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The Struggle to be Heard

This website is focused on issues and questions related to the challenge and adventure of “being yourself.” Not just being ourselves somewhere deep inside, but being ourselves in the world. There are lots of choices and challenges that an aspiration like that entails. As I’ve written elsewhere on this site, it’s always easier to go along with the crowd than to try to be your own, unique self.

But I am becoming aware of a fundamental difference in what that challenge entails, depending on where a person happens to be in the power structure of society. And that difference matters a lot. I think it also helps explain at least part of the vast gulf in reactions observers have had to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing testimony we’ve all been hearing the past week.

I’ve spent the past 3 years researching and writing a book on the importance of a woman’s voice (Speaking Up: The Hard-Won Power of a Woman’s Authentic Voice). And a fascinating phenomenon has emerged, as I’ve begun talking about and showing the manuscript to other writers, editors, and professionals. I didn’t expect men to fully “get” how a women’s struggle for voice feels, any more than I can fully “feel” or “get” the pressure men feel to be a provider or suppress vulnerable emotions. But I thought they’d at least be aware that the struggle existed.

I was wrong. 

In all the research and conversations I’ve conducted over the past 3 years, not a single woman has asked what I mean by a woman’s authentic voice, or the importance of it. Not one. And the women I’ve talked to about the manuscript, or who have read it, have all had similar reactions. Different women have suggested elaborating on certain sections, or clarifying particular points. And I am very grateful for their insightful suggestions. But their overall reaction has been along the lines of, “This is such an important book; such a powerful book, on such an important subject.”

The men I’ve spoken with or who’ve read the manuscript … well, that’s another story. A fascinating story. The almost universal reaction I’ve gotten from men so far—smart men; accomplished men; literary and arguably enlightened men, and men who are married to smart women—has been a perplexed “I’m actually not sure what you mean by ‘voice.’” Or, “I really don’t think many women are struggling with this.” Or “Honestly, I’m really not sure what you’re talking about.”

It’s as if I’ve composed a symphony, scored for a full orchestra. And women look at the score and say, “Oh! Such beautiful harmonies!” And a lot of men look at that same score and say, “What are those squiggly lines you’ve written all over the paper, there?” I was so dumfounded that I went back and checked with women who’d read the manuscript. Had I been unclear? Was the subject not well presented? Were they confused as to what I’d meant, reading it? No, no, they all said. Crystal clear. Powerfully resonant.

In my 30 years as a writer, I’ve never encountered such a dramatic and total gap in understanding. There are no shades of gray here. It’s night and day. So what gives? I found a clue in one of the few exceptions I’ve encountered so far. The man who’s most intuitively “gotten” what the book is about; well enough that he could even elaborate on some of its points, also happens to be African-American. And I think that point is telling.

If you happen to be born into a group on top of the power structure in a society—which would still be white men, in America—you have fewer constraints on your ability to be yourself. Your group, after all, is the one that set the rules. And since you were born with the privileges that come with that power and freedom, you’ve never known any other experience. So you often aren’t aware that those perks and advantages aren’t enjoyed by everyone else.

It’s like a story a friend of mine tells about a beautiful young woman who goes into a pizza parlor. The man behind the counter, dazzled by her looks and trying to curry favor, gives her a free piece of pizza. After she leaves, she says to a friend, waiting for her across the street, “I don’t know how that place stays in business, giving customers free pizza.” Indignant, the friend exclaims, “They gave you free pizza???” The beautiful woman looks genuinely perplexed and says, “Well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone get free pizza?”

I think the concept of a struggle for voice; a deep, existential struggle for the basic dignity and right to be heard, seen, and respected/accepted for the person we are, may not be understood by many/most white men, because they’ve never had to fight for those things. For them, the struggle simply doesn’t exist. Doesn’t everyone have a voice? Doesn’t everyone just speak up? Doesn’t everyone get free pizza?

If a person possesses the freedom and power inherent in being a part of the group at the top that makes the rules, the question of being “yourself” becomes more or less a matter of choices. Do I want to be a doctor? Or a stock broker? An adventurer? Or an entrepreneur? There are still consequences and costs to those choices, and both self-knowledge and achievement take effort. There are also still those who will disagree with ideas you put forth. But you are unlikely to be rendered invisible, or shut out/dismissed/ignored completely by those in power because of who you inherently and physically are. You may have competition from other men in a conference room, and politics will always be at play. You’ll still have to think about how you want to express your “voice.” But there is a basic assumption of the right to speak; the right to be heard; and the right to have your voice and thoughts taken seriously.

If you aren’t in that group at the top of the power structure, however, being “yourself” and having a voice entail a much harder challenge. I find myself remembering the photos of black men protesting during the 1960s civil rights movement, wearing T-shirts saying “I AM A MAN!” I try to imagine a white man wearing that T-shirt. It would seem silly and redundant. White men are assumed to be men, not something less than that. There’s no struggle involved. For black men, however, there is.

