bewize

(And no jokes from the peanut gallery, thank you very much!)

There is a spider that lives in my bathroom. I noticed it a while ago, mostly because I thought it was dead and sort of stuck to the ceiling. It lives in the right corner closest to the tub and is easily visible from the toilet.

Which is, you know, where I saw it first.

However, since I thought it was dead, I forewent the "being frightened away" part. I also don't eat curds and whey, ever, and I certainly don't eat them in the bathroom. Sometimes, I drink a glass of wine in there, but usually when I'm in the tub.

Regardless, I ramble. This morning, I happened to notice that the spider had moved. Meaning that it isn't dead. My skin immediately began to crawl, but then I started wondering... how does it stay alive in there?

It's hardly a tiny spider. It's about the size of a dime, with the legs taking it to the size of a quarter or bigger. What's it eating?! Unless the answer is "steam," I'm creeped out.

I have another problem now. Since I gave it a pass for so long, I'd feel guilty moving it now. Forget killing it. It's seen me at my most vulnerable and hasn't dropped dead, which is strangely complimentary. You know, if a spider could be complimentary.

It doesn't seem to have much of a web, but if it did, I wonder what it would write.

I can easily imagine a few messages.

"Hey you, turn down the music."

"Hey you, coconut bubble bath? Really?"

"Hey you, you should really use the razor. You're looking a bit... unkempt."

"Hey you, I saw you not wash your left arm. Gross."

"Hey you, eat more fiber."

"Hey you, reading in the bathtub is one thing. On the toilet... not so much."

"Hey you, the toilet is overflowing again. It really is probably possessed."

"Hey you, the orange cat is really annoying when you're trying to relax."

"Hey you, reconsider Weight Watchers?"

"Hey you, you forgot to refill the toilet paper before you peed. Classic."

"Hey you, I knew that your roommate and his friend were around before you went into the hallway in a towel. I just didn't tell you because it's funny."

"Hey you, that drunk guy that shows up sometimes and doesn't shut the door when he pees? HAHAHAHA."

"Hey you, do you want to know about the folks your roommate had over while you were gone? No, you really don't. But don't sit there."

I suppose that we'll just have to live out our days together in a truce. He'll eat steam and continue to silently mock me. I'll pretend that I don't see him and won't squish him.

But I swear to God, if he leaves the message, "SOME PIG," I will end him.

When I was little, my grandfather would come to our house and garden. My father... well, let's just say that he had issues. But my Dad's dad, to me, could do no wrong. I have since learned all the ways that he is indeed my father's father. The men in my family are assholes, and they learn it from their fathers.

But when I was a child, I was pretty certain that my grandfather hung the moon. And, I know he loved me. I know he still loves me, even though he doesn't understand me. And I still love him, even though I don't understand him.

But I understood those days. I understood the smell of hot sun on hot dirt. I understood the feel of gardening tools in my hands. I understood calluses and the almost surreal pleasure of picking vegetables that my sweat had helped grow. But mostly, I grew to understand the fleeting nature of time.

My grandfather was the strongest man in the world, second only to my father, of course. He could use the tiller - a machine that I was not allowed to touch - to break through the hard clay ground. He could run the hose - that he'd poked holes into - along the ground to water the vegetables. He knew hot to grow everything, including a little girl's interest in nature and in history.

I learned how to tell if tomatoes needed bigger stakes, and how to tell if aphids were eating our plants before we could; I also learned what it was like to grow food because you had to have it to survive and what it felt like to be in a war.

My grandfather, for those hours in the garden, would lower his guard and let glimpses of his real self slip through. I learned that he had an older brother - who died in the Great Depression - and I learned what it was like to go to a one room school. I learned about my great-grandmother, who ran a boarding house to feed her two surviving children and I learned about my great-great-grandfather who fought in General Lee's army at the age of 15.

I learned what dirt smelled like after the rain and that watermelon vines run riot. I learned how to tell when tomatoes were ripe and when to pick peaches. I learned how to eat pomegranates.

Mostly, I learned to enjoy what I was given and accept that I couldn't make people different than what they were. I learned that my grandfather loved me and that sometimes that's enough.

Today's 3w4dw theme is politics. Good God. The quickest way to lose friends is to talk politics. But, that's never stopped me before.

Luckily (or not), I don't want to discuss American politics today. Not exactly, anyway. I want to talk about the UK election, but there is simply no way that I can avoid talking about it like an American.

( Brace Yourself )

According to the AFL-CIO (at least in 2007), women make on average $0.77 to the $1 that a man makes for doing the same work. While the disparity in pay is a fairly commonly known fact, there is a lot of shoulder shrugging that occurs when anyone wonders why.

