Bitch

I took a trip to the beach by myself last year. It was in the middle of covid and I couldn’t take a dip in a communal pool or anything so I picked a hotel with a hottub/bath in the room. And once I found out I could hook my phone up to the speakers in the tub I got some noise complaints. I had been drinking hard cider and utterly blasting “I’m a Bitch, I’m a Lover,” by Meredith Brooks and for some reason the family with kids in the next room didn’t appreciate that.

I’ve always loved that song. I’ve always been someone who was seen as bitchy. At first it was mostly irritability from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. Even my mother couldn’t be patient with me when it was bad. My sister called me a bitch one day and I yelled, “Mom she just called me a bitch!” My mom, at her wit’s end, with none of us realizing why I was always so uncomfortably and twitchy, just said, “Well then stop acting like one.”

As I aged, I refused to conform. I do my own thing. I just don’t like a lot of things other people like. I like to read and sleep and hang out with my cats and only leave my house like once every six months. I’ve actually really enjoyed quarantine. And when I see something I don’t like I can’t just let it go. I speak up about it. And, I’ve learned through the years, this is a very annoying trait of mine. I’m the asshole that brings up politics at Thanksgiving, I but my nose in when I see peoeple beind discriminated against (remind me to tell you about the time I made a ten year old at the park cry….don’t worry he deserved it.) My partner is constantly asking me to, “Please just let it go. Why do we have to talk about everything?”

Jim and I were sitting in our living room the other day, discussing something to do with law development. A bill or a proposal or something-you know one of those baby laws that isn’t actually a law yet but it’s chugging itself along trying to become one? He said it was in the senate now and I said, “Which one is the senate? The one it has to go through first or second? I always forget which is which.”

Jim, with no harmful intentions whatsoever, immediately launches into a detailed explanation of the executive branches of the U.S. government.

I said, “Please, stop, I wasn’t asking for an explanation beyond which one comes first. Look. I’ll look it up later. So it’s in the senate now?”

Jim froze like a little rabbit in panic. What I had just said didn’t compute in his head. “Why don’t you want me to tell you about the difference between the senate and congress?”

I shrugged. I said I didn’t feel like learning about that at the moment. “Whenever I need to remember the difference I look it up real quick, then the information kind of just flies out of my head until next time I need it. Doesn’t stick. So I just don’t bother trying to memorize it. Go on. You were saying, it’s in the senate…”

But Jim did not go on. Jim could not go on.

Jim is a brilliant person. He’s curious about everything. When he settles in for bed every night he pulls up Wikipedia just to read it. Like a regular person reads a book. I’m not even joking, I have pictures. It’s always super random. One day it will be quantum physics, the next day bog bodies. He spends free time learning just for the sake of learning. He’s always said his ideal career would be able to just go to college his whole life and wrack up degrees in everything he finds interesting. He has failed in this endeavor, he only has one measly Ph.D., in theory and criticism. (From what I have gathered that’s basically arguing about literature. I think. I’m not sure. He kind of goes on about it a lot when he’s asked and it’s hard to focus.)

He did not understand how I could proceed with my life not having the executive branches of government firmly outlined in my head for all eternity. I think he was actually worried about me. How was I going to get through my day if he didn’t explain this to me? Plus, he had been a college professor for decades; he was used to standing in front of people and bequeathing unto them his knowledge. He couldn’t just sit there, knowing he had information he knew I didn’t have and not fix it. He couldn’t just let this go.

Eventually his body spasmed and started explaining it anyway.

I said, “Ok Honey, now you’re just mansplaining. I need you to not do that. I said I don’t want to hear you explain this to me and I mean it.”

He was frustrated by this and explained, “Baby, that’s not mansplaining.”

Smoke began puffing from my ears as I said, “Jim. You insisted on explaining something to me when I made it clear I wasn’t interested. That’s mansplaining.”

The confusion cleared from Jim’s face and he began patiently, “I see how you’re confused. See, that’s not mansplaining. Mansplaining is-”

I cut him off and said, “Jim are you seriously about to mansplain mansplaining to me?!”

“Of course not! I was just telling you you had the wrong definition of the word and telling you what the correct one was!”

It’s ok, you guys. I eventually just sent him a diagram.

