Warning: Fuck-words on the horizon…
Over the next few weeks my office will (hopefully) hire someone to fill the now-empty office of my boss. Now, this office has an enormous responsibility within the state and our industry at both a local and national level. It’s no small thing. Today we met the four final candidates and got a chance to hear them present on some major topics pertinent to our department and have an informal chat with each candidate to ask and answer questions about the more day-to-day aspects of this position.
All four candidates are women.
My department consists of ten women.
The rest of my company is dominated by men, particularly in upper management (i.e. my industry is not one primarily made up of women).
As a department, my colleagues and I work well together, we collaborate and exchange ideas, we rely on data, we present our programs and initiatives to a wide range of constituents, we partner with community, state, and national entities to further our projects and aims. We have learned how to cut through red tape–lots of red tape–we both rely on funding from and report to the state legislature, and partner with state and local boards and community organizations. In the last five years we have made tremendous change and improvement in our industry and have been recognized at national levels for the work we take on and the initiatives we create and promote (yes, I’m being deliberately vague, sorry/not sorry. #dooce).
In a word, we GET SHIT DONE.
YES! I know, it’s kind of shocking, I suppose, but we women ACTUALLY DO OUR JOBS WHILE WE ARE AT WORK!!! Whaaaaaa!??! Inconfuckingceivable!!
We don’t cry and ignore data and fall in love with our male colleagues and sit around and gossip instead of doing our jobs. We accomplish more in any given month than most places of business are likely to complete in a financial quarter.
Yet, there is still crap like this floating around the world, getting traction and supportive comments:
A training on “how to deal with women” for the newly elected Austin City council.
Female scientists should be kept out of the lab, they just cry and fall in love with me.
I can’t work one-on-one with a woman in the office because that’s like cheating on my wife…
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Dear Men: I show up at my office every day because I am passionate about what I do, I want to make a difference and change lives for the better. I am not interested in having a lusty, romantic affair with Office Ink.
Dear Men: I am damn good at my job, I am capable and talented and have all the qualifications and experience to excel at my job. If you need training on how to “deal” with a capable and experienced colleague in a professional work setting the problem is NOT me, it is you.
Dear Men: Ya’ll have been In Charge in many ways for thousands and thousands of years, especially in a political or professional setting. Your track record is pretty dismal. Why are you so damn scared of opening up to the idea that the other half of the population may have something positive to add to the way you do business? It is proven world-wide that governments, companies, and communities who have higher levels of equality–true equality–between men and women have happier, healthier constituents and their profit margins increase. WHY DO YOU NOT PAY ATTENTION TO THIS DATA?!
Dear Men: I am so over the douchebag, self-entitled “I’m so great everyone probably wants to sleep with me” attitude. I am willing to talk about feminism and the completely radical notion that women are humans too and should be treated with the same respect and given the same rights and opportunities as their penis-weilding counterparts. But I am unwilling to continue to pander to or even engage with this kind of bullshit. Get it together. It is 2015. No matter your industry or profession women will be in your workplace. In order to stay relevant and–GASP–continue to be successful throughout the remainder of your career you need to re-examine these outdated patriarchal notions of male superiority and “universal” “emotional” characteristics of women (romance, love, crying, not liking data) that you view as unsuitable in an office or professional setting. Get over yourself. You sound like a fucking Neanderthal.
