“Take her home, she’s been arguing”: Fragility, Masculinity, and the Silencing Power of Subvert Patr

[Cartoon by Kaye Blevgard for the New York Times piece on Mansplaining - click here to read it !]

I have always been extremely passionate about the issues and ideas I hold close to my heart. Since being a curious, intrigued, little girl, I have never felt that it wasn’t my place to voice my opinions or disagreeing views out loud regardless of the situation. Rather, I’ve always believed in the value and importance of being upfront, honest, and outspoken — especially when it comes to conversations and debates that have tremendous social impact outside the realm of a coffee meeting or a dinner table. This habit — the one in which speaking out when I feel something is wrong, simplified, or misleading is a natural intellectual instinct — has been one that has only intensified throughout my journey of discovery into the realms of social theory, political study, and cultural impact. Unfortunately for me, my willingness and intense approach to voice my opinions and knowledge on a range of subjects has not always been one that has been embraced with open hearts by society. Especially because I am a woman.

Throughout my life, I have repeatedly been looked at conspicuously or accused of aggressive verbal behaviour for the passionate, “no-BS-taking”, and upfront approach in which I approach debates or intense conversations. This thread of insults is nothing new for me, but most recently an incident occurred in which I realised the true impact and ideology hidden behind such comments. I’d like to share that incident with you today, and more importantly, I would like to explain why such occurrences — way too common and subtle in their approach — are making intelligent, passionate, and curious young women all over the world silence their voices and opinions.

I found myself recently debating with a man - an established art dealer who was sitting on a fine leather sofa amidst his exhibited personal collection in a lavish old painter’s home in South Kensington - on the subjective nature of taste, art, and experience. The conversation had begun when he had extravagantly exclaimed, “ I don’t know why people go to Glastonbury, all music today is shit”. His discourse, one that is relatively common in older generations stained by the atemporal effects of nostalgia (after all, had the film ‘Midnight in Paris’ not taught us that nostalgia for ‘better days’ is characteristic of every generation ever), annoyed me for its simplicity and lack of self-reflection. It also, in its naivety, ignored the range of incredible musicians currently struggling to make music and make themselves visible on a global mainstream platform monopolised by naked asses and trashy pop (shout out to The Internet, Anderson.Paak, Jazmine Sullivan, Tank and the Bangas and so so SO many more…). Since I disagreed with his logic and argument, I decided to voice my opinions and counter-arguments in hopes he’d understand not only that there’s great music today too but also that there’s many reasons a generation disenfranchised by overqualification and unemployment would want to escape to a mud field to listen to musicians that allowed them to live their fantasies and escape real world worries the time of a weekend.

And so, as was in my nature since I was a little loud and constantly speaking little girl, I disagreed and debated - albeit in the passionate manner that I do when something is close to my heart. I presented him with economic arguments - presenting the stupendous way inflation rates had made the average pop concert go from a fiver in the 1970s to over 100£ for your favourite musician today (and that is if you could wake up early enough to purchase the ticket before the rest of the cybersphere). In this present state, no wonder teenagers were dying to access a festival that gave them an entire year’s worth of concerts, acts, and activities in the UK for the price of two average concert tickets and a 3-person tent and inflatable mattress. Realising he was too stuck in the arrogant ideology that his generation was inevitably better and that after all “I didn’t need to worry about money when I was young so it didn’t matter” (with complete oblivion for the classism which titled his tongue with such words), I tackled another key argument. “But art is subjective after all, it depends of your class, culture, social position, perspective” I responded. After all, my sociology training had given me an extensive course in Bourdieu’s influential concept of cultural capital. “That is complete stupidity, art is either good or bad. It’s not subjective”. Clearly, we disagreed, but he could not back it up beyond the boundaries of his perspective beyond necessarily the correct experience.

