That's What She Said

That's What She Said

When somebody says the word “office” I think immediately of the cubicle: that charmless little box of efficiency, a quality unconnected to sexuality in any way—one that is, at least to my mind, its opposite. Which is perhaps the point. As Julie Berebitsky points out in Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, sexual relationships—consensual or not—have long been considered a threat to productivity and morale, eclipsing the mid-century trope of the secretary sitting on the boss’s knee. Employers labor to strip their offices of expressions of id, encouraging their sublimation elsewhere. (She said “strip”!) But all that this repression suggests is the persistence of what needed repressing in the first place.