Peeing in the punch bowl

[jere7my]

Several of my friends have linked to, or contributed to, this post. It invites people to claim their awesomeness, and begins:

Too often we put ourselves down. Too often we think we are useless, not good enough, less than perfect and thus less than acceptable. Too often we demur praise, or will not praise ourselves. Often we outright hate ourselves, and much of the dominant media and various cultures around us are determined to make us feel as bad as possible, usually so that we will buy things.

In the comments to this post, I cordially invite you to tell me why you are awesome.

Damn straight, say I. Good points, say I. Well said, say I.

Except the post is only addressed to, and open to, women.

"Gosh," I said. "That's unnecessarily divisive!" And it didn't need to be — the post would have been just as strong, just as awesome, without the exclusivity. It's my assumption (and I admit that I am making an unfounded assumption here) that the author is operating under the widely held belief that women are disproportionately affected by irrational low self-esteem, à la impostor syndrome, and are therefore more in need of spaces to proclaim their accomplishments. That, of course, is common knowledge — I've seen several people repeat it in connection to this post — which happens to be false:

Early on, this phenomenon was associated with women, a belief that persists today. But subsequent studies, including another by Clance [who first described impostor syndrome], have shown that men are affected in equal numbers. [link to highly worthwhile Science article]

Men are just as likely to feel like frauds, to downplay or disbelieve their own achievements, to suffer from irrational low self-esteem. Everything in the post I quoted above applies equally well to men and women. Posts like Claim Your Awesome contribute to the idea that it's a women's problem — okay, maybe some men feel that way sometimes, but it's not systemic, it's not legitimate — when in fact it's a people problem. We put on blinders when we draw a box around it and call it a "feminist" issue or a "women's" issue — which means we look in the wrong places for solutions, place the blame in the wrong places, and that hurts men and women alike. Men, by typically being taciturn about their emotional needs, contribute to the idea as well, and that leads to a vicious cycle.

I would be hard pressed to finish the sentence "I am awesome because...." I don't suffer from impostor syndrome, but that's only because I have no role I could imagine myself to be fraudulent in. I don't have a career; I'm an unsuccessful writer; my physical flaws are numerous; I just turned thirty-eight; and I am more than half convinced that I have wasted my life.

None of that counts, because I have a dick.

#

(That said, the comments section of the Wikipedia article on impostor syndrome includes this line: "I feel like I'm only pretending to edit Wikipedia right now, like inwardly I'm not a Wikipedian." I am awesome because I am the sort of person who would close a self-pitying post like this with an observation of an awesome line like that.)

Comments

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether the original post was inspired by this one, but one thing that the linked post brings up is that women are disproportionately more likely to be disbelieved or shot down when they assert their expertise and/or awesomeness. That said, I'd certainly love to see a gender-neutral iteration of this meme :-)

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

The post you link to also seems to be turning a people issue into a women's issue. I remember reading something by Stephen Fry (I think) in which he talked about his problems with accepting praise from fans — he was always aware of the flaws in whatever he'd done, so he couldn't accept a compliment without pointing them out. (I do exactly the same thing.) The advice he got from John Cleese was, "Just say thank you."

When I read posts like the two we've linked to, I always come away thinking I have unusually feminine emotional patterns. But I don't think that's true — I think feminist blogs are pointing out universal problems, and cloaking them in the label of women's issues. I'm just more aware of, and expressive of, my feelings than many men. The fact that men don't tend to talk about these things contributes to the perception that men don't feel them.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I guess what I should ask is this: have there been studies showing that "women are disproportionately more likely to be disbelieved or shot down when they assert their expertise," or is it "common knowledge," like the fact that women are disproportionately more likely to suffer from impostor syndrome?

[adfamiliares.livejournal.com]

I ask (you and crystalpyramid below): How much does it really matter? Do women need to suffer disproportionately for their experiences to be worth talking about? Do men need to struggle as much as women or in precisely the same ways for their experiences to be valid or interesting? Making this kind of misery poker the necessary precondition of conversation seems not terribly productive to me.

[crystalpyramid]

You're totally right. I think the main function of a women-only thread is to establish a community to have the discussion in, where some shared experiences can be assumed. It doesn't mean it's an experience unique to women, just that it's useful to have a smaller group than "all people" to discuss it in. "Academics" is apparently also a useful subset. "Swat alums who are not famous yet" might be another good one.

You're also right about how all this has distracted from the intended discussion of awesomeness. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it to, and I hate the way I made this conversation escalate away from where it was supposed to go. And adfamiliares is awesome for attempting to rerail the conversation.

Hey, jere7my, I think you're awesome. You have a keen eye for the world and a great sense of humor, highlighting the beautiful and the absurd. The little teaser bits I've gotten from your talking about your book make it sound awesome, too!

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I think you're awesome too, even when we clash on the internet. We should chat more. My post wasn't actually a back-handed fishing expedition for compliments, at least not consciously, but I appreciate them.

I would think that the post existing on a feminist blog would pretty well self-select for women and supportive men (and deleteable trolls, who wouldn't respect the instructions anyway), so the limitation seems unnecessary to me. I still think she was being thoughtless, one way or the other, but there are a lot of thoughtless posts on the internet, so it's not such a big deal. It stuck in my mind last night, so I wanted to post a response, to show that nifty, well-meaning blog posts can have unintended consequences.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

Definitely not, and I'm sorry if I phrased things poorly.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I'd be very interested in seeing any studies that have been done. But it is the lived experience of many women that they are disbelieved explicitly on the basis of being female and thus having a single-sex "safe space" to discuss that in can be a very valuable thing. The blog that I linked to self-identifies as a feminist and predominantly-female space. There is certainly room for other spaces that aren't female-labeled.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Not sure I buy that. Do you have a link to a man saying the same thing?

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

A man saying which thing?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

Never mind. It was a joke.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

Ok :-)