Anna Eckhardt is a licensed social worker and a psychotherapist in private practice. Personally that sounds like a dream job and I would like to be her friend/patient. But seeing as how she regularly provides beautifully intellectual and poignant commentary to BuzzFeed, she's probably pretty booked these days.
I read an article recently where Eckhardt talks about the difference in emotional sharing between men and women. It is no secret that even in 2016, men are conditioned to repress the messy stuff because someone, somewhere is still teaching their baby boy that he cant express what he feels for fear of being shoved in a locker and endlessly mocked as a "sissy". While that is not a riveting revelation, it hadn't occurred to me in contrast that we, as women, inherently feel compelled to lighten the mood and worst, lighten the load, putting our own needs and feelings behind those of others.
"Eckhardt offers the example of how we're taught to 'be gracious' above all. In our society, women are taught to be thankful for the space, time, and things 'allowed' or provided to them, she says, with the result being that when we need to demand these things for ourselves, it becomes very difficult."
Earlier this summer, I sat in the cafeteria of a local community college to interview eager youths looking for internships. It was disturbing, and not in the sense that these were soon-to-be high school freshmen with more impressive resumes than my own (one girl developed her own app at age 13 to exploit and monitor the development of cliques in her school district). I was really concerned with the difference in dynamic between the girls and boys. I watched these 14 year old boys nonchalantly interview without an ounce of preparation, but oozing with entitlement. However, I watched girl after girl nervously fidgeting with clothes and hair, practicing elevator pitches, and putting more effort into thanking me and other groups for their time and the opportunity than their male counterparts.
It would be entirely unfair to generalize each gender-- boys and girls as independent but all-encompassing wholes. I try very hard to never do that to any human being. The amount of times people have made assumptions, harsh and unfounded judgments about me are innumerable, and I desperately try to avoid pigeonholing others in the same way. But there was a pattern in that cafeteria. There was a theme, an obvious division that as liberal as I tried to be in this qualitative research, I could not deny.
I wondered if these boys were being taught to be lions, and these girls, gracious lambs, or was it inherent?
Humans are a lot of things inherently, chief among them: self-serving. We come out of the womb that way. I believe that. I believe that on some level we are all looking out for ourselves at first, reliant on those around us to provide without question all that is needed for survival. That's just our nature. But then nurturing happens. Some find this deep sense of guilt for having relied so much, that we exceed others with our independence. Some keep on the tit- suckling and always expecting our needs to be met by those dubbed to serve. And there are others who feel, by their own accord, indebted to those providers; who develop what they call a "servant's heart", slowly but surely always bleeding for a cause, to do their part/make their contribution/give unto others freely.
All of these are fine. I pass no judgment. Every part has a place in our world; a need is satisfied in all situations. But I would be a fool to not realize another pattern. That historically, it is the men who are the fiercely independent, the takers, the crushers of concrete jungles they savagely run through. And historically, women are the gracious, conscientious lambs with servant's hearts. Please know that there are men that are lambs, and women that are lions. There are also humans, men and women alike that are somewhere in the middle or nowhere near those categories at all.
But I couldn't help but notice that day that the proud den leaders were just 14 year old boys, and there was a quiet desperate need to please, to thank, or hone in on the needs of others above their own from these girls.
What I have concluded is not a flag flying high in the name of creating lionesses among our female youth or breaching the enemy lines of male insensitivity. I have concluded that these divisions, these placeholders for lions and lambs, men and women, remain, standing tall, not wavered by progress.
I doubt I will be the driving force in this change, especially not through this blog that most people forgot exists. Although, I do make J tell me why he feels the way he does and that's a super cool transformation to witness. What worries me for these girls, for women, for myself is that while we are proud lambs with bleeding servant's hearts, at what point do we become wholly self sacrificing? At what point do we find ourselves saying yes to everything and no to no one? At what point do we give so much to a person, a service organization, or the worst, our job, and realize that along the line we have given everything? I ask again-- at what point does my servant's heart, the extent of my giving, become an all-you-can-eat buffet?
I brought in gender to this, because I see a pattern in myself, in my world. I see a concerning division among women, where neither side has a solution. I see women so desperate to prove that they are just as worthy, just as smart, and capable and powerful as a man, that they've left their servant's heart far behind. They are then not invested in equalizing women, but making themselves equal with a man. And that doesn't help in the long run, as most self-serving mindsets don't. And then this is the opposite, like me. Where I give, and worry that I haven't given enough so then I give more. This opposite group has a mantra and it reads: "whatever works best for you works for me". We answer the phones politely, and never let the assholes see us cry. We are embarrassed for giving so much, and apologetic for not giving enough. We give because we are called to give, not because we are crazy; we give because we hope if we give enough, someone else will want to give too.
