When did you become a Mormon feminist?
May. 7th, 2011 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thetatianaI'm participating in the WAVE blog carnival to answer this question. It may be too late, since it looks like it was posted back in January, but I want to show my support, however belated. So I'll post here the answer I gave on By Common Consent when Aaron B asked us that same question.
I don’t remember when I became a feminist. I just always have been one ever since I remember. The games other girls in my neighborhood played were limited to “house” and “dolls”, both of which bored me. So I played with guys instead, including my best friend Wesley, with whom I ran, climbed, and built things outside. Staying inside was boring for me, and I remember looking out with longing on stormy days and wondering how I could possible stand it until I was allowed out again.
From the time I was very young, people would constantly say to me “girls don’t do that”, “girls can’t do that”, etc. I found that they were always mistaken. I just went ahead and did what seemed right to me, and never had a problem. My dad, his dad, and *his* dad were all engineering types, designing and building things. In an open house recently given of a house my great-grandfather designed and built, I could totally see my family’s style of engineering there, which passed down through the generations. It was odd and awesome to see something so familiar it looked like I or my father had built it, but made by someone I knew almost nothing about. From the earliest age I just loved machines, structures, and building. On my mother’s side all her siblings and progenitors were scientists, engineers, and inventors. Sometimes I think I’m the Kwisatz Haderach of engineering, brought here by a long-term breeding project, who arrived one generation too soon and the wrong gender. =)
Anyway, I remember the unfairness of things from long ago. I loved my older brother’s scouting manuals and stuff. They did such fun and important stuff like learning to make fires, tying knots, boating, etc. so I joined the Brownies and it was so freaking boring. We sang a lot and did crafty stuff. Absolutely nothing fun for me at all. So I quit after one year and did not fly up.
I remember that I quickly learned to avoid whatever was specifically made for girls, as it would be sure to be glittery, cheap, boring, and of poor workmanship. I actually still loathe pink as a clothing color today. When I was in 3rd grade I asked why girls had to wear dresses to school, and was told the shapes of our little girl bottoms would be distracting to the boys if they were visible. In 3rd grade! How repulsive!
On the playground in a dress at recess, you can’t climb on the monkey bars because someone might see up your dress. You can’t play any game that requires you to be on hands and knees, because a dress quickly gets caught under your knees and flips you over. You can’t hang upside down from a tree branch because your dress falls over your head and blocks your vision. Dresses are ridiculous. I knew that, and I knew I had to wear them, and I hated it.
In books and stories, the interesting roles, the protagonists, were almost always boys or men. In the few that weren’t, figuring out how to comply with the draconian requirement always to be ladylike was a major part of the difficulty. That and voraciously searching for husbands who always seemed to turn out to be rich, too, among their other charms. Way to teach girls to sell themselves to the highest bidder! How is that not prostitution? I’m not seeing how, in principal, it is different, though obviously your life is better if you have only one john rather than many.
And it was the same way all the time. In about 1995 when someone commented how few women were online at the time, a colleague said “oh there are a few there chasing the guys”. Excuse me? Another colleague said to me directly “you don’t have to be an engineer to get a man!” Huh?
In 1982 I was called the “Lady Programmer”, which is different, I suppose, from being a programmer. Over the next decade in IT it became very equal, with plenty of females. I think the last decade or so has been a time of reversal, when fewer girls went into technical fields. My friend who studied computer game design in grad school said there were zero women in his program at USC. Nary a one.
I feel like ranting a huge rant, given the obtusity of some of the people who act like girls are just like that or something. No, we aren’t! We’re forced to be that way, and some of us refuse to be forced.
Another one was the guy at a then new job who goggled speechless at the sight of me using a tape measure. Uhhh… engineer? scores of start ups? long time designer? I so thought we were past that by then! That was around 2001.
Another one was when my hydraulic supplier responded to me pointing out a glaring error in his schematic by telling me that it was right, that I just didn’t understand, and telling me to go ask my male boss to explain it to me. I explained multiple times the exact problem but wasn’t heard. Finally my boss called them and said “she knows what she’s talking about, listen to her, we won’t buy it until it meets her approval.” That finally did it. I’m kind of grateful to that horrible hydraulics supply company for they forced me to learn all about hydraulics so I could evaluate their machines and fix them. =)
That’s not even mentioning all the times people assume at first I’m not the person they want, because I’m female. I remember saying cheerfully to one customer “well, I’m him!” when he asked to speak to our electrical guy. (Yes, it should have been “I’m he” but I can’t get away with using good grammar on top of my gender failings.)
Being a girl has come in handy in some ways too. I often get first pick of the good electricians and millwrights for my job-sites because they find it a novelty to work with a female engineer. I can shame the slowpoke union guys by getting more done myself with my own tools during their 15 minute break than they’ve accomplished all morning. Most guys really hate for a girl to show them up in guy things. Also, I remember one time when I won my point by blithely climbing up a junk tower to show the plant engineer the problem which was not due to my machine but rather to an unexpected proturbance inside the tower. I suggested he climb up and look for himself, and he was reluctant due to wanting to stay clean, or lack of fitness, or possibly fear of heights, but he took my word for it.