Google, “Mansplaining chart.” A woman was sick of her male colleagues not being able to figure out when they were passing from helpful into condescending so she made a flow chart. It’s very good. At one point I threatened to blow it up and frame it for our living room. Jim was not a fan of that idea and started working on the problem.

Now Jim is a good and kind person. He has never intentionally hurt anyone or anything. He is an avid leftist and huge advocate for equality in every sense of the word, and he still accidentally found himself on the threatening end of an offended feminist partner.

We had a doctor at my old job who was known for being openly misogynistic. My position was as a psychology associate, a master’s level employee who wrote behavior plans for clients with intellectual disabilities. While I was not, myself, a doctor nor a member of the medical staff I was often a part of medical meetings to speak to the mental health aspects of the client. Typically these meetings were very interdisciplinary, involving medical professionals, myself, and people who had nothing to do with the medical department like house managers. However, one day I was stuck going to a meeting by myself with otherwise only medical doctors, including the man known for his sexism who happened to also be the director of the entire medical department.

Of course all the doctors were men who were decades older than myself, so I, at 29 with just a shitty master’s degree in a soft science, wearing a leopard print ensemble over my fat ass and red lipstick, stood out like a sore thumb. It was an intimidating meeting but I was determined to get through it with poise.

Now I didn’t have a lot to say but I had a few opinions and I was in that meeting that morning sharing them, when the medical director interrupted me. I shut my mouth, let him talk, then began to say what I’d been trying to say before the interruption.

Then. That motherfucker interrupted me again.

The first time, I wrote it off as maybe just a mistake, not realizing I wasn’t done talking. The second time I was pretty pissed but I still let him speak over me and dominate the conversation again. The third time, I had fucking had it.

I just started speaking more loudly, over his interruption, and said, “...EXCUSE ME WILL YOU PLEASE LET ME FINISH WHAT I WAS SAYING?”

The medical director was shocked. He was clearly not used to being spoken to like that.

I was panicked. I wasn’t used to speaking to people quite like that.

But he seemed impressed. He chuckled, a little condescendingly at my moxie, put his hands up and said, “Yes I’m so sorry. Of course. Continue.”

I actually had forgotten what I was saying during the stress of the conflict and stalled by slowly and dramatically saying, “Thank you.” I eventually remembered what I had been saying, got it out and then before the director started speaking again he asked my permission to do so.

Interestingly, after this experience, the medical director loved me. He always greeted me by name in the hallway, in subsequent meetings he would go out of his way to ask my opinion. He could be a harsh man to others so my supervisor was jealous. “Dr. T. really loves you doesn’t he? Man I wish he’d listen to me like that.”

“I don’t give a shit. He’s an ass. He can like me all he wants I have no respect for a grown ass man who has to be yelled at in a meeting to stop speaking over a another person who has every right to advocate for her position in that setting.”

He eventually was fired or kind of asked to, I’m not sure which one, for of course, being an asshole (to people more important than myself). I saw him once in town, walking his dog along the beach on my normal jogging route. He came up and jauntily said hello, enthusiastically introduced me to his wife. I remember looking at his dog and feeling bad for her. The wife was in charge of her own life, if she wanted to be married to a man who was a jerk, that was her choice. But this sweet little labradoodle, who looked at her dad with such love in her eyes? That poor sap. I wanted to take her home with me. Dr. T. cheerily walked away with his family and I frostily watched him leave, still unable to believe a man that successful still hadn’t learned how to treat women and hoping he was different to his wife and that sweet dog.

We have all heard the statistics. Women can speak for 30% of a conversation and still be perceived as “dominating the conversation;” men acting assertive are given leadership roles, women doing so are labeled bitchy; women in leadership roles spend x amount more time trying to be “nice,” so as not to be labeled a hard ass, etc. But it doesn’t feel real or hit home until you’re in a situation wondering, “Why did I even have to say that?”

I sent my partner a meme about “kneecapping,” the other day. It’s about how women are typically expected to add phrases like, “Maybe you can…” or “I sort of think…” instead of simply asking a person to do something or stating declaratively their own opinion. It makes us sound less intimidating, but also less firm in our requests.

