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IF YOU ARE a working gal who’s read anything about Caitriona Perry and Trump this week, your reaction has likely been one of recognition and unease. Soft sexism in the workplace is something that is all too real. And while it’s rarely acknowledged, we’ve all experienced it.
To recap, Trump told Leo Varadkar on their first phone call that: “We have a lot of your Irish press watching us right now.” He pointed at Perry, calling her over to him. “We have all of this beautiful Irish press,” said Trump, and asked Perry: “Where are you from?” Perry approached the desk and introduced herself.
“She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well,” he said. Perry kept on smiling.
Difficult to explain it to men who’ve never experienced it
Trump’s inappropriate singling out of a female reporter was derided by so many on social media, with the president’s words described as “creepy”, and American women apologising to her.
The truth is that every woman has felt that at some stage in the workplace—that moment when you realise that a more powerful man isn’t talking you as seriously as your male coworkers. It’s soft sexism and it’s an almost impossible feeling to quantify, and an even harder one to communicate to men who have never felt it.
When I’ve asked friends if they have experienced sexism at work, they often say no… not really. Then if I ask them to think for a minute if they’ve ever been asked to do anything or treated in a way a man wouldn’t be, the answer usually quickly turns to a “yes”.
You see sexism isn’t always blatant. That would be way easier for us to fight. For so many of us, it’s the routine sexist comments and incidents that make us question our own talent and success potential. And while it’s tempting to dismiss comments like Trump’s as a minor annoyance, the fact remains that these regular incidents of sexism are still diminishing women’s professional progress.
Remember Trump singled out a female journalist for this awkward interaction, not a male one. Do you think he’d comment on a male journalist’s smile? Not a chance.
We’re accused of blowing things out of proportion
Nearly three quarters of us have experienced sexism in the workplace, according to the results of a survey by an employment law consultancy Peninsula in 2012. 21 per cent of women said they did not feel confident that their ideas would be taken on board because of their gender.
While soft sexism at work is less overt and less frightening than so many other forms of sexism, it can carry more serious repercussions. The need to preserve a good relationship with coworkers and clients means that responding angrily to sexist incidents isn’t really an option. There is no way Perry could call Trump out on what he did to her and not have that backfire on her professional life in some way.
The subtle, unconscious biases that influence things like promotions and evaluations make the office one place where women sometimes do have to smile and shut up to get ahead.
When women speak up about casual sexism we are accused of getting things out of proportion. Most of us are actually primed by instinct to play things down and this plays right into the hands of sexist men because it enables everyone to go on pretending that their behaviour doesn’t matter. We never call them out even though we should. It means that the squalid power games continue.
Lorraine Courtney is a freelance journalist.
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So, basically, the boards.ie administrator was a dunce.
Agreed, this was no hack the administrator of boards was negligent using the same password for two different services. It amazes me how lax people are with passwords, pet name year of birth etc.
Hey that’s victim blaming ……. Oh wait .. yeah it is a bit like leaving a BMW unlocked in Dolphins Barn with a laptop and Iphone in view and expecting nothing to happen.
That part of the report was taken from his submission which we couldn’t cross examine as he pleaded guilty. Its factually incorrect as the password was unique and not used on Twitter. It was also a strong password and we believe it was snatched during a “man-in-the-middle” attack.
Boards.ie/journal.ie are the same company, how much of this article can be taken at face value ?
I hope you were referring to the site administrator when you said Muppet!
Shocking lack of security on behalf of boards.ie really amateur stuff!
Or how about changing the headline to – Script Kiddy discovers gaping hole in Boards.ie security, boards thank him for identifying the hole and have since upgraded their security policy.
Companies pay kids like this to run penetration testing on their IT systems, having your IT admin use the same password on his twitter as for the server is a big facepalm.
Very surprised he didn’t go through a proxy for his hacking especially when he was a bit of a whizz kid.
Whizz kids usually use 7 proxies.
Yeah he’s a bit of a dope to get caught. Using his own ip address; scarlet for him.
How did such a security flaw cost boards.ie 30,000 Euro? All they had to do was delete the unauthorised file and change passwords. I’d say Boards.ie just exaggerated the claim to deck out their office and buy a couple of new servers, ipads, Macbooks etc
My password is my first name.
Boom?
Its factually incorrect to say the same password was used on Twitter. It wasn’t. The password was unique, it was also a strong password and we believe it was snatched during a “man-in-the-middle” attack.
OK buddy, we get you
Who are you trying to kid, Tom?
I remember having a few pints with you in town one night around that time, and I had a quick look at your phone when you were in the jacks*.
All of your passwords were the same. TomLuvsBords4Lyfe
*That chick who was pretending to be a journalist made me do it. She was hot, and I thought I had a chance.
Sorry for being the “Man-In-The-Middle”. :(
By the way, what year is that screenshot from?
When I look at the level of moderation on that site I am not surprised that the admins would be clueless. No surprises that this place is linked to them.
A bit OTT to extradite someone over something like this, no?
How is this hacking if you have the password ?
” Playing a game” They never change, do they? Kids will be kids!
I remember my first hacking back in 1983. I thought I was hacking into a video games company’s computer, to play all their unreleased games, but, it turned out, I was accidentally hacking into a NORAD supercomputer that was using games like chess as military simulators to calibrate how to react in a situation where the USA and the USSR began launching missiles, to spare as many lives as possible. I remember the designer, Dr Falken, used a backdoor password called “Joshua,” that the NORAD people weren’t aware of. I figured it out after doing some intense studying on the guy, and realised that was the name of his late son. So, me and a friend started playing this game on WOPR, that was the supercomputer’s name, called “Global Thermonuclear War,” and we started bombing cities like Las Vegas and Seattle, thinking we were playing a game, meanwhile, at NORAD, they thought the Russians were sending missiles their way. Long story short, after an arrest, an escape, a meeting with Dr Falken on his reclused island, we got back in time before the US responded to the phantom bombs, only for WOPR to try and overtake the system and figure out the code to send the missiles itself! So, we figured we’d let it play a game of tic-tac-toe, a game it couldn’t win or lose at, and it realised that there was no winning and decided not to play any more and decided not to set off the missiles.
God, those were the days!
I wonder who inserted my name into Irish waters database…. I didn’t…
My password is password.
How did he get the Twitter password? Was it hacked too?
I would imagine the sript kiddy used some kind of a widely known exploit to crack the password, if it cracked easy then it was unlikely very strong… provbably something like ‘ilikeboards’ or ‘boards123′
wysiwyg
Give that young man a job, he clearly knows more than others about IT security.
1Password enough said would end that problem in terms of using same password
It won’t take long for his next attempt and he won’t be caught.
He already works for the CIA.
A year suspended sentence is a bit harsh.
ok so how did he actually get Twitter password?
as by the sound of it he actually hacked Twitter not boards ie – he just logged onto boards.ie as proper user (admin)
Amateur. My password is passw0rd. They will never guess the o is a 0.
What’s with your quoting wysiwyg? And why should he get a job when his intentions are to falsify and steal from others? Any reason or answer?
Quoting wysiwyg was an example of “easy to guess” passwords. From reading that article, it suggests the site admin has used same/similar credentials for multiple accounts, which is extremely bad practice.
It states in the article that the hacker in this case didn’t divulge it share this information, instead the hack was to prove how easily it was in fact done.
The fact the hacker was only 17 at the time, probably had a bearing on a non custodial sentence.
Along a similar line, you’ll find AV vendors have actually hired people who wrote/spread malicious viruses, as they clearly have the ability to program and bypass security.
Hence my logic.
Give the lad a job, clearly he could seal up a few holes.
have your say