You Can't Make This Stuff Up
I say that out loud every time a White House staffer resigns or someone in the Trump circle gets indicted.
I say it a lot, actually.
Recently my community held an event in conjunction with International Women's Day. I didn't go.
In past years, I might have gone. Once upon a time, I would have covered the event for the local paper, or even served on one of the panels.
But being retired now and out of circulation, so to speak, I didn't attend. After hearing a recap from a friend, I'm glad I didn't.
For one thing, when a speaker brought up the Me Too Movement, a majority of the small-town audience didn't appreciate the topic. A few applauded. Some later accused the speaker of bringing politics into play.
Huh?
Secondly, my experience with one of the speakers chosen to represent women in a certain field has been anything but positive. In fact, that particular speaker and I were once on a screening committee in which she lobbied loudly and persistently against hiring a woman with better educational credentials than she, at that time, possessed. A former coworker once called this "the-only-bra-in-the-room" syndrome, a condition which gives women the need to be the Only One or the Top One of her gender in a given genre.
Spare me. (To be fair, it took me several more years of dealing with the woman speaker to fully understand her motives. I am sometimes dense.)
There is always going to be a woman smarter, prettier, better educated or more talented than we are, you are, I am. This is a given. The only way to deal with it is to hold that woman up as inspiration, a role model.
Mothers need to teach this to their daughters.
I wasn't about to sit through a panel discussion about women championing women when I knew one of the speakers wasn't able to do that: champion other women. In fact, the only time I've seen her do so is when the woman is, in her opinion, vastly inferior to herself.
It's good to support women who need it. But if we can't support those who have achieved more than we have, or whatever, what does that say about us?
Admittedly, it took me decades to learn all this. The old-fashioned nuns at the very parochial grade school I attended thought comparisons were useful for insecure or unmotivated young girls.
How wrong they were. We can all learn from each other, true, but we are all different and move through life at different speeds.
This should be obvious, but it's not.
Women need to put aside comparisons and unite against bathrobe-clad movie moguls and groping politicians.
More to follow.
I say it a lot, actually.
Recently my community held an event in conjunction with International Women's Day. I didn't go.
In past years, I might have gone. Once upon a time, I would have covered the event for the local paper, or even served on one of the panels.
But being retired now and out of circulation, so to speak, I didn't attend. After hearing a recap from a friend, I'm glad I didn't.
For one thing, when a speaker brought up the Me Too Movement, a majority of the small-town audience didn't appreciate the topic. A few applauded. Some later accused the speaker of bringing politics into play.
Huh?
Secondly, my experience with one of the speakers chosen to represent women in a certain field has been anything but positive. In fact, that particular speaker and I were once on a screening committee in which she lobbied loudly and persistently against hiring a woman with better educational credentials than she, at that time, possessed. A former coworker once called this "the-only-bra-in-the-room" syndrome, a condition which gives women the need to be the Only One or the Top One of her gender in a given genre.
Spare me. (To be fair, it took me several more years of dealing with the woman speaker to fully understand her motives. I am sometimes dense.)
There is always going to be a woman smarter, prettier, better educated or more talented than we are, you are, I am. This is a given. The only way to deal with it is to hold that woman up as inspiration, a role model.
Mothers need to teach this to their daughters.
I wasn't about to sit through a panel discussion about women championing women when I knew one of the speakers wasn't able to do that: champion other women. In fact, the only time I've seen her do so is when the woman is, in her opinion, vastly inferior to herself.
It's good to support women who need it. But if we can't support those who have achieved more than we have, or whatever, what does that say about us?
Admittedly, it took me decades to learn all this. The old-fashioned nuns at the very parochial grade school I attended thought comparisons were useful for insecure or unmotivated young girls.
How wrong they were. We can all learn from each other, true, but we are all different and move through life at different speeds.
This should be obvious, but it's not.
Women need to put aside comparisons and unite against bathrobe-clad movie moguls and groping politicians.
More to follow.
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