When I was growing up, great strides had already been made by women before me and I had the sense that anything was possible. Sort of like riding on a train 3/4 of the way through patriarchy-land, headed for equality kingdom.
Blatant sexism was part of the scenery, but I was safely cocooned in my second-class seat with my white privilege, on the train to success via study, hard work, and strong performance.
But I’m 57 now and worrying about my 17 year old daughter’s future here in America. Did the train slow down in the last 10 years? Are we fighting off attacks by train-robbers that have been equipped and hired by therobber-barons? Is the train transporting us to Gilead?
Or is it just me? Is this just the accumulated bitterness I hold from the trauma of divorcing a covert narcissist and being laid off twice in what should have been my highest earning years?
How much were those layoffs and his cheating related to my gender, and how much to my age? (As if they could somehow be disentangled). I suspect those rejections had a lot to do with my increasing unwillingness, as an aging woman, to tolerate the disrespect and devaluation I was experiencing at home and in the corporate workplace.
When I noticed the discrepancies between what I was told and the reality of what was happening, I called them out. Not just those that affected me, but those that affected the people around me. I tried to fix them. I believed that we were all on the same team working toward the same goals. And I was angry when I tested those values and found out they were bullshit.
I believe now that if I had kept quiet and kept my head down, I could have kept those jobs and that marriage longer. But I firmly believe the disrespect and devaluation would have increased to exceed any new level of tolerance I could have mustered.
Any bitterness I retain now is mostly aimed at myself for tolerating what I did of those situations.
I can also see now that when I was young and pretty and charming and open to all the possibilities, I was surfing the waves of mysogyny; benefitting from a system that wanted me and extracted labor from me, but never truly valued me as an equal.
It was my audacity to believe I had earned respect for all those years of service. Instead of the archetype of the matriarch valued for her wisdom and leadership, I had aged into the role of harpy, serving a system designed to ignore and replace me.
As a result, I find myself, more than ever, drawn to women of color who are speaking truth to power. Black women, especially, have been inspiring in their honesty, humor, and willingness to call out the hypocrisy, cruelty, and inequality they see. I would follow them into battle. If they haven’t given up on America yet, then maybe there is still hope?
I can’t help but think of this quote from the 2016 election:
“What I have learned is that America is more sexist than it is racist, and it is really f*ing racist.”
-comedian Patton Oswaldo
By ignoring the problems of sexism, was I contributing to the problems of racism?
What do you think? Do any of you relate to any of this? Are my problems Personal or Political?
Or is it my Postmenopausal algorithm that is inflating my sense that mysogyny is increasing, so the robber-barons can monetize my impotent outrage?