It’s really tough to just get over the election. I’m finding that I am now questioning my value as a female contributor in the workplace. I think that the hateful and dismissive language from our soon-to-be POTUS will leave a Harry Potter lightening bolt on my forehead for a while (maybe forever).
From the other side, I can see why people just want us “sad women” to move on. And I can understand how women who have decided to unplug from all media are finally moving on – or at least one step beyond despair.
But my struggle is that I have been trying hard throughout my career to wear many faces of a male identity for years, when I write my business language or pitch my work or try to fit into the boys club. Sure, I feel like an imposter at times. Who doesn’t?
So imagine… with the election and the recent a-ha that Trump voters are women who don’t want to defy gravity, that these women who identify with the male identity more than our female identity are NOT my people.
Right. So why am I trying to wear any male identity, again, especially given the new definition?
And who are my work people? Feminists tone it way down at work out of necessity. Tribalism is dangerous if there is a perceived common enemy (it’s effective in advertising, branding and politics but not necessarily truthful or careful).
So I need to start over, and it’s unnerving. It’s depressing. I’m agitated. I know I’ll move beyond, but I am not yet through my vortex of despair, occasionally trying to create new threads of hope to grab and hold onto.
Meanwhile, big project launch on Thursday, so I need to get my head back in the game. (BTW when I say anything that references a male work culture, like get my head in the game, I question if I ever had my own language and identity. See? Slippery slope…)
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