For women and minorities, the traditionally accepted norms of how we’re viewed, who we should be, what we should say, or how we should behave, were not only set by those above us in the power structure; they’re far more limited in scope. To be “acceptable” is to be non-threatening, and to fit those norms without protest. Women are still judged on their appearance—as in, how pleasing they are as objects of desire for men—and any assertive behavior is fraught with potential repercussions. The angry black man or woman. The pushy broad. The bitch.

As a result of those negative stereotypes—promulgated by those more powerful than us—as well as the inherent difficulty in breaking into conversations that traditionally exclude us, women and minorities quickly learn to carefully craft their appearance, words, and behavior to avoid seeming threatening, or to gain entrance and acceptance among the powerful above us. It’s an exhausting way to go through life. But somewhere in that process, which African-Americans commonly call “code switching,” we often lose something even more essential. We lose a clear sense of who we actually are, or would be if we weren’t constantly twisting ourselves into pretzels to meet others’ expectations. We are too used to being guarded; to molding ourselves into something acceptable. And so we often lose our “authentic” voice. The ability to speak one’s truth, as oneself, and as an assumed equal.

Even if we do speak up, we still face enormous challenges to being heard, and having what we say taken seriously. A friend of mine, who is African-American, says when her 16-year-old son’s friends ask him about the experience of being black in a predominantly white community, he’s found that as soon as he starts trying to explain how it feels to him, their reaction is along the lines of, “Oh, come on.” And faced with that dismissal of his experience, he simply shuts down and stops talking. I’ve had the same thing happen to me, in predominantly male environments, more times than I can count. When your truth is ridiculed or dismissed as wrong, ridiculous, or crazy, you realize that people don’t really want to hear you. And often, you just stop talking.

Even if we do keep trying to get our voices heard, there are other obstacles. Research cited in my book shows that women are interrupted and talked over at rates far higher than men—even within Congressional committees and on the Supreme Court itself. And one of the biggest problems professional women listed, when it came to getting their voices heard, was that of presenting an idea in a meeting and having it dismissed or completely ignored … until it was brought up 5 minutes later by a man, at which point it was applauded.

Beyond that basic struggle to be heard is the secondary challenge of being believed. Women and minorities are still not seen as reliable witnesses to their own experience. A very rigorous 2010 meta-analysis on sexual assault found that among credible studies, the incidence of false accusations fell reliably between 2-10%. That means that 90-98% of them are not false. And yet, women who report assault or harassment routinely face such a gauntlet of disbelief, derision, accusatory scrutiny, negative career consequences and/or humiliation that even the toughest woman pauses before speaking up. Worth noting, as a point of comparison, is that the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud has found that approximately 10% of robbery claims turn out to be false. But when someone says their house has been robbed, we don’t immediately wonder if they’re making it up, or if they did something to make the robbers think the break-in was okay.

Minorities understand why it can be useless, or hazardous, to speak up. Women do, too. So the idea of having a voice: an authentic voice, that we can speak freely with, and that allows us to be seen, heard, and respected for who we really are and what we have to say … is both a fantasy ideal and a struggle we wage daily. At home, in our professional lives, and certainly in the public sphere. As one woman I interviewed for the book put it, “Women are just not as valued and heard. In any setting.”

On the one hand, that painful, lived experience of frustration—of being interrupted, silenced, disbelieved, humiliated, intimidated, and disregarded to the point of invisibility—helps explain why so many women, watching female Senators getting interrupted, disrespected, and talked over, and watching men fail to believe yet another woman’s experience, saying she must be mistaken or have psychological difficulties—erupted in such fury last week. But on the other hand … taking out of the discussion, for the moment, all the partisan and blatantly political players, elements and agendas that were absolutely part of the dynamic, as well … there were still well-meaning men, watching and perhaps even part of the proceedings, who simply couldn’t understand why a woman wouldn’t have spoken up before, if what she was saying was true. I mean, if that had really happened to her, why didn’t she speak up? Why didn’t she report it? Why didn’t she just go get her free pizza?

The idea of not having a voice; of not being able to speak or be heard; of not being able to be believed; of being punished for challenging entitled, powerful males … is apparently such a foreign notion to many smart, well-meaning white men, that I think they lack a good frame of reference with which to understand or believe it. There are other factors, to be sure. But I think, in that confusion about what a woman’s voice and the struggle for it even means, there’s an important clue as to why men struggle to believe women who say something happened a long time ago, but they didn’t fight back, or didn’t feel they could say anything about it.

To be clear: there are men who dismiss those claims because they hit too close to home, or endanger a power order they wish to preserve. But the first step for the rest of us, in bridging the divide in how we view incidents like this, is to better understand how the experience of being in, or below, the top power group affects what we assume to be true in the world. If we begin to understand why women and minorities view an authentic voice—and getting that voice heard and respected in the world—as such a fundamental and difficult struggle, we might just begin to see new explanations for their silence. We also might find an opening for real discussions about what we need to do in order for that to change.

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