"I'm Not At All Sexist, Except..."

I work in a café – this may not initially seem important, but bare with me. So, when I work on Sundays, I’m the team supervisor; a seventeen year old girl running a team which includes at least two over-eighteen year old guys.

Up until yesterday, that had never been an issue. I’d never considered for a moment that they might react to me being in charge, or that they might not respect me the way that they’d respect any other supervisor they’d ever had… or that they might not respect women in general.

Yesterday, though, two of the guys on my team started making sexist jokes – I don’t think either of them even know how it started, but by the time I heard them talking about this, for the first time, though, things had become nasty; and yes, I know that they were only joking, but I still reacted the way that I would have to any other anti-female comment… I called them misogynistic arseholes and told them to get on with their work. They were, by this point, discussing ‘appropriate’ treatment of wives – to which I responded by pointing out that anyone who agreed to marry them would have to be insane. And I wasn’t joking.

By the time they’d both realised that they had genuinely offended me, I was past expecting an apology, and was beginning to wonder if they were serious about any of it. One of them apologised profusely, assured me that he hadn’t meant any of it, and that he wasn’t sexist at all, but what did misogynistic mean? He kept on apologising to the point where it could almost have been called grovelling, and assured me that “if I was a woman, I’d be a feminist” (why aren’t you, anyway? I wondered. To no avail), and so I eventually forgave him. I had to. I have to work with him every week, and on the whole he’s a good guy.

The other one, though, didn’t apologise… he just told me that he wasn’t sexist, except for when it came to women in the police force. “It’s not possible to be ‘not sexist, except…’”, I told him, seriously annoyed now.

“But I mean it. Women shouldn’t be in the police force.” He insisted, smiling smugly.

“Why not?!” my friend, another girl (of course), and I demanded.

“Because you can’t defend yourselves properly.” He said, completely seriously.

“Of course we can. Have you heard Amy yell?” my friend asked, and he nodded, remembering how I’d yelled at him earlier. And he hadn’t enjoyed it either, let me tell you.

“Even a Sergeant says you shouldn’t be allowed, though.” He assured me, as if this made it right, “even Sarah (his other supervisor) agrees with me.”

To which I say, if this is the British Police Force’s attitude to women, there are serious issues with it; I can defend myself just as well as any male.

That’s not the point, though; the point is that I don’t believe it’s possible to “not be sexist, except…” To me, even that one thought makes him sexist…

And I was wondering if you agree with me? Or… am I being too extreme?