I will do what I want to do.”

It would have been nice if I would have known that there was some action I could have taken, knowing I didn’t want those pictures there…

[Catharine MacKinnon:] Do you have any idea, just to enlighten it for all of us, what their stake in it was, why they kept putting it up over and over?

I, for a long time and, you know, this might not be right, but this has been my sense. I mean, I have encountered pretty much hostility in the last six years being the only woman on the job doing men’s work. On that particular job, I was a legal threat because I had replaced one of the other men who was causing trouble, who was one of the good old boys. And I think they were doubly angry at me on that job and they wanted to get rid of me.

See also (added 3/20/07):

Captain Blakey, the first woman to pilot an Airbus A300 jumbo jet for Continental, testifies that the Continental Airlines corporation did nothing to stop harassment against her by male pilots who spread pornography in plane cockpits and harassed her for reporting the incidents. (Associated Press, 10 September 1997)