Musings

Hi. My name is Margie Clayman, and I am single.

Phew. That is a load off!

What do you mean you don’t care? According to all of these articles, you should really be judging me right now:

Singled Out, from Slate Magazine

All the Single Ladies, by Kate Bolick for The Atlantic

Do Single Women Face Spinster Stigma? ABC News

NOW do you feel judgmental?

Truthfully, it’s kind of weird being single in the online world. There seems to be an unspoken thought that if you are single AND you are doing social media, fitting the social media stuff in is probably a lot easier. You don’t have a spouse asking you to like, spend time with him or her. You don’t have kids that you complain about all of the time (which really is a social media activity, but still, you have to experience their shenanigans in real life). I mean, sure you might have a job that keeps you kind of busy, but other than that, your life is pretty meaningless. Thank goodness for Twitter!

None of this has ever really been said to me directly or in so many words, but it’s kind of been insinuated. Like, “Well, you have more time for that kind of stuff.” You know, those smug whispery sort of tweets and emails that kind of sneak in on ya when you least expect it. Factually, my 27 cats, keeping my hair in a tight bun, and wearing nothing but turtlenecks keeps me VERY busy, thank you.

But seriously…

Women, so far as I can tell, seem to be in a no-win situation when it comes to family status in the online world. I know a lot of women who have entire families going on and it comes as a complete shock because they so seldom talk about their home lives. I talked to one such woman who told me she likes to keep her kids on the down-low because there are stigmas about the “mommy.” By the same token, the most powerful clique of online women is probably the “mommy blogger” community. Kind of confusing, isn’t it?

Why so serious?

My question – why do we care if people are married or not? I mean, I’ll fully admit that if we were in a situation where the world’s population was at risk, like in Battlestar Galactica, and I had to marry and reproduce with Jamie Bamber’s Lee Adama just to keep our race going, I’d probably sacrifice my single life. But humans are hardly in that scenario (knock on wood). The population will still be over-stuffed whether or not I get married and have kids. I will still be content with my life if I live another day in the single lifestyle (so far I haven’t gotten any marriage proposals for today).

Is it possible that people are kind of weird about those of us who are single because there is a sense of freedom that is being missed? After all, and I’m just being honest here, no matter how much you love your spouse and kids, there are going to be times that they bug the heck out of you. There are going to be times (as I read so often) when the kid wakes you up at 4 AM the day that you have a huge meeting. There are days you want to stay in when the spouse wants to go out, and visey versa. Unless you suffer from multiple personality disorder or imaginary friend syndrome, you don’t experience these clashes as a single person. While companionship is often awesome, having the ability to choose what you want to do when you want to do it is kind of nice. Is the stigma borne out of some unspoken jealousy?

What about the men-folk?

I’ll be honest about something else aside from my marital status. I’ve been a woman my entire life. Therefore, I really have only experienced society’s pressures as, well, a woman. I know the pressures that exist to plan that dream wedding (just search for “wedding” on Pinterest). I know the pressures that exist to create your family, have your house with the white picket fence, and then complain about how bedraggled you feel after a long night with a sick kid. What I’ve never experienced is how society pressures men.

So far as I know, there is not a male counterpart to the “old maid.” I don’t think there is a “crazy cat guy” counter to the crazy cat lady stereotype. It also seems like the bachelor life is often lusted after by both men and women. But are there pressures to have a spouse if you are a guy? Is there a ticking biological clock filtered through societal pressures?

And if there is, why? What is this all about? Why are we STILL worried about what people do with their personal lives?

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About a year ago, my friend Karima-Catherine Goundiam brought to my attention an article from the Wall Street Journal. The article was called, “Where are all the senior level women?” To say that the article fried my friddle (there’s a saying for you) would be an understatement. The underlying belief in this article and many others is that women are absent from senior management positions in large part because (and I’ll quote this particular article), “As women age, their desire to move to the next level dissipates faster than men’s.”

