'Why I said nothing when a well-known man exposed himself to me at a work function.'

‘Why I said nothing when a well-known man exposed himself to me at a work function.’

Of all the sports functions I’ve attended over the years (and there have been many), one sticks out in my memory for all the wrong reasons.

Towards the end of the evening, I went to the ladies’ room. When I came out of my cubicle and headed for the washbasin, I saw a man leaning against the wall. And he was staring at me.

I knew him (he’s well known in sporting circles), and I’d been speaking to him earlier in the night. The sight of him stopped me dead in my tracks. He registered the look of confusion on my face and offered up a smile. He then unzipped himself and pulled out his penis.

It’s not like me to be lost for words, but moments like this freeze the brain. Mine iced up in about half a blink, leaving me at the mercy of my autopilot – which fortunately walked me right out of the bathroom door just as the rush of blood to my head almost blinded me.

My last memory of the encounter is of him standing there with his appendage framed against his grey suit trousers, his glazed eyes, and his smile rapidly fading from his face.

I didn’t confront him at the time. And I didn’t tell anyone at the function what had happened.

What did he think he was doing? What was going through his head as he made his way towards the women’s toilets? ‘Hey, I’ll show Ange something that’ll really break the ice.’ What did he want? A round of applause?

For me to invite him into the cubicle for further examination? Was it his way of flirting? (99.9 per cent of women would find being flashed about as attractive as watching someone lose control of their bowels during an intimate dinner.)

I certainly didn’t flirt with him, so there was no way that he could have misinterpreted our earlier conversation – not that this would be excusable. At the end of the day, if someone is going to show me his business, I want to have some say in the matter.

I’m not prudish, so what was so interesting and disturbing for me was that I felt really rattled by the incident; I never once felt threatened, but I certainly felt violated.

I couldn’t help wondering how a father would feel about his daughter being exposed (in all senses of the word) to that kind of behaviour. What would a brother do if he heard that it had happened to his sister? How would you feel if it happened to your mother or your best friend?

Let’s be real, though. It’s never simple to speak out about uncomfortable things – most people take a deep breath, then weigh up the pros and cons (because there are always pros and cons).

We all want to get by, and we all want to fit in. We get by on the choices that we make – we do this and we get accepted, we do that and we don’t. What’s going to happen if I say this? What will the reaction be?

It gets complicated, and part of the problem is that we’re often forced to shift our moral boundaries to get by, to be liked, to feel part of a group. We’re all forced into complicity, though perhaps for different reasons depending on our gender.

I knew that it was more trouble than it was worth. I was new on the scene in Melbourne, the sporting capital of Australia: I knew that my story would label me, I knew it would follow me everywhere, I knew it would set me further apart from my peers in sport.

I already felt like an outsider – as a woman and, even worse, a woman from Adelaide. I was trying to carve out a career in sport in a new city, and the last thing I wanted to do was to further ostracise myself.

So I opted for the way of the three wise monkeys: hear nothing, see nothing and say nothing. Some would call this ‘cowardly’, some ‘smart’. And some would call it ‘necessary’.

I left my conscience behind and I buried my values deep – something I would do over and over again in work situations to keep relationships intact.

I knew that by turning a blind eye to one of the darker elements of sporting culture, I was compromising my values. It was a conscious decision to just get on with those around me, to make my work life as comfortable as possible and kick career goals. I didn’t feel great about it.

This is an edited extract from Angela Pippos’ Breaking the Mould (Affirm Press, $29.99), available now at all good bookstores.

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