If you follow my Instagram @misohappy_blog you may have seen that I went to Pregnant Then Screwed Live last weekend. It is an annual conference bringing together like minded people who have become parents and are now looking for ways they can achieve their personal goals. Whether that is returning to work, being a stay at home parent or starting their own business, everyone there had a story. The nature of the event meant that the majority of people there were women. It was an eye-opening, awe-inspiring day and I left as a ball of emotion feeling a lot less alone in the way I feel about being torn between my children and my career, both of which I love.
So many women spoke that day. I heard about women who worked flexibly, who had nannies so they could work full time, who were stay at home mums, who had started a business or had ambitions to start one. There were women who wrote blogs, who were activists and many like me who had taken the plunge and showed up alone ready to make friends. I learned about being a confident public speaker, tips on starting a business, the different types of flexible working there are out there and so much more. It truly was a great experience.
There was however, one thing that really pissed me off and now I wish I had said something. There was a man in the crowd who just would not stop talking. At every opportunity to raise a hand and ask a question he would raise his hand and because he was one of the few men there he was always called upon, I guess in the spirit of inclusivity. Yes cis-het-white fellas you benefit from positive discrimination too. My problem though was that he never really asked the panel a question. He was there to raise awareness for his Crowd Justice campaign to pay his partner’s legal fees to take her employer to tribunal. His partner wasn’t even there. He had come into a space where mainly women and non-binary people had created a platform to have a voice and he just kept talking over us. He used the phrase “coloured people” (come on everyone should know by now it’s not ok to say that!). He called his partner’s employers “bastards” but couldn’t say who they were (I don’t know about you but I can’t abide abstract name calling). He even raised his hand during a Q&A session and instead of asking a question to the panel of amazing women who were successfully running their own businesses, he started giving us all his own advice on how we can network better and make better connections. No he doesn’t run his own business. It was the most direct and arrogant example of mansplaining I think I’ve ever seen.
At that point I got up, walked out and went to another seminar. Now I really wish I hadn’t done that. In fact during the Campaigning Panel Q&A which was all about how we can all be better allies to groups that are less privileged than ourselves by being vocal and campaigning on their behalf, he stood up again and plugged his Crowd Justice without asking a question, and instead of silently fuming about it I wish I had stood up and called him out. What I wanted to do at the time but didn’t have the courage was march over, tell him to stop talking and take the microphone out of his hands. I’d have then asked the panel a real question: “how do we explain to people, particularly ones who don’t mean any harm, that actually their actions are not making them a good ally. That actually by not talking at all you could be a better ally”.
If I felt I couldn’t do that in that space which had been created to give people like me a voice, what chance do I have out in the real world? So I finally have a New Year’s resolution:
SPEAK MORE!
Anyone who knows me might scoff incredulously but it’s true. Whilst I might witter away at 19 to the dozen in various situations, too many times I have sat silently when I should have been talking. And vice versa to be fair!
