Not sure if this is the right subreddit but this is my situation.
I(37M) have worked at a hotel for the better part of two years. My role is a houseman, I basically strip the rooms and take the trash out without cleaning the room or making the bed. Basically I make it easier for housekeeping to do their job by removing the dirty stuff. The housekeeping staff has generally been made of women as long as I've worked there, with only occasionally a man being part of the crew. Recently another man was hired.
I learned today that this man had been let go due to unwanted advances on the other housekeepers. I won't go into details but the gist of it was he pushed boundaries and made more than a few employees feel like he was stalking them at work. Obviously this man could not stay and I agree with this.
Here's the problem, I was outside my manager's office after logging in where I overheard her talking to some of the housekeepers about this man's actions and what had been done. She was completely unaware that I was outside and could hear what was being said. At the time I was just going to go in and get my first assignments when she said everything, but then my manager said something that made me stop. She talked about how weird it was to have a guy like him working for the hotel in the first place. How he had left his last job to specifically work in a hotel around a lot of women, and she said men like him were in her words 'low worth men who have nothing to offer women in the first place'. Which a few of my coworkers agree with.
The bad part is while my manager may have been talking specifically about this one guy, her choice of words were really generalized. As if she was actually talking about all men and had wanted to say something for a long time.
I was stunned. Is that how my manager sees me too? As a potential risk everyone has to be on the lookout for? Now that this guy is gone, is everyone going to be keeping an eye on me waiting to catch me do something wrong? I've worked at this place for two years without causing any problems. I generally work alone and when I do talk for a moment with others it's in passing. If I'm not trusted by now then nothing I do will change that.
I want to believe I'm being paranoid, but at the same time I now feel like someone is going to be looking for a reason to get rid of me. HR is impossible to get ahold of in my company, the best I can do is bring up my concerns to the higher manager. But I know that if I do, then if word gets to my manager than she'll know any complaint about her came from me. And even if she doesn't retaliate against me, odds are she'll just dismiss the complaint or use it as proof that I'm another 'low worth man'.
What can I do? What should I do?