Recently, after examining my life and the events leading up to this point, I have come to the realization that I, and many women like me, have been caught between two completely different generations of women, two opposing faces of Feminism.
The first of these were the women who lived their lives in the years following WW II, those who embodied the stereotypical image of feminism on the cusp of extinction: kissing husbands goodbye on their way out the door to work then hauling a station wagon full of children to school. Their highest ambition was to have five little buns in the oven and a perfect home in which to raise them. The second generation was the women of the sixties, pregnant with the power of a revolutionary movement within them, no longer oppressed by a male-dominated society. Their highest ambition was to throw little Miss Suzy Homemaker and her American Dream right out the window.
So, after looking at my life and all that’s happened, I guess I’m a bit of both. I am devoted to a life of faith and purpose, and at the same time, I am independent, resourceful, and wild in that Goddess of the Wood kind of way.
I also guess it made sense that I would choose geology as my life’s ambition.
Becoming a geologist was a goal I established quite young in life. I was born in the autumn of 1950, fourth in a family of seven children. By six, I was wearing an apron and helping my mother with chores. At nine, I was cooking family dinners on my own. The great thing that resulted from this constant practice is that I am now a seasoned cook. Beyond this, I only saw my mother exhausted from raising my siblings and me, or at least I thought she was.
It wasn’t hard for me to want to be like my dad, the oil man. And I was determined. By age ten, I was bringing him coffee and helping collate stacks of paper, what I know now as petroleum plays that solicited potential investors for monies to drill wells around Pinedale, Wyoming. It was a golden time.
Fast forward to Mother’s Day 2006, and I’m finally on my way to realizing a dream career in geology, graduating college thirty years after quitting. Then, the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself, a mentoring program in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The company offering the program pairs newcomers with more experienced engineers within its infrastructure. I would be spending six months commuting back and forth between classes in Texas, and the unforgiving, desolate oil and gas fields of North Dakota. It would be a grueling schedule, but this mentorship was the field experience I’d been hoping for and needed after graduation, so I took it. Thirty students, I and my peers, were assigned to mentors whose sole jobs were to advise and serve as examples to their pupils, nothing more and sometimes a lot less.
Enter my mentor, Frenchie. I call him Frenchie because he reminds me of those little French men with pencil thin mustaches who sneer at unsuspecting maidens in old silent films. I knew by the third month that something was terribly wrong with Frenchie. The program’s original concept was to place new engineers into the field with equipment operators to gain firsthand experience of what it takes to get oil or gas out of the ground and then bring this knowledge back to the classroom. This was not my experience.
At first, I was so excited. I’d been a mudlogger on oil rigs in my younger days and couldn’t wait. Frenchie, however, was more interested making sure I could “spell him”. In fact, he said that I didn’t need to be in the field, that he would teach me everything I needed to know. My gut instinct told me I was in danger. I did not heed the warning, however. By the time I realized Frenchie had ulterior motives, it was too late; he made unsolicited advances. I immediately reported the incident to three managers, the Three Stooges in charge of the region, and was emphatically assured that the company would take “any form of harassment seriously.” Questionably, Larry, Moe, and Curly took little time to decide, concluding that since Frenchie had not sexually harassed anyone else, he had not harassed me, but guaranteed me that there would be no further contact with my supposed mentor. This was not the case.
The retaliation and backlash against the complainants of sexual harassment are not new to this world and still exist in every career choice and facet of a women’s life. The practice is insidious and often difficult to prove. It cost me my new career.
Women’s intuition is a double-edged sword but also a tool that can help you stay safe, physically and emotionally; it’s just a matter of developing your gift. Discerning the difference between “gut instinct” and someone else’s “baggage,” for me, has taken time. Over the years I’ve been in physically demanding and dangerous situations - whether driving a 60-ton Euclid in a coal mine or working the open range as a field geologist, often relying on gut instinct to keep me out of harm’s way. My gut told me Frenchie was dangerous. It also told me the Three Stooges weren’t going to watch my back. It was right.
After a two year investigation of my case, evidence obtained by the State of Wyoming does support a violation of state or federal statutes and supports reasonable cause to believe that sexual harassment, intimidation and retaliation occurred.
I’m out of Wyoming now but not going away. I still have a fight ahead of me.
Denise Eleanor Skinner