Tag Archives: Women

On My Mind

On Women and Power

2 Comments

8 November 2016 – There were tears in my eyes when I voted for Hillary Clinton.

9 November 2016 – There were tears in my eyes throughout the silent ride to school. My carpool of strong women could think of nothing to say. Like many of my colleagues, I cried at work that day. I sat in a school-wide meeting called by our director, stunned, as he explained to the students that at our school, we value dignity and respect. We accept everyone, he emphasized, and we do not believe in hate. How to explain this to middle school students who, like the rest of us, had just watched hate win?

10 November 2016 – Our carpool was no longer silent. Shock and despair turned to anger and we realized the most important of lessons: Our voices were all that we had. I had the good fortune to be living in New York City and I was well aware that life would remain largely unchanged, despite the persistent chill in my chest.

22 November 2016 – It took about two weeks to accept that I was afraid.

December 2016 – Plans were formed and we waited.

18 January 2016 – Preparations finalized and we waited.

21 January 2017 – Women’s March on New York City. Women’s marches everywhere.

February, March, April, May, June 2017 – The carpool to and from school became an opportunity to call government officials at the local, state, and federal levels. We gave donations, signed and circulated petitions, read the news aloud, listened to the radio, joined online interest groups. We attended marches and protests. We spoke up because we could. We spoke up because we could not stop reading about people living in places that had become openly repressive and dangerous. We spoke up because these people could not speak.

And we realized, our voices were all that we had.

My political awakening came during the Obama years. I voted for the first time my first year in university, there was a financial crisis and promises for changes afoot, and I was studying to be a social studies teacher. Politics took on a relevance it never had before and I was excited to be involved. By the time Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party nomination for president, I assumed the United States was ready to join the nations that had already elected women to the highest offices. It was 2016, after all.

Like more than half of the country, I was wrong. The people may have been ready but the Electoral College was not, and it is the Electoral College rather than the people who make this decision. So much for demokratia. The people hold power . . . except when they don’t.

This was not an issue of politics. This was an issue of women.

I have watched from afar, in horror, as the United States has increasingly restricted what can be taught in schools and what books are available for young people. I have watched from afar, that sinking feeling again in my stomach, as the nation’s courts deny women the right to their own bodies, again and again and again.

And I ask: What are they so afraid of? What are they running away from? What are they scrambling to hide?

I am a student and teacher of history, and this is the pattern of the world repeated over and over.

So I answer: Power.

After all, we do not silence people who we do not fear. We do not delegate inferior status to those we exclude without repercussion. When we do not feel threatened, we need not respond at all. In fact, we likely don’t even notice.

This leads me to the conclusion that men in power fear women. They fear opposition. They fear ideas that could harm the illusion they have built around themselves. And this illusion? That whatever power they think they have is, in fact, theirs. If it were, if that power were rightfully earned and positively utilized, there would be nothing to fear. Nothing to hide. Nothing to silence.

Clearly, there is a great deal to repress.

And this says a great deal about power.

Criminalizing a woman’s right to her own body suggests that the people making these laws are afraid of everything that makes a woman. And so I ask: If this is the case, who actually has power?

Head held high, I needn’t answer. I need only act. With my very self as the threat, my existence proves stronger than your resistance. Power lies in me and of me and through me. And no amount of you can take that away.

Women’s March on New York City – January 2017
On My Mind

#MeToo

Leave a comment

There is only one way to begin this post, which is to acknowledge that I have been incredibly, incredibly lucky and that I’m writing from a place and position of privilege, safety, and security. I’m writing to honor the women and men who have come forward with their stories and to encourage those who remain locked in worlds of hurt and shame. If you haven’t spoken up because you feel that you have no one to tell, I’m here to listen to you.

I thought about writing this when the #MeToo movement first gained ground, but I didn’t. Again, I am incredibly lucky. I didn’t want my uncomfortable experience to be misconstrued as a cry for attention and I didn’t want it to take away from the “real stories” that people were telling. And frankly, my grandparents read this blog and this isn’t something I want them to read. (Sorry, grandparents.)

