“Be nice.”
“Be patient.”
“You catch more bees/flies with honey than with
salt/vinegar.”
I’m still getting this advice from well-meaning women in my
life. Let me tell you something. This advice isn’t useful and doesn’t help. In
fact, it only serves to exacerbate the feeling that my problem is in a black
hole being ignored.
I’m having serious problems right now related to my home,
damages, my insurance company, and the public adjuster company that I hired to
help me resolve the issues. I will get into the details later once it is all
over – because believe me, I have plenty to say. But this is the issue that
prompted this post and that’s all you need to know.
Being a woman in American society is a liability in many
ways. Women are meant to be nice, patient, kind, compassionate, and above all,
not get angry. Because that’s not ladylike, feminine, appropriate.
I call bullshit.
When companies or individuals are ignoring you after you’ve
paid for a service, or not doing their jobs, or just being mean/inappropriate/ineffective
for the situation, being nice and patient doesn’t resolve the problem.
When we tell young girls, young women, and even 40-something
women to be “nice,” “patient,” and “don’t get so upset,” what we are really
saying is “don’t stand up for yourself” and “don’t fight.”
Again, I call bullshit.
Anyone who has known me since my 20s knows that my temper is
now in admirable control and I don’t often get angry. Yoga and meditation
helped a lot with that self-improvement. And I do consider that an
extraordinary feat of self-improvement. Being nice, patient, compassionate, and
all of those other “positive” qualities have helped me to develop into a better
friend, better daughter, better girlfriend/life partner, better teacher. But so
has my anger and sense of righteousness; my ability to stand up for myself,
negotiate and argue on my own behalf. And yet, we don’t value these “negative”
aspects of being human – especially in women.
Rejecting these qualities in women is wrong.
Advising against these qualities in women is detrimental.
Being angry all the time is counterproductive, trust me on
that. But never getting angry? Never hearing that it is ok, appropriate, and
acceptable to get angry when the situation calls for it, to advocate vigorously
for ourselves? Talk about telling girls to avoid a necessary life skill that
is, indeed, more important than cooking, looking pretty, and being peacemakers.
This advice and the impulse that causes women to express
such advice to girls and other women is toxic, detrimental, and needs to stop.
The most consistent advocates for getting angry and
defending myself when the situation warrants it are men.
Ladies, we should take a cue from the men in our lives and
learn to embrace the necessity and value of anger and verbal/written
self-defense instead of telling each other and the young women in our lives to
calm down, be patient, and be nice. That only works for doormats.
And we are not doormats. We are women. Women with value in
all of our emotional and intellectual complexity. Women who aren’t “over-reacting”
or “being hysterical” when we are justifiably upset. Women who are still women with value even when
we get mad and stand up for ourselves.
So let’s stop advising each other to be doormats.
