Drawing the Line

So I've gotten sick of Dr. Lee's remarks in meetings about my appearance. At first it didn't seem like a big deal. "We're so glad to have a beautiful woman on our staff now" was easy to brush off and just attribute it to ignorance, but the remarks have continued. He makes a lot of inappropriate remarks to the trainees and many may think it's funny.

However, this is a country where sexual harassment is rampant and I think part of that is because women brush off the casual remark, which could be complimentary. But that's how they get painted into a corner. I thought it was particularly weird, when our director at KNUE urged some younger trainees to try to be more attractive for one of the trainers. This trainer caused a scandal some time ago when he started a romance with one of his students and then dumped her. She was devastated and there was a big brouhaha when her brother came to school to call the trainer out.

With that in mind, I wrote and sent the following:

Dear Dr. L,

Although you may think you're just being grandfatherly when you comment on my appearance or that of the trainees, in most professional organizations, remarks on women's appearance or any jokes like "This is my love letter to you," are considered extremely unprofessional.

This may just be your humor and style. I do want you to know that remarks of this nature should stop as far as I'm concerned. They're just unprofessional.

I hope that's all I need to say.

Regards,

SK

Next I have to see if he's going to sit in on class today. That's got to stop too. He can come back when he's seen 5 hours of all the other teacher's classes.

From the archive, October 2010.

N.B. He stopped for about 2 days and started up again.