Ooo I love it when I can do the work. So in High School, I (Black girl) joined the debate team. The team was pretty big so we had to divided into different teams when we went to tournaments. I can’t remember how we got divided but we did have an all girl team and I wasn’t chosen for that. I was on the team with 2 White guys, 1 Asian guy & me. Nice guys by the way!
Anyway we go to a tournament and my team wins. We’re the heroes on the bus back. The girl team complained that the all male judges were biased and they described what happened in their debates and I agreed with them.
Then we got the judges notes. The girls were picked a part for clothing, voice modulation, presentation. We looked at my team notes and I swear to god I am not making this up —- one of the judges said I was “bitchy”. I was going for competent, forceful, articulate but I’m tagged a bitch.
This stayed with me for awhile, I wasn’t even happy about the win when they announced it in the intercom on the next morning announcement. By the time I got to college and work environments I just accepted that how I am perceived is out of my hands - Get the Win!
I only have anecdotal evidence from being in the classroom for 16 years, but as a teacher of middle and high schoolers, I watched girls’ dreams die all the time. When I taught 9th graders, girls came in so excited to learn. They, with their highlighters and studious notetaking, ruled. By the time they were in my Senior English classes, many of those same girls hardly spoke at all. My soul died a little bit with them. They were taught that their place was being quiet, and they watched the boys gain confidence while theirs shrunk. The times when I saw them shine again was in their papers, where they showed me their secret dreams, and still strong voices that had gone quiet in the classroom. Of course, this wasn’t all girls, but it was enough to notice. It was enough for me to make an all girls advisory group where I could encourage them. It was enough to make me worry if I was doing enough.
Decades ago when I was much younger, a young engineer, my most competent and level-headed peer was a woman. She was a friend from school, a first rate professional and wonderful person. Her dreams died the day her boss took her off lead for the company’s highest profile assignment and gave it to a guy. She quit working two years later, married another engineer, and years later I saw her in the middle of the day with two kids in her front yard. I was driving by and didn’t stop to ask what that thousand-yard “not quite seeing” look was in her eyes. It didn’t feel right, she wasn’t my wife. But she and the world lost something big when she got “put in her place.” It still bothers me thirty years later.
"The reality is girls get to be unlimited in their dreams as long as companies can profit off them, but adult women are stymied by a culture that refuses to give them basic rights like autonomy and equal pay." That about sums it up.
Sometimes I wonder if it's more cruel to discover the world isn't interested in what you need later or to know it all along, as I did. The answer is probably that comparative suffering is always a trap. The dissonance that I find so upsetting these days, though, is how much I love being a person in a female body, with all of the instincts and internal skills that I've cultivated as a result (not to mention that women's bodies are fucking delicious), and how the culture consistently offers in response laws and messaging that to be in this female body is a hindrance, a liability, and a danger. It's bizarre and unsettling to move constantly through a world that imagines me as the polar opposite of how I experience myself.
As a young person growing up in Iowa, some of my earliest memories of starting to date happened when I met their mothers. You know, the family invites you over for supper and you get to meet the whole family. After dinner, I’m always with the moms in the kitchen, clearing off the table and helping with dishes. It was really glaring to me that each woman shared her story with me in those moments and it usually was something like “well, I was in college studying music. I wanted to be a music teacher and I know I was really musically inclined. Then I met (insert guys name here) and we were married. Five children later and here we are.” And they would say it with sadness in their voice. One woman spent an hour showing me all the canned goods in her pantry and telling me what good prices she got on them “6 cans of green beans for a dollar!” From a woman whose family was deep in evangelical Christianity. They talked and I observed and listened and felt so sad for them. So I didn’t go down that road. I never had children, got married at 46 and have always worked and volunteered everywhere. I’m one of the happiest people I know. But I’d like to know where she was buying those green beans. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Today in my women's lit class, one of my students was presenting on pop culture and feminism. Her class notes were on a presentation slide with a pink background; she joked about wanting to put a Strawberry Shortcake watermark on it too but thought that would be too much. I had just read this substack and said BUT WHY WOULD THAT BE TOO MUCH. Then I read the class your quote about getting back to the toddler version of yourself. They all cheered.
