How I Dealt with an Experience of Gender Microaggression
In this blog I write about gender microaggression because I experienced it the other week. I will share my emotional reaction and the difficulty of fighting against gender microaggressions when the aggressor doesn’t realize that their behavior is sexist and aggressive.
Gender Microaggressions are commonplace and so unconscious, we don’t always realize what is happening or that we are acting out our internalized and normalized sexist beliefs. Gender microaggressions include comments, attitudes, and behaviors that question or limit a woman’s value, validity, equality, truth and reality, and their purpose is to silence women and maintain the patriarchal power structure.
The other week, the administrator of a coaching discussion forum removed a post I had posted in which I passed on a link to my blogs and article on the root cause of mother-daughter conflict. My purpose for posting these links was two-fold. First, I wanted to pass on much needed information, because coaches are unlikely to have any training in this vital female relationship. Second, I wanted to stimulate a discussion about mother-daughter attachment. The reason I was given for the removal of my post was that she thought that I was being too self-promotional. Yes, the person who took down my post on mother-daughter attachment was a woman!
My initial reaction was shame. I felt as if I had done something wrong, even though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I had done wrong. I couldn’t see how my information about mother-daughter attachment was self-promotional, when male coaches and therapists pass on their expertise and knowledge all the time without being accused of being ‘self-promotional’. As I thought about it, I remembered the “three second rule” exercise I use with my clients. I use the “three second rule” exercise when a client is feeling shame and I want her to test whether she is feeling real shame or toxic shame. I ask her to come up with a real crime that she believes that she has committed in three seconds. If she cannot name a real crime, she hasn’t done anything wrong, and the shame that she is feeling is toxic shame. Toxic shame is shame that belongs to someone else and the victim is taking responsibility for the perpetrator’s behavior, often because the perpetrator isn’t owning the harm that they have caused. Women can feel toxic shame when they step outside of their prescribed gender roles and are criticized for not being compliant, not fitting in, and claiming something that women shouldn’t do or desire.
When I did the “three second rule” exercise I couldn’t name what I had done wrong by posting the links to my blogs and article. I then asked myself what toxic shame was I feeling? What gender role stereotype had I broken through this post? As a woman, was I being too big for my boots? Had I presented myself too confidently and not modestly enough? Had I hit up against the age-old sexism that doesn’t allow a woman to be viewed as a thought-leader? In my previous blog on “Where is Mother-Daughter Attachment being taught?”, I wrote about how the coaching, counseling, and marriage and family professions reflect the wider society through its glass ceiling, and how many of the psychological and human development theories are created by men. Female theorists and thought leaders have a difficult time being recognized and heard.
This incident bothered me for two reasons. First, I felt as if the person had erased my work. A little dramatic, I agree, but this feeling tells my story of how hard it is to get my work noticed within my profession. Over the past fifteen years, I have sent countless emails to training organizations about including mother-daughter attachment on their syllabus, and I rarely receive a response. The week my post was removed, another well-known training organization I was trying to contact wasn’t responding to my inquiries. Which brings me to my second reason. If I was a man who had pioneered a specialism, I know that I would not be ignored. My emails would be answered, and my wisdom would be revered. My anger about my post being removed wasn’t just about my wisdom being erased and the opportunity for a much-needed discussion about mother-daughter attachment being thwarted. It was because women have for generations had their knowledge dismissed, their wisdom criticized, and their ability to lead denied. We still live in a society that doesn’t view women as leaders and expects women to over-justify themselves and jump over extra hurdles. And all this extra hurdle jumping, chasing up unanswered inquiries, and processing of gender microaggressions is exhausting. It takes energy to not take responsibility for other people’s sexist behaviors and to keep calling out sexism. #calloutsexism As for my deleted post, I asked for an explanation.
Silence is a powerful weapon that has been used against women for centuries.
Reprinted with permission from my American Counseling Association blog.