When you’re “too emotional” to be a leader and the President makes fun of widows at rallies
2012: “this has to end somehow”
I have been called for jury duty six times in my life and served through three trials. My experience as a juror is probably the neatest allegory possible for my leadership journey: during my first trial, the bailiff explained that we would elect a foreman, who would oversee our process and who would be the official liaison between the judge and the jury. We were left to ourselves for this process, and the man next to me immediately began explaining that he was an MD/PhD who worked at the local hospital and that he would be happy to serve as the foreman. Everybody around the table nodded, and we turned his name in on a slip to the judge.
Fast forward three weeks: the trial is contentious and going longer than the judge had estimated during the voir dire process (in addition to selecting out on the basis of bias, they also select out for logistical factors which means they give you a rough overview of how long they expect the case to take before locking in the final jury). We’re also about to roll into a holiday weekend. The judge is adamant that we reach a unanimous verdict, which seems basically impossible: I am leading a small but vocal minority that insists that we do not have sufficient evidence to convict, and the foreman is leading the majority of the jurors who insist that we do, and neither one of us shows any signs of caving.
And then the bailiff rolls in and says that we’re going to have to keep showing up until we turn in a verdict, and if that means we cut our holiday weekend short then so be it, and in literally an instant, everything changes.
The foreman takes this moment to remind us that he is an MD/PhD and a surgeon with a long caseload that he had to put on hold for this, and that he does not get to spend very much time with his family anyway because he’s an MD/PhD and a surgeon with a long caseload that he had to put on hold for this (I wish I could go back in time and demand “wait are you a doctor?” which is absolutely what I would do now but oh well) — and he explains that he’s happy to switch his vote because “this has to end somehow”.
All of the people who’ve, right up until this moment, been intensely Team Convict, look at this MD/PhD who is a surgeon with a long caseload and all of a sudden their votes change too.
“You can’t do that,” I insist, but it doesn’t matter. Not five minutes later, we’ve written down a “not guilty” verdict and the foreman turns it into the bailiff and we all shuffle back into the two rows of jury seats and watch the judge read it, and on the way out the foreman says to me: “I don’t know what you’re so upset about. You got your way.”
Here are my takeaways from this anecdote, during which I was 23 years old:
- Some people care really deeply about justice until it is inconvenient to serve it; some people feel really deeply convicted about their beliefs until it is inconvenient to stand by them.
- Some people never really care deeply about justice at all. They care about upholding processes and institutions but it doesn’t matter whether the young man in the chair is served well by their efforts. Their opinions are extremely strong and all-encompassing, drowning out everyone else in the room, until all of a sudden they insist on the ability to opt out completely; everything is a game that you are allowed to go all in on and then quit at will.
- Some people feel really deeply entitled to leadership based on experiences or credentials which might or might not have any bearing on the situation at hand. Some other people gravitate really intensely toward this type of person.
- Sometimes all of this occurs together.
1995: “a little rocky so far”
I am in first grade and life has been a little rocky so far. My parents have gotten divorced and I’ve switched schools and I’m too loud and too weird and I read too much and I never stop telling people about what I’m reading and I don’t have very many friends. The only thing I do have is that I know I’m smart and I know I want to lead.
“I want to be the President,” I explain extremely matter-of-factly to my first-grade teacher, who both of my parents even today will maintain disliked me. I am six so I don’t understand that, and I give her this for-some-reason-vulnerable aspiration anyway.
(To be honest, I don’t understand it at 30, either, but here we all are.)
“You’re probably not going to be the President,” she explains back, in the exact same matter-of-fact tone. At recess two different boys come up to me and explain that women aren’t President.
At six, none of this hurts yet — it just doesn’t make sense. Even at six, I don’t like it when things don’t make sense.
2019: still rocky
At thirty, nothing’s changed, other than now it all hurts a little bit. I still don’t like when things don’t make sense. Maybe more importantly, I’m still smart, and I still want to lead. And yet, my entire life, I’ve been surrounded by this narrative that leadership is a narrow box and most of us don’t fit into it, especially if we fall outside the white-straight-cis-man framework (but also even then: god forbid your masculinity be non-aggressive enough to label you a “beta male”).
I have learned to be careful with who gets to hear my aspirations. As a rule I usually don’t tell people how long I nurtured an aspiration to be the President — and when I do I’m quick to explain that it’s not something I want anymore, that I know how absurd it sounds, I promise. I definitely don’t share the other things I want — I think I could be a University president, I think I could get a PhD, I think I could write a book — because aspirations that are still real are still scary, and when I say them out loud I hear the same things I heard in 1995 when I had the nerve to want something bigger than I should be allowed. You can’t for a million reasons, not the least of which is who you are. You can get all the degrees and all the middle-management positions you want, but you’ll still be a girl, with all of the shrillness and fragility and call/obligation toward motherhood and big messy emotions and periods and whatever else comes along with womanhood that automatically disqualifies you from meaningful leadership that entails.
These messages have followed me my whole life. I’ve heard them on the playground, seen them on TV, read them in the paper, been given them by family members and teachers and mentors and supervisors and peers. I’ve heard them disparagingly (it’s funny you’d think you could ever lead people) and lovingly (maybe you should adjust your expectations — be a little more realistic). They all come down to the same thing: who you are is too far away from what we understand leadership to be.
