I ran across a story recently about the women on President Obama’s staff, and how they had the usual problems of being interrupted by male staffers in meetings, or having someone else get credit for their ideas. (I’ll pause a moment to note that, particularly with the interrupting, men don’t always realize they’re doing it or that they’re doing it disproportionately to women.) The women came up with a strategy that was simple and beautifully effective.
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From the Washington Post:
So female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called “amplification”: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.
“We just started doing it, and made a purpose of doing it. It was an everyday thing,” said one former Obama aide who requested anonymity to speak frankly. Obama noticed, she and others said, and began calling more often on women and junior aides.
Business advice books for women are full of suggestions for how to individually handle situations like this. Stand up for yourself, be assertive — but not too assertive, do it in a ladylike way and smile, etc. But what made this intervention effective was the women working together. No one woman was left with a target on her back for not being a “team player.” Instead, they modeled what a team is supposed to do.
Conservatives love to sing the praises of bootstraps and the Individual Workaround. Underpaid as a burger flipper? Work your way up to become store manager. (But someone will still have to flip those burgers, or what’s the manager going to manage?) Harassed at work? Donald Trump says find another job. (Which may or may not be any better, and the harasser will just find more targets to harass.) Liberals, on the other hand, will work together to raise the pay and rein in the harassment for everyone’s benefit. Because no matter how many movies there are where one lone hero upends the system, it really does take a village.
Or as Malvina Reynolds put it, “When we sing together, we’ll be heard.”
On to Top Comments!
From MikeTheLiberal:
In NASA to Hold Media Call on Evidence of Surprising Activity on Europa, we see how the Senate would continue its political BS with this comment from uyanga.
From AKALib:
Comment is from G2geek, in my diary Nasa to hold media call on evidence of surprising activity on Europa.
"All of this is true for people who have a good grasp of practical reality and/or the ability to think things through.
But consider the perennial 20% of Americans who are completely out of touch, such as the dark side of Trump supporters (the ones who aren’t just “tribal Republicans” who always vote R, but buy into his whole platform and can be seen shouting racial epithets at his rallies). ..."
(Note from Tara: there’s lots more, go read the whole thing!)
Highlighted comments:
Highlighted by restondem, this comment by NorthBronxDem takes Trump’s whinging about the “rigged system” to its logical conclusion.
kareylou highlighted this diary-worthy comment by EDebbs on the differences between police training in the US and in other countries.
kay3295 highlighted this comment from Yoshimi in Bubbanomics’s diary about a frighteningly clueless Trump supporter.
Late addition from your humble (if antisocial) diarist:
Elwood Dowd finally explains, via a perfect pun, why the NY Times is called “the newspaper of record.”
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter: