CALM DOWN

/ janpriddyoregon

Maybe I should keep it to myself. But no, that would not do. I read most of it aloud to Gary. Then I composed an email, but kept adding to the Bcc. So here. Here it is. It’s unlikely that any (none?) of my family will read it, but sending it as a link in an email probably wouldn’t change that.*

I am calm in desperate situations, sometimes passionate in discussion, but quiet at my core under stress. Pressing down fear, anger, frustration, and other emotion in fraught situations is almost automatic. (Most people who think they have seen me angry have no idea.*) I learned to suppress those emotions when I was being teased, bullied, and otherwise harassed in childhood and adolescence. It is a skill I have fallen back on throughout my life when dealing with mentally ill relatives and grief. And injustice every darned day.

All my life I have vowed to fight the good fight. And if I have had little impact on my world, it is not from lack of trying.

Below is a link to an article that examines the very real issue of women’s righteous rage about our society, the source of the so-called “baggage” too many used as an excuse to ignore and demean our anger. Justice demands more from us.

“When women marched against Donald Trump in 2017, or protested against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and then family separation in 2018, or organized to get out the vote in 2020, what they were doing was fundamentally justice work and fundamentally outrageous. And that is of course why it is always met with the blowback, the rape threats, the personal hate and intimidation. That is why the chant is always ‘Lock her up.’ “

—Dahlia Lithwick
Screaming in Secret: Dahlia Lithwick on the Women Who Work Within the Legal System

I hope you will follow the link and read Lithwick’s essay. I hope you will recognize and honor what I find of value.

We’ve talked about entitlement. We’ve talked about privilege. We’ve talked about all of the ways women’s voices are silenced.

Don’t tell me to calm down. I’ve heard that already.

* Only fair to point out that Gary, as always, is exceptional and reads my blogs, knows my worst, and loves me anyway.

11 thoughts on “CALM DOWN”

  1. So true, all of it. I have been told to calm down for all kinds of reasons that I have thought were injustice happening in front of my eyes. Even my own sons a time or two felt I was jumping a line in the sand: I am driving along a downtown street of a college town and three young women are being harassed by three young men wanting them to pay attention to them, give them what they want, and I was so incensed about it I called out to the young men to leave them alone, and then followed in my car until I knew the girls had got inside their residence. My sons were embarrassed and bothered. Every time we just acquiese to the so called norms we are guilty then of helping that side belittle us into nothing.

    My current boss is a Trump follower, has little respect for anyone including me even though I am related to him by marriage. I need the job, so I tolerate his bullying to some degree but it has reached a point I have finally started saying he cannot talk to me that way. He often will not approach me in person but will wait to write texts. I am not letting him off the hook then either but reminding him that is not going to be tolerated.

    So a high mountain for all of us women, we may never get to the top .

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  4. Most—no, probably all men are not qualified to comment about how women should exist on earth let alone enact laws to control their entire existence. This is universally evident by the horrible situations women are forced to endure merely to live. Has there ever been a time when the words “Great job—boys!” was heard on a regular basis from women? Maybe at a sports event, but this ain’t no game anymore. Now everything seems to be going backwards. Surely it must stop—keeping calm isn’t working, guys—probably never did.

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