The Relevant Articles page on my website is turning into sort of a mini-blog on gender and career issues. Check it out sometime.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Epithets
As I walked to my flight in the Houston airport last Saturday, I happened to notice a bookstore display prominently featuring a book called Why Men Marry Bitches. I've been thinking about this ugly title and the word "bitch" and how it's used ever since. I don't know anything about the book itself (nor do I think I want to), but once the B word was the 5-letter equivalent of a 4-letter word not used in polite company. Not only would it not appear on the cover of a book prominently displayed in an airport bookstore, it also wouldn't describe a woman that any other than the most un-self-respecting of men would marry. It meant a pushy, harsh, nasty, cutting, self-centered, mean, critical and never satisfied woman who was horrible in a particularly female kind of way - an altogether awful human being.
I’m guessing the book uses the word "bitch" in a more 21st century way to describe a woman who thinks for herself, doesn't cut people much slack, and insists - probably vocally and in no uncertain terms - on high standards from herself and the people around her. All of this, of course, would make her "difficult" in the minds of the traditionally, conservatively inclined and anyone else who thinks women should be seen and not heard.
This pisses me off. A woman who refuses to be a doormat or even predominantly a subservient listener (as opposed to an active participant) should not necessarily be labeled difficult. A woman with a mind of her own who is willing to express her opinions and insist on high standards is not necessarily a bitch. A man with the same characteristics wouldn't be slammed with a similarly derogatory term. I understand the classic need for the weak or intimidated to denigrate the strong and the threatening, but come on....
Why has the word come to mean (as my cool new iMac Leopard dictionary widget defines it) "a woman whom one dislikes or considers to be malicious or unpleasant?" That definition covers a lot of territory. The word has evidently become an all-purpose descriptor to apply to any woman who doesn't fit one's personal definition of what a woman should be. It seems to me to have become a misogynistic social statement rather than merely a noun used to label legitimately bad behavior.
I’m guessing the book uses the word "bitch" in a more 21st century way to describe a woman who thinks for herself, doesn't cut people much slack, and insists - probably vocally and in no uncertain terms - on high standards from herself and the people around her. All of this, of course, would make her "difficult" in the minds of the traditionally, conservatively inclined and anyone else who thinks women should be seen and not heard.
This pisses me off. A woman who refuses to be a doormat or even predominantly a subservient listener (as opposed to an active participant) should not necessarily be labeled difficult. A woman with a mind of her own who is willing to express her opinions and insist on high standards is not necessarily a bitch. A man with the same characteristics wouldn't be slammed with a similarly derogatory term. I understand the classic need for the weak or intimidated to denigrate the strong and the threatening, but come on....
Why has the word come to mean (as my cool new iMac Leopard dictionary widget defines it) "a woman whom one dislikes or considers to be malicious or unpleasant?" That definition covers a lot of territory. The word has evidently become an all-purpose descriptor to apply to any woman who doesn't fit one's personal definition of what a woman should be. It seems to me to have become a misogynistic social statement rather than merely a noun used to label legitimately bad behavior.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Only in Vegas
At around 3:30 yesterday, C. and I joined a couple in their 40s or maybe early 50s at a blackjack table at the Venetian. We played and exchanged pleasantries (where are you from, what do you do, etc.) for 45 minutes or so, then the woman said she had to go get dressed and asked the man not to wait too much longer before he came up to get ready. Turning to us, and with a nice, dimply smile, she said they were getting married at 6:00. We exclaimed congratulatorily (even as I wondered if maybe I'd heard wrong - casinos are pretty loud even two days before Thanksgiving, and what a surprisingly - and wonderfully - casual way to spend the hours before your wedding). Play continued as we asked how they met and the other questions you ask people who are about to get married. They were all smiley and very sweet with each other as they told us their story. After she gave him her chips and left, he stuck around for another half hour, glancing at his watch every five minutes (adorably), told us all he really had to do was shave and put on his suit, won some more money, and then, with more congratulations from us, headed off to get married.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Farther, The Better
I've written before (here and here) that I love to think about time as something other than a straight line. The notion that the past and future might exist simultaneously with, and influence, the present is both cool and intellectually challenging. I saw the movie Next last night and realized that time and its unfolding also have an impact on thinking strategically and not confusing outcomes for goals.
