Yesterday, I had lunch with a strong, intelligent, and accomplished woman - my officemate. We ate in a cafe owned by another strong, intelligent, and accomplished woman. Last week, I had lunch with a strong, intelligent, and accomplished friend who is a hospice doctor. Today, I picked up some treats for my strong, intelligent, and accomplished Southern women friends from a deli owned by a strong, intelligent, and accomplished local woman business owner. I am surrounded on a regular basis by strong, intelligent, and accomplished women. I am also a strong, intelligent, and accomplished woman. None of us became accomplished by remaining quiet, not speaking up, and acquiescing to the will of a society that would prefer us to look and be perfect Stepford dolls (and did I mention unopinionated and stupid?) We all became accomplished in spite of this pressure to conform to silence and subservience. And yet...and yet...
...we all feel twinges of doubt about a wide variety of issues - body image, writing, business decisions, family decisions, professional choices. This bald fact is unavoidable, but sometimes something happens that brings this issue of self-doubt about one's self-worth to a head.
Yesterday as I was driving very slowly through the cafe parking lot and heading toward the exit, a middle-aged man jumped out of his truck and started across the lot to the KFC. We saw each other at about the same time, so I stopped a good 50 feet away, and waved him on. He stood still, and waved me on. I shook my head and smiled, waving him on - the universal signal that says "I see you - you're safe - go ahead."
You know what this man did? Something that I suspect many men AND women do on a daily basis - so much so that it is embedded in every reaction that we have whether we are driving, ordering something on the phone, listening to an expert, or voting.
He shook his head, held his arms up in an X, and shouted, "I don't trust women!" And then waved me on again. My stomach flipped, but I laughed (wrong response) and drove on. I should have stopped, gotten out, and asked him why he would say such a thing - it was insulting. But instead of responding the right way and challenging this behavior on the spot, this exchange has been eating at me ever since.
Why did he say that? Why doesn't he trust women? Women drivers, or women in general? My anger is also rising about this because it seemed so friendly and innocuous, but was loaded with toxicity and the expectation that because I'm a woman, I must not understand that I have to stop so that a man can cross in front of me. That pisses me off. And before you go off on some rant that I just don't understand and that oh, he was just "playing" or being funny - let me remind you that women in positions of power and authority suffer this assumption constantly. (And a woman behind a the wheel of a car can be perceived to have power over someone on foot.)
Over the course of my life, now and then, I will be reminded of my place by a "well-meaning" person - either man or woman, sometimes friend, sometimes colleague, sometimes family. Perhaps you've heard this statement and are similarly irritated by its counterproductive nature:
"You should watch what you say because you're in a position of authority - people trust you."
This is my all-time favorite and is ubiquitous to my life - this statement and its many forms has followed me from the moment I became a journalist. Until then, I was a subordinate figure in advertising and other businesses - I worked for others. The moment I started working for myself, I became scary to others. Now that I'm a professor, and part of the "intellectual elite" (whatever that is), apparently, I'm REALLY scary. I have things to say and I am not afraid to say them and for a woman to be that way and have that attitude rubs against the grain of a whole lot of people. The main thread that links both of my careers and positions together is the fact that I am a strong, intelligent, and accomplished woman who isn't afraid to talk and write about anything, even when it pisses other people off. My greatest critics in this respect have, much to my chagrin, been women.
This hurts more than any man's criticism.
Women need to be more supportive of each other's desire and ability to speak up, speak out, and speak well on a wide variety of issues, including some of the most sensitive and difficult topics. We need to stop being so critical of each other's strengths because there are enough men who feel the way that the KFC-loving parking lot-walker feel - they don't trust women - so we need to trust and love each other as we are - and not try to change each other into some stilted societally-acceptable silent presence in this world. There are enough forces already winning that war - let's stop contributing ammunition to the wrong side of the battles.
The men in our lives, employees, co-workers, employers, service workers, random people on the street and in stores, may not trust us, but it is imperative that we trust each other AS WOMEN and allow our fellow women to be who they are without judgment from us. The men aren't going to take the lead on this, ladies. We must trust each other. We must lead by example.
