I went to see North Country last night with Julie. Last night I was horrified by the violence and harassment perpetrated on these women, yet I woke up this morning remembering exactly why it is I never went into the trades. Julie did comment during the film that I could’ve expected that if I had gone into electrics, and sadly she was right.

Back in grade 8 while we were selecting our courses for the next year at the new school – high school! – we’d be going to I was completely drawn to the idea of taking the Tech 2 course. See, within each year at school you’d only really have one or two electives, and in the case of grade nine I could take a focused shop stream that would take both of mine, so I did. I also was being advised by Mr. Ashley, my junior high shop teacher.

I always had pure amazing tech teachers right through my schooling experiences, starting with Mr. Ashley. I seem to remember that he was thrilled to have someone with an aptitude and a love for woodworking in his class. I wonder if in some part the fact that I’m a female made that even more of a positive experience for him. The poor man (and my poor sister) was so disappointed when my girly-girl sister hit his shop class.

So, grade nine I’m in Tech 2 as my elective and I’m the only girl in my class. There’s a group of us, about 20-25. It was not appreciated that I was sitting in that room with them, let me tell you. Joe was the ringleader for the most part – the guy who expressed how unimpressed they were with a girl sitting in there midst. I should note that most of my tech teachers were incredibly supportive and just thrilled to have me in their classes; the only exception was my auto shop teacher to whom I was just another student.

The sexual harassment that Joe dealt to me and the other guys either tossed comments in or turned away from was only on my peer level. Most of it was laughable, for example the time in auto shop that Joe grabbed his crotch and asked me if I wanted to “suck on [his] chili dog”. For the most part the comments were that I was fat and nobody would ever want to fuck me, or that obviously I was a whore since I was in tech. The mindset being that no girl would want to take tech for its own sake, because she enjoyed it, that she would only be there to pick up the guys. Please.

For the most part I would make little comments back or ignore it, but that never seemed to make it go away. I knew that I could ask my teachers to stop it and they’d take me at my word, but that it would never stop when they weren’t looking. Just the way it was.

So it finally came to a head one day when we were working on the house wiring unit. The electrics classroom was awesome, above the rooms at the back of the room the frame of what would be a decent apartment had been built for the sole purpose of being able to practice wiring in a practical setting. So the bunch of us were up there and Joe’s holding the drill. He came up behind me as I was working and *as the drill was running* thrust it at my crotch, to simulate fucking me with it, I suppose.

I lost it. I could ignore the harassment but at this point it was crossing the line from words and gestures to potentially hurting me. I grabbed the drill out of his hands and I think I dropped it on the floor, then put both my hands on his chest and shoved him as hard as I could. He went down into a pile of wires. I seem to remember saying something like “are you a fucking idiot? You could’ve hurt me. Now STOP IT.” He did from that point on. No fun bullying someone who can and will kick your ass. After that day nobody harassed me again.

But it was always the same whenever I’d meet a new group of young men in the context of my being a techie. Not always sexual harassment, but always a level of isolation and mocking. In my experience to be a woman in a male-dominated area, you have to work twice as hard and be hard as nails. Eventually the respect will come and you’ll be one of the guys, but it’s an uphill, hard road.

Several years ago now my mom cut out an ad for a women in trades at the local college. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life at that point, and from Mom’s viewpoint I’d always loved the trades, so why not. I told her that I’d never go back into tech in any serious way because I just didn’t want to deal with the sexual harassment all over again. She didn’t believe me that it would be that bad.

So she brought it up with my uncle Freddy over coffee one day since he owned an electrics company. She told him what I had said, and apparently in his quiet way, my uncle said “She’s right.” So Mom let the subject drop.

I keep thinking about situations in North Country and how I would’ve dealt with them at the time when I was in tech, or really even now. I’ll tell you this, if a co-worker was groping the breast of another in my presence, I’d be laying hands on him and shaming him. None of this “hey, come on” crap. Most people, most men, no matter how beastly they may act will fold to someone that in fury asks them how’d they like it if someone did that to their daughter, sister, wife, mother. How’d they like these same women they love to know that they behave in these ways? In my experience most of the games played in sexual harassment is all about show and dominance. Take away the show and dominate yourself, you can force a hand.

But women are taught to not make a scene. Taught to submit and let it go away. Whenever this comes up for me I’m reminded of a situation of a friend of Mike’s. She was being cornered by a guy on a dance floor in a club, touching her inappropriately, if I remember right. And instead of slapping him and making an unholy scene of “what the fuck do you think you’re doing. Get your hands off of me. GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME, NOW.” she looked for someone to rescue her from him. I’ve always been so upset by that story because it means in some way we fail each other in that we don’t teach our girls that they have the right to loudly and forcefully protect themselves.

Oi, almost 2 pages on this. I think I’m going to let it go now and post it.