posted
I hate Seinfeld, but I find a paraphrase of a quote here to be appropriate.
Elaine: Men beat each other up, and it's over. Women give each other eating disorders.
SO true. Also, (in general) women dress to impress each other, fight for status using the accomplishments and charm of their men, and LIE, lie, lie.
I hate it. I also don't know how to navigate all that, and at this point I am flat out refusing to learn. I have enough close female friends that don't play that game that I don't have to - all very bright, confident, fearless women.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
To start, when I say I learned passive-agressive in college, I may as well say I learned it in the South, because that's where college was. I know there is a cultural difference between how we approach each other which is easy for us Northerners to overgeneralize by calling passive-agressive. I think that there is a difference between southern etiquette and pa, but I think that the south's approach encourages pa and embraces it. That is to say, ya'll aren't pa, but if one of you is, the rest of you will fight tooth and nail to tell us that we just don't understand your approach.
quote: I think I am able to be a pioneer for women in my field because of my ability to ignore the constant social pressure to conform to female roles. I can see that some other woman with all my same abilities, but who was not as socially tough and oblivious, who was more affected by what other people thought of her, would not be able to be the first.
It's so true.
And maybe Annie just isn't in one of those pioneer areas for women, because, while it isn't the rule, I can think of many, many examples from my own work experience of discouragment based on my gender. And probably an equal number of encouragment based soley on my gender as well. I hate both.
I hated listening to one of my favorite professors (who I was working for at the time) explain the role of women in society to me. Hated the change in managment in the company I co-oped for suddenly change my job from experimental work to secretarial/administrative crap.
And while I loved having the department head on my side, helping me get funding and writing recommendations, I hate knowing that, inspite of my grades and activities and experience, if I were male he wouldn't have considered it worth his time. I hate any award that I have to wonder if I got because I had impressive credentials or because they were impressive for a girl.
But I can't focus on that, it isn't the day to day reality (well, aside from the co-op, but that's why i quit that job). The reality is that if I am competent at my job, the majority of people eventually start to think of me as "competent" instead of "girl" and even if they're still attaching that gender to my actions, they're at least emphasizing the competent part. It is, at times, a fight. Not the level of fight it is for you, aka. But I like what I do too much to have it any other way. And all of you, men and women, are just going to have to deal with that.
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Celia This is why I wear baggy clothes to work. I'm not ever going to look like a guy completely but sometimes they do at least partially forget I have breasts and a vagina. (On top of which I couldn't imagine wearing a business suit in the job I do, considering how many chemicals I slosh around on a daily basis and guys clothes are far more comfortable for the task.) I have the disadvantage of being "the new kid" too, which I'm never going to lose considering all the people I work with have been with the company for 15 years+.
What also ticks me off is female professors who are idiots and were just hired because they were female. There were several very competent female profs in other departments, but the one they hired in the Chem E department gave every female in engineering a bad name.
posted
I guess it probably is pretty different for me in liberal arts to be accepted as a female than for thoes of you in scientific and technical fields.
And I don't know if I've really articulated my original question well. I'm speaking less about how women compete and act in the workplace than about their actual motives for being there at all. But maybe, again, my absolute loathing of the nine-to-five mentality and lack of desire to pursue a competitive career has less to do with my gender and more to do with my liberal arts personality. I like to do well and be good at what I do, but if it turns into a competition, I'm more likely to forget about it and go back to doing my own thing my own way than to fight my way to the top. I don't know...
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Annie, I think you can have a competitive career without being particularly competitive. Actually, I think that, but only if you don't want to be any sort of management. I love what I do, and it truly is not competitive and has never been (though if I had that mentality I guess it could have been). I showed aptitude for working with computers, so my boss let me play with them. Then he made me responsible for them. Over time, I kinda took over. Then other companies wanted to hire me. And now I work for the software company whose software I used to use. It wasn't competitive, and along the way I learned that I don't like managing other people. Managing kids is fun. Managing adults is torture. So I am happy to remain a flunky, and I'm good enough at what I do that my bosses generally just leave me alone. I've lost almost all my coworkers to downsizing, so of the few that remain, we all get along, do our jobs and complain about management like anyone else, while at the same time being extremely relieved we aren't one of Them.
So truly, I think, if you're good at what you do, and you do everything you can to be as professional as possible without resorting to competitive games, you can have a very good career where you move up (or at least on) to better situations. Which isn't to say you won't have to put up with some pretty stupid stuff along the way. I worked with quite a few young women who never got how to get along and be professional. The girls who turned the office into a living soap opera were the worst. I can deal with other people taking credit for my work -- I know that will catch up with them eventually -- but the ongoing saga of the lovelorn and perpetually miserable makes me want to run away screaming.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
There is a difference between passive and passive aggressive. True PA is subconscious, and it doesn't always come out against those who triggered the aggression. Behavior like eating disorders or clinical depression can be PA responses, and I believe these are much more common in women than in men.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Annie, I swear, I said the exact same thing. I still feel the same way, and it's legit. If you have a different life planned, go for it. However, I'd make you sure you have something you WANT to do planned, and not just what you DON'T want to do.
How I ended up in a 9-5 while feeling that way and contemplating grad school and the academic world drew from two factors: (1) horror of not being able to take care of myself. I hate that it's true, but money can be freedom. Security can be binding - I have to go to work every day - but then, I always, always have enough money to take care of my life, and to finance any changes in my life I want to make - including going to grad school to get a different kind of job when I'm done. It's certainly not enough to fill a life, and it doesn't make me transcedentantly happy, but freedom to do what I want and freedom from worry is not bad. AND (2) *sigh* To try to make my dad happy with/proud of me. I realize I was way too old to still be worried about that, but my mom dying messed up all sorts of mental wiring, and it was a last ditch (and ultimately fruitless) attempt to earn my last parent's attention. That was dumb. But I guess it had to happen.