I wonder if sometimes we trick ourselves into opting for individual choices for societal problems because it feels easier to just control our choices, rather than working with or influencing disparate groups of people. I live and work in a community where there are endless social problems, and endless repeating community groups, all are trying to solve the same problems but refusing to work together. Trying to wrangle people to work together seems impossible sometimes. But I also work at a university with almost no faculty voice or influence, and have become very aware of how helpless an individual working on their own is. I don't have a good answer. I really appreciate this conversation, and thinking about how communities can advocate for change in an age of exhaustion.
I have befriended an Afghan refugee family that moved to CR in November 2022. They have five daughters and one son, 12 to infant. It makes me so happy when the father talks about the opportunities his daughters will have here, especially when so many American fathers don't think the same.
In less than an hour, I have a meeting with my new boss. He was hired for a VP position that didn't exist on Jan. 1, a position that I wasn't aware they were hiring for until after he was hired. A position that I should have been at least told about in advance. He started Monday and I looked up his LinkedIn profile to prepare for our meeting. He is 33 years younger than me. He is so young that he still includes his HIGH SCHOOL information in his profile. It's not an elite school, that I would kind of understand, for good-old-boys-networking and all that rot. But no, they hired a guy with nine years of experience in our field to be my boss. I'm in my job for 24+ years in a field that I helped create. There was no email marketing, no social media, and barely websites when I began in my job in communications. We created email marketing, social media, podcasting, electronic publishing, and content development. I am part of the cohort who developed this field. A year ago, I was told to put myself in front of the c-suite more often. Which I have done, working directly with them on multiple projects, doing award-winning work. Now I report to a person who is younger than my youngest daughter. When did my dreams die? Yesterday. The wound is fresh and I am full of rage. In 35 minutes I have to be on my best "good-team-player" behavior or I may find myself in search of a new job at my age, the age where they no longer even really look at your resume because you're too old. Until Monday, I reported to a SVP who reports to the president of the company. Today I report to a man who was 7 years old when I started my job. I am bereft and engaged.
Girls envisioning themselves in all of the different possibilities for a life and career as they dream it, learn from Barbie a performative, superficial understanding of a career as an outfit to be put on or taken off. Boys are given toys in the form of tools required to actually do a job.
Ivanka Trump is the perfect realization of a Barbie-inspired woman with a career - she is fundamentally incompetent as evidenced by video of her attempting to speak to actual professionals during her father’s presidency - but she “looks” the part. She has the right “outfit.”
Gambia just passed a bill reversing laws against female genital mutilation!!!
Of course, fucking MEN passed this grotesque bill, reversing a law that had been mostly ignored, due to a lack of enforcement and education. Cutting off a woman's genitalia and sewing up their vagina's?! Who thinks up this shit! This is the epitome of the many, many grotesque affronts to women. Fuck Barbie.
I'm so tired of hearing about all the strides women have made, because if we're still fucking striding, then it doesn't really matter. I never made as much money as my male counterparts did as an RV electrician, even when my knowledge and experience differed greatly from theirs (me > them). If I nagged for raises that they automatically were given I might get told I would get one "next time." My performance reviews were stellar, as was my attendance, but that didn't seem to matter either. And, who got stuck going on all the repairs? I did. I could usually complete them faster and do a better job of it. I got some atta girls, but those didn't help me as a single mom, not one bit.
One of my favorite stories about women in Iowa politics was told to me by former Lt. Gov. Joy Corning (R) of Cedar Falls. Lt. Gov. Corning was smart, competent, and pro-choice. Toward the end of her life, she was not included, not welcomed, by her own party.
When Branstad stepped away from the Governor's office, his own Lt. Gov. Corning expressed an interest in running for Governor herself. Gov. Brandstad told her he had already endorsed Fred Grandy, of Loveboat fame.
