Member-only story
International Women’s Day: Learning From My Allyship Misstep
A Story of Unintended Bias and the Power of Perspective
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Disclaimer: I despise the terms Black or White. When the term Black (or White) is used in this article, understand Afro-descendant (or European-descendant). I use them for convenience.
I am not Black. I am Chocolate. You are not White. You are Lemonade.
Chapter One: Witnessing the Problem
Now, let me share a recent story that happened to me on March 8th, 2024, the International Day for Gender Equality.
It is the end of the morning. I am scrolling mindlessly on our internal social platform. Everybody is celebrating the day with some posts and some hashtags. Then I thought to myself: the leader of our organization did not post anything.
As I am in charge of internal communication, I contacted him and suggested that he also celebrate the women in our organization via a post.
He said: Great idea, let’s do it. I said: Here is a post I drafted for you. I am in a meeting right now. He replied, put my executive assistant in the loop, and let’s work it out.
I was very excited. Then, I went back to endlessly scrolling our social platform. I stumbled upon two posts that highlighted everything wrong with mansplaining that day.
“Mansplaining (a blend word of man and the informal form splaining of the gerund explaining) is a pejorative term meaning “(for a man) to comment on or explain something, to a woman, in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner”
Mansplaining. (2024, February 17). In Wikipedia.
Let me explain.
The two posts were just text without any pictures. I mean, we are in 2024.
Who does not illustrate their post with a picture to grab people’s attention?
The first post is from a White French male senior leader, and it reads like this: Here is the percentage…
