Nina: I'm watching my own emotions as I read what you just wrote. And thinking that it was years and years in a male-dominated academic scene that has trained my modes of argumentation and response, not always for the better.
I have learned that, as Kit Kat said: The female posters who seem to get most respect from the board in general, and from male-identified posters, seem to be those who post in what we view as a reasonable, 'rational' (as opposed to 'emotional' way). It seems to me that this is slightly different for male-identified posters, who can post angrily, or in the heat of the moment, without it necessarily being taken as indicative of their general character (not the right word, sorry - their general... presence... persona). The content of their posts may be taken to be badly-thought-out, or incorrect, or intellectually/culturally suspect, and this may cause some other posters to think badly of them; but they don't get called hysterical, as a general rule.
This is also true of my workplace (so much so I feel like KitKat's been to faculty meetings), so this is partly why I care about this topic so much.
And it's also a class issue, because the most successful female voices in that environment are the ones who conform to class-based (and, in this case, regional/geographic) expectations of behavior, which means the women who get the most respect are, of course, neither the administrative assistants (despite that some of them have advanced degrees), nor the custodial crew, who often have a very clear view of things going on in the institution, but even, beyond that, my colleague from a huge, urban Irish-Catholic family who has the "credentials" (the good school, the right dissertation adviser) & an intellect like a razor, but who doesn't mince words, has been pretty much written off by a good number of our peers and superiors as an unreasoning, manhating bitch. Purely on style, really, and its a style that has gendered and class markers.
So what to do? Questions like this throw me into a bit of a tailspin, which is good. My style is something I work pretty hard on. A purely rational style cuts me off from the most important places of my own knowing, so I know that that's not what I do exactly, but I work pretty hard to stay calm and put my reaction in words that I think have the best chance of being "heard," and won't simply serve to reinforce existing divisions or distract from the larger goals.
However, I really wouldn't want the whole world to sound like me, wouldn't want all of Barbelith to sound like me, and frankly. I'm not sure I always want to sound like me... |
