has me wondering what is the best way to be a woman who wants change in the world. To scream or not to scream that is the question. I mused last week that we were one America despite differences, and then that maybe we needed to scream more in elevators, then I beseeched God to show me what to do and how to love “these people.”
I truly feel that somehow the answer is, as we perhaps say too often in my philosophy these days, “both and.” Maybe I need to find a way that is more honest and transparent and less concerned with men’s comfort and maybe I need to do it before the point that I’m ready to scream. In thinking about how to be, I need to observe that it wasn’t men who raised me to lower my voice in elevators, be circumspect and not offend men, it was women.
It’s really strange that I grew up with such strong programming to be careful of men’s fragile egos. My father was a strong gentle self-confident man whom I don’t recall yelling at me or my brothers even once. If we pushed it too far and crossed a line, the most I ever remember was him tightly gripping one of our upper arms and saying “that’s enough.”
Yet, from my mother, I internalized a message of don’t be strident, don’t talk about women’s things in front of men, and above all, cross your legs at your ankles. And, although I have broken all these rules many times, I have prided myself on being able to work and get along with men well, where other women may not have. Even recently I notice that if there is a group of women with only one or two men (common in my profession of new thought ministers), I’m making sure that the conversation is comfortable for the man, that we don’t veer too far into women’s subjects.
Generally, men will not extend the same courtesy to women. A group of men with one or two women, will usually feel perfectly comfortable with an extended discussion of professional or amateur sports. I think it’s well-established that the groups with less power are expected to understand, tolerate and be conversant with the more powerful groups’ norms and behaviors but not vice versa. This is part of what we call “privilege.”
We all know how circumspect women still are on anything to do with menstruation. I remember feminist comedian Kate Clinton (back when there were like two such comedians) doing a hilarious bit on how it would be if men had periods. Two men are spectators at a sporting event, one shouting out, “hey, who has a tampon? I’m out!” A guy several rows down says, “you need a ‘pon, man? That’s cool, packing right here,” slapping his breast pocket. He pulls out like a cigarette box of tampons, pulls back his arm like a quarterback and shouts “go long!” before hurling it.
I know for myself that would make me lose my composure and scream in an elevator is years of suppressing rage, fear and truth, years of pretending that things are okay that are not okay. So maybe one thing women can start doing is just being open in real time about things to do with women: what we like, what we need, what we feel and how we do. And maybe men can just begin to see this is really how it is. And maybe that will make as much or more change as protest later.*
*Note that “visionary political astrologist” Caroline Casey points out that the etymology of the word “protest” is from the Latin “testis” for witness which is the same root as “testes.” Literally the original “witness” was asked to grab his testicles to swear rather than a Bible. Perhaps women want to rethink the language and the action of protest in light of this. Although we do need to seriously draw from our gonads into order to speak our truth.