Not Being Heard
Thank you for sticking with the first part of this post yesterday. Did I need that much space to explain the difference between hearing and Hearing? Probably not. If you’ve experience not being Heard, you get it. I guess I wasn’t writing that for people who get it. I was writing it to explain it to people who don’t.
Yesterday, I gave you the only time in the book (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing) that I believed the narrator was female. She was letting you know she had a story and she wanted to be understood. THAT is something I think we all think about — male or female — but if you are accustomed to being Heard, you may not be compelled to use your precious time on earth working to get your story out there. In the same way that if you normally have food aplenty, you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how you’re going to get food. You trust that food will be there when you need it, simply because it always is. If you are accustomed to being Heard, you’ll get your words out there when you have something you really need to say. You don’t need to tell people to “listen up” because you trust that they’re already listening.
Anyway, I wanted to highlight the flip side, where I didn’t believe she was female and how this book helped get me through the Kavanaugh vote by understanding the nomination conversation.
A few pages later, the narrator states that she didn’t see the point of her white, male friend’s podcast and now does:
They would stream themselves playing video games to tiny audiences, and they had a podcast about the best TV death scenes that they also filmed and uploaded to YouTube. To me it just seemed like that incurable ailment so many well-off dudes have, believing despite mountains of evidence that what the world truly needs is another white-guy comedy podcast. This sounds harsh, but that’s what it seemed like to me back then. Now, of course, I know how easy it is to feel like you don’t matter if no one’s watching (p. 7 – 8).
She is referring to something a lot of writers/artists/videographers (et al) feel: Attention is limited and when you’re not getting it, it sucks. You write a blog post, write a book, record a song, film a movie, and you want people to consume your creation. You don’t even need them to love it; you just want it to be given someone’s time. No one wants their effort ignored.
But here’s the thing: women already know how it feels not to matter. We don’t have an epiphany; we know this based on experience.
Let’s say I enter a very diverse room and ask people to write down all the times they are shown through other people’s actions that their life/thoughts/opinions matter. Not on an individual, moment-to-moment basis, but overall as they move through society. Do they think they benefit from existing laws? Do they see what matters to them reflected in the world around them? Is it easy enough to get products they need in order to be themselves? Do they see advertisements that are aimed at them, making it clear the product creators want them to know that they matter as a customer?
How long would your list be? What if you were an African-American woman? An immigrant? A gay, Latino man? Someone wealthy? Someone uneducated? Someone Jewish? Someone healthy?
A woman?
A man?
I think our lists would be very different lengths. There are places where I have privilege, and I know I matter. But I’m a woman. I KNOW I don’t matter to society as much as a man — and that’s not America; that’s the world. I am my womb. A man is his brain and his muscles, and I am a single organ located in my pelvis.
We get our rights and protections slowly, and once we have them, we still have people fighting to take them away. We had to fight for the right to vote. In fact, the 19th amendment wasn’t ratified here until 1920. That upcoming 2020 election will be the 100 year anniversary of women having the right to vote. We are still fighting for abortion rights, sexual assault laws, equal representation in office or the board room.
If you want to know whether or not we matter, all you have to do is look at the Kavanaugh conversation and the people who said his life shouldn’t be ruined just because he sexually assaulted someone in his youth. HIS life ruined? What about HER life, the woman he chose to harm? Assault isn’t an accident.
We get it. Women don’t matter.
So the idea that Green’s narrator would ONLY understand how good it feels to be heard and how awful it feels to be ignored due to the fickleness of attention on social media doesn’t ring true. That feeling of not mattering is something little girls pick up and carry with them their whole life, even if it’s just background noise in their brain as they push forward.
But moreover, I didn’t believe that a woman — even a woman who individually adores her male friend — would take precious moments of telling her story to point out how she understands now that white boys need attention, too. Unless she’s part of the Patriarchy. Or written by a white male.
So what is your list? Do you feel heard? Do you get the sense that you matter?
On a side note, it feels incredibly unfair to use Hank Green’s book to make this point; it’s an enjoyable story and I hate the idea that anyone may not read it because I’m pointing out the problems in the narration. So, please, read it and come to your own opinion because… it has robots and robots are awesome. But really, this embodies why we need diverse books.