Lt. Gov. Corning ran against Grandy in the Republican primary.
Grandy complained to the press that Lt. Gov. Corning was "like a little dog nipping at my heels." (Code for Bitch.)
Corning went downtown to Joseph's Jewelers and got herself a brooch of a little poodle and wore it on her lapel for the rest of the campaign.
Consciousness-raising groups became therapy groups because so many women who came to groups had terrible individual problems. It was often domestic violence which had not yet been criminalized or taken seriously by police and the meager social services available. It was a time when it was difficult for women to be financially independent.
I'm back in college at almost 50 pursuing an RN degree. While learning sterile indwelling catheterization technique, we were informed that those with a penis get local anesthetic as standard ebp. If you have a vagina you have to ask for it, because, you know, A WOMAN'S PAIN.... 2024 and still.
I of course challenged the professor (man) who could only respond with the male urethra is so much longer nonesense. Pain is pain and getting a catheter SUCKS. So I will push back against this sexist system by asking every woman with a vagina if she wants a topical anesthetic that there's an option for that.
This is so true. My small fight against the patriarchy is to take some time every day to read and to do some of my hobbies. It’s tiny, but I spent so many years making myself small that demanding that hour or two back really matters. Also, we clean the house on my schedule and to my standards. I’m not going to give my husband and sons any credit for this either, since I had to insist and make a stink to get those things and I should never have had to do that. Housekeeping should have been done to an objective level of order and cleanliness and everyone should have time to do things that they enjoy. I should not have had to make demands like I did.
The author of that piece thinks that the Right should shame women for having bodily autonomy. He — of course it’s a ‘he’ — never mentions any of the things women suffer in pregnancy; women are the designated Suffering Class and it’s in a poor taste to object to that. That website doesn’t have comments, so it would be really nice if we could use our outlets to shame that asshole as much as possible.
Ooo I love it when I can do the work. So in High School, I (Black girl) joined the debate team. The team was pretty big so we had to divided into different teams when we went to tournaments. I can’t remember how we got divided but we did have an all girl team and I wasn’t chosen for that. I was on the team with 2 White guys, 1 Asian guy & me. Nice guys by the way!
Anyway we go to a tournament and my team wins. We’re the heroes on the bus back. The girl team complained that the all male judges were biased and they described what happened in their debates and I agreed with them.
Then we got the judges notes. The girls were picked a part for clothing, voice modulation, presentation. We looked at my team notes and I swear to god I am not making this up —- one of the judges said I was “bitchy”. I was going for competent, forceful, articulate but I’m tagged a bitch.
This stayed with me for awhile, I wasn’t even happy about the win when they announced it in the intercom on the next morning announcement. By the time I got to college and work environments I just accepted that how I am perceived is out of my hands - Get the Win!
I only have anecdotal evidence from being in the classroom for 16 years, but as a teacher of middle and high schoolers, I watched girls’ dreams die all the time. When I taught 9th graders, girls came in so excited to learn. They, with their highlighters and studious notetaking, ruled. By the time they were in my Senior English classes, many of those same girls hardly spoke at all. My soul died a little bit with them. They were taught that their place was being quiet, and they watched the boys gain confidence while theirs shrunk. The times when I saw them shine again was in their papers, where they showed me their secret dreams, and still strong voices that had gone quiet in the classroom. Of course, this wasn’t all girls, but it was enough to notice. It was enough for me to make an all girls advisory group where I could encourage them. It was enough to make me worry if I was doing enough.
Decades ago when I was much younger, a young engineer, my most competent and level-headed peer was a woman. She was a friend from school, a first rate professional and wonderful person. Her dreams died the day her boss took her off lead for the company’s highest profile assignment and gave it to a guy. She quit working two years later, married another engineer, and years later I saw her in the middle of the day with two kids in her front yard. I was driving by and didn’t stop to ask what that thousand-yard “not quite seeing” look was in her eyes. It didn’t feel right, she wasn’t my wife. But she and the world lost something big when she got “put in her place.” It still bothers me thirty years later.
