Without Pleasure by Katie Sullivan - Essay Example

Critical discussion of Katie Sullivan’s “With(out) pleasure: Desexualization, gender and sexuality at work” Introduction The deprivation of the sexual uniqueness of women in the workplace has been a subject of great debate over the last decades, owing to the fact that most commentators observe the equal treatment of men and women as an important aspect of desexualization of organizations. The scholarship has therefore been divided over the best mode of addressing desexualization; with one part observing that it should be permanently eliminated, while others observing that it is the essence of a pleasurable working environment (Sullivan, 2014:347). The sexualization of the workplace has been termed as retrogressive and purposed to waste the greater gains that had been made through the equal treatment of men and women in the workplaces. The most sexualized and apparently abused women roles are those of waitresses and bartenders. These positions evokes the structural power relationship between the clients and the waitresses, where the tipping system basically follows the structural power system where the most beautiful and sexually-appealing dressing women are tipped higher than the rest of the waitress and waitresses in restaurants (Sheppard, 2010:95). The eradication of sexuality and sexual distinctiveness of the different genders was the major focus of creating an equitable workplace, where both men and women are treated equally at the workplace. Nobody wants to go back to the traditional times when women were treated as chattels or sexual objects (Kensbock, 2015:36). However, the fact that women should not be treated as sexual objects, should not amount to the deprivation of the uniqueness and distinctiveness of women sexuality (Wajcman, 2013:18). The importance of this critical analysis essay is that it will try to strike a balance on how desexualization within organizations can be achieved, without necessarily resulting in the discrimination and sexual harassment of women. According to Katie Sullivan, the pressures arising from the need for desexualization of massage therapy has enhanced the sexual discrimination and harassment of women, through turning the need for desexualization into re-eroticization (Sullivan, 2014:346). However, the need for the introduction of the concept of desexualization within organizations is to suppress sexuality within workplaces, in the interest of enhanced production (Wajcman, 2013:18). Thus, this discussion seeks to critically analyze Katie Sullivan’s paper, “With(out) pleasure: Desexualization, gender and sexuality at work”, with a view to affirming the authors argument that desexualization of organizations has turned into a tool for women discrimination and harassment. This discussion will first elaborate Katie Sullivan’s argument in the paper, citing the evidence she has applied to backup her arguments, and then offer a personal view on the issue of sexuality at the workplace. Key definitions Desexualization: The deprivation of the distinct and unique character of sexuality/gender Sexuality: An individual’s sexual orientation/gender Heteronormativity: The perception that people fall into distinct genders and gender roles that complement one another. Critical discussion of the arguments of the author Description of the arguments of the author atie Sullivan, in her paper, “With(out) pleasure: Desexualization, gender and sexuality at work”, argues that desexualization is of great influence to the organizations, although its apparent its ideals can never be fully realized within organizations (Sullivan, 2014:346). Thus, despite the fact that desexuialization is not entirely a necessity for organizations, the socially constructed concept of civilization, as well as the political influence stemming from different and multiple sources has influenced the organizations into embracing desexualization. Additionally, Katie Sullivan argues that the influence of the professional rationalism and the need to address complex bureaucracies within organizations has resulted in the overemphasis on the concern for feminism, which has also meant that mitigating the concern can only be done through desexualization within organizations (Sullivan, 2014:347). Nevertheless, according to Katie Sullivan, the impulses to control sexuality do not exist on their own, but rather alongside the active presence of other sexual desires and acts. This being the case, the attempt to achieve desexualization and its noble intent of creating an equitable working environment has been interfered by the persisting sexual desires and acts, such that “desexualization cannot be accomplished in pure form” (Sullivan, 2014:347). Thus according to Katie Sullivan, the conscientious work and any attempts applied towards the desexualization of the workplace, with the intent of expelling sexuality from individuals, merely ends up creating more gender problems. Katie Sullivan argues that the social impulses to desexualize the work places exists alongside the need for sexualization of bodies and places (Sullivan, 2014:347). The outcome of the attempt to desexualize the workplace therefore is to co-create gendered subjectivities and interactions, which in the end results in the “maintenance of heteronormativity, discrimination, and sexual harassment” (Sullivan, 2014:347). The further argument by Katie Sullivan is that the nature of the discrimination, sexual harassment and heteronormativity experienced by different individuals is base on different factors, most notably the nature