Next is not a great movie, but it's a good one. Much tighter and more taut than Déjà Vu, although that movie also raised intriguing time issues (in and among all the explosions). Both movies illustrate the sequential, consequential nature of actions and events - how one thing flows from and is shaped by another - while, at the same time, clarifying that the slightest change, including awareness of past and future, can utterly transform outcomes. Next goes several steps further and demonstrates (correctly, I think) that if your goal is too short-term and specific, you'll end up with the wrong outcomes even if you achieve it.
I've always been struck by how willing people are to plow ahead without first articulating what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it. You need to think ahead and figure out which actions and paths will get you what you really want, whether you're driving a car and will have to turn left at some point (it makes more sense to move into the left lane a block or two before the turn, right?) or you're trying to succeed in your career or retire when you're 45 or whatever. You also have to understand what a goal really is. Many of the things usually labeled goals are actually outcomes - financial security, teamwork, career success, marriage, saving someone from a particular disaster, etc. Set up as goals, things like this, however desirable, won't by themselves make one set of actions clearly better or more effective than another, and they can easily lead to skewed results.
This isn't news to me - I wrote about it a long time ago in Madison, Wisconsin. But I hadn't focused before on time's impact on the distinction between goals and outcomes. The skewed result in Next demonstrates that even something that looks like a well articulated goal may turn out to be only an outcome if you think far enough down the road - and so the farther ahead you can envision, the more directed and pertinent and successful your actions will be.
Next is not a great movie, but it's a good one. Much tighter and more taut than Déjà Vu, although that movie also raised intriguing time issues (in and among all the explosions). Both movies illustrate the sequential, consequential nature of actions and events - how one thing flows from and is shaped by another - while, at the same time, clarifying that the slightest change, including awareness of past and future, can utterly transform outcomes. Next goes several steps further and demonstrates (correctly, I think) that if your goal is too short-term and specific, you'll end up with the wrong outcomes even if you achieve it.
I've always been struck by how willing people are to plow ahead without first articulating what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it. You need to think ahead and figure out which actions and paths will get you what you really want, whether you're driving a car and will have to turn left at some point (it makes more sense to move into the left lane a block or two before the turn, right?) or you're trying to succeed in your career or retire when you're 45 or whatever. You also have to understand what a goal really is. Many of the things usually labeled goals are actually outcomes - financial security, teamwork, career success, marriage, saving someone from a particular disaster, etc. Set up as goals, things like this, however desirable, won't by themselves make one set of actions clearly better or more effective than another, and they can easily lead to skewed results.
This isn't news to me - I wrote about it a long time ago in Madison, Wisconsin. But I hadn't focused before on time's impact on the distinction between goals and outcomes. The skewed result in Next demonstrates that even something that looks like a well articulated goal may turn out to be only an outcome if you think far enough down the road - and so the farther ahead you can envision, the more directed and pertinent and successful your actions will be.
Monday, November 5, 2007
I Know You Are, But What Am I?
Warning: This is more an essay than a blog post, but I got carried away.
I like intellectual patterns and I tend to see them in very disparate occurrences and situations. Today, it's (a) the recent flap over the 2007 performance of the New England Patriots and (b) women lawyers so timid that they are still - in 2007 - waiting for permission to have rewarding, significant careers rather than grabbing the opportunities in front of them with both hands. To me, both phenomena (and I use the word in two of its senses for the Patriots' performance) are part of a pattern I don't like that says nothing is pure and everything must be measured by reference to what the least charitable someone else might think. They also seem to be part of a pattern that says something about power.
