There are 2 types of men I’ve encountered as I buzz around the country interviewing at schools.
1) Men who actively put me down. This almost nearly always happens after they elicit from me the information I already have a professional degree (everyone asks each other what they “do”). They start looking for something to criticize about me. The followup questions are always nearly about what other schools I’m applying to, have received inteview invites at (5/7 officially now!), what my GMAT score is. They find it unbelievable that I’m doing well. Technically I find it kind of unbelievable as well, though it’s interesting to note that not only does my father get extremely angry when I say that, but Mentos does too (“Come on, dude! Stop being self-deprecating! Who are those f*ckers to question you, anyway? Why are they so genius?”) Responses have ranged from “Well, for some reason there’s a big tendency for business schools to prefer lawyers, even though I think it’s kind of undeserved considering it’s not that hard to get into law school,” to “Well, your GMAT score is pretty high for someone like you, but for someone in my class, it would be pretty mediocre.” To which I always respond then it’s a good time to be me, isn’t it? It’s annoying and awful, but at the heart of it, I understand the insecurity that comes along with the application process and the feeling that another person’s success comes at the cost of your loss.
2) Men who elicit in me, an uncomfortable sense of guilt. And forgive me if this sounds arrogant, but it’s wrapped up in why I enjoy Mad Men so much. There’s a delicious pleasure I get out of watching the world of Don and Betty Draper and Sterling Cooper and Peggy and Joan-it’s the voyeurism of knowing that the assumptions and expectations, nay, entitlements, so many of the characters bring to the table with regard to societal order are on the brink of collapse. The Peggies of the world are coming, and they’re coming for the jobs that many individuals earned simply because certain people were barred from or discriminated againston the basis of gender and racial discrimination.
So when I’m in the waiting room and I get asked that question, “what do you do?” and I respond honestly, I feel very uncomfortable when men respond along the lines of “it’s nothing like being a lawyer” or “I haven’t exactly been working 7 years.” There’s an underlying tone of “well, 40 0r 50 years ago, I wouldn’t even have had to compete against someone like you.” And I know I shouldn’t be feeling guilty, but in a way I am because my parents and my family and my entire immigranty generation was part of the group that profited from that collapse of racial and gender segregation in the professional fields. I know that I’m a neurotic, high-strung, goal-oriented ethnic woman who has in some way, been part of a movement that snatched opportunity out of the hands of those “good guys”. Guys that didn’t necessarily distinguish themselves academically or professionally (trust me, those uber-qualified men I am competing with fang-and-claw as we circle each other with chicletty smiles and discuss the Wall Street Journal) but who inched into certain schools and certain jobs and managed to establish themselves somewhere at the margins of the upper echelons of wealth and power simply because they were male, fit a certain demographic and were needed as “hands”.
This morning I was reading the blog of a very young Republican Conservative woman who was railing against the “otherwise undistinguished career of Sonia Sotormayor,” even though she herself had only managed to graduate from an unaccredited, Christian, right-wing University that apparently does not admit anyone with a skin tone darker than what may be obtained at a tanning salon (which no offense people, I’m not super obsessed with tiering and ranking undergraduate schools, but I have a hard time not sniggering at that). And how Obama wants to turn the Supreme Court into a mockery, an experiment in multi-cultural diversity that will ultimately eliminate freedom.
While I strongly agree that 90% of hiring decisions should be made on the basis of merit, I wonder at how people are so comfortable in the assertion that a 9 member Supreme Court made up entirely of heterosexual white males is ever-so-much-more qualified to protect our liberties than a Court marked by diversity. Please, explain to me why our “liberties” are never at stake until a hint of melanin begins to cloud the air?
You know, the truth is that I found myself really offended by Sotormayor’s statement about how she has a deeper insight into “plight’ on account of being a Latina woman (or whatever) but the anger I felt over how she was castigated by right-wing Republicans is just an extension of how I feel I’m treated as I continually try to better my situation and self-actualise Masloweian-style. That no matter how hard I work, no matter how many times I point out that my scores are higher than yours, actually get your anti-affirmative action arguments out of my face, no matter what I accomplish simply because I am goal-oriented and obsessive about it…my career will be summed up by a certain element of society as “otherwise undistinguished” simply because I’m a woman and a minority.