of their work that the individuals do, and how such individuals believe their bodies are assessed (Sullivan, 2014:347). Therefore, the understanding of sexuality within the workplace can only be suitably done through applying the holistic and context-dependent approach, which then differentiates the nature of different occupations and their associated risks of sexual harassment, discrimination and negative sexuality perceptions (Colgan & Wright, 2011:548). Evidence the authors provide to support their argument The author provides varied evidence to support the arguments. First, Katie Sullivan argued that socially constructed conception has led to the pervasive nature of desexualization, which has continued to influence organizations despite the apparent failure to achieve its core intent to creating a gender-equitable workplace (Sullivan, 2014:346). This argument has been supported by the evidence drawn from the evaluation of the massage therapy profession in the USA, where the massage profession has struggled for long, with the public perception that the profession comprise of sexual labor. In this respect, the society, including the clients, therapists and practitioners have strictly called for the desexualization of the massage therapy profession (Sullivan, 2014:348). This exemplar is evidential of the role of socially constructed perceptions in building the persistence of the need for desexualization of organizations, where the public opinion largely shapes how a certain profession is perceived, and for that reason determines the nature of desexualization demanded on the profession. Although the message labor is essentially non-sexual work, the social construct of the profession has confused this essence, with its practices such as lit candles, soft music, undressing and bodily touch causing the public to view the massage practice as a practice in the objective of fulfilling sexual needs and fantasies (Sullivan, 2014:348). The second argument by Katie Sullivan is that the need for desexualization comes alongside the presence of other needs that disrupts the core intent of desexualization, such as the active presence of other sexual desires and acts (Sullivan, 2014:346). To backup this argument, Katie Sullivan has used another evidence related to the message therapy profession in the USA, where the clients expectations, desires and acts have been largely attributed to hindering the desexualization of the massage therapy. This is owing to the fact that the expectations, desires and acts demonstrated by the clients to the massage therapists, coupled with the environment in which the massage therapy occurs, may overpower the core intent of the massage therapists to desexualize their profession (Sullivan, 2014:348). Thus, despite the core intent to desexualize the massage therapy, there are still different and highly dynamic interactions between the therapists and their clients, which can take varied forms. In this respect, the existing well meaning and defined organizational policies and the existing social norms and the existing worker and client relationship based on the context and the nature of work, vary greatly to influence and give meaning to body, gender and associated sexual materiality of the body. The third argument by Katie Sullivan is that the nature of sexual discrimination, heteronormativity or sexual harassment associated with any profession is determined by the nature of the work that the individuals in the profession do. To this effect, Katie Sullivan offers the example of teachers, doctors, social workers, bartenders and flight attendants as the evidence that supports this claim. Katie Sullivan evidentially demonstrates that teachers, social workers and doctors operate in a profession where the profession seeks to dissociate with sex work, and thus easily enables to these professionals to present a well appealing image of a socially constructed acceptable profession that is highly distanced from sex work. Therefore, such professions, by way of social construct and widely held public perception, have been able to rise above the suspicion, and consequently managed to disavow sexuality (Sullivan, 2014:347). Further evidence shown by Katie Sullivan to the effect that the nature of work defines the level of sexuality and the need for desexualization that is associated with the profession is that of the example of bartenders and the flight attendants. Here, Katie Sullivan observes that such workers are able to selectively apply sexuality to obtain varied benefits (Sullivan, 2014:347). The author goes ahead to observe that the professions that draws more sexuality suspicion are related to femininity, for example flight attendants, bartenders and masseurs in the massage therapy profession. Katie Sullivan contrasts these different professions with the massage therapy profession, which is branded the identity of sex work without any attempt of critical appraisal, and thus required to apply a high level of desexualization (Wolkowitz, 2002:497). In this respect, the author has shown evidence to the effect that the gender and sexuality tension is much higher in a profession where the individual workers in the profession are tasked with the responsibility of monitoring and controlling sexuality (Sullivan, 2014:349). Overall therefore, women must monitor and control their bodies properly, while men do not need to control their bodies, but merely sustain their masculinity. Critique of the authors’ argument Katie Sullivan has advanced the major argument that desexualization within organizations rarely achieves