Body Language

I was at a congressional hearing last week, and at a Degree Day meeting today.  What do these two events have in common?

Gendered body language.

Women tended to look down, slouch, hunch shoulders.  Women smiled, men did not.  Men were loud, women were not and tended to speak in a higher, lighter tone that almost asked people not to argue or criticize.  Men spread out, leaned back and took up space, one politician blatantly falling asleep in his seat.  Women tended to use qualifying statements or precede their presentations with how they didn't actually plan to be speaking and how they weren't qualified.  Men spoke longer than women.  There were no openly trans people there.

Issue 1:  Basic traditional sexism- man-identified people need to tone the assertive confidence down a little, women-identified need to bring it up to a happy medium.  We need to take extra care in how we nurture kids and treat people of different genders, making sure female-identified people get told and shown they are powerful.

Issue 2:  Dissociate our mental framework (expectations, interpretation, etc.) for body language and confidence from people's (assigned?) genders.  Create trans-inclusive space and make legal equality for trans people so more trans people have the resources to be participating in all these things.

Issue 3:  We need to learn how to respect the voices of people with all different personalities and comfort levels in any given situation.

I get frustrated when people quit after Issue 1; it just pisses off lots of man-identified people and makes a lot of women-identified people feel indignant (hey, I'm not weak or under-confident, and good people respect me!) and is generally unproductive.