"What Hollywood’s Acceptance Of Sexism Looks Like In Practice"

"I felt uncomfortable but was focusing on getting the shoot done. Without hesitation, I sat down next to Johansson with my laptop, explaining to him the process of creating reaction GIFs — at which point he slung his arm around my back.

Then, in the middle of the shoot — for which we asked Johansson to act out reactions to so-called dicks in the workplace — the actor made another comment, one we did capture on camera. "I'm not shy," he said to my colleagues and me under the hot fluorescent lights inside the studio. I laughed at his improvisation, which admittedly was pretty funny. Then he said, a little too casually, "I'm sweating like a rapist," wiping his forehead and the sides of his face, seemingly not paying attention to the camera that was recording those very words.

It took me a second to register what I'd just heard. Still, none of us in the room objected or expressed our discomfort. Instead, I forced myself to laugh before proceeding...

In the immediate aftermath of my interview with Johansson, I'd shrugged off one of my colleague's suggestions to write about the experience and told myself that this was bound to happen one day. Every journalist has had a negative experience with an interviewee at some point in her career, and this was mine, right?

It worries me that I felt this way. It worries me that it took a conversation with my editor to make me realize that I should have been pissed. If I were a man, Johansson would not have said those things in front of me, let aloneto me."
http://www.buzzfeed.com/susancheng/paul-johansson#.dh9oRAY7l

Ya, my initial reaction to most microagressions is laughter - I guess in the hope that if I act like it's not a bug deal then it won't escalate? But probably shitty socialization that tells me to trust the feelings of the other person in the situation more than I trust my own feelings.

Related: “Why Smiling Too Much May Be Bad for You”