its core objective of creating an equitable work environment where sexuality is completely expelled, but that it instead creates more opportunities for the advancement of heteronormativity, sexual harassment and discrimination (Sullivan, 2014:347). Further, Katie Sullivan argues the overall effect of the attempt to desexualize organizations has been the requirement for women to monitor and control their bodies, while men have to just maintain their masculinity (350). This argument is valid and seems to confirm the argument that had been put forward previously by Judy Wajcman, who argued that the public expression of sexual behavior for men is supposed to be a mark of manhood, while the expression of sexual conduct in public by women is socially constructed to mean a degradation of the woman value (Wajcman, 2013:18). The sexual objectification of woman has persisted throughout the history of corporate and organizational operation, where the personal and intellectual capabilities of women were often overlooked, in favor of the woman’s sexual appeal (Waskul & Plante, 2010:148). While this notion has been argued to change through civilization and modernization of organizational and corporate operations and management, with women being capable of holding any position that a man can hold within an organization, the truth is that women are still objectified as sexual commodities. This is because, despite the desexualization efforts that have been put in place by organizations, women are still required to work in double-bind, where they must avoid being overly sexual for the avoidance of degradation of their dignity, and yet still maintain their feminized sexual appeal (Sullivan, 2014:350). The major problem associated with the concept of organizational desexualization, despite its noble intent of expelling any form of sexuality from the workplace, is the fact that desexualization of the workplace has been formulated to erode the identity of women, and thus cause them to ‘fit-in’ with their male organizational counterparts (Burrell, 1984:97). The effect is that the distinct and unique women sexual character is continuously degraded, as more and more women join different professions and find the already desexualized women as their role models. The end product is that the whole workplace becomes absolutely masculine, since even though such a workplace may constitute of women employees at different levels of the organizational occupation, the whole organization is characterized by the domination of the masculine traits (Brewis, Tyler & Mills, 2014:307). The perpetuation of the male domination therefore means that women are not only discriminated against in the workplace by their men counterparts, but that even women themselves discriminate against their fellow women who do not appear to fit into the male-dominated character traits expression. In the end therefore, although the core object of desexualization is to establish an equitable workplace where the men and female are treated equally through the suppression of the sexuality of either gender, the outcome is the desexualization eventually turns out as a mechanism for discrimination and harassment against women (Rumens & Broomfield, 2014:372). Thus, the manner in which desexualization has been undertaken within organizations has been more ham-fisted and destructive, owing to the fact that it has been applied in the form of remaking humans, most especially women, as opposed working with their true nature (Rumens & Broomfield, 2014:377). The other central argument by Katie Sullivan is that women-dominated industry are associated with socially constructed perception of such professions bearing the identity of sex work (Fleming, 2007:247). This argument has been supported by Albert J. Mills, whose study of the role of desexualization in the British Airline industry concluded that women are associated with job tasks that represent the female bodily sexuality as a symbol of marketing the British airlines imagery of sexual appeal to the clients (Mills, 2012:147). This finding by Albert J. Mills study is complementary of the argument advanced by Katie Sullivan, whose exemplification of the occupations of flight attendants and bartenders as positions associated with high sex-work suspicion has been affirmed by the study findings. Albert J. Mills went ahead to observe that the promotion and marketing of most of the British airlines was done by the application of women imagery, where such women were used to target the airline clientele under the banner of the airlines services being appealing, as does the women bodily sexuality (Mills, 2012:148). More predominantly, the British airline industry constructed the imagery of women occupation in the airlines as constituting pleasurable experiences for the airline clientele, due to the fact that between 1945 and 1960, there was less concern for the application of women bodily sexuality a symbol of sexual appeal. The other Katie Sullivan’s argument is that desexualization, rather than succeeding to expel sexuality from organizations, has only increased the role of giving the bodies of women more sexual materiality (Sullivan, 2014:348). This argument has been validated by Colleen Sheppard, whose study seeking to establish the effectiveness of desexualization in the Canada health sector reached to a conclusion that it is no longer respectable for a woman to behave ‘like a woman’ within the health organizations (Sheppard, 2010:97). While the true nature of women is emotional and impulsive, women working in the health industry have been trained