It’s very easy to blame others for our general life woes. Feeling the complete and full responsibility for our own lives and our own choices is a hefty weight to carry around, yet in my opinion that weight is what also gives us our freedom. So I think it’s worth it. Unfortunately, our society seems to be pointing fingers more and more at others as if they are the root cause of all our discomforts. It’s hard to be responsible for our own, usually very human, mistakes. In a society where we shame one another for every small flaw or misstep, we don’t want to be the person who ends up under that spotlight. Perhaps this is why a socialism movement seems to be weaving its way into our society. If we give up our freedoms to the government and give them the responsibility to make many decisions for us, then we don’t have to carry that weight and we have someone to blame when it all falls apart. Although I don’t know if a majority of people who support socialism realize that’s what they may actually be doing.
Throughout history people have pointed fingers at others, trying to make claims that if so-and-so weren’t around then everyone’s life would be better. The Nazis pointed at the Jews. The Bolsheviks pointed fingers at the Russian monarchy just like the French pointed at their monarchy a little over a century before. All of these moments were marked with murder and fear and seemed to culminate over time in dictatorships and restricted freedoms for all. Not having lived through any of them, thankfully, I often wonder if these eras in time may have also been punctuated by a pervasive anger throughout the country. It seems like it would.
Today in our society, I see, or at least notice, finger-pointing going on everywhere to an extreme level and I wished we could take a step back and stop. I’m trying to be more aware of that myself and the only thing I can do to help with that change is to write this and have conversations among my friends, which hopefully would get perhaps one person to rethink our blame-centric society.
What I see happening is that Republicans blame Democrats and Democrats blame Republicans. Baby boomers blame millennials. Trump blames all immigrants. White supremacists blame blacks. And the loudest one I’m hearing right now is women blaming men. Yes, I’m a feminist’s enemy, sort of. I’d like express my thoughts on this women versus men issue.
I grew up in a small agricultural-based community, in fact I grew up on a farm/ranch. I was expected to help out with all the daily chores that raising animals and food requires. Eggs had to be gathered, the cow milked, horses, cattle and sheep all needed fed. In the summer there were marathon days of weeding the garden and in the late summer and fall those days turned into marathon picking and canning days. I was expected to learn how to pick up hay bales and snap green beans. This was in addition to the expectations of getting good grades, being involved in school and I also learned the basics of sewing and a bit of cooking. These last couple of ones fell more into the skills I needed for county fair 4-H projects, but they’ve become some good skills to have. I was in college probably around 20-21 years old before I ever heard the term ‘glass ceiling’. Someone mentioned it in a leadership class I was taking and I had to ask what the hell a ‘glass ceiling’ was. By the time I heard the term, it was too late for me. By that, I mean it was too late for me to buy into the idea that there is a glass ceiling, at least for my generation. I praise the strong, willful women who, decades prior to my existence, began paving the way for me to have my own checking account, house, college degree, career and dreams. I know that for women, we have only been able to vote in the United States for less than 100 years. We truly weren’t allowed to have some jobs simply because of our gender. I don’t want to forget about any of those hard won rights. I will forever be grateful to the battles that were fought which allowed me to pursue my dreams today. I know that road still has some potholes in it and I know that discrimination still exists and that some work will still need to be done.
With that said, we are decades beyond the initial women’s rights movement. I think our message needs to change. Maybe it’s just the stories that are getting the most screen time, but I feel like I’m seeing message after message out there that women are not succeeding because we are women and “the patriarchy” isn’t letting us. I don’t know if that sentiment still fully rings true. Yes, statistically we still need to fight for equal pay, but there are few things that a woman still isn’t allowed to do, or hasn’t done, these days. We are surgeons, congressional representatives, state governors, CEOs, small business owners, industrial designers, construction workers, college professors, financial analysts, computer programmers, airline pilots and military captains. In fact, as I write, the only profession that I can immediately think of that still doesn’t allow women would be the Catholic priesthood. We’ve made a lot of progress in the last 100 years and it’s wonderful. Are we really still being held back by a male-dominated society or are we just using that old line as an excuse to blame someone else for our very own, very individualized, failures or fears?
