Interview with the Male Secretary

Let’s face it: like it or not, this is a man’s world. Men make more money; men get more respect; and everything’s pretty much set up to keep it that way. The Secretarial profession is one rare place where the powers that be allow women to dominate. It figures they’d dump such a crappy profession on us! Male Secretaries are few and far between. And when you do find one, it’s usually an unsettling experience. Why? Because even though we don’t give a second though to seeing a woman slog through this rotten job, we’ve been trained to be disturbed by the idea of a subservient male! Even though we dominate the field, hiring a disproportionately high amount of female Secretaries=sexual harassment, though they’ll never admit THAT in “sensitivity training.” Why should we get stuck with all the shit-work? Fed-Up Secretary recently met up with a male Secretary to learn about life in this minority among us. Fed-Up Secretary: Do you like being a Secretary?

Male Secretary: It’s better than digging a ditch, but mostly I hate it.

F-U.S.: I feel exactly the same way. A lot of Secretaries are grateful that they don’t have to serve fast food or do manual labor. They think that makes it worth it to put up with the shit we have to do on the job.

M.S.: I work with a lot of people like that.

F-U.S.: We all do. Tell me, how long have you been a Secretary?

M.S.: Five years.

F-U.S.: And how did you get started?

M.S.: When I got out of school, I started temping. I had taken typing in school and didn’t have any trouble filing or talking on the phone, so I though I’d give it a try. It was easier than managing record stores or the Gap, like all my friends were doing, and it paid better.

F-U.S.: What did you friends think?

M.S.: Mostly they were jealous because I was making more money than them. But there was some teasing and rude comments.

F-U.S.: Like what?

M.S.: That I was lazy; that I wasn’t working hard; that guy Secretaries are all gay.

F-U.S.: Oh, stereotypes! Were you lazy?

M.S.: (laughs) Just a little.

F-U.S.: Were you working hard?

M.S.: Sort of.

F-U.S.: Are you gay?

M.S.: (laughs) Uh, well, yeah.

F-U.S.: I see. Now, the secretarial profession is unusual in that it’s dominated by women rather than men. As a minority in the field, do you feel oppressed?

M.S.: No. If anything, it works to my advantage.

F-U.S.: How’s that?

M.S.: No one thinks a man is going to be as good a Secretary as a woman, so I’m usually the second choice to give a difficult job to. I’m the one they send out for coffee or lunch.

F-U.S.: How interesting. Aside from that, do you think the male secretarial experience is basically similar or different from the female secretarial experience?

M.S.: Mostly, it’s the same. Bosses still treat you like shit, people still blame you for everything that goes wrong, you still never get credit for your ideas. I guess the only advantage is I don’t really have to deal with sexual harassment.

F-U.S.: You also don’t have to buy nylons.

M.S.: I’d probably get in trouble if I did!

F-U.S.: But I think you raise an interesting point about the lack of sexual harassment toward men. I guess office life isn’t like Disclosure.

M.S.: Didn’t you hate that movie?

F-U.S.: Completely! As a female Secretary, I happen to know a thing or two about sexual harassment! For Hollywood to address it only as being perpetrated by a woman... and if I was going to sexually harass a man, it wouldn’t be saggy-assed Michael Douglas, that’s for sure. But, back to the topic. How do you feel people react differently to a male Secretary?

M.S.: The bosses are weird about it sometimes. The men are used to sort of talking down to Secretaries, but with me they feel that they have to make buddy-buddy talk about sports, things like that. One of my bosses always gives this nod to me as he walks by, sort of like a military salute, which I take to mean ‘I still respect you as a man, son, even if you do have a girl job.’ Female Secretaries are nice, but they seem to like to be able to have ‘girl-talk’ with other Secretaries, and they don’t want to ‘girl-talk’ with me. The girl I work next to always talks about Roseanne to me, and not much else, really.

F-U.S.: What about female bosses?

M.S.: I don’t know; I don’t have any female bosses.

F-U.S.: No female boss, but an office full of female Secretaries?

M.S.: All except me!

F-U.S.: How typical. Tell me, have you ever met any other male Secretaries?

M.S.: Sometimes, on the phone.

F-U.S.: What’s that like? Meeting a kindred spirit?

M.S.: No, it’s like meeting someon else who has a stupid job, but I meet people with stupid jobs all the time.

F-U.S.: Why are there so few male Secretaries? Guys don’t like typing or answering the phone?

M.S.: Well, I think it’s obvious. Men have better opportunities in education and are more likely to be hired in better jobs than the rest. Secretary jobs are what’s left over.

F-U.S.: Yes, that does seem to be the case. But you’re a man--why aren’t you running the company?

M.S.: Just being man isn’t enough to get them to let you run the company. I don’t have an MBA, I don’t have connections, and I don’t think I really have the personality type. I wouldn’t work at all if it was my choice. But there are bills to pay.

F-U.S.: We can all relate to that! “There are bills to pay”--that ought to be the Secretarial motto.

Sidebar: Male Secretaries Support Groups At the present time, there are no known support groups for male Secretaries. This is probably because being in this particular minority isn’t really much of a problem, since most priviledges of being a man still apply to men who are Secretaries. Men who feel otherwise are advised to go off into the forest and beat on a drum.