Come Over For Tea, Ladies, and We Will Fix The World.

[minxy]

I have seen two things in the internetly media lately that have been speaking to some issues of misogyny and racism and also to some of my real life experiences in the workplace. Being the personality that I am, which we will likely be gazing at to some extent in this essay, I can’t usually be found on the front lines of confrontation, of anger or announcement or identification. You’ll find me quietly weighing in with my vote, with my feet or with my choices, but in terms of the great path of change, I am not built to be active in the fighting part. I may, may be able to contribute something a little later on, though. I will contribute possibly over-cerebral navel gazing at this moment, but who knows? Later on the world may have adapted so much that I might shine as a beacon of, I don’t know, role-modelship or something. I think you have to be the change you wish to see in the world, though. Someone really smart said that.

I don’t have the guts to run for president, is what I’m saying. I do have the guts to fight for a career in academic biochemistry and biophysics, though. It’s a personality thing. And at the moment I am brave enough to navel-gaze in public, but if you're wondering why I'm not outraged and yelling? Personality.

So lately I read a rather badly written, possibly satirical-in-intent, argument that women are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of respectability when they do absurd things. The absurdity of the opinion piece is resoundingly pointed out in this rebuttal, but it is interesting to me that so much of the reaction to this is ‘if you meant to say this, you failed. Do better.’ Which is ultimately a statement both about communication and the demands placed on someone making an argument for change (do it well.)

This pings a couple of recent debates in the blogosphere that I’ve been peripheral to lately involving tone (in both a racial and non-racial context.) Tone being something that’s okay if everyone understands it to be satire, to be sarcastic, or to be appropriate. If a person either directly or indirectly involved takes exception to the topic, they can become defensive or antagonistic, and suddenly the credibility of the speaker comes down to tone. Not logic, not facts, but how you said it, and whether the people involved were capable of hearing anything else. We'll leave aside whether they have any right to judge (and not because it's not important, for the record.)

If you want an extraordinary example of a person making an important argument extraordinarily well, you might read this article at Kenyon Farrow.com by Tamara K. Nopper, but notice the irony of how the author’s word choice changed the entire experience.

My reaction to that story is two-fold. The first is probably a combination of a personality trait of most first-borns to sweep in and fix something if it goes wrong, to lead in the absence of proper guidance, but it’s also likely a product of sympathy and white privilege. My first reaction was: why didn’t someone speak up for that woman? I would have done (because I am noble and a knight in shining armor, lo.)

This is not helpful, obviously, because the author of the second article was doing a damn fine job of speaking up for herself in an emotional situation that was handled supremely and shamefully badly by almost everyone else. But we all have our issues. I like to think that mine are unobtrusive to others, but that’s probably wishful thinking.

My second, and probably far less directly emotional reaction is to try to figure out how the hell that situation went so wrong, and if it were me in that situation (as the victim, not the knight in shining armor in this thought experiment,) could I have controlled the behavior of the people around me? So the question for me, then, is what could have been done differently? How could that outcome have been avoided by the author, and would Ms. Nopper have been selling out to utilize any of the tactics? Would I?

If you were to draw conclusions from the first article, by a woman named Charlotte Allan who for the moment we shall assume was trying to make an earnest point, you would have to conclude that Ms. Nopper failed to gain the respect of those around her because she wept after the fact, or perhaps because she was frivolously talking on the phone when it began. None of these arguments is even remotely rational, and they contradict entirely the fact that Ms. Nopper is taken to task during the experience for the strength of her language used. No, the respect Ms. Nopper was not afforded had nothing to do with whether her cell-phone had fake rhinestones on it, or whether her clothes suggested that she would be willing to be a doormat and whipping boy. No, those arguments may be dismissed. It comes down to tone, and this is something that my mother would whole-heartedly agree with.

