Why I let sexual microaggressions slide – and wish I hadn’t.

This episode of The Velvet Hammer provides listeners with an eye-opening glimpse into the challenges faced by women in the legal profession. Karen delves into uncomfortable encounters she's experienced over the years in her legal career, exploring how these actions were a form of microaggression and a display of power dynamics. She examines the reasons why women, including herself, often ignore or downplay such situations, aiming to be seen as equal professionals rather than being defined by their gender or appearance.  

Tune in to hear why she let sexual microaggressions slide – and wish she hadn’t. 

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Hosted by Karen Koehler and Mo Hamoudi, trial lawyers at Stritmatter Law, a nationally recognized plaintiff personal injury and civil rights law firm based in Washington State. 

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Transcript

The Velvet Hammer an Inside Look at Trial Lawyer Life with Karen Koehler. Real life stories about fighting the good fight.

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to another female lawyer who had had a situation arise at work that wasn't sexual harassment or sexual abuse, but something less than.

I looked it up in Google as to what the definition of that thing would be, and the answer was a microaggression. What on earth is a microaggression, you might wonder? Well, in the case of unwanted sexual connotated interaction, it's something less than sexual abuse, sexual harassment, something less than.

And in talking with her in this beautiful year of 2023, I thought back, because as a person getting ready to turn 63, this doesn't so much happen to me anymore. But it happened all the time, and it hasn't seemed to change over the decades.

So I'm going to go way back in time. Not that long back, but enough back.

Number one, the bailiff.

The first time it happened, I was trying a case in King County Superior Court, and the bailiff started acting inappropriately towards me, catching me out in the hall, walking with me if they could find me outside of the courtroom, making comments daily outside of the presence of the court on my appearance and letting it be known that they would like to date me.

This probably happened 15 to 20 years ago, and that was a very odd situation. The first time it happened, disregarded. Don't think twice about it. But as it kept happening, I realized that there was really nothing I could do about it and that it was not okay. I had another trial just a couple of years later,  same bailiff, and I've had at least three trials. Now with that bailiff. Now, the bailiff probably doesn't would know that it happened, but the first two times it most certainly did.

And because I was representing a client, client has to come first. And so there's no way to shrug that off to say, do not do that, or I'm not interested, or please don't walk that close to me.

At least I felt like that was never going to happen because my clients interest had to come first, and the client's interests dictate that I do whatever I can to make the judge like me and their staff like me and make things go smoothly. And so I did not raise it.

I actually wanted to tell the judge after the first incident because I thought he needed training or a stern talking to. It was that significant. And he was a minority bailiff, and I wanted to promote that.

It was just one of the things that I just grinned and bared it and let it be gone that, in retrospect, shouldn't have happened. I don't think that the judge would have gotten mad at me for going and talking to them.

I don't think that a court staff should be hitting on an attorney in the middle of legal proceedings because there is a dynamic of power involved. I e. They're an arm of the court, and you, the attorney, are not.

I also felt if they were doing it to me, they were doing it to other people.

Why didn't I speak up? Well, I can blame it again upon not wanting to impact the client's case, but was there something else at play there?

Scenario number two opposing counsel.

I've had this kind of stuff happen throughout my career with opposing counsel, but there was one particular opposing counsel who was way, in my opinion, over the top. And so what? What is it? What is it that I'm talking about? The it I'm talking about is a form of expressed interest and intention that is not done to make the other person uncomfortable or feel like they are in fear.

It is an act of and I guess it's a microaggression power involving, in my case, male making statements to indicate that they're interested in me. Female in a non professional manner. I e sexual in nature.

It is unwanted, it is unsolicited, and it can be really awkward and off putting. So in the I in the decades before internet dating, it used to just be people approached people just on the fly out. That's how it happened. People were I guess that was more of the thing.

You would approach someone and say, hey, you want to go out on a date? Or somehow show interest. Maybe it was at a bar, maybe it was just out in the grocery store. Much to my children's dismay, I had a guy at the roller rink fixate on me. Whatever the intent or desire, when you are the target of that and you are in a professional setting, it really leads to uncomfortability and awkwardness and feelings of almost downright embarrassment.

It's not a positive experience. Maybe one thinks, well, they're going to be flattered that I mentioned how nicely they fill out their outfit, which is what happened to this young woman I just talked to. Or they're going to say things to me. These things have been said. Such as, have you always been able to maintain your figure?

Like commenting not only on, oh, you look nice today, but wow, your legs look great in that outfit.

There's a line between saying, nice tie and my God, that tie looks great on you.

And it's not just the words, because remember what is it, 80? It's a huge percent. 75, 80, whatever. The ridiculous percent of communication is not the words. It is everything else. The tone of the voice, the heightening of an eyebrow, the grin on the face. That is not just the typical the change of voice.

We don't have to be dummies to know what's going on. So when that happens to female in a professional setting, you'd think, well, I mean, a strong female like you, Karen, I mean, you would just let him have it, right? No, I wouldn't. I absolutely wouldn't. And when. I think back on it, it's something I regret.

So the opposing counsel says something like that to me, and what do I do? I change a subject. I pretend it wasn't said. I rarely meet their eyes. I brush it away.

I don't acknowledge it and move on. And it always does. People will always move on, no doubt. They'll just move on.

But why don't I confront it? Why haven't I confronted it? Why have I let this type of behavior go? And I bring us right back to the present with my colleague who was told something that was very much based upon not what their outfit looked like, but what their body looked like and made them uncomfortable. And yet they did not do anything except for try to get out of the situation. They did not confront.

Why don't we confront when that happens?

