On sexual harassment and hospitality
+ Mushrooms, fish welfare, and the links between the Indian farmers' protests & the western wellness industry
Nice Pear: a weekly(ish) feminist foodletter | Issue #025 | 14 March 2021
Hello!
This has been a hard week to be a woman.
The disappearance/murder of Sarah Everard was followed by an outpouring on social media of women telling their stories of being harassed, followed, groped, and worse. These are stories that pretty much every woman knows intimately.
My timeline seemed more saturated with these harrowing first-person accounts than it did during #MeToo. Maybe the world is slightly more perceptive to women’s stories, now. Maybe #MeToo was about ‘bigger’ (for want of a better word) assaults than we’re recounting in the current conversation. Maybe - whether consciously or subconsciously - I’ve curated the algorithm of my timeline over the past three-to-four years, so I’m just seeing women more than men.
We’ve all read the stories of sexual harassment in the hospitality sector, the culture of machismo perpetuating the harmful gender stereotypes propping up rape culture. Three years ago (in 2018) Unite found that 89% of hospitality employees reported in a survey that the had experienced sexual harassment at work (and, as sexual harassment is notoriously under-reported, the number is likely even higher). A more recent survey found that almost all young women (97%) in the UK have experienced some kind of sexual harassment.
Harassment in the hospitality sector comes from all angles: not only from colleagues and management but also frequently from lairy customers. Hospitality is typically an environment with late nights, surrounded by booze, in a much more casual atmosphere than, say, an office or even a store. Working in the hospitality sector often feels like being part of a new ‘family’. With unsociable hours and intensely emotional labour, usually for little pay, close bonds can form between colleagues and lower managerial staff - which in turn, makes reporting sexual harassment even harder.
Reporting risks not only your job and source of income but also alienating yourself from your social circle.
As I so often say at the end of these emails, I don’t know where we go from here. It feels like we’ve been ‘in a moment of cultural reckoning’ since 2017 - when can we stop reckoning and start rebuilding the culture?
We need to call out this behaviour - and men particularly need to call out this behaviour. It’s the ‘small’ behaviours that are so insidious, so harmful, in creating a culture that makes the ‘big’ behaviours possible. The bottom-slapping, the breast ogling, the deeply offensive comments and almost-threats said in a tone that can be passed off, wide-eyed, as jokes or banter.
With the hospitality industry is on its’ knees, it can feel harder than ever to fight against the patriarchal structures and cultures that harm women - but if anything is going to change, we need to fight anyway.
👇 Scroll on down for Things to Read 👇
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Things to read this week
A really good long read in BitchMedia on the ongoing Indian Farmers’ Protests - and the links between it, and the modern western wellness industry: “now, when the farmers who fuel this industry are demanding basic financial support, where is the showcase of solidarity from the wellness influencers?”
In kitchen-adjacent, environmentally-good news: The UK is introducing rules that make appliances last longer.
Just an interesting read in Alicia Kennedy's newsletter, an ode to mushrooms: “Mushrooms thrive in opposition to tech and capital”
plus, some of the amazing things we’re now doing with mushrooms from Emma Orlow in Taste, from coffee and beer to jerky and even fabrics 🍄
In vegan stuff 🌱:
Where to find me this week
Nothing new published this week.
This week I sent four pitches, got two rejections, and no commissions, but the story I’ve been working on for Food52 should be published this Friday!
As always, you can find me @ZoePickburn on Twiter, Insta, and other social media.
Thanks!
Zoe
Freelance writer & journo | Food blogger & newsletterer (she/her)
Say hello@zoepickburn.com with stories, commissions & foodie chit chat
If you enjoy Nice Pear & want to support it (or any of the other content I create online) you can always become a paying subscriber, buy me a virtual cuppa, or throw some change in the tip jar.