I know that you, too have many stories alike; these mobbing-infused sexist experiences are unfortunately too common for us all. Names may change, but our stories remain the same.
*This article was published online in Turkish at Argonatlar.com on 2 November 2022. It has been translated to English by Ekin Tümer.
I categorize the responses I’ve received as my article entitled Not being a cis man in the world of Arts and Culture went online into four groups. The first group was from my sisters who identified with each sentence, and my colleagues who were exposed to similar behavior in the field due to their sexual orientation, encouraging me to write and talk more on the issue. Yes, we are stronger together; this is absolutely true, thank you simply for existing! The second group was the people who reached out to remind me of the fact that sexist behavior is practiced not only by heterosexual men but also by female executives. Absolutely true! Over the years, we have experienced –we still do– many situations where, our effort, labor, and time were underestimated and we were merely being suffocated under mobbing by many of our supervisors regardless of their sexual orientation.
For this very reason, what we need to pay attention to as female executives in our field is to make a difference by emphasizing solidarity, rather than being a part of the system at the expense of ensuring the sustainability of power. In order to achieve a more egalitarian and fair work environment, we have to talk and write more about all these experiences, and we will! Without further ado, let’s talk about the third group… My cis male friends who, with great difficulty, briefly mentioned during a small talk that they had read the article, congratulated me, and then quickly changed the subject to avoid sharing their personal comments. What can I say? Let’s talk, share our opinions, let’s clash if needed, as long as you have the patience to listen and build a dialogue… And what about the fourth group? Well, they are mostly cis male and cis female friends who are not even remotely close to the topic and continue living their extremely egalitarian lives since the issues I write about take place in a galaxy far, far away. Good luck to you, please enjoy your place carefree!
I have to admit, when some of my friends asked me, “Will your next article be about gender equality again?”, I answered: “No, my specialty is art direction, I want to continue writing about the problems in our field, otherwise I cannot claim such continuity as I do not have an academic career on gender equality.” To start working on my new article, I was patiently waiting for the Istanbul Biennial triggered art season openings in September and our reunification to calm down, with our inertia and our masks, which we threw off with great enthusiasm, and the distanced attitude we renounced.
Unfortunately, this time, fate weaved its webs differently: My phone rang while I was home alone with my meds and cats, knocked down by a viral infection at the end of our art festivals –as a friend of mine beautifully put it– ‘where we were piercing through each other so to speak’. The friendly voice, which I’m always pleased to hear, told me that our beloved author the owner of a creative institution that has invaded a year and a half of my colorful resume had mentioned me in his newly published diaries. Do you want to know how?
“Bad things happened… Ah! We argued with the museum’s headmistress Esra… Since September…I was furious because she didn’t know the exact numbers. It was her who brought up the issue of resigning. Our phone call went bad!”
Do you remember the moments when you burst with anger and lose control? I do, unfortunately, because my body reacts post-incident. I remember hearing the voice of my colleague sitting next to me as a faint hum when this ‘argument’, which took place ten years ago and which our author later decided to reveal and make me a part of literature, ended and I hung up the phone at my small office at that time, clarifying my resignation. “Your face is turning red!” I was really flushing red with anger, more precisely, I was angry enough to break out in hives!
My adventure with my own entrepreneurship of setting up an arts initiative in 2010 ended so sadly that I always admired people who set up their own businesses and realized their own dreams. I was also attached with great admiration to this institution, which I describe as a unique work of art. The fact that our author made me a part of his carefully constructed dream had for a full year dressed me in a bizarre armor of happiness and protected me from the reality of his ‘behaviors’ –which I can only make sense of when looking back now. For instance, during this period I spent as ‘Esra, the headmistress of the museum’, I was mainly called Madam Esra. Although I found it strange to be called “ma’am”, I did not object to this address –considering him being of a different generation and his love of the old Istanbul language. There were times when I even joined this parody with laughter when he told me that sometimes he imagined me as a headmistress in a tailleur.
(I am so sorry.)
