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.