I grew up in an era where it was advertised that a woman could bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan. I was taught that we could have it all. About 10 years ago, a very traditional, yet nice man, made a comment to me that our society has done women a disservice by saying that we could have it all. It pissed me off! Royally! Then he described what he meant. He said we had taught women that they could be a CEO and a wife and a best friend and a mother and a beauty expert and a fitness queen – ALL AT THE SAME TIME! He said that he believed women could have it all, but just not at the same time. And I agree. In fact, no one, man OR woman can have that. This is why in 1957 men went to work and focused on work, but never lifted a finger to cook or clean. Men weren’t concerned with being a star in the kitchen and the office simultaneously, but somehow, along the way, that was the message that women told each other. We seem to want to be perfect housewives and mothers along with being the boss and succeeding at each portion of our lives, totally and completely, every single day. No one can have it all every single day. Some days we don’t pay attention to ourselves, some days we don’t give it 100% at work and some days we feed the kids grilled cheese because it’s the fastest thing to make, some days we only have 10 minutes with our spouse. As far as I’m concerned that’s more than ok. We should give ourselves a break now and then and stop blaming men for us not being able to do everything. We should remember that we’re human.
We should also be self-aware enough to realize that sometimes, no matter how much we might want something, perhaps we are not the best person for the task and that has nothing to do with gender. Recently Elizabeth Warren suspended her bid for President. I have not fully combed the news feed on this, but to my knowledge, she has not said that her lowered ratings were due to her gender. Nancy Pelosi apparently did. Stories are out there on the internet which state that Warren did not go further in the race because the country is not ready for a woman president. Bullshit. I’ll say it one more time – bullshit! If there was ever a time in this country that a woman could be president it’s now. Elizabeth Warren did not go further because a lot of people, myself included, did not agree with the policies that she wanted to support and move forward.
I also think we need to stop with the labels, all labels. I am not a female architect. I am an architect. We don’t call nurses “female nurses”, they are nurses. Yet if a man wants to be one, he is labeled with the title of “male nurse”. If we expect a two-way street, then it really does need to be a two-way street. A nurse should be a nurse, a teacher a teacher, a doctor a doctor and a pilot a pilot. I believe if I run around telling people I’m a female architect, that somehow I’m telling the world there’s a quantifier to my career, either inferior or superior. I earned that degree and license with the same exact criteria that anyone else has, male or female. I will not discredit my profession by qualifying it with any gender.
Are we somehow responsible for our own culture by constantly thinking we still need to break some type of traditional rules from 1961 even if they were broken by those pioneering women in the 70s and no longer apply? Have we still been telling ourselves that we are supposed to be oppressed? Are we trying to use gender discrimination as an excuse we tell ourselves to make us feel better when we just didn’t reach a goal we had set? Can we tell ourselves that we’re no longer oppressed and just give ourselves the freedom to succeed as individuals rather than as men or women stereotypes? I don’t know the answer to those questions, I think they are very complex and they would probably have different outcomes depending on region and circumstance. Now that I’ve gone on about not blaming groups, I want to say this. Sometimes individuals truly are responsible for our lack of success or our emotional turmoil. These people can be men or women. It’s not fair to hold the whole male gender responsible for the stupidity of one man who happened to be the boss. I’ve worked for that person, they’re annoying. I wouldn’t want to be held responsible for the entire female gender and I don’t want to say that actions and words of one man represent all men. Those people who are jerks should be held accountable for their toxic actions and those who have committed crimes should be prosecuted – all as the individuals they are. I’ve been in plenty of circumstances where there have been one or two people in my way but I blame those individuals, not their gender or ethnicity or religion or any other label. I think that perhaps keeping our eyes open for biased, toxic or dangerous individuals and avoiding or leaving those relationships while letting go of biases toward groups may actually mean we’ve taken control of our own power. Is it possible that we can change our viewpoint a little bit and see this women versus men conversation a little bit differently? I do know that I don’t think I’m held back, in this country at least, because I’m a woman.