We had been arguing the other day and he had asked me, “Ok I see your point but could you say it more nicely?” Then he rephrased what I had just said with a couple variations of kneecapping and I had simply said no I was not going to do that. He’d been upset at the time and not really understood what the “big deal,” was so when a mutual friend of ours (a female, of course) had shared this meme on the topic, I sent it to him pointing out that this is exactly what he’d asked me to do the other day. He was much more agreeable to my point in this context and agreed to try not to ask me to do that again but he did point out he felt there was a difference in how he’d expect a person to talk at work and in their home. I told him that was fair but if I started kneecapping my speech for him, I’d start doing it out of the home as well.

Because kneecapping, and other things women do to not be “bitchy,” are ingrained so deeply in us that if we want to break one of those habits we must focus on that breaking every second of every day. We are programmed to be nice and diminutive and I’m just sick of it. I asked Jim if he remembered the story of me having been reported for being unprofessional for simply leaving one meeting to attend another.

I was in my office, sipping some coffee and trying to decide if I wanted to check emails or sneak over to my window where I got reception and browse social media, when my program area team (PAT) director, basically my boss’ boss, called me. “Come to my office Desire. Now.” He did not sound happy which was pretty weird because he and I usually got along well and typically had a lot of mutual respect. Had he known I was on Facebook??

I walk across the hall and go to sit in his office. A colleague is there already, but she seems to just be in there chatting. He asks me to sit down and asks, “Why did I just get a call from the superintendent asking why one of my psychologists, and I quote, ‘threw her glasses on the table and stormed out of a meeting’?”

My jaw dropped and panic rose in my chest but it was patially doused by the outrage of my colleague’s face. She said, “Um, I was there in that meeting and Desiree did nothing inappropriate whatsoever.”

The director, who was not known for being a patient man, seemed to calm a bit and asked me to explain myself.

“Well. I showed up to the meeting and the first thing I said was I was sorry but I did have to leave in twenty minutes. I had a house team meeting I had tried to reschedule but this was the only time everyone was available, so I could only stay until 2. And then at fifteen-to I reminded her I had to go, then I stayed another five minutes past what I had said I could and when I left I just said I had to get to my other meeting and my colleagues could take it from there. And I left her with Tina and Connie.”

“That’s true,” said Tina. “Call Connie. She said multiple times she needed to leave.”

“And so far as throwing my glasses? I mean the conversation I was having with her was frustrating, and we did disagree. I take my glasses off sometimes when I’m frustrated and kind of rub my eyebrows. Now that I think of it, that did happen yesterday and I think I dropped my glasses. Maybe she saw that as aggressive because I was disagreeing with her, but that’s it.”

Connie and Tina confirmed my story and the director and the superintendent were assuaged. But it was frustrating. I hadn’t spoken with phrases like, “I’m sorry but….” or “I kind of need to go.” And on top of that I had politely, albeit firmly, disagreed with the person with whom I was meeting. And she probably wasn’t used to being disagreed with because she had higher credentials than myself and most people with my education probably just defer to her. But I certainly wasn’t mean.

So I told Jim this story and told him I will not kneecap sentences when I am advocating for myself in any context. I don’t think he and I agree on the definition of mansplaining to this day, but we’ve hit a truce where he just accepts that if I feel insulted that’s close enough, he’ll stop what he’s doing.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the moment Kamala Harris looked at Mike Pence and firmly said, “I’m speaking,” I bawled like a baby. To see a woman, a pretty, intelligent woman in power, have to say that….to simply remind a man that she had been speaking and he needed to let her finish….to see something so unfortunately familiar...was intensely cathartic. I’m planning to message my tattoo artist soon and ask if she’d be able to put the phrase, “I’m speaking,” on the inside of my index finger. (Penelope if you’re reading this just text me a quote for the price, tax returns are coming up.)

I will always probably be perceived by most people as a little bitchy because of how I choose to communicate. But I’m in good company. There’s a Tina Fey/Amy Phoeler SNL skit that discusses the term bitch, and how women who are firm are labelled with the expletive. When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was called a bitch on the steps of the capital she spoke about it with a quote I have in the form of a sticker on the back of the laptop I’m using to write this piece. She quoted the last line of the SNL sketch, basically saying she was fine with the label bitch, because, “Hey, bitches get stuff done.”

Cheers, Bitches.