BENEATH THE SKYLINE

WHERE DID I LEARN THAT AN OUTSPOKEN WOMEN IS UNDESIRABLE?
Gender Matters, Part 2

Deborah Good

The following column is the second of a two-part series. The first, "Yes, Women Have Bodies" (DSM, Autumn 2004), brought my inbox more emails and led to more lively conversations than any other piece I have written for DreamSeeker thus far. This, along with the fact that gay marriage and abortion dwarfed war and poverty as key issues on election day lead me to think that body and sex lie on a very sensitive and discordant cusp in this country—on that elusive edge where feelings run high, attitudes shift . . . and change happens. By all means, let’s keep talking.

It was probably 7:30 a.m. I was on a train from D.C. to Philadelphia. The train was rocking me gently back and forth, and I fell asleep easily, my head resting on my balled-up sweatshirt against the window.

I woke up maybe an hour later. Good, I thought to myself. I needed that. As I slowly dragged myself from my dreaming world, I became aware of something lying on my leg. I looked down. A man’s suit coat was resting against my right thigh. It was then that I noticed the middle-aged man who had boarded the train while I was sleeping and now sat beside me, head leaned back, eyes closed.

Still groggy, I made a small motion to move his coat from my leg, then realized, horrified, that beneath the coat lay his hand. My businessman train-mate was sleeping with his hand on my thigh.

I can’t remember exactly what happened next. I must have said something like "Oh, my God!" as I threw his hand from my leg. He must have shifted for a moment in his pretend sleep, but other than that, paid me no mind.

What I do remember is sitting there for the remainder of the trip, trying to build up the gumption to do what I had once been taught to do: Turn to this man and say in a very loud voice on this very quiet train, "Excuse me, sir. Your hand was on my thigh. I would appreciate it if you kept your hands to yourself." And then to watch while all heads turned to the two of us, and he, surprised and embarrassed, moved to a different seat.

I couldn’t do it. Instead, I sat in silence and decided it would be easier to say nothing. Maybe it was unintentional, I justified, even though everything in me knew it was not. If I get everyone’s attention like that, what if people think I’m out of line? What if I really hurt his feelings? I don’t want anyone to hate me . . .

I know many women who were taught to be quiet, who grew up believing the Bible told them their wishes would one day be second to their husbands’, who learned that a woman who speaks her mind is rude, maybe even a "bitch," and—worst of all—unfeminine and unattractive.

How archaic, you’re thinking. We’ve been talking about this ever since the resurgence of the Women’s Movement in the 1970s. I thought that way back in 1931 Virginia Woolf slayed the "Angel in the House"—the woman who was "utterly unselfish. . . . She sacrificed herself daily. . . . in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others." Can we talk about something else?

Yet here I am in the new millennium, young, progressive, and fighting my own Angel on a train headed north.

I thought I had been taught differently. My mother is the kind of woman who says what she thinks. I grew up listening to her tell my dad he needed to listen before interrupting. And when I was five, a woman butted in the bathroom line ahead of us at the circus (apparently she really had to go), and my mom let the whole crowd know her thoughts on the matter.

At school, my teachers were boisterous women from Cuba and Argentina, and African-American women who had learned there was no other way to survive in a society stacked against them than to be strong—in word and personality.

I grew up arguing with boy cousins and brothers, preferring soccer to shopping, and later finding my competitive, assertive personality made me different from the girls—and slightly intimidating to the guys—I met as a transfer student at a Mennonite high school.

I am still more assertive than many of the women I meet, particularly in Mennonite circles. But I have also worried that my forwardness is part of the reason for my less-than-thriving dating life, and I have sometimes chosen to play weaker than I am—and often wished I was. In college I found myself surprisingly quiet in some of my classes—and more recently on that train from D.C.

Where did I learn that an outspoken woman is undesirable? Where did I learn to not only keep some of my opinions inside, but also to downplay my intelligence, my successes, my skills as an athlete?

When I started to pay attention, I realized the reasons were all around me. There’s Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirsten Dunst in Sam Raimi’s "Spiderman"—women who are kind but helpless. (Thank God for Gretel who uses her wits to cook the wicked witch in her own oven.)

Then there’s Teresa Heinz Kerry who made a flurry in the media when she told a reporter to "shove it." (Would they have even batted an eye if she had been a man?)

And there’s church, where I learned that it is through service and self-sacrifice that I will find everlasting life—theology that is no doubt better suited for a self-assured man than for a woman who has already been socialized to lose herself in making others happy.

As a female athlete I have observed that in general women athletes approach competition differently than men do. The best coaches are aware of these differences. If you want men to improve, you pit them against each other. You criticize them and compare them with one another. As they try to beat each other and compete for starting spots, they get better. Then they walk off the soccer field and remain friends.

For women, on the other hand, competition and criticism often have the reverse effect. In my experience, we downplay ourselves so as not to show up a teammate. Instead of motivating us, criticism from outside sources (like from a coach) can lead to greater self-criticism and a downward spiral in self-confidence. We don’t want to compete seriously with one another because we fear we will lose friends when we leave the field.

These dynamics also play out in classroom settings. I have found that men enter easily into the healthy competition of intellectual debate. They play a game of one-upmanship, each trying to prove himself smartest and most articulate. They argue back and forth, leaving the discussion with friendships intact.

In co-ed classrooms, I have found that women generally are slower to speak—in pasrt, I suspect, because we believe we must have something of real value to say to justify taking up space in the conversation. And what we do say is less likely to be argumentative. We are careful not to sound smarter than our neighbor, and we nod our heads at each other, not in agreement but as a way of saying, "Yes, go on. I’m listening." We take arguments personally and worry that any arrogance could scar a friendship.

In Talking 9 to 5, Deborah Tannen writes that "a man who learns to speak more forcefully will be perceived as more masculine—but so will a woman, and the consequences for her will be quite different." As long as we talk about outspoken women as having "balls," thiose of us who are women will always have a hard time speaking our minds.

Until being assertive is considered as feminine as it is masculine, we women will always be sacrificing some of our sense of womanhood when we speak up.

Guiding my comments, then, is the contention that boys and girls, in general, are socialized differently. Expectations of adult men and women are generally different in limiting ways. But of course generalizations are always incomplete. Many men feel as silenced as women by one-upmanship models of relating. The characteristics that define "masculinity" and "femininity" in our society limit all.

The answers are not easy. Classrooms and workplaces—which currently benefit an assertive and competitive conversation style—need a redesign. We need to teach girls to speak up and boys to do more listening. And in the meantime, sleazy men should learn to keep their hands to themselves.

—Deborah Good, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, suggests fending off the winter blues with hot tea, a weekly swim, and a few road trips. Good conversation is also a must. She’d love to hear your thoughts on this column—or anything else. Contact her at deborahagood@gmail.com.