Other articles note that women allegedly lose their desire to “move to the next level” because their desire to stay home with the kids outdoes anything having to do with work. There is also the “ticking biological clock” that so many speak of. Take as an example this 2008 article that suggests that women should have babies in their twenties because “you can have a career any time you want.”

Granted, there are a ton of women out there who DO definitely prefer to put family first. Even if they have had a lot of success in their professional lives, a lot of women strongly believe that once they have kids, their place is with them. However, I am not sure this is enough to explain why there aren’t more women in CEO or other high level positions.

Where the dads come in

All of that being said, these types of articles that indicate that women are more willing than men to put family first also are perpetuating stereotypes about men, and this often goes overlooked. I have been fortunate to meet or learn about a lot of men who want nothing more than to be with their children as much as possible. They have often put plans on hold or have hauled over their professional lives so that they can be at home more. Many of these men are struggling with society’s odd attitudes about men who are more ambitious about fatherhood than they may be about getting that corner office, just like society has odd attitudes about women who are more ambitious about the corner office than they are about families.

In the struggle on the part of many women to equalize the playing field, the stereotyping that men are now having to fight often gets overlooked. I think this statement from Scott Stratten (aka @unmarketing) is very telling:

I think we’ve lost our way on what a “man” is. We need to go back to a man meaning someone who held doors open for others, who didn’t mind picking up the tab instead of calculating % of bill on their iPhone, and someone that isn’t afraid to show emotion. I guess I want “gentlemen” to return to the front lines. from Digital Dads

There is an increasingly loud voice amongst men indicating that not all men prefer professional success over success at home. Men like Brandon Duncan, CC Chapman, and Bruce Sallan vocalize this perspective on a regular basis. This isn’t to say that these men aren’t desirous of success, of course. It just means that given the choice, an increasingly large number of men are feeling like they need to make clear that they love their families as much as women do.

With all of that in mind, articles that indicate that there aren’t more senior level women because “women care about families more” not only pigeon-hole women. They also pigeon-hole men. Men and women are finding themselves constantly having to swim against society’s pre-determined “normal” to find happiness, and that is not a winning situation for anyone, right?

What are your thoughts about this issue? Are men facing just as many ramifications of sexism as women? If you are a man, do you feel that you are looked down upon if you place your family as your first priority? If you are a woman, do you agree that men are being pigeon-holed based on outdated societal expectations?

I’d love to hear your opinions!

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A video by Gary Vaynerchuk has been circulating over the last few days. and it has me concerned. The video is called “A Rant from the Heart, Hip, and Head,” (warning, a lot of Not-safe-for-work language) and in it, Gary argues that he is a winner because he was born to be a winner. It’s in his DNA.

On the one hand, the temptation is there not to disagree with this guy. After all, he is a best-selling author, a huge force in the online world, and a much admired speaker. He has accomplished more in 35-36 years than many do in a lifetime. Is there something to his “DNA” statement? Maybe.

I think, however, that given the times we live in, this is a dangerous and potentially harmful sentiment to spread. Here is why.

If I’m not winning now, I must be incapable

During the very very early years of European colonization in what is now the US, the Puritans were here looking for religious freedom. The Puritans believed in pre-destination. In other words, as soon as you were born your fate was sealed – you were already set on a path that would lead you to heaven or hell, and there was nothing you could about it. The Puritans spent all of their lives searching for signs that would tell them if they were good people or bad people, and they believed that their actions, rather than controlling their fate, simply reflected it.

If we say that winning is in our DNA, I feel we could suffer the same fate. Am I a winner? Well, depending on how you define “winner” maybe your answer is no. Does that mean the capacity to win is not coded in your DNA? Does that mean you can never be a winner?

Any person who has experienced a “rags to riches” story (and they still do happen) would probably disagree.

Working hard is not enough

The other thing Gary says in this video that I fear could misguide people is that working hard is only part of the equation. You need to have the right kind of DNA that will enable your hard work to pay off. I see where Gary was going with that statement, but I fear that that could fill a lot of people with a sense of disillusionment or even despair.

