An Emily Wright Original Rant on giving up the fight.

A Shared Secret of The Only Road.

Every day, I remind myself there is much to be grateful for; or so they keep telling me.  

This is not a pity-party, nor am I just another Karen ignorant to her privilege. 

I am privileged. This I know.

I grew up as a middle-class white girl in the country. There were no limits to what I thought I could accomplish. There were obstacles, yes. Many of which I welcomed. Crashing through norms, busting down barriers, and biting into ignorance is in my blood. Maybe this is because I grew up fighting against and disguising my dyslexia and the uninspired future my family had imagined for me. Or maybe this is because I am a Scorpio, redheaded, Scott Viking with molten lava in her veins. Either way, I am not about to back down and fight for what is right.

I graduated from university, surprising them all, and ready to set the world on fire. As a humanities major, I raged and burned with the inequities of our past that paved our future. I was going to make a difference and level the playing field. I was going to bring rich white men to their knees and make them see how their narrow gaze and financially driven ways perpetuated and fueled the fires that burned in every disadvantaged, marginalized, and unprivileged community. There would be a day of reckoning, and I would be there with bloodied fingers, a dirty face, and a sweat soak brow just to help hoist that flag.

Twenty-five years later, and I have nothing. It took me years to understand that passionate is often confused with being emphatic, and no one is listening if you are shrill and dramatic. So, against everything I am about, I learned to be controlled, calm, and slow when I spoke. This I mastered, and still no one is listening. I am dismissed and overlooked at every turn. I have lost count of the number of occasions I had the right to say, ‘I told you so.’ It didn’t matter, no one was listening anyway.

While on maternity leave, a younger, less educated white male became my manager. Never before setting foot in my department until inheriting the keys. Accepting his leadership was a massive bitter pill without water. While choking, I tried to see the bright side and reasoned that I could leverage myself when he inevitably came to me for my advice and opinion. When he did not, a slow rot consumed me. Instead, he recruited two young white males who looked at him with wonder and admiration. Not long after learning the bare minimum of the job, they were assigned the training of new hires. With their six months of experience between them, they were responsible for molding even newer staff members. There were days when I actually poked my own arm to confirm that I was not invisible. Experience was worth less than obedience.

These boys had overthrown me in the eyes of my manager. Still, I sought comfort and sanity in the fact that those I worked with appreciated and preferred my work ethic, dedication, skills, talents, and years of experience over the unengaged, arrive late, leave early attitudes of the newbies.   

The smartest woman I know is a doctor of the highest degree. She is a wife and mother of two. A few years ago, the opportunity to earn her fellowship came at the least opportune time for her career and her family. The overachiever could not resist the challenge, yet still struggled with the promised sacrifice of this goal. This decision was forcefully encouraged upon her by her boss, a childless doctor herself. After months of studying and adding one more near impossible task to her already unmanageable schedule, she earned her fellowship.

Her credentials had yet to be hung on her wall when she was asked to be patient and less particular with her male colleagues. She was told to accept mediocrity. Nothing in her life thus far was achieved by way of mediocrity. So why must she lower her expectations to accommodate her lesser counterparts?

Another friend of mine waited to have her child later in life, thinking it would help secure her career. As young women, we were told by our role models, “We could have it all, just not all at the same time.” This we accepted. So, confident in her field, she left her dream job to have her daughter. She returned to work early because she caught wind that her job contract was up for renewal. She would have to compete with her replacement for her position. After cutting her maternity leave short by more than three months, the guy who was filling in for her landed the job anyway. She lost out: lost those three months with her baby girl to lose to the guy with no risk of going on maternity leave. 

I am angry. Everywhere I turn, there are women working their asses off to achieve things they already deserve. They work harder with fierce loyalty, expecting only respect and acknowledgement in return. And every time they are disappointed, they turn inward to improve and have greater self-awareness. Fuck that ! ! ! 

That is like taking a hit and donning more protective gear. Instead of calling foul and enforcing the rules. But let’s face it, those rules only apply to them, and they are changing them as we go.

On the day I realized my privilege and understood that guilt lacked value and purpose, I vowed to use my privilege to better the world, open some eyes, wake the ignorant.

Today, I see my privilege as window dressing. It is enough to exclude me from the marginalized but not enough to allow me to make a difference. 

I am not allowed to complain because I am white and middle-class. But as a woman who has been silenced, dismissed, objectified, and victimized, the rage burns on. I am nearing fifty. What is sadder than losing the fight is losing my will to fight. For decades I have been throwing punches with quick wit and undying moxie. It took a lot to kick me down, and when I did fall, I would have a good cry, question my code, and feel sorry for myself. While down, I would doubt my path, which inevitably ended with me getting up, brushing myself off, and bracing for another fight. 

I am afraid that someday soon I will just stay down. I will scroll past the job post for the promotion I will never get. I will turn down the volume on stories that celebrate tiny achievements of the marginalized and then gloss over the growing financial divide between classes. I will sit down when called upon to protest. I will look down when my daughter asks me about my greatest accomplishment. The obstacles were just too big, that when ignored and dismissed too many times for far too long, I finally learned to just turn off, shut up, and stay down.