Maybe I’m Doing Woman-ing Wrong
Does this make me a bad 21st century woman?
- I have a coming-of-age son whom I love and feel protective of
and
- I have a dirty mind
and
- I’ve experienced sexual harassment that changed the course of my graduate training, but did and will continue to do nothing about it beyond the MeToo hashtag.
I feel conflicted because I want to raise my fists in unity and stand by my sisters-in-arms, validating my feminist tendencies. I feel strongly that a change in male decorum is, in many instances, long overdue and sometimes social movement is the only way to create such change. I believe my sisters and I have faced culturally sanctioned abuses for far too long.
On the other hand, I don’t want to contribute to the creation of an environment that leaves my son walking through life on eggshells, avoiding women at all costs lest an innocuous comment come under scrutiny provoking dire consequences through the drop of an accusation. I want to hear and tell off-color jokes, even in the workplace, and not hurt my brain filtering my base frontal lobe remarks. And, I don’t want to skewer the former professor whom I still despise for creating a hostile workplace for me through repeatedly making comments about my panties and providing preferential treatment to my more obsequious female peers. Finally, although I #-ed MeToo to raise awareness, some of the fall-out from swinging the reactionary pendulum too far deeply concerns me.
I worry that in our fervor and zeal, we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not just the potential of a movement to degrade into a witch hunt with innocents burned at the stake for the sake of a worthy cause. It’s the distinct possibility of cutting off our noses to spite our faces. It’s about the potential with unchecked momentum, to ultimately create an environment for men in which many women don’t even want to work.
Don’t get me wrong, those who threaten and violate women (and children and other men) need to be punished. Regardless, I’ll go ahead and say it knowing that I may violate the terms of 21st century womanhood - I don’t like the radical undertones of the current #MeToo movement. Before we get too carried away by the most vociferous among us, perhaps if there are other women like me out there, we could forward an alternative measured perspective.
In my estimation, we have historically addressed the problem too meekly. We fueled our challenges by quietly contributing to an ever-growing list of behaviors we will not tolerate. After a while, the list became meaningless – filled with so many intricacies that it was impossible to keep up with, much less live by. Many men and women developed attitudes of resistance. It became even more confusing and confounding to men when women like myself who resented workplace rules, violated them by doing things like telling off-color jokes in the workplace. So, if others feel as I do, I propose we clarify and fortify our stance by reducing our demands down to a workable and meaningful level (maybe a short list of red light and yellow light behaviors along with green light behaviors with which the majority of us feel are really okay).
I’m going to further potentially jeopardize my 21st century womanhood standing by suggesting that we have contributed in another very salient way to obfuscating the problem. Due to shaming and often failing to support one another, over the past century we have diminished our ability to stand together, to shout in large enough and organized enough numbers at loud enough decibels about the interpersonal behaviors that have detoured and disturbed us. Instead, we individually relegated our voice and agency to lawyers to fight our battles. Empowered groups, and those battling for empowerment, do not rely on others to fight their wars. Women must recognize the need for solidarity for solidarity sake because we will face other battles in the future. We cannot risk the dispersion created from competing with and shaming one another. Our self-protection and advancement depend upon our ability to retain open lines of supportive communication. Re-establishing such unity only during tumultuous times results in the assumption of leadership by those most reactive rather than those most capable of speaking for the collective.
Now that I think about it, I really should not be feeling so conflicted. While women have received unfair treatment for far too long, turning the tables 180 degrees simply isn’t a good idea and I won’t be apologetic about my stance.