I won't pretend that it's a simple answer. Instead, I'll just quote a few rather astonishing facts (based on data from 2007):

* Nationally, women make 77 cents for every $1 men earn.
* In terms of annual pay, it took women from January 1, 2007 until April 2008 to make as much money as their male colleagues had made by December 31, 2007.
* In terms of weekly pay, women have to work until the following Tuesday to catch up to the earnings of men in equivalent positions.

While there is no doubt that the undrlying problem here is rooted in sexism, the recent posts floating around about Imposter Syndrome and women's (in particular) hesitation to accept praise for their accomplishments or point out their own successes reminds me of a book that I read in college.

I attended a prestigious women's college and in my senior year, I haunted the career services department as people are wont to do. I remember reading a book called "Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change." While I didn't agree with everything in the book, it hit upon some ideas that have stuck with me ever since. These are the same ideas that now intersect with posts like synecdochic the ghost in the room, or, why modesty is a dirty fucking word.

A quick summary of the book (and of my point) holds that men make more money because they negotiate differently than women. The biggest difference? Men are more willing to point out how awesome they are.

naraht's post Awesome is as Awesome... Says?* pretty much hits the nail on the head. As a gender, women are taught from the beginning that we should not point out our own successes. Instead, we should trust our actions to do that for us. We shouldn't be "vain" or "proud" or "narcissistic" and, whatever we do, we shouldn't act like we're better than we actually are.

* naraht's post questions the need of anyone (male or female)to point out how awesome they are. Zie states that it sounds like "bragging" or "arrogance."

The problem with this approach is that people, women especially, end up downplaying their actual awesomeness. This has a name, folks, and it's called "false modesty." This is an unbelievably costly phenomenon. To give just one example, according to the authors of the book “Women Don’t Ask – Negotiation and the Gender Divide” (Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever), by not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate the important first salary. Clearly, women are doing ourselves no favors by pretending to be less amazing than we are, or by being too shy to point out just how awesome we are.

I would never presume to explain how this plays out in other women's lives and careers, but I can offer a few illustrations from mine:

I'm a civil litigation attorney. This is an undeniably high stress field that is overwhelmingly populated by men. It has the added factors of being designed to be adversarial and confrontational. Every day, I am questioned on my intelligence, my abilities, my drive, my passion and my skills. Every day, I have to show how awesome I am.

Oh, and I am awesome. I am damned good at my job.

This has not stopped me from being told in an interview that the interviewer would prefer to hire a man. It has not stopped the same interviewer from asking me if I would cry at work. It has not stopped the same interviewer from offering me a low-ball salary when he finally decided that he could "live with hiring a woman."

That interview, though undeniably one of the most bizarre experiences of my life, doesn't even come close to showcasing all of the sexism that I find in the workplace everyday - from judges who won't allow women attorneys to wear pants suits to opposing counsel who feel that it is somehow appropriate to call me "young lady" like I am being scolded for being silly, to being told that I am being overlooked for a promotion because I might want to "someday have a baby and I can't balance everything."

I do the same work as a male attorney in my position. I do it well. Hell, in a lot of cases, I do it better. And if I'm too shy to point this out on my own bi-yearly evaluations, then you had better believe I won't be getting offered the same sort of raises.

I negotiate on behalf of my clients over millions of dollars. Why on earth should I not do the same for myself over thousands, or even hundreds, of dollars?

If I don't think I'm worth it, no one else will either.

So, this is my post wherein I say: I *am* awesome. I *deserve* to be recognized as such. While I was offered opportunities because of my privilege, I *make* my own reputation and I will not pretend to be less awesome than I actually am just because it makes someone uncomfortable. I will not pretend to be less awesome than I actually am just because I'm afraid I'll sound narcissistic. I will not pretend to be less awesome than I actually am, because I am not less awesome than I actually am.

And if someone questions me about it, I will tell them that I am awesome, because it's the truth.

Now, let me close by echoing synecdochic's battle cry:

Modesty is a dirty word. Fuck imposter syndrome. Own your awesome.

I... really don't have anything at all to say about Computer Programming. I know nothing about it. At all.

Instead, I would like to make a tribute of things that computers have made possible for me.

1. The people: I've made some incredible friends. I know people from all continents now. I've met people who share my interests, from the mundane to the bizarre, and there is a real sense of community to be had.

2. The games: I confess it. I've discovered RPGs. And through the RPGs, I've had the chance to both meet incredible people and just have a great deal of fun. I've been playing in one game since 2002 with the same people. It has given me so many hours of fun that I suspect I've passed into months of it. (Also, the other players have become incredible friends.)

3. The fanfic: Fanfic ate my brain well before I started writing it myself. But then I started writing it myself and I've never looked back. And I've met friends who share my fandoms and encourage my writing. I've undeniably become a better writer thanks to it.

4. The knowledge: I joke all the time that Google knows everything, but you know what? Google knows everything. I honestly do not know how I used to cope without being able to look everything up online. Google knows my bank account balances and directions to anywhere and what time the movies start.

