NotSpaghetti
My daughter worked in a office when she was about 26. It was quite a "fancy" professional one with very "respectable" staff and a big local profile.
She was the only woman. She knows she was sexualised virtially every day behind her back. She told people straight what she thought if she caught them and after standing her ground it would go away, the men would apologise and over a short time it would all come back.
Eventually she told the owner that whenever she heard this (or saw lewd gestures etc) she was going home... And she did. He had a daughter studying A levels and a wife - you would think he'd want it to stop.
It was straight after her MA year - and she was extremely well paid. She's certain she was well liked - was always invited to after work drinks, lunches, before work breakfasts etc.
When she left, one of the younger men came and apologised to her privately. "I'd never want my sister to have to suffer the men in this office". She was grateful - but said that unless good men spoke up against it then it will likely always be the same.
The owner of the business tried to persuade her to stay. She cited the "banter" as the main reason she was leaving - and has no idea if it continues.
Some men will just not be told.
More recently she has taken this type of banter straight to the police.
My point is, that unless others speak out I believe "banter" will continue.
Kudos to your determined daughter NotSpaghetti. It surely must have been a depressing experience - lewd gestures?... for crying out loud, these men have mothers, daughters, sisters - are they really OK with them being targeted for this kind of 'banter'?
My late ex worked in an almost exclusively all-male environment. He was a Thames Waterman & Lighterman. In spite of being privately educated, he chose to go into the trade (he could've had a fair pick of jobs, at that time) because his father before him, and his brothers had all been similarly apprenticed.
He told me once - during the late 60s, early 70s, when 'Women's Lib' was a high-profile movement, and we were discussing it - he thought, based on his experience, that men were a bunch of savages. Obviously, he was generalising, because you know - 'not-all-men', etc...
He said that the way they talked about women, singularly and collectively, was absolutely appalling. They were simply sexual objects, evaluated on the size of their boobs (not the word they used) and their sexual 'availability', basically. Of course, they all loved their mums... my ex wondered at the disconnect in their brains between 'their mums' and the sex they were denigrating on a daily basis.
Of course, you could say this was working-class 'culture' - most of the watermen and lightermen were from working-class backgrounds - but, it's not, is it? It's men - or men with a certain mind-set. I should say at this point that there were exceptions in this camaraderie of men. Some were clearly uncomfortable with the banter about wimmin, according to my ex. But it was a difficult 'culture' to challenge, as a man among such men.
As you say - good men have to speak out - like that younger-man who apologised to your daughter.
If they don't, it will continue to be women who have to manage men's behaviour - either by accepting the 'bit of banter', or by speaking out against it, in which case they run the risk of being accused of "having nothing better to do" than ruining a man's reputation and career by - as a couple of commentators on Facebook opined, "crawling out of the woodwork" to complain.
