I wasn’t going to post this period because I returned from a trip to France Monday to a series of mishaps and emergencies at home — a gravely sick father-in-law, an elderly mother whose cochlear implant died, a crashed computer and finally a violently ill dog. All in a week of an unusually heavy client work load.
But I am trying to catch up on work this morning and I can’t get my head off of that Trump tape that was released last night — and, more importantly, my reaction to it. Possibly I am learning something about how the human reacts while under stress, but I find myself enraged by what I heard. So I’ve decided to write about it. Apologies for what will be an unpolished entry.
I spent the first 25 years of my career in newspapers, the last 15 in various editing capacities, including as the top editor running newsrooms and reporting to aggressive, male publishers in what was an aggressive, male-dominated field. For the record and for what it’s worth, I’m a soft-spoken person who can present as rather retiring.
In those days — I left journalism in 2003 — I was often the only woman in the room during meetings and the only woman in a leadership role in the newsroom. At a national conference for newspaper editors in the late 1990s, a reception for women editors was easily contained in the hotel’s smallest function room.
At my last newspaper, I was the first woman to serve as managing editor. I was in charge of all breaking news, which meant a lot of hard-bitten male reporters reported to me. They made a big deal of my first-woman status, something that, as I recall, I saw as a little silly. I tried to avoid assigning any importance to my gender.
My approach was informed largely by my understanding of Bowen theory because the leadership and editing phase of my newspaper career coincided with my involvement with theory. And I found extremely attractive the idea that I couldn’t change anyone else, but I could change the relationship with others by working on self.
So I used theory the best I could to help guide me through often difficult work situations. Regarding sexual harassment, I kept in mind what I understood Bowen to say: biologically, men and women aren’t really meant to work together. So sexual harassment can be expected from a certain percentage of men who are relatively low functioners. It’s instinctual, not personal. I used Bowen theory not to excuse sexual harassment, rather to try and put it into a workable context.
I always tried to keep it in mind in reporting to my publishers, leading newsrooms with male colleagues who were uncomfortable reporting to a woman and sometimes used sexual remarks and even in negotiating with union leaders whose opening salvo was to slap a pistol on the table (that was in Puerto Rico). When men would mistake me for the secretary and comment on my appearance when asking for the editor (who happened to be me), I’d try to play with it. Treat it as research into human behavior. Find it interesting, rather than something to complain about, file a grievance over or launch a lawsuit against.
But seeing that tape loosed a primordial rage in me. It’s really interesting. All those years of trying to step back and see it as part of a system.… It’s as though that all vanished and I’m in some raw state of anger over things that happened years ago. I recall rarely getting angry as events occurred back then. So why is it emerging so forcefully now?
There is something powerful about video and audio. Women rarely get to hear what Trump called “locker room talk” and hearing that unguarded conversation was shocking to me. It brought me right back to my newsrooms days, when I occasionally overheard something. But that doesn’t entirely explain my reaction.
I think that thinking theory is so unnatural for someone at my level of differentiation, that reverting back is always a possibility even after years of working and nominally succeeding in an area.
Oh my. I think I’ll take the polarization all the way and volunteer to work for Hillary.