"The reality is girls get to be unlimited in their dreams as long as companies can profit off them, but adult women are stymied by a culture that refuses to give them basic rights like autonomy and equal pay." That about sums it up.
Sometimes I wonder if it's more cruel to discover the world isn't interested in what you need later or to know it all along, as I did. The answer is probably that comparative suffering is always a trap. The dissonance that I find so upsetting these days, though, is how much I love being a person in a female body, with all of the instincts and internal skills that I've cultivated as a result (not to mention that women's bodies are fucking delicious), and how the culture consistently offers in response laws and messaging that to be in this female body is a hindrance, a liability, and a danger. It's bizarre and unsettling to move constantly through a world that imagines me as the polar opposite of how I experience myself.
As a young person growing up in Iowa, some of my earliest memories of starting to date happened when I met their mothers. You know, the family invites you over for supper and you get to meet the whole family. After dinner, I’m always with the moms in the kitchen, clearing off the table and helping with dishes. It was really glaring to me that each woman shared her story with me in those moments and it usually was something like “well, I was in college studying music. I wanted to be a music teacher and I know I was really musically inclined. Then I met (insert guys name here) and we were married. Five children later and here we are.” And they would say it with sadness in their voice. One woman spent an hour showing me all the canned goods in her pantry and telling me what good prices she got on them “6 cans of green beans for a dollar!” From a woman whose family was deep in evangelical Christianity. They talked and I observed and listened and felt so sad for them. So I didn’t go down that road. I never had children, got married at 46 and have always worked and volunteered everywhere. I’m one of the happiest people I know. But I’d like to know where she was buying those green beans. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Today in my women's lit class, one of my students was presenting on pop culture and feminism. Her class notes were on a presentation slide with a pink background; she joked about wanting to put a Strawberry Shortcake watermark on it too but thought that would be too much. I had just read this substack and said BUT WHY WOULD THAT BE TOO MUCH. Then I read the class your quote about getting back to the toddler version of yourself. They all cheered.
I wonder if sometimes we trick ourselves into opting for individual choices for societal problems because it feels easier to just control our choices, rather than working with or influencing disparate groups of people. I live and work in a community where there are endless social problems, and endless repeating community groups, all are trying to solve the same problems but refusing to work together. Trying to wrangle people to work together seems impossible sometimes. But I also work at a university with almost no faculty voice or influence, and have become very aware of how helpless an individual working on their own is. I don't have a good answer. I really appreciate this conversation, and thinking about how communities can advocate for change in an age of exhaustion.
I have befriended an Afghan refugee family that moved to CR in November 2022. They have five daughters and one son, 12 to infant. It makes me so happy when the father talks about the opportunities his daughters will have here, especially when so many American fathers don't think the same.
In less than an hour, I have a meeting with my new boss. He was hired for a VP position that didn't exist on Jan. 1, a position that I wasn't aware they were hiring for until after he was hired. A position that I should have been at least told about in advance. He started Monday and I looked up his LinkedIn profile to prepare for our meeting. He is 33 years younger than me. He is so young that he still includes his HIGH SCHOOL information in his profile. It's not an elite school, that I would kind of understand, for good-old-boys-networking and all that rot. But no, they hired a guy with nine years of experience in our field to be my boss. I'm in my job for 24+ years in a field that I helped create. There was no email marketing, no social media, and barely websites when I began in my job in communications. We created email marketing, social media, podcasting, electronic publishing, and content development. I am part of the cohort who developed this field. A year ago, I was told to put myself in front of the c-suite more often. Which I have done, working directly with them on multiple projects, doing award-winning work. Now I report to a person who is younger than my youngest daughter. When did my dreams die? Yesterday. The wound is fresh and I am full of rage. In 35 minutes I have to be on my best "good-team-player" behavior or I may find myself in search of a new job at my age, the age where they no longer even really look at your resume because you're too old. Until Monday, I reported to a SVP who reports to the president of the company. Today I report to a man who was 7 years old when I started my job. I am bereft and engaged.