But the more I thought about it, half the problem is that I feel like I need to justify what I’m going to say. And then today happened.

A man filmed me while I was running this afternoon. I realized this as I ran towards him and he didn’t move from where he was standing on the path, holding up his phone. There was a glint in his eyes that went right through me and a leer that made his actions apparent. Instead of knocking his phone out of his hands or spitting at him, both of which I was close enough to do because I was hellbent on making it obvious that I knew what he was doing, I snapped, “Totally in the way” loudly enough for him to hear me and ran past him.

My heart rate sped up and I felt my legs begin to pump faster. Hello, fight or flight. I tried to relax my breathing and stopped running. I sat on the rocks by the beach until my body felt normal again.

This experience reminded me of being tickled from behind for the entirety of a crammed three-hour bus ride. It reminded me of all the times I’ve been whistled at, catcalled, stared at, and approached while walking down the street. I thought of the podcast I heard this morning about sexual assault in the entertainment industry. And I thought about the time I repeatedly used the words, “no”, “stop”, “don’t”, and “get off” before he finally did.

The only time I’ve ever alluded to this experience on this blog was when I wrote about my online dating experiences in New York. The guy I’m talking about is one I named “The Guy With Two Faces”. That post was supposed to be light, airy, and humorous.

This one is not.

The first night we went out, he walked me home and then asked if he could come up and use my washroom. I knew that was coming because he hadn’t let go of my hand for the entire walk. New York isn’t a city known for its public washrooms and it wasn’t an unreasonable request. Against my better judgement and because I really do understand that plight, I said yes.

He wasn’t the first person who had walked me home but he was the first to ask to come upstairs and I didn’t know how to get rid of him. I didn’t want him in my apartment. I didn’t want what was next in the script of “boy pays for a nice evening and girls pays him back”. But that’s the script we was running.

What made me uncomfortable wasn’t anything we did that night, but his insistence that we do it. In my experience, people are usually a little cautious at first and let me lead. That was not how this worked. He was very strong and forced on me things that I did not want. And I didn’t kick him or punch him or scream because I figured it was easier to play along. I also figured I’d given enough mixed signals because of my own confusion that he actually may not have realized that I did not want to participate. In many aspects of life, I am bad at saying no. This was no different.

We went out again because we did have a lot to talk about and he was really sweet over text messages. I reasoned that nothing had really been that bad, that I hadn’t gotten hurt, and that this time I just wouldn’t let him come upstairs. Easy enough.

But I hadn’t solved the problem of not knowing what to say when he asked if he could use my washroom. So again, he came upstairs. Again, I couldn’t get him to leave. I couldn’t figure out how to simply open the door and say goodbye. I failed at acting as my own agent.

This time, he wouldn’t put on a condom and all of my protesting and squirming didn’t seem to register. He whispered in my ear, “Don’t you trust me?”

Done playing, I replied, “No. I hardly know you.” And that was when I figured myself out. I kicked myself out from underneath him and shoved him off, which was easier than I had expected, likely because it came as a surprise. I told him to get out of my apartment.

I can’t actually remember what happened next. Part of me thinks he asked to take a shower and part of me thinks that if this happened, I probably said yes. But part of me thinks he just left. I’m sure it’s written in a journal somewhere but I really can’t remember. When I described this to several girlfriends later, I said he’d “given me sass about using a condom.” All could relate, too familiar with that scenario.

Reader, we out again. I was lonely, it was a nice day, and walking around the city with a buddy seemed like more fun than doing it on my own. He kept trying to direct our walk towards my neighborhood. I kept turning the other way. He finally said, “Look, I don’t have all day.” I made up a story about my roommate having friends staying with us.

“So?” he asked.

“I’m shy,” I said.

His hands were all over me in the middle of the street and he muttered, “You don’t look shy to me.”