5. The work: Since becoming a freelance writer, I use the computer to do everything from research my topics to writing the actual articles to emailing them to editors. It allows me to work from home, on my sofa, in my PJs. It allows me the chance to do something I actually want to do and to even, perhaps, be good at it!

6. The social awareness: I've become a better person because of the awareness of issues that I have acquired online. I now look at movies, books, tv and politics in a very different way than I used to. I'm more critical and more discerning and generally just more aware than I used to be. This is a very good thing.

7. The recs: I love recs. I make a ton of them when it comes to fic. I make them when it comes to links to interesting articles. I definitely make them when it comes to music. And other people make them and that makes me so damn happy! I love finding new things - from comics to music to fanfic.

8. The squee!: There are days when seeing other people's happy reactions to things can forcibly drag me from a despairing funk into a good mood. I love watching people celebrate things ranging from political elections to the completion of projects to the latest episode of whatever TV show they want. Plus, there are picspams. And I love a picspam. Someone should make one of Timothy Olyphant soon!

9. The history: I've been blogging for 7 years. That's a lot of my life that is there for me to flip through whenever I want. It's interesting to me to see how I've changed and grown in the past 7 years. When I started my LJ, I was nearing the end of law school. It's been with me through 2 jobs, being laid off, starting my own firm. It's been there with me through a variety of personal relationships and a great deal of navel gazing. I like knowing that I can look back and see where I've been, because it gives me hope for where I'm going.

10. The unknown: One of my favorite things about computers is that I don't know where they'll be in ten years. A really good friend of mine, who IS a computer programmer, and I discussed this over dinner last week for about 3 hours (much to his wife's and our other friend's likely disgust). We disagreed, but with amusement, about what computers would do for us in the next 10 years. I propose that we will see the next Big Deal emerge from communities exactly like DreamWidth. It's a way for all of us to share our knowledge and our hopes and - in my opinion - we will see change come from that, both socially and scientifically.

So, from what I can figure, today's 3w4dw non-fannish topic is dedication to inclusiveness. This... scares me a bit. When I discovered that yesterday's theme was "cooking," I decided that it would be fun to make a public post trying to keep up with the non-fannish themes each day.

It was going to be a fun writing exercise, and one dedicated to making me a better writer. I thought, "Self, turning something around in a few hours is a good exercise. Plus, it'll be fun."

But wading in on issues of inclusivness - or rather, on sensitive issues involving race, sexual orientation, gender and/or religion - is a bit daunting. I confess, I nearly backed out. I've read so many wonderful essays dedicated to these issues by men and women who are smarter and more knowledgable than me that I'm not sure what, if anything, I can offer to the conversation. Plus, honestly, the risk of public humiliation is high.

For the sake of disclaimer, allow me to say that I am a straight, white woman who grew up in the southern United States, and who definitely falls in the upper middle class in terms of education and current lifestyle (though not in terms of how I grew up).

I attended a prestigious private women's liberal arts college and then obtained my JD. I've practiced law for five years. I write for several newspapers and magazines about a variety of topics mostly ranging from health to entertainment. Until the past year, I was extremely healthy and suffered from no disabilities. (Now, I have chronic adult onset asthma, but that is not really relevant.)

I tell you these things so that anyone who might wish to turn away can do so, but also because I think it's important to understand where I've come from in order to understand where I am and where I'm going to. And I write this post because I've realized that no one in the whole world needs to know or care where I've been, where I stand, or where I'm going but me.

This is me, looking in the mirror, and admitting that I don't like everything I see.

For a while, I wracked my brain about how to best approach this topic, but then I remembered reading quite extensively about the idea of "BINGO cards" a few months back. I looked them up at the time and was appalled by some of the excuses on there, even as I became uncomfortable by some of the others. I was uncomfortable because at some point in my life, I'd heard them offered as an excuse and accepted them as valid. I was uncomfortable because at some point in my life, I'd made those excuses and felt justified.

Realizing that I'd made racist/ablest/(and even sexist) comments was upsetting in a way that I cannot describe and, for a while, I turned away from it. Then I read a post by a friend, who is a person of color, who said something along the lines of, "If you choose to turn and walk away, at least admit to yourself that it is your privilege that allows you that choice - and think about all of us that will never be given that choice."

That stung.

A lot.

Because it was true.

Still, I kept my silence for a long time - making even more excuses like "who wants to hear what I have to say anyway?" and "everyone else says it so much better." Then the topic comes up right after I challenged myself to answer every non-fannish topic with a post. I pep talked myself into positng and told myself to not be a coward. I may be many things, but I'm not a coward. And, as long as I can remember, I have demanded that I meet the same standards that I would expect of anyone else. So, here goes.

( Learning to See, and Accept Responsibility for, my Own Privilege )

I always say that when you make a mistake, the best thing to do is to say you're sorry and promise to do better.

I've made a lot of mistakes.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry.

For what it's worth, I'll do better.

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