Girls envisioning themselves in all of the different possibilities for a life and career as they dream it, learn from Barbie a performative, superficial understanding of a career as an outfit to be put on or taken off. Boys are given toys in the form of tools required to actually do a job.
Ivanka Trump is the perfect realization of a Barbie-inspired woman with a career - she is fundamentally incompetent as evidenced by video of her attempting to speak to actual professionals during her father’s presidency - but she “looks” the part. She has the right “outfit.”
Gambia just passed a bill reversing laws against female genital mutilation!!!
Of course, fucking MEN passed this grotesque bill, reversing a law that had been mostly ignored, due to a lack of enforcement and education. Cutting off a woman's genitalia and sewing up their vagina's?! Who thinks up this shit! This is the epitome of the many, many grotesque affronts to women. Fuck Barbie.
I'm so tired of hearing about all the strides women have made, because if we're still fucking striding, then it doesn't really matter. I never made as much money as my male counterparts did as an RV electrician, even when my knowledge and experience differed greatly from theirs (me > them). If I nagged for raises that they automatically were given I might get told I would get one "next time." My performance reviews were stellar, as was my attendance, but that didn't seem to matter either. And, who got stuck going on all the repairs? I did. I could usually complete them faster and do a better job of it. I got some atta girls, but those didn't help me as a single mom, not one bit.
One of my favorite stories about women in Iowa politics was told to me by former Lt. Gov. Joy Corning (R) of Cedar Falls. Lt. Gov. Corning was smart, competent, and pro-choice. Toward the end of her life, she was not included, not welcomed, by her own party.
When Branstad stepped away from the Governor's office, his own Lt. Gov. Corning expressed an interest in running for Governor herself. Gov. Brandstad told her he had already endorsed Fred Grandy, of Loveboat fame.
Lt. Gov. Corning ran against Grandy in the Republican primary.
Grandy complained to the press that Lt. Gov. Corning was "like a little dog nipping at my heels." (Code for Bitch.)
Corning went downtown to Joseph's Jewelers and got herself a brooch of a little poodle and wore it on her lapel for the rest of the campaign.
I sure do miss Joy Corning.
Love,
Cynthia
Consciousness-raising groups became therapy groups because so many women who came to groups had terrible individual problems. It was often domestic violence which had not yet been criminalized or taken seriously by police and the meager social services available. It was a time when it was difficult for women to be financially independent.
I'm back in college at almost 50 pursuing an RN degree. While learning sterile indwelling catheterization technique, we were informed that those with a penis get local anesthetic as standard ebp. If you have a vagina you have to ask for it, because, you know, A WOMAN'S PAIN.... 2024 and still.
I of course challenged the professor (man) who could only respond with the male urethra is so much longer nonesense. Pain is pain and getting a catheter SUCKS. So I will push back against this sexist system by asking every woman with a vagina if she wants a topical anesthetic that there's an option for that.
This is so true. My small fight against the patriarchy is to take some time every day to read and to do some of my hobbies. It’s tiny, but I spent so many years making myself small that demanding that hour or two back really matters. Also, we clean the house on my schedule and to my standards. I’m not going to give my husband and sons any credit for this either, since I had to insist and make a stink to get those things and I should never have had to do that. Housekeeping should have been done to an objective level of order and cleanliness and everyone should have time to do things that they enjoy. I should not have had to make demands like I did.
I think this is relevant to Lyz’s point: https://americanreformer.org/2024/03/abortion-is-shameful-act-like-it/
The author of that piece thinks that the Right should shame women for having bodily autonomy. He — of course it’s a ‘he’ — never mentions any of the things women suffer in pregnancy; women are the designated Suffering Class and it’s in a poor taste to object to that. That website doesn’t have comments, so it would be really nice if we could use our outlets to shame that asshole as much as possible.