Actually, what came to mind was the movie Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith. In looking at the story of Chris Gardner, whom Will Smith plays in the film, it would be tempting to say that he had nothing but bad luck in his DNA. He undertook an aggressive project and mostly failed. He lost his home. He lost his wife. He worked hard during the day while sleeping in the bathroom at a subway station during the night. What about this man’s innate life story would point to his eventual success?

Nothing, really, except his desire to make life great for himself and his son.

But Gardner did the impossible. He learned skills that were entirely new to him. He learned how to wine and dine. He learned how to balance his difficult personal situation with his professional life and he learned how to toughen up for the business world.

I would argue that Gardner recoded his DNA. He reset his program. He put himself on a path towards something new. It wasn’t a DNA thing. It was a hard work, self-confidence, defeating the impossible thing.

In hard times, leave the door open

Even though a lot of us are living comfortably, there are tons of people who have it super tough right now. They have a family member who chronically ill and they don’t have health insurance. They’ve been unable to find a new job since they were laid off in 2009. You know these stories. To say that following an established business model will lead you to be a C or D player is irresponsible, in my opinion. To say that hard work is not enough to make you a winner is irresponsible me during these trying times. In fact, using words like “winner” is kind of tough to stomach during times like these, when so many people who really are winners are living in situations that simply have escalated beyond their control.

There are no silver bullets out there. Very few people can snap their fingers or scratch a lotto ticket and find themselves with millions of dollars. But there are a lot of people who are working their butts off. They are trying to change the story that their lives are telling right now. They are trying to reprogram what their situations have instilled in them. They are trying to win as they define that word, which may be what Chris Gardner wanted – a safe neighborhood for his son to play in, a roof over their heads, and  a great, stable job.

Is now the time to say that winners are winners because it’s in their DNA? I don’t think so.

What do you think?

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A few years ago, I had the opportunity to present a pretty big, fairly complicated idea to a few people. I was really excited and really passionate about the idea, so I started talking and presenting in full force. As I got to what I really felt was the kicker of the presentation, one of the people in the room started to laugh. It wasn’t a giggle or a guffaw. It was more one of those laughs when you see a little toddler trying to spell words with blocks. I stopped what I was doing and asked what was funny (I guess I was pretty ticked off), and the person said, “No, no, I just think this is great.”

I continued with my presentation, but I wonder to this day if the same presentation, presented by a man, would have garnered the same kind of response. Somehow, I doubt it.

The performing dog syndrome

When I was pursuing my Masters in History, I worked on a thesis that focused on a woman named Phillis Wheatley. She was a slave in Boston just before the American Revolution, but almost from the time she arrived in the colonies, it was discovered that she had an amazing gift for language. She learned English and Latin in months and started writing poetry shortly thereafter. As a woman, not to mention as an African woman, Wheatley became quite the sensation. People would come and watch her write because no one believed that such a “creature” could create poetry in the classical style the way she did (they totally missed the double meaning present in her poems, but that’s a different story). There was never a question about whether her poetry was good or whether it even had a meaning. It was just implausible that she was able to write anything at all.

In modern times, she likely would have been part of a circus act or something similar, as sad as that is to believe.

Have times changed much?

How do you define patronizing?

Often times, when a woman claims that she is being spoken to in a patronizing or condescending manner, the reaction is a roll of the eyes. “Oh, it must be her special time again,” you may hear. However, one also finds that being patronized is something women endure (or at least perceive) quite often. Take, for example, the reaction Joy-Ann Reid had to Mitt Romney handing a poor African American woman a wad of cash while he was on the campaign trail. To her, the act was pure propaganda, and for a man that made a $10,000 bet on stage, handing a poor person a cool fifty-dollar bill seemed more insulting to her than anything good.

It should be noted that the recipient of the $50, however, was entirely thankful. Perhaps patronizing behavior is only in the eye of the beholder.

