If you’re a yoga teacher, check out the opportunity at the end of this essay to join me and David at our Sardinia retreat at a significantly discounted rate in exchange for sharing your gifts.
Thank you for naming how we, as men and women, have been socialised so differently. Particularly how men are deferred to and how they are trained to assume space. I have felt this my whole life, and I can very much relate to your pickle ball female friend. We do it with such grace, such smoothness, it is almost second nature for us to smooth over the rough edges that some men leave lying around the place. And in this instance I truly mean some men haha.
I have noticed myself doing this at work recently. I joined the team 6 weeks ago and I am the only female developer. I work with 5 men. One of them is even newer than me and joined 2 weeks ago. He is barely online and I don't think anyone would be surprised if he is working two fulltime jobs. In standups he talks on and on and the other guys are quite frankly sick of him. So, of course, being the only women in the team, I find myself wanting to smooth things over and give him more grace or a safe place to land so that he might actually feel at home in the team and it might work out. And yet, in our last meeting when I was running deployments across 10 microfrontends and in a meeting with our manager, who could clearly see I was owning it, he joined half an hour late, and withinout understanding anything he told me I was running the wrong localhost in my browser. I was not. And instead of saying it like a fact, I softened it. Because this guy was offended by simply being asked to keep his standup speil concise - even messaging me to tell me that he was upset that he hadn't been given the time to announce his updates on a private message... The guys were understandably annoyed at him and he of course defaulted to telling his only female colleague. He was hardly going to take a woman being better than him at her job. Particularly given he was hired as a senior engineer, and me as a mid level engineer.
I tiptoe around men's egos all day. I have another colleague who is nice enough but he is always trying to make it out he knows everything to me. To the point where he confidentally tells me the wrong thing, which, last week, led to me dpeloying straight to production without testing AHAH. I had to own the mistake and ask him 'sooo why did you tell me I could do that??' Like, couldn't he have just told me he didn't know...?
Anyway, most of them are simply beautiful humans too. And I have to say, in my team, way more than half create so much space for me and while they may not be 100% sure how to work with a female developer, they are working it out and staying curious.
Curiosity in men is a beautiful thing.
My manager in particular. He has told me I am doing great and to not call myself silly. My old manager also was the same. Such a champion of me. Always affirming that I was doing a great job and always taking me seriously as a professional. I am so thankful to both of these men for that.
I loved this:
"But what Kristen articulates so well in the video above is this: even if I’m not abusing power, I was still handed it. Even if I’m not intentionally dominating, I was trained to assume space. That training doesn’t disappear just because I meditate, or teach about love, or consider myself one of the more conscious men."
This is beautiful Scott, like truly beautiful.
Thank you for naming how we, as men and women, have been socialised so differently. Particularly how men are deferred to and how they are trained to assume space. I have felt this my whole life, and I can very much relate to your pickle ball female friend. We do it with such grace, such smoothness, it is almost second nature for us to smooth over the rough edges that some men leave lying around the place. And in this instance I truly mean some men haha.
I have noticed myself doing this at work recently. I joined the team 6 weeks ago and I am the only female developer. I work with 5 men. One of them is even newer than me and joined 2 weeks ago. He is barely online and I don't think anyone would be surprised if he is working two fulltime jobs. In standups he talks on and on and the other guys are quite frankly sick of him. So, of course, being the only women in the team, I find myself wanting to smooth things over and give him more grace or a safe place to land so that he might actually feel at home in the team and it might work out. And yet, in our last meeting when I was running deployments across 10 microfrontends and in a meeting with our manager, who could clearly see I was owning it, he joined half an hour late, and withinout understanding anything he told me I was running the wrong localhost in my browser. I was not. And instead of saying it like a fact, I softened it. Because this guy was offended by simply being asked to keep his standup speil concise - even messaging me to tell me that he was upset that he hadn't been given the time to announce his updates on a private message... The guys were understandably annoyed at him and he of course defaulted to telling his only female colleague. He was hardly going to take a woman being better than him at her job. Particularly given he was hired as a senior engineer, and me as a mid level engineer.
I tiptoe around men's egos all day. I have another colleague who is nice enough but he is always trying to make it out he knows everything to me. To the point where he confidentally tells me the wrong thing, which, last week, led to me dpeloying straight to production without testing AHAH. I had to own the mistake and ask him 'sooo why did you tell me I could do that??' Like, couldn't he have just told me he didn't know...?
Anyway, most of them are simply beautiful humans too. And I have to say, in my team, way more than half create so much space for me and while they may not be 100% sure how to work with a female developer, they are working it out and staying curious.
Curiosity in men is a beautiful thing.
My manager in particular. He has told me I am doing great and to not call myself silly. My old manager also was the same. Such a champion of me. Always affirming that I was doing a great job and always taking me seriously as a professional. I am so thankful to both of these men for that.
I loved this:
"But what Kristen articulates so well in the video above is this: even if I’m not abusing power, I was still handed it. Even if I’m not intentionally dominating, I was trained to assume space. That training doesn’t disappear just because I meditate, or teach about love, or consider myself one of the more conscious men."
Thank you for sharing . I loved this article.
I love this and I plan to share it with some men in my life. Thank you for giving me the language to discuss this. I love you.