I saw people on the opposite side of the street and loudly demanded, “Stop” and pulled away. He saw the people, too. He stopped and we kept walking. Eventually, he said he had work to do and led us towards his office. On a random street corner with no office in sight, he announced that we’d reached his destination. We said goodbye. I went into the first coffee shop I passed and sat there for hours.

I didn’t reply to the message he sent me weeks later and never saw him again.

Although I have a number of concerns and questions about the #MeToo movement, this is not the time for those. This is the time to say that yes, me.

And you, and you, and you.

I do not know anyone who has not been touched by this movement in some way, even if it’s just through degrees of separation. And in case someone in my world hasn’t understood that yet, here’s my story. So now you’re part of this, too.

As a society, I hope we can do two things to move forward. First, I hope we can talk to young people about what it means to have a relationship. We talk to students a lot about actions (this is what sex is, this an STD, this how to use a condom) but very little about what it means to love, value, and respect another person. Love is a verb. What does that verb mean? What does that verb require of you and of someone else? We need to talk about that. We need to talk about consent. We need to talk about how we enter into relationships and why the agreement of both parties matters. We need to talk about how we relate as humans and how we come to know each other. Consenting to embark on any journey together is essential to the journey’s success. We need to have conversations about that.

Secondly, we need to allow adults to have conversations about the very human desire for intimacy. It’s still strange to me that so many people meet in the workplace and then feel the need to keep their relationships secret. After all, the workplace is where you’re supposed to turn off the part of yourself that is human. This then becomes the place where you’re probably the least honest with yourself and with those around you. It’s perfectly acceptable to ask a stranger to coffee, but you’re not supposed to think of a colleague, someone you actually know, in the same way. And if you do, and if you voice those thoughts, you run the risk of a sexual harassment claim even if a rejection is respected and never brought up again. Why is that? Why are we prohibited to be human around the people with whom we spend the most time?

I think these are questions worth considering and I know there’s more to ask, to say, and to do. We will have come a long way when #MeToo leads us to rebuild the society we live in.

On My Mind

What makes a man?

Leave a comment

“Alexander Hamilton,” my friend declared after listening through Act Two of the musical, “was not a good man.”

Well. That depends. If we’re judging the measure of a man by his faithfulness to his wife then no, Alexander Hamilton was not a good man. And neither were Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, nor Albert Einstein. All of whom, I would argue, are key figures in building the world we live in today and who did more good than anything else. But to say they were not good men because of marital transgressions seems to unfairly dilute and discolor their legacies as individuals who built a world.

Yet, my friend’s comment leaves me wondering: What makes a man? What makes a woman? More importantly, what makes a good man or woman?

Is a good man one who puts his family or his wife first? To me, that sounds like a good father or a good husband.

Then, what is a good man?

Is a good man someone who puts work, money, and providing before everything else? To me, that sounds like an employee or employer, a breadwinner, a producer.

And I continue to wonder, what is a good man?

Is a good man someone who has ideals, stands for them, writes them, shouts them from the rooftops? That could be an orator. That could be a leader.

It seems to me that all of these characteristics comprise the entirety of a man, just as they also comprise what makes a woman.

So what is it about people who stray, who are unfaithful, who seek a plurality of relationships of varying types and intensities that puts them in the “not good” category?

I wonder about that.

And I wonder about the other categories that we all fall into. I’m an educator, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I’m a runner, a yogi. Once upon a time, I was a dancer, a singer, a girlfriend. Do any of those things make me a “good” woman? What is a good woman? Is a good woman different from a good man?

And so back to, what makes a good man?

I’d argue that we need a social conversation about our goals for the people that we are developing, the people that we are creating. I’d argue that what makes a good man or a good woman can be discussed as simply, what makes a good person? 

We want people who care about other people. We want people who work for sustainable worlds built on justice, happiness, security, and increased well-being for all. We want people who care about those around them and who are willing to put others first and do what is right for the good of the whole. That seems to me less about being a good man or good woman and more about simply being a good human.

What makes a good man? What makes a good woman? That depends on who you ask.

What makes a good human, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the much more important question.