Patronizing behavior in the business world

It seems like the patronization of women is most often pointed to in the business environment these days. Take, for example, this letter to the editor from June 2011 in which the author notes that a column was patronizing because it indicated there were “too many choices for women to deal with if they wanted to become entrepreneurs.” This article about Sharp Skirts CEO Carla Thompson is also interesting. Thompson apparently has shrugged off a lot of events, Oprah, and Forbes Magazine because whenever she tries to talk business, the subject inevitably turns to fashion or work/life balance or the latest hairstyle. Thompson wonders why women can’t just talk business like the men do. Maybe even with the men. Now wouldn’t that be crazy.

Why does this pattern of behavior exist? Do people think that women prefer to talk about these subjects rather than boring old business? Or is there a darker meaning, like maybe thinking that women just can’t grasp those big words, little acronyms, and complex numbers?

Another question to put out there – how come the strongest group of women in the online world is the “mommy bloggers?” There’s nothing wrong with that, but where are the “women business bloggers?” Where are the “mommy New York Times Best Sellers” authors?

There seems to be a gap there. Is it coincidental or is it comfortable? Is it just okay for women to be super smart about diapers, or can we expand our horizons without getting a chortle or a big condescending smile?

Now it’s your turn

What have been your experiences with this issue? Have you been the recipient of patronizing behavior? Have you been accused of being patronizing when you didn’t think you were even approaching that mode of conversation?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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I thought I would try a little experiment with this here blog. I know way a lot of great people who are looking for jobs, and while I try to pass things on to them or try to pass them on to other people on Twitter or on Facebook, those messages tend to drift away on the endless sea of updates that those 2 platforms represent.

My blog posts, on the other hand, remain rather easy to find for at least a few minutes longer.

So, I’m going to use this blog post to invite you to comment if you are looking for a job. List what your skills and talents are. Make your elevator pitch. Hopefully, people who have openings will start visiting this post and ideally, the right person will find you here.

Social Media, it is often said, is all about serendipity. However, serendipity needs a stage or a platform on which to set. Let’s see if this post can become a stage for job-finding serendipity.

Post away, and best of luck!

This week is going to be more about me asking you questions than me going off on a rant. I am legitimately curious as to whether some of the things I’ve experienced and/or heard hold true for everybody or if my own particular experience is just plain weird (note, I’m not inviting people to confirm if *I* am weird. We already know the answer to that).

So, normally when you think about sites like Twitter or Facebook, you think about the great big wide public domain, right? Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of your peers and colleagues. However, most social platforms have a way around this. On Twitter you can “direct message” people so that you are just talking to them. On Facebook there is a similar messaging system.

In my experience, and this is just my experience, the primary users of these more private messaging systems or women. Women tend to direct message me for the following reasons:

1. To share a post they have written (I don’t know that I’ve ever gotten a direct message from a man for these purposes)

2. To complain about another person (I think I have only gotten 3 direct messages from men in this category)

I myself tend to use direct messages or Facebook messages if I want to converse in a way that might not fit with how I converse on the wide open platform. If I want to share a funny observation, verbalize a complaint, or just check on someone who seems to not be doing well, I tend to use the private messaging system for whatever platform I’m on.

How does your community work? Do you see direct messages pretty frequently from both men and women? Do you feel that men and women use private messaging with different motivations? Does my experience sound pretty typical to yours or do you experience something different?

Using direct messages for abuse

Beyond this question, there is also the sad fact that some people opt to use private messages to bully other people. I have only heard women verbalize this kind of situation so I am wondering if men experience it too. Believe it or not, I have heard women say that they have received, via direct message, very inappropriate messages regarding their appearance or messages with not so subtle sexual undertones. With all of the talk about bullying, I find it disconcerting that there could be so much abuse going on where people can’t step in to intercede. I find myself wondering how much of this goes on beyond our ability to see, and how many people simply delete these messages, feel hurt, and do nothing because it is all behind the privacy curtain.

If you or someone you know has ever received these kinds of damaging private messages, I can only encourage you, whether man or woman, to vocalize your concerns. Just because it was a private message does not reduce the impact it can have on a person.

So now it’s your turn

What is your experience with the underground, behind the curtain, “private” sector of the online world? Do you notice different behaviors between men and women? How so?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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