Tea at Trianon: Women vs. Women in the Workplace

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Women vs. Women in the Workplace

Here is an article about women being cruel and violent in the workplace. Cat fights are nothing new. Anyone who has read any history of any royal court will know about the schemes and intrigues that went on among the ladies of the court against each other. There have always been the Madame de Merteuils, and sadly, always will be. But must women sink so low? As the author of this article says: "But you still have to make a living in the company of your fellow women. Do it well. Do it with courtesy and feminist dignity." In other words, be a lady. To quote:

I have twice feared physical violence from female co-workers after life went well for me and a little less well for them.

Women — usually older women, even as I age — have gone after me from every angle and left me with sliced viscera, the floor slippery with office fluids.

They have barked at me in the hallways like dogs, actual growling, the kind you hear in ill-fenced parks. Female co-workers have micro-knifed me anonymously and shredded me like a cabbage for everything from my ankles (non-matching) to my allergenic perfume (but I wasn’t wearing any, I swear, dabbing wetly at my neck) to my words (criminal, insufficiently earnest, etc.). Some have blanked me for years (awkward in the office washroom).

I once spent a week in a courtroom covering the sentencing of a serial killer where the ongoing hatred of two female journalists towards me frightened me more than he did. It was a courtroom where a radio guy screamed at me for writing a feminist column, and I still feared the women more.

Women have hissed at me about the horror of other women — go ahead, I don’t snitch — which would be absolutely fine if they had ever found a male co-worker to deplore.