You're not in that position. You can certainly make your own way.
You could be a free-lance. In fact, most graphic designers and technical writers these days are free-lance. It doesn't mean a life of more freedom, though. It just means you turn into your own boss, and besides doing graphic design, you also need to be an entrepenuer, an accountant (sometimes), and salesperson, where you are selling your own services.
I don't have the desire to do that. I don't like the 9-5 bit, but then, at 5, it's OVER. When you're a contractor, it's never quite over. My evenings and weekends are totally free, and when I come in in the morning is extremely flexible - I just need to show up before 9:30.
Another option is, of course, to find a sugar daddy. I don't particularly reccomend this one.
You could do academics, but there is even more competition in humanitarian academics than the workplace. Zal could tell you more about that.
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What is it that you want to do? If you know, then do it. No matter how crazy it sounds. You won't starve.
quote:Another option is, of course, to find a sugar daddy. I don't particularly reccomend this one.
Let's not be hasty, Kat.
quote:You could do academics, but there is even more competition in humanitarian academics than the workplace.
You can say that again. As the wife of an academic, I can honestly way that there is more hostility, deception, back-stabbing, and just plain ugliness in academia than there is in almost any other field.
quote:As for what is passive-agressive, I am not sure. I believe there are genuine cultural differences between the North and the South in the U.S. on many things. Southerners are considered very polite by Northern standards, but as Miss Manners knows, one can be very polite without letting people dictate to you how they will use you and run over you, or how you will spend your time, or what you have to do for them that you never intend to do. The way you do this varies from region to region of the country, and certainly from country to country in the world. And things that would be considered unbearably, insultingly, in-your-face rude in the South are thought of as being up front and straightforward plain dealing in the North. Concomitantly, things that are considered in the South to be very polite, non-inciting, but firm ways of making clear the boundaries of what you are prepared to do for someone, and how you expect to be treated, may possibly considered very underhanded, passive-agressive cheap shots by someone up North.
Two southerners understand each other completely. As do two Northerners. But when one interacts with the other, you get the situation from which the stereotypes arise. The Southerner thinks "Wow, what an incredibly hostile rude and horrible yankee that is! Was he raised in a barn?", while the Northerner is thinking, "These people are so nice to your face but they are really nasty and passive aggressive underneath".
ana kata, as a Southerner who has lived in the North and married into a Yankee family, I think this is apt. However, it doesn't necessarily have to apply to the workplace.
After college, I worked for 2 companies. I was ad traffic coordinator for an online ethnic community and I was the VP of a company that did K-12 online schooling for homebound, hospitalized, and cyber charter students. In both companies, I worked under women and had both men and women working under me. It was never a problem. The president of the online school was a woman and the CEO was a man. The president and I basically ignored him and went about the business of running the company. Our 80+ employees were mostly female, as well. Frankly, most of our HR problems came from the men in the company and we dealt with them.
For example, my male assistant was getting a lot of personal calls from his girlfriend. It was really getting out of hand and affecting his performance. Being a Southern woman, I made a few carefully-worded comments about how there's a time and place for everything and how it's easier to talk to friends without being distracted by work. When that didn't do the trick, I changed tactics and told him to stop taking personal calls during business hours. He did.
More on this later...
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another option is, of course, to find a sugar daddy. I don't particularly reccomend this one. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's not be hasty, Kat.
*laugh*
It's true, though. If you want to skip the normal mode of working in the country, you must either (1) come up with an alternative plan, or (2) be in a position where someone else does either the normal mode or alternative plan.
posted
I, for the record, have found this thread fascinating and extremely cool.
I'm also the exact opposite of the PA woman you describe.
I'll be honest -- I'm extremely competitive. I much prefer direct confrontation to the passive-aggressive style (take my roommates for example: they drive me up the wall because they're not willing to come tell me when they have a problem -- they tell the other people on my hall about it! Ugh, I hate it!!). And I want a really high=paying, 9-to-5 or longer job -- as a lawyer. Possibly as a criminal defense attorney.
But I was also a tomboy. I wanted to play baseball with the boys after t-ball was over; softball pitchers threw underhand (what sissies)! I have *always* made friends more easily with boys; they've always been my best friends, and I'm definitely going to get a 2 bedroom apartment w/ one of my guy friends next year. At least that way if I get mad about something, I can yell at him, he can yell back, and we can move on.
I don't want to just get along, damnit, I want to change the world! (Although it seems to me the best way to go about changing the world is to figure out how to make everyone just get along. How would the world be different, I wonder, if all heads of state/government were women? Better, or worse?)
So I guess I don't fit the mold? But I'm definitely....*checks*...a girl!
[ December 02, 2003, 05:00 PM: Message edited by: Kasie H ]
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I like to dress like I am both hot and professional when I am feeling competitive. I'll wear a pretty, flowing skirt, boots (the sexy boots only if I'm not around children), tightish top, my best makeup, jewelry, etc. And I aggressively ask questions and flash my eyes.
But when I am not feeling competitive, I get a little more boring.
I guess I feel that if I'm going to be a threat (by acting aggressively), I might as well go all the way and look as sexy as possible while still getting away with looking professional. I must say, it does tend to get positive results. Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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(Although it seems to me the best way to go about changing the world is to figure out how to make everyone just get along. How would the world be different, I wonder, if all heads of state/government were women? Better, or worse?)![[Evil Laugh]](graemlins/evillaugh.gif)