3 comments:
A while ago, Tina Fey made a joke that Taylor Swift needs to stay away from Michael J. Fox's son. There was a big thing about it.
Taylor said Katie Couric told her, "there's a special place in Hell for women who don't support other women."
I like Tina Fey. But she blew it off, saying it was a joke and needs to be gotten over. However, considering the crap Taylor is always getting for her dating habits, it's a dumb joke.
It did make me angry that it was ok to make fun of her for that. That the responsibility is put on Taylor for multiple failed relationships, when maybe she just doesn't take crap from guys. Maybe she won't stand for not being treated the way she wants. I'll say this - for the fairytale romances she writes about, the break-up songs are never about cartoon villain boyfriends. Unlike Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry's Professor Ratigans who are looking to have the last laugh and chew a girl up and spit her put and various other hyperbole.
Taylor has wishy washy jerks who can't decide if he wants to be with her or not and enough is enough.
You reminded me of this. How even so many women who claim to be some powerful, outspoken women tend to be the kind who also don't support other women. It's a vie to be top of the heap - above other women themselves.
I know, I can have trouble with it myself. To stop and think before I say and do, just because I spent my life in girls' locker rooms being trained to be catty first and apologetic later.
I wish it was not so hard to trust other women. Before boys start creeping into our relationships, we all know that our best friend, standing no taller than yourself at 3'8 and 46 pounds, would hold your hand through fire and ice against the biggest, baddest monster in the closet.
Okay, first, I want to echo what Taryn said above me. I love Taylor Swift--it was a slow-to-come-on kind of love because I wasn't very sure about her pop star status. But as I've been listening to her later, more mature, albums, I've come to really hear what she's saying: don't put up with the bullshit! And you know what? I sing these songs to my daughter, and now she's starting to request them. (She calls "I Knew You Were Trouble" "Ee, ee, ee" because Swift has a few verses that end in "ee, ee, ee" sounds. This is Melanie's favorite, most requested song.) Do I expect my daughter to make mistakes when choosing her dating partners? Of course. It's how we learn. But I am focused on training her to be a strong woman who can (and will!) say no to bullshit when it presents itself to her. Thanks for the reminder, Taryn!
As for the (to borrow a line from Tina Fey's character in Mean Girls) "girl-on-girl violence," I am absolutely with you, A.Mo. When I was pregnant, and even as a new mom, my eyes were opened to the unabashed hate coming from other pregnant women and new moms. Think you're raising your child "correctly"? Think again! I decided to forever stop reading the "helpful" message boards on parenting sites (like What to Expect When You're Expecting and BabyCenter) after I was doing some research on safe car seats. (Oh, you want to see some girl-on-girl hate? Google "forward-facing car seats" and read some message boards.) I don't understand this culture in women of wanting to beat each other down and encourage silence/subservience/extreme caution.
Sometimes I wonder if we're living in the backlash of the earlier feminist movement where now that we have conquered the men (so to speak), we have to turn on each other. It's an extreme example and assumes a lot, so forgive me that, but what the hell am I doing by apologizing for making my point??
I catch myself every day apologizing for my "radical" or "extreme" views. That frustrates me. I don't know where it became so deeply ingrained in me, but I know I'm not the only one. I've seen it happen to female reporters, strong female leaders, and my own female role models. And no one is stopping it.
You know what I wish you could have done in the moment? I wish you could have flipped him the bird. Isn't that what a guy would do if someone said something similarly degrading? May not be the most poised or mature response in the world, but it sure does get the point across.
I got a brief clip of *Miss Representation* the other day--the section in which the featured personalities were discussing the ERA. There was footage of not only men but also women who vehemently opposed the ERA as a force that would ruin the fabric of society and put women "out of place."
That other women saw their places as only in the home, after millions of women went to work to keep the country going during WW2, was a powerful illustration of what seems to be internalized inferiority. Either we're capable of holding up the world, or we aren't, right? If women still, in various ways, continue to support these contradictory narratives about women's (lack of) value, then we still have a long way to go.
I like what A.Hab. was saying about Melly, though. Even at this age, she's teaching her a more appropriate narrative. Each one, teach one--I'm all about it. Preach on, A.Mo.!
Post a Comment