Was Prof’s lingerie ‘joke’ acceptable?
A PROFESSOR’S joke which revived memories of the 1970s BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? did not go down well with a feminist academic at an international conference.
In a scene similar to the hit comedy’s opening credits, where a lift attendant recites the list of departments in a store over a jaunty theme tune, Prof Richard Ned Lebow of King’s College London, stepped into a crowded lift and replied “ladies’ lingerie” when asked which floor he wanted.
There were mild titters but for Simona Sharoni, professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, the joke was lost in translation.
After her formal complaint, political theory specialist Prof Lebow has been ordered to apologise.
Both academics were attending the International Studies Association’s (ISA) annual conference in San Francisco last month.
Ms Sharoni said after the lift incident: “All his buddies laughed.
“After they walked out, the woman standing next to me turned and said, ‘I wonder if we should have told them it is no longer acceptable to make these jokes’.
“As a survivor of sexual harassment in the academy, I am quite shaken by this incident.”
ISA executive director Mark Boyer last week told Prof Lebow that his DEAR lord, the things they find to get upset about these days. There is absolutely nothing that will not offend someone, somewhere.
Professor Lebow was making a joke. Given his age and nationality, it is also extremely likely he was quoting from Are You Being Served?
He was not making any comment on the status of women nor indeed their undergarments.
There is a famous story that took place during World War II. An air raid siren went; the locals elevator remarks were “offensive and inappropriate”. Prof Lebow has declined the ISA’s instruction to issue an “unequivocal apology”. He said: “If I did apologise it would be an acknowledgment that an innocent remark in an elevator is somehow wrong.” crowded into the shelter and a warden came to check they were all right. “Any babies in there?” he called. “Give us time, guv,” shouted one wag in reply, “we’ve only been here 10 minutes.” It got a big laugh. These days he’d have probably been arrested. What a world we live in now. IT MAY seem like an innocent enough joke but there’s no getting away from the fact that it normalises the sexual objectification of women.
When I was younger I used to humour these kinds of throw-away comments by feigning a smile. Now, older and wiser, I refuse to join in out of politeness.
It’s not that I find these kinds of joke offensive, it’s more disappointing, particularly from an esteemed academic.
And Professor Lebow’s response that we should be focusing more on “real offences” rather misses the point.
Just like Chinese water torture, it’s the drip, drip, drip of everyday sexism that drives me crazy.
If you’re constantly being harassed, even in a small way, it builds up and wears you down.
Time’s up.