The text messages included two images of overweight, naked women – and they were sent to a female colleague with the words “Di” and “Would you hit it?” and “Di who wants a go f….. this?”.
The ‘Di’ in question is Di Patston, the only female on the management staff of the Wallabies Rugby Union team.
And the texts came from one of the team’s stars, Kurtley Beale, 25, who sent the messages to Patston in June.
Those texts lie at the heart of a scandal currently rocking Australian Rugby.
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What is the issue here?
It is probably just the tip of the iceberg for Di. There is probably an undercurrent of a terrible culture she had been battling all along and then bam..sexual harassment to top it all off. Women work in a different way to men, from my experience with a heap of due diligence. This would include going the extra mile to make sure everyone is on the same page, not behave at the expense of others and I have never in my career seen a woman hide her mistakes either. Sometimes you just suck it in, sometimes you just loose it. I wish Di didn't give in to it but I can appreciate loosing it, it happens to the best of us. The aggression with the plane incident would leave one feeling entirely unsafe. Sounds like no one helped put him in his place which is typical of pack animals. Maybe if another woman was there it would not have been so bad who knows, and I suppose we will keep copping it until there are more women around.
I work in Engineering and the most unfortunate thing is meeting women in top jobs that are so jaded they say stupid things like you cant cry, that's just what it is to work in this position, suck it in sweetheart. Eff that, I expect more, I understand though without these women whom in a lot of cases are pioneers, I may not be here. But I cant abide by people saying suck it in yet I have copped what Di has and more, I refuse to give in though, I feel that it my responsibility to make a difference for the next girl or woman that comes along and am taking it back to the work place and not pretending everything is fine.
It reminds me of something Lydia Cacho said about women in the most extreme of abuse scenarios of which I paraphrase: what option does a woman have after she has been trafficked as a child into prostitution, reaches 30 where she suddenly finds she is unwanted, has no options, and then turns her skills and understanding of the underworld into other business opportunities, such that she has to now be the child trafficker.
Although, this is the extreme, the thing I've personally experienced that once a woman is continually abused she can then become the abuser even in positions of power and its a cycle I had hoped to never see but I think it is a reality, I hope it doesn't happen to me.