Stories from the Cage: Autoethnographic Sensemaking of Workplace Bullying, Gender Discrimination, and White Privilege

This autoethnography examines white privilege and systemic discrimination within contexts of my experiences as a white woman encountering workplace bullying, presented and examined on three levels. In sections marked “Then,” I integrate my own memories of my employment at AAA. In sections titled “Now,” I analyze my experiences through three interpretive lenses: first workplace bullying, then cultural enactments of gender discrimination, and finally white privilege theory to reinterpret the organizational dynamics that took place at AAA. In a section called “Next Time,” I present descriptions of what I would do differently given what I know now in the form of two letters. Throughout, I engage in self-investigation and self-implication. In short, through weaving together the past, present, and future of my experiences, sense-making, and theoretical prose, I examine the intersections of race, class, and gender in workplace bullying behaviors, to make sense of my experiences and to help others.