When the Pats scored 52 points against the Redskins, there was a lot of grumbling about running up the score as well as some dire predictions about how such superiority of attitude and dominance of play might well lead to, among other negative repercussions, a deliberate attempt to injure the quarterback. I'm tempted to go off on a tangent about how any such attempt would be reprehensible and possibly criminal or about how provocation does not excuse violent behavior however much it may explain it. And regardless of that 52 points, it's hard to imagine that the Patriots' exceptional play hasn't already turned them into a hunted team that everyone wants to knock off. (Nice try, Colts - and I mean that sincerely.)
But I'm on a different track today. As I watched the Patriots play in Dallas the week before the game in question, it occurred to me that their coach might well be trying to build a perfect football team. His insistent focus on what his talented team could have done better in every game, which is evidently how he coaches and also how his players look at results, seemed beautiful in light of how very good the team is. By normal standards, they were already well past good enough. When I watched the game in question with this notion in mind, it seemed to me that the Redskins were basically irrelevant. The only worthy opponent the Pats had encountered up to that point on the road of the 2007 season was the Pats themselves. They looked to be trying to beat their own previous best and the result was football played gloriously, at a giddily high level.
But to my surprise, the reaction the day after the game was an indignant chorus of how unsportsmanlike and classless it was for the Patriots to have made the Redskins look so hapless. Huh? I suppose the Redskins did look hapless, but isn't that a Redskins issue? Was it necessarily the Patriots' motivation? Their goal? Their fault? Couldn't it as easily have been an unintended byproduct of the superb performance occasioned by their pursuit of football perfection? And, if so, should that pursuit of perfection be hampered by potentially unfortunate byproducts? Frankly, I don't even see what's so unfortunate about this byproduct. If the Redskins can't handle the Patriots without looking hapless, then the Redskins should get better. (And, if they do, they are free to prove it by soundly beating the Patriots the next chance they have.)
It's ridiculous to suggest that the Patriots shouldn't play to the best of their abilities and pursue something extraordinary because their opponents aren't up to it and will look bad by comparison. Why is it unsportsmanlike to do your best in a game that is about winning and entertaining the masses? Why is it more sportsmanlike or respectful to do only what's necessary to beat the other team, then sit back and coast? Is that somehow less disheartening to the loser? And anyway, why is it even relevant in this context how the loser ends up looking or, for that matter, feeling?
I've always believed that too many people worry too much about what other people inclined to think badly about them will think of their behavior - and, as a result, they make cramped, coerced, conservative decisions instead of big, free, innovative ones. I had a boss once who asked me apropos of an interpersonal mess created by a peer's discomfort with the exceptional results generated by one of my groups, "Would it have killed you to make XYZ comfortable with what you were doing?" I was astonished by the question. It wouldn't have killed me at all, but it never occurred to me - both out of respect for XYZ (why would I do him the discourtesy of assuming he had to be managed?) and because I never dreamed that he (or anyone else) would perceive my group's success as a way I was trying to make him look bad. I was just doing my job. It wasn't about him or directed at him in any way; he was completely irrelevant to my motivations, my intent, and my group's performance. But, apparently, I should have foreseen his discomfort and found a way to make him comfortable, too. Sorry to be repetitive, but huh? Why on earth would he think my group's results had anything to do with him? Why couldn't they be purely what they were? Why did my group's success justify his attempt to blame his own feeling of inadequacy on me? Why couldn't he give me the benefit of the doubt? Do we have to correct for the upside of success by slamming the people responsible for it?
And it's not like any of this helps the weaker. A woman lawyer recently told me she wanted to get on an important committee, but “because I deserve it, not because I’m a woman.” I told her she shouldn’t care why she got on the committee. In a place like her firm, where women still don’t routinely find themselves on important committees, it’s silly to turn down a leadership opportunity because affirmative action is or might be behind the invitation. The goal is to get there and then prove via great performance that you deserve to be there, not to wait for the powers that be to recognize that you’ve earned it the “regular” way.
