Sunday, February 11, 2018

Advocate

Recently I attended a meeting where the featured speaker told the all-female crowd that being powerful doesn't mean being loud, doesn't mean throwing a fit.  You can be quiet and be powerful.  Zoom in to Jen sitting back on row 7, seat 27, shaking her head from side to side.   While I agree with these statements, I don't believe being loud equates "throwing a fit," a phrase that I found a little insulting. And I believe that being loud is ok.  And when there's been centuries of silence and silencing, maybe being a little loud is a little called for.

And again, while I do agree, I also think this kind of talk translates to "so remain quiet, do things quietly and gracefully, as a woman should" to most women which, well, I don't feel I am "most women."  It tells women, when the moment comes up, to not speak up. Or at least gives not much encouragement to do so.

A few weeks ago we were at Target browsing around and found ourselves in the books section. Sean found one he was excited about, called Women Who Rocked Space, and it features women in all kinds of professions--astronauts, engineers, astronomers, etc.  He's encouraged Julian several times to check it out and has sat down with him himself to read it. {heart}

Just a minute ago, Julian was sitting here next to me reading the book and he made the following observation:


"Wait a minute, every person in here is a woman.  Maybe space is a woman's thing..."

To which to my heart swelled and I replied, "definitely."  But don't worry, I added on, "but there are men, too."  

2 comments:

Joel said...

I've had a bunch of conversations about this at work with men and women. I think that for things to change at all, loudness is a must. The best analogy I can make is a weird math one. If you have a series of numbers, like a bunch of fives, you can either take a bunch of tens and over time the average slowly increases, or you get a crazy big number and it goes up immediately. So you have centuries of oppression of women and minorities. You can either take centuries to improve how they are treated, or be crazy loud and in-your-face for a few years, and hopefully that will change things.

I don't know if this makes sense to anyone but me. But it does. And I'm all for #TimesUp and #MeToo. People are people and need to be treated with respect and equality, whatever the price may be.

)en said...

Sooo good, Joel. Makes me feel so good to hear stuff like this. I feel like such an outlier sometimes around here so it feels good to have allies. I like that analogy. I feel like I probably understand it (ha) And it could take so long and be so slow-going that, without any momentum, you wonder how it could ever pick up?? I agree that loudness is necessary. It's sooo uncomfortable in the moment but what else can be done? WHEN else should it be done? I often speak up in church and it's so dang uncomfortable. But I can't not. And i've found that every time i do, it draws my people out who appreciate it or agree or show support in some way. ALLIES! {fist bump}