September 7, 2020

Hello BOSLadies, I hope this email finds you all well rested after the long holiday weekend and stoked for our September meeting Tuesday night! Let me know if you did not get the Google calendar invite and please feel free to pass the invite along to anyone else who may be interested. We will be discussing Kate Manne's Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women. As always, if you didn't read (or just don't like reading), don't worry! Sometimes we don't even discuss the book directly and no matter what, your input and opinions will be valued and appreciated.  As I shared last week, Brittany, Catherine, Alexandra and I participated in the IES Annual Conference with our panel "Not Your Average Old Boys Club: Supporting Female Talent Beyond the EP". Thank you to everyone who tuned in and to everyone who reached out to support us even if they couldn't make it. If you were registered for the conference, all presentations are uploaded and available at elearning.ies.org. All attendees will have received an email from the IES with this information and directions on how to access the videos once you log in. If you missed it, we'd love for you to watch the video and contact us with any feedback or questions!  The Weekly Three 1. Something from Entitled about mansplaining; In her chapter "Unassuming- On the Entitlement to Knowledge", Manne defines mansplaining as "a man presuming to 'explain' something incorrect(ly) to a more expert female speaker or set of speakers - and in an overly confident, arrogant, or overbearing manner, which often results in his not backing down or admitting to his mistake after it has been authoritatively pointed out to him". A result of this, Manne argues, is Kristie Dotson's term " 'testimonial smothering', where a speaker self-silences, due to her anticipating that her word will not receive the proper uptake, and may instead place her in an 'unsafe or risky' situation."  This shocked me. I don't think I realized how many times I've experienced this, especially in professional settings, until there was a name put to it. How often do we not speak up because we know we won't be listened to? Or because our content will be dismissed as invalid, that we "don't know what [we're] talking about"? Testimonial smothering is insidious. After being shut down so many times, the speaker no longer speaks.  However, it is an important distinction to make that testimonial smothering is not a fault of the would-be speaker. It's a failure on the part of the audience.  

Cartoon by The Nib (for a further dissection of mansplaining) 

2. Something about the importance of confirmed validity: In the same chapter in her book, Manne discusses gaslighting. A footnote shares Kate Abramson's argument that "isolation is a key tactic employed by gaslighters, so that the victim or target won't have people to...at least support her own perceptions". No one is around to confirm what the target experienced and gets manipulated into questioning. One thing a target may hear is "you're imagining things". 

Am I imagining this or did this really happen? I was reminded of an anecdote from Feminist Fight Club: "The New York Times columnist Gail Collins once told me that while the sexism of her era was certainly crushing, the upside was that you knew it when you saw it...It certainly wasn't fair, but at least you knew it wasn't fair. It was clear-cut discrimination - sexism with a legal definition and a thumbprint - not simply a 'feeling'. (Was it real? Am I crazy? Was I the only one who saw it?)".

To me, this reiterates the importance of having a group of people you trust to candidly share with and who can deter feelings of isolation by confirming shared experience.

Image by Kayla Feeney

3. Something that's a light retrospective: To finish on a less heavy note, here is a link to every Ikea catalog published from 1950 to the present. Perusing the pages of past interior trends was a lovely way to escape 2020 so hopefully it can provide you a brief respite as well. While certainly not a paragon of style and taste, Ikea and its catalogs make me feel very nostalgic.  Thank you for reading and see you all on Tuesday evening! Best, Amber