I know sometimes I would feel as though I had to prove my masculinity in these start-up situations at plants with all new guys who didn’t know me. Then I made a conscious decision not to do that anymore, because it’s annoying to me when guys do it so I decided to stop too. But I’ve always been very hands-on, getting dirty and taking a part in the actual work. Most engineers prefer to leave that to the workmen, but I never felt I could, because I needed to know from direct experience how to do every single step of the process, because the workers would ask me, and I wanted to really know how. So I got dirtier than most of the guy engineers on my sites. And I learned a lot too.
See, ideally you need to be a welder to design a good weldment. You need to be a millwright to make good mechanical designs. You need to be an electrician to design good electrical panels and systems. And you should always take the point of view of the operator to design good control systems. Those people who use it every day are the ones who can tell you the most about your machines, and how to improve them. I always made friends with the operators, and never acted like I was a superior person because my job requires a degree and their doesn’t. This friendliness was interpreted by some people as flirting or hitting on people, just because I’m female. My colleagues at the office who were like brothers to me were always teasing me about how many friends and admirers I would collect on job-sites. Dude, I’m doing my job! It’s not about that. But of course, they think everything is about that if a female is involved.
So in addition to my skill at engineering design, wiring, inspection, project management, installation, and start-up, in order to do my job I also had to have a fairly thick skin, and be able to ignore all the well-wishing people who tried to steer me toward something cute and decorative and away from the meat and potatoes business of my companies. Also away from the stuff that’s interesting, challenging, and fun, and toward the things that are dull menial work, which people seem to think women like and are best suited to.
What I hope is that my career trajectory converted a lot of people to the idea that girls *can*. Though I was the only female in the paper industry who did what I did, I hope that I can be followed now by girls who only need the good engineering skills, and aren’t required to have that super thick skin and stalwart determination to do the part of the job that’s fun. That’s my hope.
When I found out this church was instrumental in defeating the ERA, my earliest political longing, I almost quit. But things have changed, and are changing still, and the restored gospel is still the truth and still very good news. God keeps telling me the place I belong is here. And maybe there’s a reason he wants someone like me in his church. It may be 100% for my good, which I know it’s good for me to make the attempt, even if ultimately I fail. But it just also might be a little bit for the church’s good too. So that’s my Mormon Feminist Manifesto. I’m a girl and I’m here to tell everyone that girls CAN.
I don’t remember when I became a feminist. I just always have been one ever since I remember. The games other girls in my neighborhood played were limited to “house” and “dolls”, both of which bored me. So I played with guys instead, including my best friend Wesley, with whom I ran, climbed, and built things outside. Staying inside was boring for me, and I remember looking out with longing on stormy days and wondering how I could possible stand it until I was allowed out again.
From the time I was very young, people would constantly say to me “girls don’t do that”, “girls can’t do that”, etc. I found that they were always mistaken. I just went ahead and did what seemed right to me, and never had a problem. My dad, his dad, and *his* dad were all engineering types, designing and building things. In an open house recently given of a house my great-grandfather designed and built, I could totally see my family’s style of engineering there, which passed down through the generations. It was odd and awesome to see something so familiar it looked like I or my father had built it, but made by someone I knew almost nothing about. From the earliest age I just loved machines, structures, and building. On my mother’s side all her siblings and progenitors were scientists, engineers, and inventors. Sometimes I think I’m the Kwisatz Haderach of engineering, brought here by a long-term breeding project, who arrived one generation too soon and the wrong gender. =)
Anyway, I remember the unfairness of things from long ago. I loved my older brother’s scouting manuals and stuff. They did such fun and important stuff like learning to make fires, tying knots, boating, etc. so I joined the Brownies and it was so freaking boring. We sang a lot and did crafty stuff. Absolutely nothing fun for me at all. So I quit after one year and did not fly up.
I remember that I quickly learned to avoid whatever was specifically made for girls, as it would be sure to be glittery, cheap, boring, and of poor workmanship. I actually still loathe pink as a clothing color today. When I was in 3rd grade I asked why girls had to wear dresses to school, and was told the shapes of our little girl bottoms would be distracting to the boys if they were visible. In 3rd grade! How repulsive!
On the playground in a dress at recess, you can’t climb on the monkey bars because someone might see up your dress. You can’t play any game that requires you to be on hands and knees, because a dress quickly gets caught under your knees and flips you over. You can’t hang upside down from a tree branch because your dress falls over your head and blocks your vision. Dresses are ridiculous. I knew that, and I knew I had to wear them, and I hated it.
