Tuesday, August 30, 2016

What girls learn.

So, I find myself feeling kind of discouraged about my daughter's future. 

As the summer is drawing to a close, as the afterglow of the Rio Olympics begins to subside, and as Stanford Rapist Brock Turner prepares for steaks on the grill at home for Labor Day Weekend, I am afraid this world just isn't fit for any of our daughters. Our daughters do not hold the same value in this world as our sons. There is no doubt about it. And I don't know what to do about it. 

It was literally weeks ago that so many of us were angered and outraged by what seemed to be a far too lenient sentence for a young man who seized a terrible opportunity. He raped an unconscious woman, and even though convicted, the judge in his case thought a long prison sentence would be harmful to him. As the weeks of Brock Turner's sentence have ticked away, and now been further shortened, there have been other fragile, young rapists (unsurprisingly white) whose futures were deemed too valuable for more than slaps on the wrist. The potentials of these young rapists were, essentially, measured against the potentials of their victims, and judged to be worth more. 

That's a tough lesson for a victim to learn, but sadly, that lesson reaches beyond the victims and their rapists. It reaches to all those who may become victims, and even to all of those who may rape. 

But it's lessons like this one that our daughters learn every single day. 

Many of us watched coverage of this year's Summer Olympics in Rio and were amazed by all of the skill, talent and strength of women athletes from all over the world, and especially those from our own backyards. What we didn't get to watch was all of the lessons female athletes have to learn throughout their years of training, preparing and reaching for their dreams. We did, in many cases, get to see the poise with which many of them had to respond in the face of media coverage that sometimes overlooked their accomplishments, judged them by their appearances, credited their accomplishments to men, and called into question their patriotism and values. 

In the days following the games, we also got to watch as a bunch of boys--one of them in his thirties--behaved inappropriately and even illegally by falsely reporting being robbed at gunpoint. And much of the response to Ryan Lochte and his buds breaking things in a gas station and peeing everywhere has been the all too common phrase "boys will be boys," or "they were just being rowdy kids." Again--one of those "kids" being in his thirties. 

Why is it that boys and men don't have to learn the same lessons that girls and women do? 

As a woman in my forties, I am anything but naive. I know how the world works. I know that if I go someplace after dark, I need to look around me and be aware of my surroundings, but I also need to keep my head down and not draw too much attention to myself. 

As a college newspaper reporter, I did tell my editor when an interview subject attempted to force himself on me, but I didn't want her to do anything about it, because it was a tiny campus, and I just wanted the incident to be forgotten, and I was afraid I would be blamed. I may not have told her at all, but for the fact that she questioned why the majority of my article had been fleshed out with quotes from someone else who was very distantly related to the topic.

I also know that opportunities have come and gone, solely based on my appearance or interactions with the men who have been in my work environment, and not my knowledge, qualifications or skill. 

As a woman, I know that my smile is not welcomed, but expected by men, even if I'm not feeling like smiling. I am pretty sure that the expectation of women to always be smiling when they encounter a man must be the origin for the concept of the "resting bitch face." As a rule, I never ask anyone to smile, unless I am trying to photograph them, and even then, I understand if they decline. 

I know that I paint a bleak picture. I know that women can be empowered, and I know that they can reach amazing heights, but sadly, I also know that, in our current world, if you don't learn the right lessons, achieving everything you hope to can be much, much more difficult. 

I will teach my daughter that she can be anything she dreams of being, and I will also offer her all of my support and encouragement--even if she chooses difficult paths. And I will hope that those of us who are aware of the power of the inequities between boys and girls--men and women--will manage to make a cultural shift, and some of those inequities will be diminished or gone. 

But I am scared. I am scared that my daughter will still have to learn many of these same things. I am scared that she will have to learn how to navigate, and conduct herself such that she does not become a victim, and she accomplishes what she dreams in a world where her potential is not valued at the same level as that of her male peers. I am scared that she will have to learn that no matter how amazing, gifted, talented and hard-working she might be, she will be judged by appearances, a lack of makeup, or her failure to smile when it's expected of her. I'm scared she will have to learn that she will be judged by her unwillingness to flirt, play nice, or give things of herself that her male peers will never be asked. 

And beyond being scared, I am sad. I am sad to know that girls and women of all ages and backgrounds are learning these lessons every single day. They are learning them in locker rooms. They are learning them in offices. They are learning them when they receive unwanted advances and harassment by male coworkers, classmates and friends. They are learning them when they have to follow dress codes in elementary school classrooms. They are learning them in dark horrible places where their trust is broken forever, and then again in courtrooms. They are learning them, because if they don't learn them, they won't survive, let alone accomplish all that they dream of. 

These are powerful lessons, and harmful ones. They are lessons we should all be striving to unlearn, and that we should all be standing against with our loudest voices. We owe it to our daughters, and every girl or woman we love to do more than just express our outrage every time one of these horrible lessons is taught or reinforced. 

I may not be able to thwart all of these lessons, but I can do one thing that matters. I can stand with my daughter, and I am at the ready to stand with yours as well.