to do away with their natural impulses and emotions, so that they can be able to address the patients effectively, without forming unnecessary emotional attachments or focusing on the needs of certain patients who draw more sympathy and ignore the needs of the other less sickly patients. Therefore, the study concluded that in the Canada health sector, behaving ‘like a woman’ for a health professional and healthcare provider is deemed inappropriate. This is because women are also required to be equally tough in emotions and impulses as does their men counterparts working in the health sector. The necessity is so that women can also be able to withstand some of the terrifying and emotionally disturbing scenes that are characteristic of healthcare sector, such the dying people or badly injured patients. Personal view While the organizational nature of desexualization is meant to enhance the performance and productivity of the women working in this sector, the effect has been more damaging than most people realize (Fleming, 2007:242). Rather than affording women to work in their natural capacities, desexualization of organizations is influencing women negatively, through forcing them to conform to the men working within the same professions (Pringle, 1989:177). This has simply shown that the need to alleviate the traditional nature of women as sex symbols in the workplace through the concept desexualization has failed, since even though numerous attempts have been made by organizations, the socialization and the heternormativity tradition of the society has seen the desexualizing organizations gravitate back to traditional separated sex roles for the different genders (Schultz, 2001:269). It therefore follows that the argument put forward by Katie Sullivan, to the effect that organizational desexualization has accelerated rather than expel female harassment and discrimination in the workplace should be accepted. Conclusion Organizational desexualization is a concept that seeks to entrench the equitable treatment of both the male and female genders within an organization. The major intent of organizational desexualization is to expel the traditional sexuality/gender roles as socially constructed by the society from the workplace, by replacing this social construct with a more civilized and modern age construct that perceived both men and women as equals within the workplace. There is no doubt that organizational desexualization has succeeded in changing the workplace structure and composition, owing to the fact that more and more women have been able to join different professions that were initially a preserve of men. In addition, the gender bias related to the issue of women dressing at the workplace has been largely neutralized in the modern age, giving more women the freedom to dress as they deem comfortable to their workplaces. Nevertheless, while such gains have been consolidated through the great influence of the concept of organizational desexualization, the concept has had certain damaging effects on the role of women in the workplace, owing to the fact that it has worked towards causing women to ‘fit in’ with their men counterparts, as opposed to working in their true feminine nature. Consequently, women are increasingly facing discrimination and harassment in the workplace on the basis of acting ‘like women’, when the conventional desexualization is tending towards making women embrace and live by the masculine nature. References Brewis, J. Tyler, M. & Mills, A. (2014) Sexuality and organizational analysis—30 years on: Editorial introduction, Organization, Vol. 21(3): 305-311 Burrell, G. (1984). Sex and Organizational Analysis, Organization Studies, Vol. 5(2): 97-118 Colgan, F. & Wright, T. (2011). Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Equality in a Modernizing Public Sector 1997–2010: Opportunities and Threats, Gender, Work & Organization, Vol. 18(5): 548–570 Fleming, P. (2007). Sexuality, Power and Resistance in the Workplace, Organization Studies, Vol. 28(2): 239-256 Kensbock, S. (2015) Sexual Harassment of Women Working as Room Attendants within 5-Star Hotels. Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 22(1): 36-50 Mills, J. A. (2012). Discourses: Desexualization versus Eroticism in the Corporate Framing of Female Sexuality in the British Airline Industry, 1945–1960. SAGE Publications, Inc. Pringle, R. (1989) ‚Bureaucracy, Rationality and Sexuality: The Case of Secretaries’, in G. Burrell (ed.) The Sexuality of Organization, pp. 158–77. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Rumens, N. & Broomfield, J. (2014) Gay men in the performing arts: Performing sexualities within ‘gay-friendly’ work contexts, Organization, Vol. 21(3): 365-382 Schultz, V. (2001) ‘Sex is the Least of It: Let’s Focus Harassment Law on Work, not Sex’, in L. LeMoncheck and J. P. Sterba (eds) Sexual Harassment: Issues and Answers, pp. 269–73. New York, NY: Oxford Sheppard, C. (2010). Inclusive equality: The relational dimensions of systemic discrimination in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press. Sullivan, K. (2014). With(out) pleasure: Desexualization, gender and sexuality at work, Organization, 21(3): 346-364 University Press. Wajcman, J. (2013). Managing Like a Man: Women and Men in Corporate Management. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Waskul, D. D., & Plante, R. F. (2010). Sex(ualities) and Symbolic Interaction. Symbolic Interaction, 33, 2, 148-162. Wolkowitz, C. (2002) ‘The Social Relations of Body Work’, Work, Employment and Society 16: 497–510. Read More