The point of my story is not so much the content of the debate that was being held between me and this established, upper-class older man. Rather, it is the way the debate ended that is important to unpack here. As we each grew in our frustration and inability to convince the other that our perspective was the correct one, the debate ended up quieting down as one of the man’s friends entered the room and began casual conversation with him. Another man, present for the whole debacle that had just occurred, began offering all in the room some whisky. As he pointed the expensive bottle in my direction inviting me to a glass, I responded as I always do “no thank you, I don’t drink”. Almost in an instant, the older man whose views and intellectual capacity for reflexivity and debate I disagreed fundamentally with responded with pride and excitement; “Great. Just imagine if she did drink, she’d only be more aggressive.” He ended the interaction that day by urging my boyfriend to “take me home because I’d been arguing” - as if I was unable to behave and survive adequately when being so irrational and outspoken.

Perhaps it has been that too often in my life the word ‘aggressive’ had been used to describe the passionate, fast-paced, and debate-like manner in which I liked to hold conversations and disagreements, but the moment the word slipped out of his lips my heart just sank. You may wonder what is so hurtful about such a comment, why it was this that made the entire conversation an actual problematic situation for me. For those of you who may not understand, I ask you one simple question; would the same comment have been applicable had I been a man that disagreed thoroughly with his opinions? Or rather would the words ‘aggressive’ when applied to men only refer to those that are physically, verbally, and intensely attacking one as opposed to a man who is merely passionate about the conversation he is holding. In just a second, it had finally made sense to me what ‘Mansplaining’ really was all about — and I realised too that it had been part of my experience of womanhood ever since I was an impassioned, opinionated little girl.

Using terms like ‘aggressive’, ‘bitchy’, ‘emotional, ‘psychotic’ (and so forth…) to describe a woman who believes ardently in the words she is speaking is negating her ability to formulate rational, heartfelt, and intelligent arguments. The man who stood before me, questioning my ‘lady-like’ qualities and their validity in the face of such behaviour, was frustrated in the same manner I was that he could not get his argument across (which i’ll add again an argument that held little intellectual and reflective value and was more about having extravagant overarching statements to say to amuse those paid to gasp around him). He too had become increasingly passionate as our debated unfolded. He too increased the decibels of his voice the more he found himself unable to formulate an effective response. He too after all was being ‘aggressive’ if that is how one is to define the debate that was occurring. Yet, instead of accepting perhaps that we disagreed and that his statements could be thoroughly taken apart and dissected for what they were, statements, the man felt it was his prerogative to belittle my debating abilities to nothing more than a PMS-ing, irrational womanhood. If i was being irrational, than he was inevitably correct because one in an irrational mindset cannot possibly made valid, rational and empirical arguments. What was occurring beyond the surface of a banal conversation on Glastonbury’s muddy fields was that I had poked at his masculine (and agist) fragility and he was going to respond not with thought but with hurt.

When we tell young women that they should be quiet and lady-like, that they should keep their unfavourable opinions for themselves, that they should not challenge men and the status quo but rather alter their behaviour to adapt to it, that they are limited intellectually and socially by the child-bearing body parts that they were given and by the emotional nature of their behaviour, that they are being aggressive or crazy when they are being passionate, we are ultimately telling women that their opinions, their voices, their experiences, and their knowledge does not matter. We are telling young girls and women not to follow their particular passions and drive for success and achievement as it may harm the fragile feelings and sense of security of the men who’ve been granted the privileges for centuries. We are urging young girls and women to move away from the realms of knowledge, learning, and education and focus rather on the ‘feminine’ qualities that are more important for them to have. We are telling them their minds do not matter, only their bodies do. We are telling them they do not matter.

I am not sure the man with whom I argued will ever read these words one day. I am not even sure if he was to read them he would really understand them - blinded by his masculine and aged fragility that would keep him from admitting to the very valid feelings I experienced after our sour interaction. What I am sure of is that he has only given me the driven to continue my outspoken, passionate, and ‘aggressive’ behaviour whenever I hear something I believe is incorrect or deserves to be further discussed. I will continue to advocate for the ways patriarchal structures subliminally enter our everyday discourses and oppress a range of women in a range of ways to put aside their ambitions to appease insecure men. I will never stop believing that it is my curiosity, knowledge, intensity, and strength that makes me feminine and beautiful. And I will never stop “arguing” against what is wrong, even when my boyfriend takes me home.

[Cartoon by Will McPhail for the New Yorker - find out more here]

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