Lately, and in no way uniquely, I have been having trouble communicating with my supervisor. My mother, in the pragmatic and disturbing way of mothers, has been offering remarkable advice apropos and constructive to dealing with the situation. Because she is who she is and I am who I am and we know each other rather well, our conversations commiserating on the subject of my mistreatment (mild, common, in no way unique, but unfortunate) jump very quickly to what I might do to change the situation, control the reactions of those around me, and effect a significantly more favorable outcome in the future events, which will inevitably occur unless change is effected. Should I have been insulted in my workplace by my supervisor? No, certainly not. Should Ms. Nopper have had to bear witness to the ugly human behavior she did? No, she should not. But there is nothing, you see, that one can do about other people’s opinions and minds and actions except to try to influence them with your own.

Misogyny exists; racism exists. Ageism, weightism, homophobia, poor tolerance for disability or any sort of other… these things all exists and we must deal with them, repetitively. The question is, what can you do about it, if, like me, you violently dislike anger and you are an eldest child (and troubleshooting the problem with your Mom, who is also an eldest child?) You deal with the things you can change, and you work around or tolerate the things you cannot change.

Here is what I think cannot be changed: people react emotionally sometimes. My supervisor, for example, gets defensive and attacks when he feels threatened or insecure. He is a man and he is shorter than I am. He reacts to a lot of what I say when I’m standing as though it is inherently more aggressive. I react emotionally to perceived insult to my competence in the workplace, I am unable to continue a conversation in a civil manner past the point of a statement like that, and I am not terribly confrontational, so my reaction is to freeze and leave. My advisor’s reaction is to grow progressively angrier that I’m not talking to him and not opening up a dialog when he expresses his concerns. Stalemate.

Here is what I think makes working through the problem tenable: good intentions, a likely ability, if not willingness, to work together.

Here is what I think we must overcome: the fact that he has no idea how little he contributes by way of constructive suggestion. The problem that I respond to positive motivation (very well) and not his instinctive negative; that neither of us will be able to compromise without going against our instincts. And both of us have had long careers believing our instincts to be effective and correct.

The plan, as worked out by my Mom and I and countless other really smart people: to begin a dialog, when everyone is calm and not defensive, that involves a lot of use of “I feel…” phrases and absolutely clear roadmaps on my preferences re: motivational tactics. This is my working style, let me show you it. No statements about how I could make twice as much elsewhere (at least, dear God, but we will not mention that we have looked) or how much information would leave with me if I cut bait. Sitting, not standing. Use of the phrase ‘normally, you are really pretty fair about this kind of thing, but…’ as an opener for any criticism; ‘if you recall, we discussed…’ as a stand in for ‘because you fucking told me to, you bastard.’

I’m kind of jesting here, much as I am stating these intentions somewhat simplistically. I do not expect this conversation to be comfortable or easy, but I do think it’s necessary. I also feel somewhat manipulative going into a conversation with a tetchy advisor and doing something as calculated as not wearing heels that day. Because it is one thing to use a preconstructed sentence to say something you are really having trouble communicating on your own, it is another to compromise style and strength and clothing choices and emotion. Isn’t it? It feels like it. Then again, those emotional responses are hard to control.

Would Charlotte Allan have gotten a different response if she had made professional, calm, fair arguments about the perception of silliness and respect in women? Undoubtedly, since the main problem with her article is that it is mind-bogglingly controversial over how she made her point (whatever her point was) and whether she made it in the way she intended.

Would Tamara Nopper have experienced a significantly different kind of flight if she had used an ‘I feel…’ phrase rather than ‘Don’t fucking speak that way to me”? I suspect she would have from at least one of the key players. What I don’t know is whether she would feel better or worse having subsumed her natural inclination to express offense, and avoided a lecture.

I think it’s worth considering. I’ve deliberately avoided discussing the racial aspects of this subject, largely because I don’t want to get my ‘white person, shutting up’ t-shirt mussed, but race undoubtedly strongly influenced Nopper’s experience. The argument of tone has come up consistently in dialogs about race missteps and whether or not it’s appropriate the burden of appropriate tone gets leveled on the person arguing for something to change. This becomes a different problem, though, with emotion being clouded with privilege, paternalistic crap, and an inability to make the assumption that both parties recognize a problem and have the best intentions of fixing it.

Would a white woman like me, tall and with some good muscle definition, have had my personal space so cavalierly shoved, or so quickly been physically threatened like Ms. Nopper, who is an Asian-American woman? It’s really hard to say, race and gender are in indivisible part of how the world perceives her and all of us. Would a tall man of any race have had an older white man pressing a leg up against his the minute he sat down in a plane? I doubt it, though I don’t know and clearly I’ve reached the limits of my thought experiment.

