A Response : The Thing All Women Do That You Don’t Know About
Read my Response to the Huffington Post article –
“The Thing All Women Do That You Don’t Know About”. Way to grab attention with a headline! It’s a good one and I click, wondering: what do I, and all women do, that men don’t know about?
The author writes wonderfully well. She is clear, concise and purposeful. She is also astutely correct in her observations. Yet I wonder, is this perspective not an unintentional setback for the women’s movement and is she asking way too much of the wrong people?
She plays on our fears and calls out the techniques we have subconsciously built up our whole lives to survive and get ahead in this world, portraying them somehow in a negative light – the ability to de-escalate, minimize and quietly acquiesce when confronted with a man’s violence, arrogance or shear stupidity. She asks men, in the light of our struggle to overcome ubiquitous sexist adversities, to examine their own role in our insecurities and fears. She asks them to, at the very least, just listen.
The reality is that you make your reality in every moment. It is your choice – are you a victim or are you above the puerile attention of an emotionally needy or un-evolved man? By un-evolved I mean a process of self-realization that depends nothing on education. Some of the most boorish men out there are the most educated. As men evolve slowly towards self-realization, so must women. Women err continuously with the thought they can change a man. “Just listen,” they plead.
The world is what it is. Some places are safer than others. Educate your daughters to fight for a cause, to de-escalate, minimize and quietly acquiesce for their sanity and survival (incidentally this phenomenon is not indigenous to women), and walk away with confidence when confronted by ‘not their circus, not their monkeys’. We will all be a lot happier if we take conscious control of our own sense of safety, well-being and, dare I say, happiness.
If we, as women, feel victimized or challenged in any way, this is our problem. Turn it around, brush it off, move on in the strength of your own character. You don’t need to “talk” and they don’t need to “listen” about how they should change.
There is a small, silent gap between provocation and response. Within that moment you have ultimate power to steer yourself towards an outcome that empowers you as a woman and individual, or one that feeds the notion that women need men’s attitudes to change before they can be safely regarded on an equal level.
By all means de-escalate, minimize and quietly acquiesce. Do it with clear intention and confidence in your own worth and greater good and don’t give a damn if they don’t listen.
