I Was Sexually Harassed Early in My Career—Here’s What Stands Out Most About the Incident

“It was a different time.”

That’s the phrase that, in some variation, is bandied about among Gen X women and older when we’re talking about the bad old days of workplace sexual harassment. It’s a dismissive term I’ve used myself, the period instead of ellipses to punctuate any thoughts or discussions of how some mogul or macher said or did something we’d see as unacceptable today. Indeed, “it is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person's sex. Harassment can include ‘sexual harassment’ or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature,” says the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In other words, the unpleasant experiences of us 50-somethings were a long time ago, and we’re safe now…right? Now that the #metoo wave has crested? That’s the tidy public takeaway from the rash of convictions and publicized shamings against prominent figures revealed to be sex monsters, such as serial offenders Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.

But after seeing a pair of films dealing with these issues, I’m thinking that there’s another important player in these dramas, at least in my own instance of workplace harassment—one that’s an important safeguard against junior employees being victimized. I’m talking about the strong senior woman who sees what’s going down, and won’t stand for it.

In the late ‘90s, I was an excited twentysomething magazine writer on a work trip—you mean I get my own hotel room?!?—to a Florida resort for an annual conference where publishers and editors met with advertisers. In those days, meeting with a couple potential megabucks companies poolside justified a day’s paycheck, so I was amped to have a mini-vacation in this publishing pantomime. One afternoon while I was sunning between appointments, a loud-talking exec who was as infamous for his swagger as his cigars, waddled up to me in his Speedo and started eyeing me up and down, talking about grabbing drinks or getting together later or…

Decades later, what I recall most about that moment was the sudden appearance of my publisher, a woman who seemingly out of nowhere wedged her pantsuit-clad body between my sundress and that dripping, mostly naked man.

On its face, it could be waved away as innocuous, an older adult male talking to a younger adult female at a work event. But the power differential, and my cluelessness about how private time with Mr. Big might have gone down, made the whole thing creepy, definitely inappropriate and possibly a fireable offense. Certainly, I felt uncomfortable. But decades later, what I recall most about that moment was the sudden appearance of my publisher, a woman who seemingly out of nowhere wedged her pantsuit-clad body between my sundress and that dripping, mostly naked man. She started engaging him in bro-speak work talk, jocular ribbing about how many pages so-and-so reported having bagged. The moment was broken, he stepped back, I retreated to a cabana and later, my publisher and I carried on rat-tat-tatting our publication’s strong points to another prospective advertiser.

This woman, my former publisher, flashed in my mind in the horrifying opening moments of She Said, a film chronicling the New York Times reporting the Weinstein case. In that movie’s cold open, we see a woman clutching her clothing, running down a street toward the camera, screaming in terror. Thankfully, nothing like that character’s workplace sexual assault happened to me, but I viscerally connected to the feeling of being prey among wolves. And my wolfhunter turned out to be an experienced woman who used her power to protect me, without a word, deploying her seniority and smarts to sidestep what could have been a sticky situation.

“She probably wouldn’t see it that way,” a colleague said, years later. “It wasn’t a feminist move for her maybe, instead she didn’t want this other guy messing with someone on her team.” Sure, I see that. And further, I don’t think that having protectors makes sexual harassment one iota less aggregious. Sexual harassment weakens us all, of course the victims but also the soul-sickness in looking the other way, as is so chillingly depicted in The Assistant, the 2019 indie film starring Julia Garner as a film company assistant tasked with cleaning up the messes of her menacing film producer boss. In my mind’s eye, I don’t even see the face of the leering bigwig guy who macked on me back then, but I do see the no-nonsense visage of the woman who interceded.

I made a note to myself after seeing She Said to reach out to this woman to tell her thank you for the thing she’s probably not even aware she did. I haven't done it, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll send her this essay. I'm also hoping that, now that I’m on the other side of the power dynamic, I can help increase the public dialogue and prevention against all of us letting this happen. Younger women and men—let’s make this occurrence infrequent enough to be rare, not relatable.