Well, okay. Opposing counsel, the bailiff. Well, how about just a professional colleague? You're walking down the courthouse steps, and another colleague is walking up, and they stop to greet you and then look you up and down and tell you, wow, that is just you are just looking great.

Again, not commenting on your outfit, but what your body is looking like inside your outfit or how your face looks.What is the point of doing that?

We know what the point of doing that is now. Is it that they're really trying to get a date? Is that they're really trying to let you know that they think no, it's an exercise in aggressive, predatory personal power.

And in the case I'm giving of mail in my first major job out of law school, when I worked for a large law firm of over 50 lawyers. It.

One of the senior associates who then became a partner, who'd been practicing for, I don't know, 15 or so years by then, older than me, who I did some work for, really liked, used to call me honey all the time.

Why didn't I tell him to stop doing that? And we worked in the Columbia Center right when it opened a heavy hitter law firm.

Why did he call me honey?

Obviously, he thought I was just adorable. And why did I let him? I didn't like it when he called me honey. I knew that I looked young. I knew I was 25 years old. But I was a lawyer being paid a lawyer's wage to do a lawyer's job. He didn't call anyone else their honey.

I had a fellow partner who called me sweetheart and honey all the time. I felt he did it because he, whether he knew it or not, wanted subconsciously for me to be less than.

At first I thought it was just a slip of the tongue. It was kind of endearing. And then I thought it's to show me subliminally that I am not on par with him, which I was in every other way other than our gender. And I don't really see female as being subservient to male.

Why didn't I tell these people to knock it off, ever?

Now, by contrast, if anybody did it to me specifically to attack me like an opposing counsel, I would be all over their butt.

But these other levels of we call them microaggression, something less than sexual harassment, certainly not sexual abuse. But this other power play type of language and behavior. I would let it go, pretend it didn't exist, or just get out of there.

Why did I do that? Why do so many women still do that? Well, for me, I just wanted to be a lawyer in the professional arena. I wanted to be seen as a lawyer. I didn't want to be seen as a woman lawyer, a less than lawyer. I just wanted to be a lawyer. I don't want to be a lawyer defined by my race, my gender, my height, the style of my shoes or clothes, the nature of my voice.

I just wanted to be taken for what I was, which was a lawyer.

And so I felt that if I called attention to any of that behavior, I would be making waves, ruffling feathers over something that I personally didn't want to exist, which was anything that distinguished me from just being a regular lawyer. I-E-A male lawyer. I asked my friend that this happened to a couple of weeks ago, and this friend is a very strong person, a talented lawyer.

Why didn't you say something back when that lawyer made you feel uncomfortable by commenting on your body versus your outfit? Why didn't you say something?

And the comment was, I just didn't want to make a big deal about it.

And then they told me that the day before, an expert had met with her on Zoom for the first time, her own expert. And the first thing out of the expert's mouth was, quote, oh, my gosh. I wasn't expecting you to be so pretty. End of quote.

Now, before they said that, they said these words, I probably shouldn't say this, but I probably shouldn't say this, but, oh, my gosh. I didn't expect you to be so pretty. Okay, you what does pretty have to do with competence of a lawyer? It doesn't. It has nothing. Nothing? Zero.

So from a professional standpoint, there's no need to talk about someone's looks. Now, I'm not saying that we don't talk about people's looks. Because I'm going to tell you right now there is a really cute doctor that we call, well, Dr. Cute, but we would never say that to Doctor's face. He's an expert. But we always talk about Dr. Cutie. Dr. Cutie pie. Me and the paralegals that work on cases, we have little pet names for some of them that we just think are just cute as can be.

But to their face, we would never say anything like that. Does that make us double faced? I guess maybe it does. But you know what? Learning to behave as a professional means that you can have feelings that maybe aren't great. As long as you don't express them, then that's fine. All of us have bad thoughts and good thoughts. All jumbled in our minds as long as we don't give expression to the bad thoughts.

Nobody says that we can control our innermost brain function, activity. Our brain sometimes goes places we don't want it to go, but we have the ability to control ourselves. She said nothing to the expert. So we're talking about 2023 strong female lawyer no different than my situation from 10, 20, 30 years ago, probably 40, 1560 years ago. Wait, I wasn't born then. For a long time. I'm giving you these examples because the dynamic hasn't changed. Why hasn't it changed? Especially in the scenario I'm talking about, which is professional female lawyer.

Why don't we say that's really not an appropriate thing to say. It's because we are still on the out. We are still trying to be accepted and to be on the in. We don't want to be that person with the quote unquote thick skin, end of quote, that causes other people to shy away from them. We don't want to be branded as that thin skinned person who will bite your head off if you say something nice to them.

We want to be taken seriously as professionals. We're willing to overlook the unprofessional microaggressions that come our way in order to meet that goal. But when will it stop? Up? And when will there be progress? And why is this still okay? And what are we doing to pave the way for future generations if we don't stop it now?

Why do we accept the embarrassment for having to tell someone to knock it off? Why don't we understand that they're the ones that should be embarrassed and humiliated? And I think we do conceptually, but I think that behavior is difficult to change.

So the next time, if you're a male who's attracted to women and sees a women lawyer that you want to make a personal comment about, such as, I like the way you fill out your outfit, or wow, you look super pretty today, again, commenting on actual characteristics, don't do that. If you want to say, Nice dress, that's fine. And when you do it, don't say it in a suggestive manner, and don't leer and raise your eyebrows or put your hands up in the air or shake your head or behave like an idiot.

And for women, if you are insulted because someone in a professional setting and I'm only limiting it to professional setting today, if someone makes comments on your physical appearance without your permission, tell them that they shouldn't do that. You didn't give them permission. It's not professional.

Let them feel the shame. Reject feeling shame yourself.

Over and out.