She looked unconvinced and added that she didn’t want “the guys down the hall to hate me because as a woman I got it instead of them.” This, too, is ridiculous. If she has a contribution to make and she’s willing to stand or fall by her performance on the committee, why should it matter to her that a few sour-grapes types may grumble or doubt her merit or think she got an unfair advantage? Does she hate men because they routinely get opportunities, advantages, mentoring that she doesn’t? Does she think they hate each other for this reason? Of course not. She might hate the system, but there’s no percentage in hating the beneficiaries – unless they intentionally work to exclude you. In her case, they weren’t doing that, but her fear that the traditionally powerful would attribute bad motives to her for not doing it their way was very effectively achieving the same result.
I'm thinking all this has to do with the one-size-fits-all relations that are assumed to exist between the strong and the weak, regardless of the particular situation. The strong are assumed to be so at the expense of the weak. The weak are assumed to be at the mercy of the strong and also to be trying to cut them down or curry favor with them at all times. None of these assumptions is inevitably true.
I agree that it is incumbent on the strong not to use their strength to harm the weak and to deploy the advantages of strength appropriately. But the weak have an obligation too, and that’s not to blame the strong for weaknesses they did not cause and are not exploiting. Whether you're strong or weak, there's still room for effort and for excellence. There's still room to pursue great performance, to innovate, to challenge yourself, to stay in the game and succeed spectacularly. If your motives are pure, you shouldn't have to give up in the face of strength or weakness. You shouldn't have to stop and rest on your laurels the instant you achieve the lowest common denominator with which the least capable or charitable of your fellow strivers feels comfortable. You should be able to give it your all, give others the benefit of the doubt, and count on being given the same in return.
I like intellectual patterns and I tend to see them in very disparate occurrences and situations. Today, it's (a) the recent flap over the 2007 performance of the New England Patriots and (b) women lawyers so timid that they are still - in 2007 - waiting for permission to have rewarding, significant careers rather than grabbing the opportunities in front of them with both hands. To me, both phenomena (and I use the word in two of its senses for the Patriots' performance) are part of a pattern I don't like that says nothing is pure and everything must be measured by reference to what the least charitable someone else might think. They also seem to be part of a pattern that says something about power.
When the Pats scored 52 points against the Redskins, there was a lot of grumbling about running up the score as well as some dire predictions about how such superiority of attitude and dominance of play might well lead to, among other negative repercussions, a deliberate attempt to injure the quarterback. I'm tempted to go off on a tangent about how any such attempt would be reprehensible and possibly criminal or about how provocation does not excuse violent behavior however much it may explain it. And regardless of that 52 points, it's hard to imagine that the Patriots' exceptional play hasn't already turned them into a hunted team that everyone wants to knock off. (Nice try, Colts - and I mean that sincerely.)
But I'm on a different track today. As I watched the Patriots play in Dallas the week before the game in question, it occurred to me that their coach might well be trying to build a perfect football team. His insistent focus on what his talented team could have done better in every game, which is evidently how he coaches and also how his players look at results, seemed beautiful in light of how very good the team is. By normal standards, they were already well past good enough. When I watched the game in question with this notion in mind, it seemed to me that the Redskins were basically irrelevant. The only worthy opponent the Pats had encountered up to that point on the road of the 2007 season was the Pats themselves. They looked to be trying to beat their own previous best and the result was football played gloriously, at a giddily high level.
But to my surprise, the reaction the day after the game was an indignant chorus of how unsportsmanlike and classless it was for the Patriots to have made the Redskins look so hapless. Huh? I suppose the Redskins did look hapless, but isn't that a Redskins issue? Was it necessarily the Patriots' motivation? Their goal? Their fault? Couldn't it as easily have been an unintended byproduct of the superb performance occasioned by their pursuit of football perfection? And, if so, should that pursuit of perfection be hampered by potentially unfortunate byproducts? Frankly, I don't even see what's so unfortunate about this byproduct. If the Redskins can't handle the Patriots without looking hapless, then the Redskins should get better. (And, if they do, they are free to prove it by soundly beating the Patriots the next chance they have.)
