I had a fucked up experience with male-supremacy tonight. After a cruelly long day with an uncooperative 4 year old, an infant who decided not to nap, and hours spent trying to convince my local resistance group that inclusivity needs to be talked about and at the core of all actions (a painful and looong conversation), I finally got to my ceramics class. I suck at self-care, I really do. But #45 is requiring it, so now I take ceramics once a week and it has been an awesome little sanctuary for me. Until tonight.
Within the first five minutes of class, approximately 30 seconds after my shoulders began to relax and I started to feel that joy that only comes from leaving the kids at home (I love them to death but...), my teacher yelled at me in front of the entire class. It is a big class. I honestly can’t remember the exact words because I was so shocked. What is crystal clear in my memory though is that he talked to me like an asshole would talk to their dog (I don’t talk to my dogs that disrespectfully). It was bad. Really bad. The usually chatty class was completely silent and there was this collective holding of breath. All eyes were on me. I couldn’t even speak, I was just so shocked. Up until tonight this teacher has seemed like the sweetest old white guy you can imagine. He is probably 80+ years old and a potter, he wears a ceramics apron and is adorable.
He told me I couldn’t leave the room, so I stood there as the class resumed with tears streaming down my face. I tried to calm down, I tried to get a grip, I tried to be as quiet and invisible as humanly possible. I tried to empathize with him, ‘this class is really important to him, ceramics is his passion, he thought I was somehow being disrespectful…’ I told myself that I was probably overreacting; my day was so shitty I was just being overly sensitive. After about fifteen minutes pass a woman, a total stranger who I had never even made eye contact with before, catches sight of me through my invisibility cloak. This kind woman comes over, hugs my back, and fiercely whispers in my ears, “the way he just talked to you was completely disrespectful and rude. He had no right to talk to you that way. You did nothing wrong.” That’s when I lost my shit and left the goddamn room, it was either that or have my belly sobs in front of the class.
While I was trying to regain my composure by basically holding my breath so my sobbing wouldn’t be heard a mile round, the teacher’s assistant and another woman came outside to offer their support. I was so pissed at myself for crying. I didn’t want to “give him my power.” I wasn’t even crying because of his words, somewhere in me I know intellectually that it was about him, not me; I was crying because my safe, self-care place had just been violated. Even though I knew intellectually this had very little to do with me, I was still going around in circles in my head thinking I had done something wrong, giving him excuses for what he did, and blaming myself for having feelings.
It turns out this is not the first time he’s snapped in this way. He has done it three times before, all with women. That’s when I finally stopped doubting my own lived reality and realized, ahhhhh…this is male-supremacy. That’s what this shit is.
Do you hear a voice in your head saying,
I don’t know Phoebe, you probably did something disrespectful and didn’t realize it…
or
Welllll, you did have a bad day, you probably were a little sensitive…
That is the voice of male-supremacy. That voice loves to blame women for just about everything. And yes, women most definitely have that voice too. We have all been ingesting this anti-woman BS since the day we were born, there’s no escaping it.
My inner voice of misogyny had made me doubt my very real, felt, experience, had made me feel like I was just being a sensitive female, had me feel shame, all while giving my teacher a pass for being a complete dick. My inner voice of misogyny forced me to stand in that classroom when what I needed to do for myself was to take some space. My inner voice of misogyny is still criticizing myself for crying as I write this.
That is fucked up.
I am a strong woman who has been a loud and proud feminist for decades now; and that voice is still there.
I was told by the TA to expect an apology next week; thankfully I had the wherewithal to tell the TA not tonight— Could.Not.Handle.That. The TA was so angry about the incident she had immediately gone to the teacher, who has been her friend for years, and told him how grossly inappropriate it was. The other woman who had been supportive told me she was going to call the school to complain (like I’m sayin, it was bad). I have a week to prepare my comeback to his apology. I’m not sure what I’m going to say yet but it is definitely going to start with, “that was completely unacceptable. You have no right to talk to me or any other woman like that, ever.” I also promise myself that I won’t leave room for him to excuse his way out of it. I'm not going to sooth his guilt and brush it off by replying, "it's ok." It was not O.K.
More importantly than my apology comeback, I need to work harder on getting this entrenched voice of male-supremacy out of my head because, well…FUCK THAT.
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