In books and stories, the interesting roles, the protagonists, were almost always boys or men. In the few that weren’t, figuring out how to comply with the draconian requirement always to be ladylike was a major part of the difficulty. That and voraciously searching for husbands who always seemed to turn out to be rich, too, among their other charms. Way to teach girls to sell themselves to the highest bidder! How is that not prostitution? I’m not seeing how, in principal, it is different, though obviously your life is better if you have only one john rather than many.
And it was the same way all the time. In about 1995 when someone commented how few women were online at the time, a colleague said “oh there are a few there chasing the guys”. Excuse me? Another colleague said to me directly “you don’t have to be an engineer to get a man!” Huh?
In 1982 I was called the “Lady Programmer”, which is different, I suppose, from being a programmer. Over the next decade in IT it became very equal, with plenty of females. I think the last decade or so has been a time of reversal, when fewer girls went into technical fields. My friend who studied computer game design in grad school said there were zero women in his program at USC. Nary a one.
I feel like ranting a huge rant, given the obtusity of some of the people who act like girls are just like that or something. No, we aren’t! We’re forced to be that way, and some of us refuse to be forced.
Another one was the guy at a then new job who goggled speechless at the sight of me using a tape measure. Uhhh… engineer? scores of start ups? long time designer? I so thought we were past that by then! That was around 2001.
Another one was when my hydraulic supplier responded to me pointing out a glaring error in his schematic by telling me that it was right, that I just didn’t understand, and telling me to go ask my male boss to explain it to me. I explained multiple times the exact problem but wasn’t heard. Finally my boss called them and said “she knows what she’s talking about, listen to her, we won’t buy it until it meets her approval.” That finally did it. I’m kind of grateful to that horrible hydraulics supply company for they forced me to learn all about hydraulics so I could evaluate their machines and fix them. =)
That’s not even mentioning all the times people assume at first I’m not the person they want, because I’m female. I remember saying cheerfully to one customer “well, I’m him!” when he asked to speak to our electrical guy. (Yes, it should have been “I’m he” but I can’t get away with using good grammar on top of my gender failings.)
Being a girl has come in handy in some ways too. I often get first pick of the good electricians and millwrights for my job-sites because they find it a novelty to work with a female engineer. I can shame the slowpoke union guys by getting more done myself with my own tools during their 15 minute break than they’ve accomplished all morning. Most guys really hate for a girl to show them up in guy things. Also, I remember one time when I won my point by blithely climbing up a junk tower to show the plant engineer the problem which was not due to my machine but rather to an unexpected proturbance inside the tower. I suggested he climb up and look for himself, and he was reluctant due to wanting to stay clean, or lack of fitness, or possibly fear of heights, but he took my word for it.
I know sometimes I would feel as though I had to prove my masculinity in these start-up situations at plants with all new guys who didn’t know me. Then I made a conscious decision not to do that anymore, because it’s annoying to me when guys do it so I decided to stop too. But I’ve always been very hands-on, getting dirty and taking a part in the actual work. Most engineers prefer to leave that to the workmen, but I never felt I could, because I needed to know from direct experience how to do every single step of the process, because the workers would ask me, and I wanted to really know how. So I got dirtier than most of the guy engineers on my sites. And I learned a lot too.
See, ideally you need to be a welder to design a good weldment. You need to be a millwright to make good mechanical designs. You need to be an electrician to design good electrical panels and systems. And you should always take the point of view of the operator to design good control systems. Those people who use it every day are the ones who can tell you the most about your machines, and how to improve them. I always made friends with the operators, and never acted like I was a superior person because my job requires a degree and their doesn’t. This friendliness was interpreted by some people as flirting or hitting on people, just because I’m female. My colleagues at the office who were like brothers to me were always teasing me about how many friends and admirers I would collect on job-sites. Dude, I’m doing my job! It’s not about that. But of course, they think everything is about that if a female is involved.
So in addition to my skill at engineering design, wiring, inspection, project management, installation, and start-up, in order to do my job I also had to have a fairly thick skin, and be able to ignore all the well-wishing people who tried to steer me toward something cute and decorative and away from the meat and potatoes business of my companies. Also away from the stuff that’s interesting, challenging, and fun, and toward the things that are dull menial work, which people seem to think women like and are best suited to.
What I hope is that my career trajectory converted a lot of people to the idea that girls *can*. Though I was the only female in the paper industry who did what I did, I hope that I can be followed now by girls who only need the good engineering skills, and aren’t required to have that super thick skin and stalwart determination to do the part of the job that’s fun. That’s my hope.
When I found out this church was instrumental in defeating the ERA, my earliest political longing, I almost quit. But things have changed, and are changing still, and the restored gospel is still the truth and still very good news. God keeps telling me the place I belong is here. And maybe there’s a reason he wants someone like me in his church. It may be 100% for my good, which I know it’s good for me to make the attempt, even if ultimately I fail. But it just also might be a little bit for the church’s good too. So that’s my Mormon Feminist Manifesto. I’m a girl and I’m here to tell everyone that girls CAN.
