Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you. This week I have two pieces of music to tell a sordid story of potential abuse and dereliction of duty of care.

When I was a young lass and fresh out of uni, I applied for a job as electorate officer in the then PM’s office. I recall sitting in the foyer waiting for my interview. Coincidentally at that moment the PM appeared down the hall, a halo of light fell on him as he sauntered back to his office after Question Time. He oozed confidence. The Treasurer followed, also cock sure of himself. All the office staff leapt to their feet to stand as the great man passed. I didn’t know what to do. Should I stand or stay seated? I wondered whether I would have to leap to my feet every time the PM came into the room? This did not sit well with me, so I stayed seated. After all, who did he think he was? The PM? I didn’t get the job. I was pretty enough but the other applicant had more relevant experience. Fair enough. That wouldn’t have been hard in this town.

I have fond memories of being wide eyed with excitement. However, it still struck me at the time that the hallowed halls of parliament were a hyper-masculine workplace. Despite the increase in political representation that women have achieved since then, this does not appear to have led to a commensurate decrease in the hyper masculine toxicity within parliament. I also worry that the rather dominant bullying tone of party politics and government administration has infected other workplaces and society more generally.

Cue first song – The Boys Light Up sung by Australian Crawl. It was a big hit in Australia in the 80s. It is primarily a song about sleaze buckets. You know the type. There are plenty of them. Check out the lyrics for the full cultural experience. Makes me want to vomit.

It is always difficult to ‘make waves’, especially if your job is to protect your boss’ arse. Complaining when shit happens, or when you are dumped in the shit, is almost always a career limiting move. Cue second song – Don’t Cry Out Loud, written by Peter Allen and Carole Bayer-Sager, and sung by Melissa Manchester.

It is most always women who take one for the team. It has to stop.

Be kind and, if you have the power, keep your pants zipped.

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

22 thoughts on “When Work Sucks”

  1. Yep. What men do to women in the workplace… Even stuff that might seem (to another man) innocuous and meaningless… I got my job as a paralegal because the office manager (in charge of hiring) thought I was sleeping with the new associate who was the son of a judge. It happened the new associate was 1) newly married, 2) an old friend. The Office Manager never forgave me for getting the job under “false pretenses.” He even said that.

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    1. No, it doesn’t. I didn’t appreciate the sleaziness of the lyrics at the time. It is one good thing about the internet. Hopefully the song is more social commentary than lived experience.
      There is a big drinking culture here that I find quite confronting.

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  3. If you are female even being PM yourself doesn’t always protect you from the boys club. On a cheerier note I hadn’t seen that version of Boys Light Up before but it does take me back to the 80s when Australian Crawl was one of my favourite bands even though you usually did need the lyrics on the album cover to understand what James Reyne was singing about.

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    1. Vanda, I’ve got a whole new appreciation for many of the older Australian songs now that I can easily access the lyrics. I couldn’t afford to buy albums when I was young but many of the songs were on high rotation play on the radio stations. What the words were really didn’t matter to me at the time!
      The abuse of our first woman PM is something that I think we should be really ashamed about as a country.

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  4. Male hegemony presumed is an issue in Canada too. I say presumed because many folks falsely appropriate power through coercion. Threats, bullying and the like. Australian Crawl is not a group with whom I am familiar but Canada has bands of that ilk. I’m familiar with Melissa Manchester’s music but not “Don’t Cry Out Loud.” She has a beautiful voice. I taught for nearly forty years in an educational institution (high school) and witnessed many incidents of power differentials leading to abuses. Leonard Cohen’s “First we take Manhattan” (live in London) discusses various types of hegemony. YouTube.

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    1. I agree, Sid. Some “folk” do.
      Fear of retribution is enough to silence both women and men.
      In recent weeks, one woman has been brave enough to speak up about her experience in the political workplace. A police investigation is now finally underway. There is much public conjecture about whether the support, or lack thereof, she subsequently received, was motivated by political self-interest on the one hand and male entitlement on the other, or both. Many women working in politics have since come forward with similar stories. Sexism and the abuse it engenders permeates our culture and institutions.
      Today I read Lucy Clark’s excellent article in the Guardian Australia – The trouble with boys: what lies behind the flood of teenage sexual assault stories? It seems shocking
      but we also had the 1970s equivalent as written by two then teenagers, Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey in “Puberty Blues”.
      I listened to your Leonard Cohen suggestion several times today. It is a good choice for the topic.

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      1. Tracy thank you for your comments. The problems of harassment and abuse exists in Canada, in nearly all institutions and in society in general. Dr Bonnie Henry and her staff are being harassed with death threats over the mandate to wear masks during the PANDEMIC. But what is her recourse with anonymous threats? The issue of sexual harassment must be proved by the person being harassed. It creates a very discouraging ethos that allows many of these issues to fester. Legal remedies are available as well as policies and procedures of resolution but not everyone ends up feeling right. #Metoo has some what added pressure but the results are ‘hit or miss.’

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  5. This really resonates with me this morning. I work in a straight white male dominated industry and I suspect there is change coming for me by the end of the year. As I look to the horizon into the mystery of “what next?” I find myself knowing one thing…the diversity of my next chapter has to look different.

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    1. I hope you can find a more diverse and consultative workplace, Natalie. It is good for the soul to be able to work somewhere you are appreciated for the talents and skills you can bring to a position and where you can be part of a great team that works well together. It is such a buzz for everyone when that happens.

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  6. My son told me recently about an incident in his workplace where one of the male employees was making the sole woman there feel very uncomfortable with his aggressive and sexualised behaviour. The man in question was dismissed and I got the impression all the other men were appalled by him and glad to see him go. That gave me just a tiny bit of hope.
    The only Australian Crawl song I really liked was Reckless. Actually I still like it. I’d never looked at the lyrics for Boys Light Up before …. 😝

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    1. Good riddance to that jerk, Su. I hope he learnt his lesson. Did you happen to catch Lucy Clark’s excellent article – The trouble with boys: what lies behind the flood of teenage sexual assault stories – in the Guardian today? There was some interesting discussion on why boys and men don’t intervene to shut down that inappropriate behaviour.
      Reading the lyrics brings a whole new complexion to some of these songs we grew up with. I’ve been creeped out by quite a few of them on close inspection.

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      1. I know what you mean about song lyrics!
        I will read the article; it is distressing, especially when I also see the lovely young men my son surrounds himself with and the strong, sparky women they date/are friends with. I’m sure you see the same thing with your boys and how they seem to occupy a different space to so many other young men.

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  7. Haven’t heard either of the songs before – and I’m totally perplexed to read that so many of you didn’t know the lyrics that well before, that’s something I thought only I have problems with because I’m not a native English speaker. 😂 You wouldn’t want to know what songs I sang to on the radio without even knowing what they meant when I was a kid because they’re were mostly in English. 😁 Same with French btw.😉 Anyway, it’s high time men stop being such jerks and a..holes, and that women take over more jobs in higher places. There’s still a huge difference what women are paid compared to men having the same job (less obviously) – is it the same in Australia I wonder?

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