I’ve read 43 books so far in 2016.
23 books by white women
4 by white men
9 by women of color
7 by men of color
That’s about 37% authors of color. And 63% white authors.
Better.
If I look at new books only, that’s 15 books by white women, 2 by white men, and still 9 by women of color and 7 by men of color. So I’m almost 50-50 in the the new-to-me books but when I’m re-reading (for comfort and/or writing books) most of those are by white authors.
“Do you know about mansplaining?” asked the man I was sharing a cab with.
I wondered if the cab was moving too fast to jump out of. But then I’d be stuck in the middle of 6 lanes of Bangkok traffic in 110 degree heat. That was probably worse than a stranger mansplaining mansplaining to me. Probably. “Yes,” I said cautiously.
“I was just about to lecture you on American politics,” (we had been talking politics; he was British, I’m American) “but I thought of the article I just read and I thought I shouldn’t.”
“Um.” It’s a toss up what I hate more: talking about American politics and Trump or the American obsession with guns to non-Americans.
“It would have been so fun. I wish I had never read the article.”
“Is that the attraction of it, do you think?” I asked, somewhat recklessly. Yes, he had resisted mansplaining once and didn’t seem too upset, but I didn’t know him, and who knows what kind of abusive garbage he might spew? But here was a chance to get it from the horse’s mouth, from a man who had brought it up and didn’t seem hostile.
“It’s great to have a captive audience. And women are so polite, they always look interested and it’s a great way to pass the time,” he said cheerfully.
I changed my assessment of his hostility. (My British coworker, when I told her this story, said she thought there might have been a cultural misunderstanding there, that he was probably saying it tongue in cheek. I maintain that even if it was, it was still a hostile thing to say.)
“Hmm.” I sort of desperately tried to make small talk (the code in sharing cabs with strangers seems to be either you talk or you don’t talk. The lapsed conversation feels much more awkward) until I realized was doing the gendered task of keeping the conversation going. I stopped. The conversation lapsed.
I guess he wasn’t very good at conversation now that the crutch of mansplaining had been taken away from him.
I thought this interview was kind of boring, in spite of my interest in women’s decisions to not have kids. There were two things that stood out to me, before I shut it off.
Terry Gross says she never felt called to have children. I think that’s a great phrase and I’m going to borrow it because that’s exactly how I feel. Not called. There are things I feel called to do in my life, but have children is not one of them. It’s an interestingly old fashioned way to say something that we think of as very modern.
The other is not so positive. She spoke about being a trailblazer, about being among the first generation of [white] women entering the workforce and having to prove to men that women could hack it. That they could play the man’s game. I kept thinking about the Audre Lorde quote “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” I can’t help wondering if that’s partly why we’re all still playing the men’s game, men included: expensive child care, very little family leave and what we do have is often unpaid, a lack of flexible work spaces and hours, children still seen as women’s work and not that important work either, etc. etc. The list goes on. That’s just off the top of my head.
I wonder if they [white women] had been a different kind of trailblazers and refused to play the game on men’s terms, where we would be now. If, instead of fitting the mold of the workplace that denies the reality of so many people’s lives outside of it, they had demanded the workplace fit them instead.
Hindsight is always 20/20 of course, but many women of color were advocating for those kind of changes at the time and were ignored by “mainstream” feminism.
It’s possible we’d be worse off. It’s possible we’d be better off. We can never know.
Reading, Writing and the 'Rhythmatic of Life 