8 comments
I think I accepted long ago that I will not be heard and my opinions don’t matter. I’m the youngest of 4 girls, so even if I wasn’t already getting the message from society, my family certainly gave it out in spades. I will never forget the time when my mother, sister, BIL, and I were on a train in Italy, and it was really hot. My mom was complaining and I said “I think the air conditioning is broken.” She kept wondering why it was so hot. My sister said “I’m pretty sure the air conditioning is broken.”. My mom turns to my BIL, and says, “Tim, why do you think it’s so hot?”. He said “The air conditioning seems to be broken.”. She said “Oh – I hope they fix it soon!” My sister and I just rolled our eyes at each other. I guess I can thank that kind of training for giving me the ability to know that no one is listening, and to not wait for someone to do soon before I get on with my life. People eventually work their way around to my point of view in many cases anyway.
To do *so
Bleah. This makes me so sad, raising two young girls. I don’t want them to feel this way. Interestingly, the other day we were at the beach (yes we’re lucky and it’s warm this week). My girls were playing in a certain area. Then a group of 3-4 boys showed up with boogie boards and played in the same area of the water. There was a range but in general they were older/bigger. I was on heightened alert, ready to tell my girls to stand their ground/tell the boys off if they started to elbow my girls out of the way. Fortunately nothing like that happened and they coexisted peacefully on that strip of beach. But I was ready.
I am listened to and heard a LOT because I have a PhD in a scary discipline and I live in the regimented South where professors are on pedestals, and I’m pretty authoritative (can break out a lecture at the drop of a hat) etc…
But yeah, I fricking have to prove my credentials all the time. I always notice when I have to say, “Yes, at [name of phd institution you have heard of], where I did my PhD in ECONOMICS… ” or within my field when I name drop famous people by their first names instead of their last. I get listened to, but I often have to put people in their place first. (Not the top people because they already know who I am… the people who are cowed when I mention my credentials or casually name-drop white dudes they admire.) My DH never has to do this.
Women are never given the benefit of the doubt. They have to prove they’re part of the aristocracy to show that they’re at least equivalent to mediocre white dudes.
I think John Green really gets this stuff, but Hank is still learning a lot. (#nerdfighter #dearhankandjohn) I will probably enjoy Hank’s book far more than any of John’s though… And maybe I will pretend he’s writing for an alternate universe where women *can* have this luxury. One of my favorite YA books is Boy Meets Boy which exists in a world in which same sex relationships are no big deal… and that’s a nice dream to have.
For me being heard is about finding people I can have meaningful dialogue with. It’s a two way thing. Who those people are has varied throughout my life. I don’t make big generalizations about gender or politics or whatever. I don’t see those applying to me most of the time. I would say the people who hear me are the people whom value their individuality above all. I do try to enable this by focusing on what I consider the best and unique parts of people vs whatever they are saying or doing because it’s what everybody else is saying and doing at the moment. (We all do some of that, of course.)
One of the things I do feel “as a woman” (perhaps as a woman of certain age, with children, social standing, whatever, all that may apply) is part of a very, very heavily propagandized demographic. I would never say I don’t matter, but more that certain aspects of me matter. EG women’s emotions. Those are high demand these days. Strong, negative emotions that bypass the rational mind and trigger fight/flight instinct are in high demand. Why? You tell me. I believe that that the end goal is to convince people to believe and do many very stupid things. Also, coming back to the first part, it’s the opposite of the kind of conversation where I do feel heard, as you define it. So I’m spending a great deal of time these days sorting it out. It’s all quite fascinating.
So many interesting thoughts here, and I understand better what you were saying in the first post.
I think I saw Hank Green on 60 Minutes the other day. Is this the same one as John Green’s brother?
So I’m going to be the odd one, but I don’t see the paragraph you presented as evidence that the narrator isn’t a “she.” Though I agree that men tend to be listened to more than women, I also have witnessed it not being universal (my brother and I have experienced this with my mother, where my younger sister is the one she listens to). I think it’s entirely possible to find kinship with an observation based on a shared experience.
My last job, it was women who chose not to renew my contract in a way that was highly unethical, promoting a young man because he wasn’t parenting (is: could work until 4 am and was liked because he was an easy grader). My requests for improving and getting feedback where completely unheard, despite the lectures about them being “pro-woman.” Granted there were plenty of men with the same mindset, but it wasn’t gender that caused the division, but privilege.
As far as being heard, I firmly don’t believe that’s the case outside of Grey and my small circle of friends. Occassionally I find that my questions and thoughts cause others to pause and reassess, but generally I’m ignored or written off as difficult. But it doesn’t stop me from screaming into the wind.
I’m a middle-aged, introverted, unemployed/retired, childless woman. No, I don’t feel heard, and it’s hard sometimes to feel like I matter, outside of my family. 🙁