[aishah]

on the one hand, i do think the ads and the kinds of things people are mentioning from the article are pretty upsetting in terms of the glorified sexism, good old boy behavior, etc.

on the other hand...i think it could be more complex than this for a few reasons that are running through my head and i'm having a hard time forming them into a coherent whole so i'll just list them -
there are so few representations of butch women in high powered positions that i think maybe there's a sense of wanting/expectation that people would act in ways that are less offensive.
there is a streak of overtly lewd/misogynistic behavior that runs through our communities and is often glorified.
this woman is probably working among straight men who glorify sexism and misogyny. i've never worked in an upscale corporate environment but my impression is that this is more or less the norm, particularly in male-driven industries.
because of the dynamics of oppression in our society, i'm guessing she might have to work to present a certain image in order to keep her job and career. i'm not saying that makes it right, and we always have choices about how we act within those confines, but that does make it more understandable (to me at least).
the news publishes the most sensational and extreme aspects of every story. it's possible this woman does a lot of awesome stuff that never made it to print because the news doesn't believe in printing a lot of awesome, especially about our communities. while i think the stuff in the article is pretty gross and offensive, i also wonder what we would see if her life wasn't distilled down to this one anecdote.

i'm all for calling out offensive shit. i prefer to do it to people's faces but i don't think it always has to be that way. i think in some ways public figures open themselves up to criticism from all corners, but usually with other situations (like with politicians who absolutely deserve to be called out and criticized), we at least have a bigger picture or more access to information about who they are, what their actions are, and how they live. here we have a pretty small amount of information, probably with a bias (by the reporter) towards confirming certain stereotypes and making things more sensational and sexy, so i guess that makes me want to at least question things a bit before jumping to conclusions.

(and by conclusions i mean - yes, i can conclude that if this is an accurate representation of one incident, i'm pretty grossed out and offended. but i could not even begin to speculate that she has a drinking problem or is really a terrible person or any of that.)