puppetmaker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
puppetmaker) wrote2018-09-30 10:52 am
puppetmaker) wrote2018-09-30 10:52 am
I will not be silenced
Behind the cut because I am giving you the option to not read my words which is more than some have given me recently.
Last night a number of people passed around a meme for women to change their Facebook profile photo to a black square to show what the world would be like without women. It had some origins in fighting domestic abuse.
It didn’t sit well with me and I could not quite put my finger on why. I knew it was not right for me to do. Then my friend Karen said, “Why are you in favor of women being silent for any period of time right now?” Which got me to thinking that blacking out my photo would, to my mind, make me invisible and, for some, easier to deal with.
I have been invisible and I really don’t like that feeling at all.
I am doing what is right for me. You do what is right and feels right to you.
But right now I am very angry. Given the social norms, women who are very angry do not have the outlets that men who are very angry have because in men anger is seen as a strength and for women a weakness or character flaw.
An angry woman is described as a shrew or mental unstable or not acting like a proper woman.
I discovered this week that something I do is the normal reaction by women when they get angry. I get so angry I cry. I am not sad at all. I am ready to tear something or someone apart. I am probably most dangerous when I am that angry.
I thought I was a freak because of this but I have now read a number of articles that say that this is the normal reaction of women who are very angry.
And we are very angry this week.
We are remembering every time we were patted on the head and told that we were just being emotional so we need to calm down and look at things rationally.
We are remembering every time that a man cries or gets angry and is praised for being manly but able to express his emotions.
I watched a women have herself so tightly wound so not to give the opposition any chance of being able to dismiss her as being emotional so her word could not be trusted by the men in the room. I could hear the fear in her voice but she persisted and told her story and also schooled the committee on why she could remember what happened to her so vividly. She braved the lion’s den and made it through unscathed. She was honest. Even those who went in not believe her and tearing her down had to take a pause and re-assess what they were saying.
I watched a man scream at the committee that his life is over because he can’t have the one thing he wants which is a job that he is unfit for. He has, apparently. been told that this job was his from the time he was born and he deserved it just because he exists. He claimed that there was a conspiracy against him by various individuals who hold no power over the job he wants. He raged and screamed. I have seen better behaved toddlers in my life. He can see that he isn’t going to get his toy so he is going to throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the room hoping he will get what he wants. You want to know what male white privilege looks like? It looks a lot like that. Yeah he might not remember what he did because he was stinking drunk and blacked out because you know he likes beer a lot. He is a frat boy who has been told his crap doesn’t stink. He has entitlement issues a mile long.
Of course he is being praised for showing emotion and being angry.
If she had even shed a tear, they would have been all over her as an emotional woman who could not be trusted because we know that you cannot trust an emotional woman. She should calm down and really think about what she is saying because she is destroying a man’s life.
But she is FUCKING NOT doing that. Screwing up a job interview at most. Bringing to light the moral character of someone that is being asked to rule impartially and apparently cannot do so. Also that he has one hell of an agenda against women and for political power for white men only.
He doesn’t get this job then he goes back to his previous job or gets a new one. His avenues of earning income are not ruined by any of this. I am sure there is a law firm that would be happy to have him on their team.
She has to deal with the death threats and threats against her family. Her life is more in turmoil than his. Her life is pretty much a dumpster fire right now. Let’s hope she can put the fire out and regroup. I am really hoping this is not costing her her job or any future advancement in that job but I am not holding my breath on that.
There is a director I worked with a couple of times over the years. He really didn’t get along with women for many reasons. But he has a particular problem with female stage managers for some unknown reason. I got assigned to him for a one-act play festival and did my damnedest to keep him happy or at least contained. It was a nightmare. Then one evening after the cast had gone and it was the two of us, we had an argument over something that he could not have because it was out of the budget and really impractical. He keep busting on me about how I should make this problem go away and give him what he wanted. I gave back as good as he was hitting me with verbally.
Then I realized that his problem had more to do with what he perceived as slights against him by the department including him not getting the one male stage manager in the group. I got him to see that I heard him and his frustration and I understood that he was very frustrated with the whole situation. I would go see if there was some sort of compromise with his artistic vision that could be worked out. Once I did that, he calmed down a lot and even thanked me for listening to him and telling him that I really heard what he was saying. I managed to pull of a miracle and get him most of what he wanted and he worked around the rest of it. After that I was the go to for his stage manager because I was the only one who could ‘handle’ him. We had an understanding but I had to prove myself over and over that I was better than the male stage managers.