What’s kinda bullshit is I know they aren’t true. What’s really bullshit is it doesn’t matter; what matters is whether other people know they aren’t true.
Here’s the point. The point is, last night Donald Trump got onstage at a rally in Michigan and made some jokes about whether John Dingell, the longest-serving Congressional representative ever, not one year dead, was looking down at him from heaven or up at him from hell, and then went in on Debbie Dingell. This same man has infamously mocked a disabled reporter, bragged about the latitude with which you can assault women as a star, and completely lost his shit on Twitter on a more-than-daily basis. And it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I’m writing this the day after an impeachment vote and I can tell you right now: none of this matters.
The John & Debbie Dingell story from last night stuck in my craw, though, and I couldn’t figure out why. In the face of so many other Trumpian policy-based atrocities (rolling back trans protections, family separation policies that continue to amplify trauma, a complete disregard for climate protections, et fucking cetera until the end of time), which surely carry far greater systemic impact than a visibly-petty insult to a beloved wealthy white woman… why did this particular slight bother me so much?
And then I remembered the jury. I remembered all the times I’ve been told that my leadership is inadequate because of who I am and been made to feel silly or like I should be embarrassed for wanting to lead. I remembered all the times, in turn, that I’ve stayed quiet, assumed I’m unqualified, assumed that someone else should lead even though there is a small voice in me that nearly always screams why not me? I’ve sort of accepted this small voice as an integral piece of my experience moving through the world and let the whole thing scab over, but Trump’s existence has ripped that poorly-healed wound back open, because what the fuck, I thought my womanhood disqualified me from meaningful leadership because of how ~*~emotional~*~ I am?? I thought temperament was so extremely important to leadership that we couldn’t possibly install anyone who fell short of a paragon of poise and grace to such a high office??
Turns out it was never about that. If Donald Trump never gives me anything else in our respective lives, he’s at least given me that: every single member of the very long list of people who’ve told me, implicitly or explicitly, that I cannot lead has been lying to me about why.
It might be true that when people see me, they don’t see a leader — but it’s not true, and I can point to a million clickable links that back me up on this, that this perception has anything to do with who I am or who I’m not. It doesn’t have anything to do with me being shrill or emotional. Because what the Donald Trumps and Brett Kavanaughs of the world have taught me over the last three years is that you can bang your fist on podiums or scream into microphones all day long and still (somehow, I’d argue unjustly) not sink below the temperament-related standards of what it takes to lead.
And if that’s true — if temperament was never a valid reason to dismiss a person in the first place — then I guess I’m back in the game.
In the interest of transparency: I’ve actually never left the game — or at least, I’ve been back in it for some time. I mentioned at the beginning that my jury experience is an allegory. What I meant was: I was so disgusted by my first experience as a juror that I tasked myself with making every single time following different. I’ve been the foreman on every jury I’ve been on, since that first one. Experience would indicate that I’ll probably get called again; I’ll volunteer every single time, because it matters to me that good people working hard are led well, and I know I can do that. I’m not saying I have to lead. I’m just saying that I’m comfortable saying out loud that I can, and insisting that I can (not that I must, but that I could) when challenged.
Which is all to say: it’s not like Donald Trump wondering out loud at a rally during Debbie Dingell’s first holiday season as a widow whether John Dingell was looking up at him from hell has ignited any great realization in me that hey, the bar is so low that any living person can apparently become the POTUS so maybe I could chill out about my reservations about whether it’s okay to say out loud that I think I’d make a good CEO. It’s more like: I wish I’d realized earlier that one very specific way that Donald Trump enrages me is that for thirty years I’ve been getting written off as a leader because women “fly off at the handle” or some bullshit, and here this guy comes in literally ceaselessly doing so, and seemingly unable to do anything but. He’s a reminder that I spent decades hiding myself because of criticisms that were never real. He’s a reminder that I spent decades thinking I was wrong and that my dreams were stupid and trying to deny that I wanted to lead and trying so desperately to want other things instead that I nearly made myself sick over it.
He’s a reminder that being afraid of my own ambition serves no one (because so many people aren’t). He’s a reminder that a knee-jerk “I don’t think that’s for you” is often about the person telling me so, much more than it has anything to do with me. He’s a reminder that I want to find every child in the world confessing that they want to be President and tell them: “that’s so great. What sorts of things do you want to do? What kind of world do you want to help make? What beautiful things exist in you that you want to put into the world?”
I knew those answers when I was six. I know them now, at thirty, and every year, they get clearer and bigger and more ambitious. I said last night after reading about that rally that the only fitting consequence I could imagine for the mean-spirited way that Donald Trump talks about people would be a self-awareness great enough to let him see how small it makes him look. I would like to amend that and add myself as a further fitting consequence: I would want him, too, to understand the way that his meanness galvanizes people like me to cling more deeply than ever to their ambition.
I don’t know how to end this other than to broaden that into a collective FYI for anyone who’s ever told me, directly or indirectly, that people like me don’t lead: I don’t care. I am doing it anyway. I will keep doing it anyway. Anyone can lead (clearly), and there is something small and stubborn and unkillable in me that has stayed alive through all these decades and whispered, the entire time: why not me?
Of all the ways I am disgusted by Trump, I often forget that the part of me that hates him the most is that small stubborn unkillable voice.
