Summer Internship Sponsored by Sexist Bullshit
All summer long I’ve seen Haverford post about people’s amazing summer intenships all over the world. We talk about the funding, we get amazing action shots of people in labs or doing something in another country and other inspiring images. I love that my peers are in all different fields all over the world getting amazing experiences and I love hearing about it. However, I don’t think we talk about discrimination in during these summer internships. The funding opportunities are amazing, the work experience is amazing, the local ideal, the sexism/ racism/ homophobia/ ect? not so much.
I’m going to focus in this article about the sexism I faced during my summer internship, but I can only imagine the layer of race since I am a white person. I will speak from my experience, but I hope you will also speak from yours and share your story as well.
Overall, I had a great summer internship and I loved it, but there were a few moments that left me feeling frustrated and upset. They were mostly small comments, maybe said with good intentions and probably more as a joke than anything, that being said, it was still sexist bullshit.
It was a Friday and I was getting ready for the monthly happy hour. We were giving out T-shirts and I had all of the T-shirts out and was looking through them to figure out what sizes to bring. A guy from the office comes up to me and says, “Hey, I have some laundry you could fold at home.” Firstly, that’s a dumb joke because I’m not folding the shirts, I’m actually making a mess because I can’t find the mediums. Also I’m an adult ass women, so no I will not fold your laundry.
Another co-worker comes up and asks what I’m doing with the shirts. I said that we were going to cut them up at the happy hour because we only had larger sizes. He said, “Oh yes, you can cut them into miniskirts. That’ll be great.” I frowned. Again, that’s dumb because you cut T-shirts into smaller shirts, we aren’t redefining the cut T-shirt fashion to make it into a mini skirt. Again, I’m an adult ass woman. I am not going to wear this T-shirt as a mini skirt and even if I did, I still don’t need your creepy comments.
I truly believe these comments would not have been made to a man. It’s ridiculous to ask an adult man to come to your home to fold your laundry or if he is going to cut a T-shirt into a mini skirt. Guess what? It’s also ridiculous to say those things to an adult woman.
This last moment was really the moment that got to me. It was my last week and I was at the table I always work. A coworker came up and said I needed to move because this was a communal table. I was confused because I’d been assigned to work her in the beginning of the summer, also I’d been there for 10 weeks already and if there was a time to bring up my seat arrangements, it probably wasn’t 3 days before I left. I explained that this was my assigned working station and he walked away. A few moments later he came up and yelled at me because I’d left a few papers on the desk over the weekend, he said I had to move and that I couldn’t leave things around. I was shocked. I had left 3 pieces of paper in a neat pile on the corner of the table for a few days. I was sitting in my assigned work station. I’d been here for 10 weeks and no one had said anything. To my knowledge, there’d been zero conflict of usage of the table. It truly just felt like he was challenging my space and policing my body for no reason. I immediately felt myself shrinking. How could I leave those papers there? How presumptuous was I to assume this was my space? I got so upset I was shaking. Then I realized, I’d done nothing wrong. This guy was exerting his authority over me. I am positive that he would not have said this to a male employee or to an older person.
So yes, thank you CCPA for advertising this job, thank you to the Haverford alum who interviewed and hired me, thank you to the organization for paying me and providing me with invaluable work experience and thank you to most of my coworkers who were overall extremely kind, supportive and helpful, but also fuck that sexist bullshit, I’m not moving desks.