Here is my point, though: some things you can change, like laws and whether you speak up and how, but some you can’t, like the fact that people react badly to being told they’ve done something wrong. The laws about voting and discrimination and such, a lot of them have been changed and we have a woman and a black man competing for the democratic presidential nomination, and it’s not enough. We hit situations, and they aren’t unique to us, as tragic as it is, where we will have to compromise and we will have to decide if it’s worth it (and, for the record, my preference may well be switched to the democratic hopeful who stops lashing out at the other first). For me, it’s worth working the thought experiment ahead of time so that I know whether I’m committed to working through an interpersonal problem or not, because when I’m emotional, I’m just incapable of making some kinds of decisions.

Comments

[hossgal.livejournal.com]

I quit the first career I was in, after five years, because it was a high-people skill field, and my people skills sucked. In speaking to my boss, just before I left, and moved back to my hometown to go back to school, I mentioned that a large part of the reason I was leaving was the difficulty I had in managing people. "I never know right off how to handle things, how to phrase things. It's just *hard*. Sometimes I do it right, but only after I think about it for a bit. It's not easy."

My boss looked at me, then down at his desk. Then he asked me to sit down, and apologized for not realizing that I had thought about things like that. And proceeded to unpack for me the last five or six weeks of meetings and tasks and short-notice projects and outside agency coordinations that had gone on in the office. I had been aware of nearly all of them, and involved in a lot of them.

What my boss did, in that twenty minutes, was explain how much thought and pre-planning had gone into every meeting, every encounter, every time he had to interact with people. His word choices, the place of meeting, what he would bring up in private and what he would bring up in public meetings...and he wasn't even telling me everything.

That man, a fairly gifted manager and leader, showed me how much *work* it was to lead people, to work with people. I had thought it was something he did from the gut - and, at that point in his career, a lot of it was, because he was so used to looking for the right approach to take with different people. But most of it was brain work, and choking off emotional responses.

I was already committed to my new path - moving back to my hometown, and going back to school. But I have carried that conversation with me. And it has stood me well - I am much better with people now than I was before - for starters, I *know* I can vary my approach, and I *know* I can find better ways of saying things to different people.

(In someways, this is scary, because I'm still not very good at the people dance. But everyone who knew me back then agrees that I am much *much* better now. And it is because I finally heard someone say 'this is a skill you must practice to get right' and set down to practicing it.)

So.

I don't think I draw the same conclusions from the articles you do, or start from the same place, but I do agree that acknowledging we all react emotionally and trying to work into a place where emotions have less impact is a good thing.

- hg

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Naw, I fully admit that I don't feel like dealing with the entirety of what was intended or perceived in any of the articles cited, but merely took ideas from them as they applied to ones I was already thinking about. I don't know that I could predict how we would agree or disagree if I fully considered them for what they are apart from my current life issues, but it surprises me not at all that the quirky bits I pulled and used are not what other people saw. I can have tunnel vision when something occupies my brain.

Just hearing the story you mention is actually really motivating to me too, but I've been trying to figure out where my hesitancy comes from with the current situation and why I have no trouble adjusting how I present information, say, or teach the grad students under me. One of them has a language barrier, I've learned to write things down for her. Another will have a conversation, walk away and think about it, then come back later and ask for more details, but it's really best to wait for him to prompt you. Another must be told absolutely bluntly that she is interrupting (again) and that I'll need 20 minutes before I can talk to her, but if I'm clear and calm about it, she'll be back in 20 minutes and we can proceed.

But it's the thing where my boss is offensive, and it's the thing where he's my mentor and advisor and he should know better, I feel. I think it's a respect situation. I don't perceive sufficient respect from him when he gets in one of these moods, and it's difficult to respect him enough in return to put in the effort of being absolutely painfully clear about what I want when I expect him to turn it on me. That's my issue, though, and when he's in a better mood, like he is now, it's inaccurate and an excuse.

Brain work/choking off emotional responses may be my new motto, if I start having a motto.