exiting a mindset that ignored and/or excused the reality of female oppression will leave you reeling. the misogyny that you weren’t allowed to name will creep up and crowd around you. we have been through so much. this is the beginning of a long, slow healing and there are many of us in many different stages. know even as your pain grows that it will not be ignored this time, and that you are not alone in it.
I hate being in meetings with mostly men. Initially this guy and I were about to speak at the same time. He was louder so he was heard and kept going. Then other men would jump in while I was waiting for pauses. I was going to speak up as soon as somebody stopped but nobody stopped. So I just said my idea anyway (offering a suggestion to a fellow researcher on his project). He heard me and instead of acknowledging that I brought it up he just spoke about it as if it just came to him.
White feminism and research would say to speak up, be louder, and make space for myself. But I’m a black woman.
I remember at a conference this summer this researcher spoke about things women can do to be perceived as more competent and assertive. A lot of it revolved around modifying the voice, body language, power positions, etc.
1. It’s fucked up that women have to modify our behavior to be seen as competent (puts the responsibility on the marginalized)
2. I did that thing that black women do where we add a mental asterisk to “women.” She means *white women.
So I said, “I don’t think this works for all women.” And she said, “oh yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. These only work for white women. We tried it with black women. Across the board, black women are seen as aggressive (not assertive) no matter their behavior. There’s literally nothing you can do.”
the stereotype that women talk more than men is infinitely amusing to me because men are literally incapable of shutting the fuck up
i hope this post gets popular enough that i hurt a man’s feelings
It’s not a stereotype it’s a proven fact you femanazi piece of shit.
lmao there it is
You wanna talk proven facts? This shit’s been done, son: researcher Dale Spender in Australia used audio and video tape to independently evaluate who talked the most in mixed-gender university classroom discussions. Regardless of the gender ratio of the students, whether the instructor was deliberately trying to encourage female participation or not, men always talked more–whether the metric was minutes of talking or number of words spoken.
Moreover, men literally have no clue how much they talk. When Spender asked students to evaluate their perception of who talked more in a given discussion, women were pretty accurate; but men perceived the discussion as being “equal” when women talked only 15% of the time, and the discussion as being dominated by women if they talked only 30% of the time.
Spender’s conclusion, if I may parahprase: you only think we talk too much because you’d rather we were silent.
Don’t fuck with me, asshole, I’m a scientist.
Edit:I can’t believe I got her name wrong multiple times. The researcher in question is Dale Spender and the original publication of this research was called Man Made Language (1980).
yes, it is true. Dear anti-fems, GO READ A BOOK.
~ Love and Intimate Relationships; by Norman Brown & Ellen Amatea.
~ Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology; by Joan Chrisler & Donald McCreary.
