An Emily Wright Original Rant on giving up the fight.

A Shared Secret of The Only Road.

Everyday I remind myself there is much to be grateful for, it is harder than others to convince myself.  

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 bounds 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 university, surprising them all and ready to set the world’s balls 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 these 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 sweat soak brow just to help hoist that flag.  

Twenty five years later and I have nothing.  It took me years to acknowledge being 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.’ No matter, no one was listening anyway.

While on maternity leave, a younger less educated white male became my manager. Not before getting the keys to the office had he ever set foot in my department. It took a lot for me to graciously accept his leadership but, I did, and reasoned that I could leverage myself when he inevitably came to me for my advice and opinion.  He did not. Instead he hired two new people, who happened to be young white males, had them learn the job then arranged for them to train 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 found myself poking my own arm to confirm that I was not invisible. 

These boys have overthrown me in the eyes of my manager.  Still, I seek comfort and sanity in the fact that those I work with appreciate and prefer my work ethic, dedication, skills, talents, and 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 about at the least opportune time for her career and her family. Although she would have decided to go for it on her own, this decision was no less encouraged by her boss, a childless doctor herself.  Now, with her fellowship, my friend is asked to be patient and less particular with her male colleagues.   She was told to accept mediocrity.  Nothing about her life, thus far was achieved by way of mediocrity. So why should she have to 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 my friend 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 and she had to compete with her replacement. 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. And every time they are disappointed they turn inward to improve and have greater self awareness.  Fuck that ! ! ! 

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 moxy. 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 down past the job post of the promotion I will never get. I will turn down the volume on stories that celebrate tiny achievements of the marginalized 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 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.