Our discussion, which would end with me handing in my resignation with a red face, began on a September afternoon, about a year after I was hired, at an evaluation meeting that took place at the most convenient time and place for our organization’s owner –at the office area of his home where he conducted all his meetings… Coincidentally, I was having a strange flu again. My head fuzzy from who knows what medicine I took, hungry and tired, I came into his presence with my huge museum account folders. (In this paragraph, please indicate all the mistakes made by the employer and the employee!)
Let’s get to the scene. Our protagonist is anxious and restless, hands clasped behind his back, the weight of the world on his shoulders, walking up and down in front of a magnificent view of the city. The next day he will set off, he will go far, far away and he has a strange head full of questions for the three months he will be missing. I, the side character of the story, am tired but calm. I am safe with my files, which prove that all the work has been carried out meticulously, and I dream of the hot soup I will have after our meeting. And the enquiry begins. Comparisons of visitor numbers with the income and expenditure tables… Expenses are high! What will happen next winter when the tourist season ends and visitor numbers drop? What about the impact of possible year-end tax implications that are not clear yet? The administration should not continue with these comfortable expenditures, luxury consumption (?) should end, and expenses should be cut! The travel and lunch expenses paid to interns are a luxury! Buying a new toner instead of refilling it with ink is a luxury! Serving a mid-range wine during a special event is a luxury! As many extravagances rang in my ears one after another, the hours passed, and it got dark. While the cityscape is still beautiful and the Bosporus with its lights is completely a different world, the second part of the oral exam, the incomes, begins. How many books and souvenirs are sold daily? Weekly, monthly, or annually? What about the ticket sales? Adult, student, free? Ms. Esra, the headmistress, makes one last attempt to look for the answers to the exam questions in the files, the pages are open, but the numbers are not there!
They’re all gone, invisible! The teacher keeps asking! Integrals, analytical questions, multiplication tables, physics, chemistry, geography, more, and more, and more… No, no response… Ms. Headmistress Esra is barely mumbling –ears buzzing, eyes blurred, head slightly dizzy– but we are in balance, our income covers our expanses, our accounts are solid, our financial advisor is in constant control, everything is in the files… There is a lot of data, it’s impossible for me to remember it all, if I could just look, oh if I could just take glance at it, I would tell you all… No! It’s not enough! You will know these figures by heart! Shut the folders, close them! You got zero, zero! The lights slowly fade, silence descends, our protagonist collapses in his seat, his nerves are shattered and his last evening in the city is ruined, our side character leaves the stage with shame and curtain!
Shame on me! Be the first person from Turkey to receive a master’s degree in Arts Management at New York University in the first decade of the 2000s, return home with all the arrogance, first because you gave up corporate life and stepped into a precarious professional field, and then because you found a friend who believed in your dreams in spite of the institutions and embarked on the adventure of establishing your own art initiative. For a decade, there had not been a single creative institution or artist you haven’t represented, no intercultural dialogue collaboration you haven’t realized, and here you are, standing in front of a blackboard like a little schoolgirl, sniveling and being scolded for not doing your memorization properly! Despite the fact that you suffered from vitamin D deprivation since you worked six days a week without breathing and without seeing the sun in that small office, despite the fact that you kept Excel files of income and expenses and worked as if you had taken an accounting course, despite the fact that you loved and looked after the institution as if it were your own, despite the fact that you set up the entire management system and developed funding and programming proposals that were never approved, you will go down in history as Esra, the Headmistress of the museum who did not know her numbers.
I want to phrase this question to you: Would you think that among all those popular and acknowledged names whose paths happened to cross with that of that precious museum, the mere reason that I am the only one to appear on these pages of strong literature, that my actual name can be used so easily and that the judgment of the author is given so recklessly is because I was just a ‘Headmistress’ without any reputation?
