Working with Women
a thought inspired by mom
On Mother’s Day while I was walking on a trail with my mom where she began talking about how she loves the show “Subway Takes”. She brought up a popular take that she had watched about how “everyone should be forced to work some type of service job like bartending, waiting tables, cleaning, etc in their lifetime” to which me and my siblings all agreed because we had done that type of work at some point in our lives.
This had me thinking about what other conscribed work would be beneficial to society. This brought me to the notion that men should have jobs early in their lives/careers working on a team of 6-7 women as the only man, industry agnostic. I had the pleasure of doing this last year. Even as someone who grew up with/has lots of friends who are women, having a younger sister, a great mom, and great aunts felt that-that experience made me a better man.
Not to slander my own gender, but men are not as perceptive nor as intuitive as we think ourselves to be. A lot of us, including my former self, think we have more of life figured out than we actually do, particularly our relationships with women. Which is fucking moronic if you ask me to think that men understand women when a lot of us do not spend much time with them aside from family, dating, and walking in the street.
While fiddling with this thought I played devil’s advocate against myself and asked, “should the inverse be true of women working with lots of men?”. Two things… first is that women usually work mostly with men and have already been doing this throughout most of history. The second is that with the first being true, most women understand men pretty well, so it’s not even a double standard rather it is men getting a better education of what it is to be a woman and how they interact with one another and the world at large.
We live in a world rooted in misogyny, and misogyny is similar to racism in that it comes from a lack of understanding. Once you break down that wall of understanding between one another everything else feels smooth as butter. Conversations can just be conversations… and not fights or battles or wars. You can laugh a lot more freely at each other, with each other and at yourselves. You can exist in harmony rather than competing melodies. I know I am oversimplifying to a certain extent but roll with it.
The beauty of what I took out of this experience were many friendships, great memories, and a significantly better understanding of a woman’s daily life. Also, I love saying “what’s the tea, let’s KiKi” or just add in a “girly pop” at the end of a conversation literally whenever possible. I am not going to sit here and say I know women, but I have a better understanding than I did before and that’s what matters.
An example is recently I FaceTimed with one of my old work homies to Kiki about her getting engaged, the real housewives of RI, pop culture, and to just catch up (congrats again on that boulder if you’re reading girly pop!). Another would be I rip concerts with some of my former woman coworkers because we listen to a lot of the same artists and our concert vibes are immaculate. I would KiKi with just about anyone that I worked with at that place to just chat and that’s great. Breaking down these walls can lead to great friendships and good overall vibes in the world.
A lot of guys do not have one woman co-worker they are friends with or it’s there is one woman in the office they will talk to and that’s it. You cannot just work with one woman outside of your personal circle and think you’ll understand many when you leave your desk. If you’re a woman reading this, next time you are with a man ask them how many women coworkers they have had as friends in their lifetime.
I don’t want this to be perceived as some overly woke or red pill nonsense but rather some food for thought about how men as a whole do not understand woman well and there are ways that we can fix that. To circle back on my devil’s advocate quandary, the real way to fix this would be at the root meaning to implement something like this at the youth level in the classroom to create generations of better men.
A lot of our issues in today’s society begin at a lack of understanding one another, and then a lot have to do with power but that’s a different topic, for a different day.
Until we meet again, bonne chance mes amis!