This is not a rant about men. It’s not even a rant about men who rant about women. It’s a rant about one particular blog post, and I don’t really plan to draw any generalizations about either gender from it. In fact, in general I admire and respect the work of the author of the particular post I’m on about. Except in this case, where I just flat-out can’t admire it, let alone agree with it. You guessed it: I’m leaping into the fray that has followed Clay Shirky’s recent post, A rant about women.
Many, many other commentaries precede mine; apart from the 400+ comments on that post itself, a host of other bloggers have responded. To name but a few, danah boyd’s response promotes diversity — learning to accept, value, and seek out people who think and act differently from you — over assimilation; Meredith Farkas’ post makes the point that if one has to be a jerk to get ahead, maybe the system’s borked; while Tom Coates argues very eloquently that we, as a society, should not encourage lying, arrogance, or aggression. There are many more, some of which agree with Mr. Shirky’s views and some of which don’t, gently or otherwise.
Mr. Shirky’s post makes me mad. It’s patronizing. I don’t need to act more like him to get what I want. I’ve worked for people, both men and women, who were perfectly able and willing to see my talents because they were good at seeing talent. I’ve also worked for people who weren’t, and I found that they generally didn’t appreciate the talents of my male colleagues, either, even the loud ones. I’m certainly not saying that discrimination doesn’t happen or that there are no cases where only the squeaky wheel gets greased, because I’ve been in those situations too. But I wouldn’t be comfortable saying I am good at something I’m not good at in order to get a job that I wouldn’t know how to do. I’d hate it. I don’t want to be there. I have no problem saying “… not good at yet” or “I haven’t done that, but I’ve looked into it and I can learn how,” because those things are true. On the other hand, I know women who would lie about their abilities in a heartbeat to get a job they wanted, and who would thrive in jobs where they had to learn it all on the fly; likewise, I know men who wouldn’t, and men who would. Looking at the world and saying “You’re not like me and you’re a woman, and he is like me and he’s a man, therefore women have a problem and should act more like men” is a narrow, binary view, and frankly I expected better. Actions are based on more than just gender, and there are many ways to be happy and successful.
There are some particular statements in the post that especially irritate and offend. For instance, Mr. Shirky says, in reference to a draft letter of recommendation written by a male student in which the student overstated his own abilities: “And I’ve grown increasingly worried that most of the women in the department, past or present, simply couldn’t write a letter like that.”
I’m sorry. Couldn’t? As in, we don’t have access to the same language, or our writing skills aren’t up to the task? Nope, I don’t buy it. “Couldn’t” and “wouldn’t” are not the same thing. Mr. Shirky describes an inability, a gender-based inability, for a woman to extravagantly toot her own horn. Granted, women have historically been taught not to do that, both explicitly and subtly, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do it. If you want to take issue with the cultural setting that teaches us not to boast, please do. You’d be in good company, and it’s a very strong influencer. But women certainly can speak well of themselves, and many do, and not everyone has to be an asshole to make herself sound good. In fact, the woman colleague that Mr. Shirky describes who sent her work to a reporter doesn’t appear to have done anything like what I’d call the behavior of a “self-aggrandizing jerk.” She just pointed to her work and said, “Hey, I’m good at what I do and this is interesting stuff.” There’s nothing inherently male about that.
Mr. Shirky also says that “…until women have role models who are willing to risk incarceration to get ahead, they’ll miss out on channelling smaller amounts of self-promoting con artistry to get what they want, and if they can’t do that, they’ll get less of what they want than they want.” That’s a little like saying I get less food at dinner because I eat with a fork instead of shoving food into my mouth with both hands. It may be true, but I don’t really want to eat that way, or sit with people who do. The fork-users are more pleasant company and it’s easier to carry on a conversation with them. I just don’t see myself choosing my role models from liars, jerks, and prison inmates. It’s possible to be outspoken and confident and still not be abrasive. Although, as danah boyd points out, it’s more difficult for women to do that than for men because we are surrounded by a culture that teaches all of us — women and men — that an outspoken woman is automatically abrasive.
If I look beyond the patronizing tone of the post, I can see that there is a premise there that I can identify with. It is difficult for me to speak out, especially to disagree with someone like Clay Shirky. As I am drafting this post, reasons not to publish it keep occurring to me: I didn’t see the original post soon enough, and now everyone has already weighed in. Who cares what I have to say — this is all just my own opinion, not research, and I’m not a famous author or even a well-known blogger. And all the points that I might make have already been made, somewhere. I don’t know where these thoughts come from; I don’t lack self-confidence in general. Maybe they are gender-related, though I suspect I know more than a few men who think those same things, or who did when they first started to blog. Maybe it goes away with practice.
But really, everyone hasn’t weighed in, if I feel I have something to say and I haven’t yet said it. As for “who cares what I have to say,” the answer to that arises almost as soon as I voice the question: I do. This is my blog, for me. If you are still reading this post, thanks for the investment of your time, but I didn’t write it for you. And even if someone else has already made the points I want to make, there’s still room on the vast, giant thing that is the Internet to store a more few bytes of data. Is it hard to post this? Yes, sure it’s hard. Is it risky? Sure. I’m openly and publicly disagreeing with a well-known writer and speaker. And OH MY GOD, I just realized don’t have ANY BALLS! What can I be thinking?
But having these thoughts doesn’t put me at a disadvantage, as long as I still hit that publish button and get my voice out there. And I don’t have to behave like a jerk to say what I want to say. I’m not going to act more like the men Mr. Shirky describes. I’m not going to choose them for my role models; nor am I going to seek out female role models who emulate them. Instead, I choose to focus my efforts on developing my own voice, in my own way. It’s entirely possible to be both courteous and self-promoting, to both be truthful and toot your own horn. I’m going to support practices that move us closer to a model of the workplace where it’s expected that people aren’t jerks and don’t lie about what they can do. Where people in power actually look at people’s work and don’t just listen to the loudest voice.
Actually, many of my role models did go to jail, but not for being con artists. Thousands of women have been arrested, and in some parts of the world are still arrested, for trying to change the way society views and treats us. Fortunately, in this day and age, we can blog instead.