I have always had to be better than my male counterparts because a lot of what I have done has been heavily male based.
And that makes me angry. Not that I have to be good but I have to be the best at whatever to get the respect of my male peers.
And God help me if I show emotions because that ‘proves’ that I can’t take it. See women are emotional messes and are cut out for this manly task that I have done a million times without any emotion.
I have had to push down my angry and rage so many times I have honestly lost count.
But right now I do not feel like hiding the fact that I am pissed off at the situation that I find my country in.
I am enraged at white male privilege and the sense of entitlement that so many people seem to have these days.
You are not entitled to a job. You are not entitled to a lifestyle. You are not entitled to a parking place.
We have lost the simple act of expressing gratitude. Apparently that is also a sign of weakness. I must have missed a memo along the way.
The other thing that really gets me furious is something that is called DARVO that I have seen acted out almost daily. DARVO stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender” Making those that perpetuate those heinous acts now play the victim card. They deny that they did this very wrong thing. They attack their accusers to make them look like they (the actual victims) are the ones in the wrong.
We saw this play out the other day on national television.
We see this happen every day to others who have stood up and spoken out about injustice in many forms.
It is gaslighting almost in its purist form.
It is abuse.
It is wrong.
And it makes me very angry. Angry and frustrated that I cannot do more to help.
Blacking out one’s face just makes me worry more for the silence expected from women.
Don’t tell me what women are or how they should act or the nurturing BS that I hear and read about every day.
I know who I am. I know what I am.
And right now what I am is furious for myself and other women that I know.
We think we have moved forward? No, we are barely holding onto the advances that we have fought for that our mothers and grandmothers fought for along with countless other women.
I don’t want to go back to being my husband’s property or thought of as such.
I don’t want Caroline to have to worry about whether her voice will be heard with the same strength as her male counterparts. I don’t want her to have to fight the same flipping battles I had to fight my entire career(s).
I want to be heard and believed even if I get emotional about it.
Not patted on the head even metaphorically and told that I am a good girl.
I am grateful to the voices that have been heard before mine clearing the way for me to live my life the way I want to.
Last night a number of people passed around a meme for women to change their Facebook profile photo to a black square to show what the world would be like without women. It had some origins in fighting domestic abuse.
It didn’t sit well with me and I could not quite put my finger on why. I knew it was not right for me to do. Then my friend Karen said, “Why are you in favor of women being silent for any period of time right now?” Which got me to thinking that blacking out my photo would, to my mind, make me invisible and, for some, easier to deal with.
I have been invisible and I really don’t like that feeling at all.
I am doing what is right for me. You do what is right and feels right to you.
But right now I am very angry. Given the social norms, women who are very angry do not have the outlets that men who are very angry have because in men anger is seen as a strength and for women a weakness or character flaw.
An angry woman is described as a shrew or mental unstable or not acting like a proper woman.
I discovered this week that something I do is the normal reaction by women when they get angry. I get so angry I cry. I am not sad at all. I am ready to tear something or someone apart. I am probably most dangerous when I am that angry.
I thought I was a freak because of this but I have now read a number of articles that say that this is the normal reaction of women who are very angry.
And we are very angry this week.
We are remembering every time we were patted on the head and told that we were just being emotional so we need to calm down and look at things rationally.
We are remembering every time that a man cries or gets angry and is praised for being manly but able to express his emotions.
I watched a women have herself so tightly wound so not to give the opposition any chance of being able to dismiss her as being emotional so her word could not be trusted by the men in the room. I could hear the fear in her voice but she persisted and told her story and also schooled the committee on why she could remember what happened to her so vividly. She braved the lion’s den and made it through unscathed. She was honest. Even those who went in not believe her and tearing her down had to take a pause and re-assess what they were saying.
I watched a man scream at the committee that his life is over because he can’t have the one thing he wants which is a job that he is unfit for. He has, apparently. been told that this job was his from the time he was born and he deserved it just because he exists. He claimed that there was a conspiracy against him by various individuals who hold no power over the job he wants. He raged and screamed. I have seen better behaved toddlers in my life. He can see that he isn’t going to get his toy so he is going to throw a temper tantrum in the middle of the room hoping he will get what he wants. You want to know what male white privilege looks like? It looks a lot like that. Yeah he might not remember what he did because he was stinking drunk and blacked out because you know he likes beer a lot. He is a frat boy who has been told his crap doesn’t stink. He has entitlement issues a mile long.