Gender roles aside, there's one problem bigger than the rest--- that somewhere along the line someone decided that whatever society labels you as-- male, female, lion, lamb-- you're stuck with it. I love when J is strong and decisive and independent, but my favorite moments are when he looks at me, quietly, and sheepishly talks to me-- it could be anything, too, as long as I felt that in that moment he was being vulnerable with me. (He sweetly whispered "mcdoubles?" the other day and I would've married him on the spot had we not been nursing the mother of all Pat O'Brien hangovers) Because what I have found most lacking in human nature is vulnerability. We are either labeled as "too vulnerable" (also see: moody, unhappy, crazy, Taylor Swift) or "impenetrable" (also see: intimidating, cold hearted bitch, unfeeling, leaders of literally anything).
We have spent so much time clinging to or speeding away from cliches that we have, as a society, stopped allowing people to change without notice, to adapt without approval, to ebb and flow without apology. When we think of servant hearts as lambs and lambs as less than lions and all of the above are restricted to their own category of human, we lose.
So boys remain lions, and women remain lambs, with a few breaking the mold, but never helping the cause. I think we can do better than this. I hope for our sake we start trying.
All of these are fine. I pass no judgment. Every part has a place in our world; a need is satisfied in all situations. But I would be a fool to not realize another pattern. That historically, it is the men who are the fiercely independent, the takers, the crushers of concrete jungles they savagely run through. And historically, women are the gracious, conscientious lambs with servant's hearts. Please know that there are men that are lambs, and women that are lions. There are also humans, men and women alike that are somewhere in the middle or nowhere near those categories at all.
But I couldn't help but notice that day that the proud den leaders were just 14 year old boys, and there was a quiet desperate need to please, to thank, or hone in on the needs of others above their own from these girls.
What I have concluded is not a flag flying high in the name of creating lionesses among our female youth or breaching the enemy lines of male insensitivity. I have concluded that these divisions, these placeholders for lions and lambs, men and women, remain, standing tall, not wavered by progress.
I doubt I will be the driving force in this change, especially not through this blog that most people forgot exists. Although, I do make J tell me why he feels the way he does and that's a super cool transformation to witness. What worries me for these girls, for women, for myself is that while we are proud lambs with bleeding servant's hearts, at what point do we become wholly self sacrificing? At what point do we find ourselves saying yes to everything and no to no one? At what point do we give so much to a person, a service organization, or the worst, our job, and realize that along the line we have given everything? I ask again-- at what point does my servant's heart, the extent of my giving, become an all-you-can-eat buffet?
I brought in gender to this, because I see a pattern in myself, in my world. I see a concerning division among women, where neither side has a solution. I see women so desperate to prove that they are just as worthy, just as smart, and capable and powerful as a man, that they've left their servant's heart far behind. They are then not invested in equalizing women, but making themselves equal with a man. And that doesn't help in the long run, as most self-serving mindsets don't. And then this is the opposite, like me. Where I give, and worry that I haven't given enough so then I give more. This opposite group has a mantra and it reads: "whatever works best for you works for me". We answer the phones politely, and never let the assholes see us cry. We are embarrassed for giving so much, and apologetic for not giving enough. We give because we are called to give, not because we are crazy; we give because we hope if we give enough, someone else will want to give too.
Gender roles aside, there's one problem bigger than the rest--- that somewhere along the line someone decided that whatever society labels you as-- male, female, lion, lamb-- you're stuck with it. I love when J is strong and decisive and independent, but my favorite moments are when he looks at me, quietly, and sheepishly talks to me-- it could be anything, too, as long as I felt that in that moment he was being vulnerable with me. (He sweetly whispered "mcdoubles?" the other day and I would've married him on the spot had we not been nursing the mother of all Pat O'Brien hangovers) Because what I have found most lacking in human nature is vulnerability. We are either labeled as "too vulnerable" (also see: moody, unhappy, crazy, Taylor Swift) or "impenetrable" (also see: intimidating, cold hearted bitch, unfeeling, leaders of literally anything).
We have spent so much time clinging to or speeding away from cliches that we have, as a society, stopped allowing people to change without notice, to adapt without approval, to ebb and flow without apology. When we think of servant hearts as lambs and lambs as less than lions and all of the above are restricted to their own category of human, we lose.
So boys remain lions, and women remain lambs, with a few breaking the mold, but never helping the cause. I think we can do better than this. I hope for our sake we start trying.
