Dear Google Doodle

[gansje]

Saturday was International Women's Day, which Sheryl Sandberg on down acknowledged via Google Doodle, but being busy with work and family things, it took me a few days to write this. Bear with me here and please forgive lack of flow. I actually wrote a much longer post that included a bit about how we inhabit three bodies, but I removed it to spare

Comments

[flw]

Thank YOU!

[gansje]

I was wondering what you'd think about this post!

[flw]

The only thing I ever object to is the bizarre implicit suggestion that somehow conditions are better somewhere else in the world where they most certainly are not, or at some point in the past when they most certainly were not. Also, I have been looking for an excuse to punch someone in a wheelchair for a while now for my own reasons unrelated to this post. So, if you can find that guy...

What is that concept that has to do with lowered expectations?

[gansje]

I'm definitely not implying in any way (or at least I didn't intend to imply) that somehow conditions are better somewhere else in the world. They absolutely are not. Do you mind highlighting or copying in the part of my post that implies that? I want to fix it.

[flw]

Okay... this is one of those things...

You wrote post. I read it. I replied, "Thank YOU." You said, "I was wondering what you would think," which implied to me that you might have been expecting a negative response, but I gave a positive response. In that context, I replied with what I would have objected to, had it been present in your essay. Namely, sometimes people write these sorts of things and say, "If only I was in France, where everything is perfect, based on the fact that I went on vacation there when I was 19 for two weeks." Or worse, they write about how magical and wonderful it must be to wear a hijab or head scarf or body bag in some Islamic country and be free from being sexualized in public. The freedom from sexualization that only comes with the nationwide admission that all men are rapists and women are property than need to be hidden away from public life.

But you hinted at none of this. So I was pointing out what I would have objected to had it been present, but it was not.

[gansje]

WHEW! I thought I miscommunicated! Now I see I misinterpreted -- in reading your response, I see what you meant to say!

[flw]

I am not always clear in my communication. This I have discovered by going back to read things I wrote years ago and having no idea what I originally meant. The good news is that as I get older, it doesn't take years, just months or sometimes even just a few hours!