It's ridiculous to suggest that the Patriots shouldn't play to the best of their abilities and pursue something extraordinary because their opponents aren't up to it and will look bad by comparison. Why is it unsportsmanlike to do your best in a game that is about winning and entertaining the masses? Why is it more sportsmanlike or respectful to do only what's necessary to beat the other team, then sit back and coast? Is that somehow less disheartening to the loser? And anyway, why is it even relevant in this context how the loser ends up looking or, for that matter, feeling?
I've always believed that too many people worry too much about what other people inclined to think badly about them will think of their behavior - and, as a result, they make cramped, coerced, conservative decisions instead of big, free, innovative ones. I had a boss once who asked me apropos of an interpersonal mess created by a peer's discomfort with the exceptional results generated by one of my groups, "Would it have killed you to make XYZ comfortable with what you were doing?" I was astonished by the question. It wouldn't have killed me at all, but it never occurred to me - both out of respect for XYZ (why would I do him the discourtesy of assuming he had to be managed?) and because I never dreamed that he (or anyone else) would perceive my group's success as a way I was trying to make him look bad. I was just doing my job. It wasn't about him or directed at him in any way; he was completely irrelevant to my motivations, my intent, and my group's performance. But, apparently, I should have foreseen his discomfort and found a way to make him comfortable, too. Sorry to be repetitive, but huh? Why on earth would he think my group's results had anything to do with him? Why couldn't they be purely what they were? Why did my group's success justify his attempt to blame his own feeling of inadequacy on me? Why couldn't he give me the benefit of the doubt? Do we have to correct for the upside of success by slamming the people responsible for it?
And it's not like any of this helps the weaker. A woman lawyer recently told me she wanted to get on an important committee, but “because I deserve it, not because I’m a woman.” I told her she shouldn’t care why she got on the committee. In a place like her firm, where women still don’t routinely find themselves on important committees, it’s silly to turn down a leadership opportunity because affirmative action is or might be behind the invitation. The goal is to get there and then prove via great performance that you deserve to be there, not to wait for the powers that be to recognize that you’ve earned it the “regular” way.
She looked unconvinced and added that she didn’t want “the guys down the hall to hate me because as a woman I got it instead of them.” This, too, is ridiculous. If she has a contribution to make and she’s willing to stand or fall by her performance on the committee, why should it matter to her that a few sour-grapes types may grumble or doubt her merit or think she got an unfair advantage? Does she hate men because they routinely get opportunities, advantages, mentoring that she doesn’t? Does she think they hate each other for this reason? Of course not. She might hate the system, but there’s no percentage in hating the beneficiaries – unless they intentionally work to exclude you. In her case, they weren’t doing that, but her fear that the traditionally powerful would attribute bad motives to her for not doing it their way was very effectively achieving the same result.
I'm thinking all this has to do with the one-size-fits-all relations that are assumed to exist between the strong and the weak, regardless of the particular situation. The strong are assumed to be so at the expense of the weak. The weak are assumed to be at the mercy of the strong and also to be trying to cut them down or curry favor with them at all times. None of these assumptions is inevitably true.
I agree that it is incumbent on the strong not to use their strength to harm the weak and to deploy the advantages of strength appropriately. But the weak have an obligation too, and that’s not to blame the strong for weaknesses they did not cause and are not exploiting. Whether you're strong or weak, there's still room for effort and for excellence. There's still room to pursue great performance, to innovate, to challenge yourself, to stay in the game and succeed spectacularly. If your motives are pure, you shouldn't have to give up in the face of strength or weakness. You shouldn't have to stop and rest on your laurels the instant you achieve the lowest common denominator with which the least capable or charitable of your fellow strivers feels comfortable. You should be able to give it your all, give others the benefit of the doubt, and count on being given the same in return.
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