As I look back on all these strange behaviors, I realize how often similar issues have occurred in my other professional adventures. What about that time I had my academic career ambitions upon returning fresh from New York and I was employed as a research assistant at a private university? The head of the department, who made a strong impression with his intellectual personality and design knowledge, calls me in with my notebook and dictates an article, the context of which I don’t remember at all today, but which I’m sure is very, very important. I dutifully type it into the computer, take a printout, and hand it to him, and he carefully marks and corrects my typos with his special, colorful, and expensive pens, which he tenderly holds with his precious hands that he cannot afford to waste on the keyboard! I believe we played this 1950s secretary game for almost an hour that day –until the article properly deserved his vital signature. Do you want to know what happened afterward? This time I had leg pain that wouldn’t stop, I ran to the infirmary, and the nurse gave me a relaxant and sent me back to my office room. However, the pain came back as soon as I sat in that assistant’s chair, and I had to quit because I couldn’t sit in my seat anymore. Today, he continues his career successfully by extending his influence on different cities; being patted on the back, and invited to meetings. Because he has status, he has many connections, because yes, he has some unnecessary behaviors but come on, so what if he humiliated a few assistants, he’s just our sweet naughty boy!
Sadly, there are too many examples of what I have experienced over the years… Another academic and cultural administrator –with whom I’ve had the honor of meeting only in a few meetings– and myself are among those invited to be part of the working group of a new collectors’ museum to be established in 2010, a period when hope sprung from under each piece of stone in Istanbul. One of us will be taking notes, but who? Considering the age average, I have to put myself forward a little bit. Why? Because my parents raised me to respect my elders… And do you know what the gentleman with his dazzling colorful socks said as soon as I stood in front of the noticeboard? “Write, my girl!” (He had to apologize afterward when he saw the way I stared, but as long as the mentality is there, what good will his apology do?)
In fact, we also need to stick the needle to ourselves. We sometimes accept this type of ‘masculinity’ behavior as an irreversible reality of life without even being aware of it. Over time, before we know it, we turn into mothers who tolerate the misbehavior of their youngsters… A kind of acceptance that suggests “he is the professor, hence, whatever he says and does should be right.” The excuses never end: He has such talent, he is so valuable, so sociable, so well-connected… With such flatteries, these professors actually come to power by putting themselves at the center of life and have the nerve to throw us into the outer circle!
A similar lecturer I listened to quite recently, describing the Istanbul he grew up in, which does not exist now, passionately emphasized the city as the “ravished” and “raped” Istanbul. Almost like a grieving young Turk in an old Turkish movie who laments the poor ‘innocent’ girl he fell in love with and blinds his own eyes after seeing her sing at a nightclub! And when he was asked why he felt the need to identify the city as a woman, he explained that if the city were a man, rape would be an act of violence, while the metaphor of rape of a woman is more common. If you wonder what his fan base did after listening to him, the answer is unfortunately grave: “Oh, professor, oh you! Aww you’re kidding!” and some allusive bittersweet smiles and laughter that followed…
It’s time to put an end to the examples and conclude this article. I know you have many similar stories; these mobbing-infused sexist experiences are unfortunately too common for us. Names may change, but our stories remain the same. Even though I could not reconcile with this condescending attitude in my early professional period, I somehow attributed the cause to my own incompatibility and found salvation mostly by resigning and dislocating myself from the toxic environment I was in. I mostly kept the sexist conversations I was subjected to in my personal memory, although mostly I was horrified and confided in my friends. But now, as dear #SusmaBitsin (a collective of #metoo movement on median, TV, and film sectors) say, I am writing these sentences with the call to end these internalized behaviors. No one should tolerate the sexism hidden behind fancy words, the insults occurring within the circle of love and respect in the field of art & culture, to which we devoted ourselves for years, and no one should laugh it off. Let us oppose by getting strength from each other, let us not swallow our words. Let us be able to articulate the wrongness of these behaviors to which we are subjected so that those who come after us can work and produce in a more egalitarian environment. We have the space, the experience, and the voice to do it.
And I decided to adopt the term “Headmistress”. I think it beautifully describes people who know what they’re doing, who stand up for what they know is right, who have ethical values, and who are just. Believe me, these people in power represent an extinct mentality.
These are the last-ditch efforts because times are changing, right?
Güncel Durum 