Of course he is being praised for showing emotion and being angry.
If she had even shed a tear, they would have been all over her as an emotional woman who could not be trusted because we know that you cannot trust an emotional woman. She should calm down and really think about what she is saying because she is destroying a man’s life.
But she is FUCKING NOT doing that. Screwing up a job interview at most. Bringing to light the moral character of someone that is being asked to rule impartially and apparently cannot do so. Also that he has one hell of an agenda against women and for political power for white men only.
He doesn’t get this job then he goes back to his previous job or gets a new one. His avenues of earning income are not ruined by any of this. I am sure there is a law firm that would be happy to have him on their team.
She has to deal with the death threats and threats against her family. Her life is more in turmoil than his. Her life is pretty much a dumpster fire right now. Let’s hope she can put the fire out and regroup. I am really hoping this is not costing her her job or any future advancement in that job but I am not holding my breath on that.
There is a director I worked with a couple of times over the years. He really didn’t get along with women for many reasons. But he has a particular problem with female stage managers for some unknown reason. I got assigned to him for a one-act play festival and did my damnedest to keep him happy or at least contained. It was a nightmare. Then one evening after the cast had gone and it was the two of us, we had an argument over something that he could not have because it was out of the budget and really impractical. He keep busting on me about how I should make this problem go away and give him what he wanted. I gave back as good as he was hitting me with verbally.
Then I realized that his problem had more to do with what he perceived as slights against him by the department including him not getting the one male stage manager in the group. I got him to see that I heard him and his frustration and I understood that he was very frustrated with the whole situation. I would go see if there was some sort of compromise with his artistic vision that could be worked out. Once I did that, he calmed down a lot and even thanked me for listening to him and telling him that I really heard what he was saying. I managed to pull of a miracle and get him most of what he wanted and he worked around the rest of it. After that I was the go to for his stage manager because I was the only one who could ‘handle’ him. We had an understanding but I had to prove myself over and over that I was better than the male stage managers.
I have always had to be better than my male counterparts because a lot of what I have done has been heavily male based.
And that makes me angry. Not that I have to be good but I have to be the best at whatever to get the respect of my male peers.
And God help me if I show emotions because that ‘proves’ that I can’t take it. See women are emotional messes and are cut out for this manly task that I have done a million times without any emotion.
I have had to push down my angry and rage so many times I have honestly lost count.
But right now I do not feel like hiding the fact that I am pissed off at the situation that I find my country in.
I am enraged at white male privilege and the sense of entitlement that so many people seem to have these days.
You are not entitled to a job. You are not entitled to a lifestyle. You are not entitled to a parking place.
We have lost the simple act of expressing gratitude. Apparently that is also a sign of weakness. I must have missed a memo along the way.
The other thing that really gets me furious is something that is called DARVO that I have seen acted out almost daily. DARVO stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender” Making those that perpetuate those heinous acts now play the victim card. They deny that they did this very wrong thing. They attack their accusers to make them look like they (the actual victims) are the ones in the wrong.
We saw this play out the other day on national television.
We see this happen every day to others who have stood up and spoken out about injustice in many forms.
It is gaslighting almost in its purist form.
It is abuse.
It is wrong.
And it makes me very angry. Angry and frustrated that I cannot do more to help.
Blacking out one’s face just makes me worry more for the silence expected from women.
Don’t tell me what women are or how they should act or the nurturing BS that I hear and read about every day.
I know who I am. I know what I am.
And right now what I am is furious for myself and other women that I know.
We think we have moved forward? No, we are barely holding onto the advances that we have fought for that our mothers and grandmothers fought for along with countless other women.
I don’t want to go back to being my husband’s property or thought of as such.
I don’t want Caroline to have to worry about whether her voice will be heard with the same strength as her male counterparts. I don’t want her to have to fight the same flipping battles I had to fight my entire career(s).
I want to be heard and believed even if I get emotional about it.
Not patted on the head even metaphorically and told that I am a good girl.
I am grateful to the voices that have been heard before mine clearing the way for me to live my life the way I want to.