Episode 13: The Bill Clinton scandal was about your workplace.
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EPISODE GUEST: EULA SCOTT BYNOE AND JEANNIE YANDEL, CREATORS AND CO-HOSTS OF BATTLE TACTICS FOR YOUR SEXIST WORKPLACE PODCAST
“White women in white collar and creative industries, please situate yourselves in the power structures that you are in,” implores Jeannie Yandel. In today’s episode of Problem Performers, Eula Scott Bynoe and Jeannie Yandel, intersectional feminist podcasters extraordinaire, discuss the Bill Clinton scandal and how it relates to workplace power dynamics.
Monica Lewinsky’s entire life was turned upside down by her affair with Bill Clinton, while he faced minimal consequences and continued his career in office. Yet no one at the time seemed to recognize, much less question, the vastly unbalanced power dynamic that defined their relationship. Eula and Jeannie discuss how this relates to today’s workplace structures, and how often people labeled ‘problem performers’ are in fact targets or scapegoats of a structural power imbalance. Case in point: Eula, a Black woman, has been labeled a problem performer many times throughout her career, whereas Jeannie, a white woman, has never – at least not to her face.
Tune into this week’s episode of Problem Performers for a conversation with Eula Scott Bynoe, Jeannie Yandel, and host Rebecca Weaver about the ways gender and race define power dynamics at work, and why the Bill Clinton Scandal has EVERYTHING to do with your modern workplace.
QUOTES
“The consensuality (between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton) is beside the point of what’s at stake. For her, it’s everything. For him, it’s nothing. Even if she signed up to be intimate with him, she didn’t sign up to lose her entire life as a result of it.” (15:41-15:58 | Eula)
“As a Black woman, I have to make every single decision super consciously, right? And if I don’t do it right, I could just fall off the Planet Earth and be one of them that’s literally just taken and disappears, or other things that happen to Black women in America.” (16:09-16:25 | Eula)
“I don’t know if we as white women have gotten any better (since the Bill Clinton scandal). Because I think that we still use our whiteness to gain proximity to power in patriarchy. I think that we still weaponize the notion of supporting other women to our own advantage. And I think we still will paint ourselves as the victim when it’s advantageous.” (23:20-23:49 | Jeannie)
“White women, in terms of workplace structures in large part, we refuse to recognize the power dynamics at play, whether it’s because we’re legitimately ignorant of it, or there’s something else happening there. But we’re ignoring or refusing to recognize a power structure at play, and our role in it.” (25:56-26:21 | Jeannie)
“One of the other things that struck me with this Bill Clinton scandal was how many of these people would argue that essentially they are mission-driven. They’re doing this because of their patriotism. Every single person here is making an argument about, “I have a vision for what my country should be and I’m fighting for that.” And where the stakes are much, much, much lower, I do think that there is something in common there with the people that you meet in some workplaces who talk about caring very deeply about the mission of the place where they work, caring very deeply for what that workplace exists to do. That happens a lot in public media. People will sing the praises of the mission of public media all the live-long day, as though that excuses a lot of the things that we’ve gotten wrong.” (30:08-31:35 | Jeannie)
“Companies don’t realize how often they are the bad guys in situations because of how much they’re looking to create their mission of “freedom of speech.” And in doing so, letting somebody use the N-word all day long, tell people that vaccines are killing people, and all the other misogynistic things that happen. It’s a wild thing. It’s just Rush Limbaugh of 2022.” (33:27-33:58 | Eula)
“The Rush Limbaugh to Joe Rogan line, it’s largely white, cisgender, straight dudes, or at least straight-appearing dudes, who are like, “I’m just here to ask the question. It’s just important that somebody ask the question.” Which is another example of not taking responsibility for power dynamics that are at play and your role in them, and pretending that you as an individual are the most important thing here.” (35:43-36:19 | Jeannie)
“I think most workplaces have lots of kinks in them. And I’m one of those people that goes in and when I see the kinks, I really want to fix them. Some people don’t. Some people get a job and they’re like, ‘This place is really messed up and I can just disappear…’ I am the complete opposite. I came here to work. I want to see exactly what the flaws are. I want to figure out where the injustices are. I want to figure out if we’re doing the right thing. Ideally, the job is for the community. I really didn’t know that there were jobs outside of community service jobs until I was, I guess really, really grown up… I thought that you had to think of something that was going to help someone abolish a problem. So it’s been interesting realizing that for a lot of people, it’s just that. But for me, I’ve been written up a million times.” (41:46-42:53 | Eula)
“I think part of being labeled a problem performer is, it’s as much about the person giving you the label as it is about you and your actual performance.” (48:04-48:14 | Jeannie)
“Part of the weirdness of workplace power structures is that your boss or someone with more power than you can talk about you to someone else. And that can be just as damaging as having something on a permanent record, or part of your annual review, or the reason you were let go.” (48:37-48:54 | Jeannie)
“You ruffle people’s feathers with how visionary you are. And I think that sometimes it’s kind of annoying when someone has a really good vision and does really good work, but you just didn’t want to go there.” (50:56-51:12 | Eula)
“White women in white collar and creative industries, please situate yourselves in the power structures that you are in. You are not just an individual operating in a chaotic cosmos all by yourself. You are part of a power structure. And in the same way that you, as an individual, are not responsible for fixing every form of oppression you experience in the workplace, and every bias you experience in the workplace, you are also not completely absolved of responsibility for your role in the power structures that currently exist.” (55:35-56:13 | Jeannie)
LINKS
Listen to Battle Tactics For Your Sexist Workplace at btswpodcast.com.
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Follow Eula on social media: Twitter | Instagram
Follow Jeannie on social media: Twitter
Connect with your own confidential HR coach at www.HRuprise.com.
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TRANSCRIPT
COMING SOON!