Being A Woman ... Who's Had Enough!

By Lynn B. Mann

What have you had enough of?

• women's rights being eroded?
• our value being tied to how we look or perform our roles?
• ongoing gender inequalities in all spheres of life?
• women shouldering the burden of childcare and housework?
• the term 'porn and rape culture' being used about our children's sc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Being Books
• Release date: Nov 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781838162856

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Copyright © Lynn B. Mann, 2023

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The right of Lynn B. Mann to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-8381628-4-9

For Annie

Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 15

Chapter 2 21

Chapter 3 42

Chapter 4 51

Chapter 5 62

Chapter 6 78

Chapter 7 94

Chapter 8 106

Chapter 9 117

Chapter 10 128

Chapter 11 131

Chapter 12 136

Chapter 13 142

Chapter 14 164

Chapter 15 169

Acknowledgements 175

About the Author 177

Other Books by Lynn B. Mann 178

Author’s note

Being a Woman is a personal exploration and reflection on my experience of being a woman, and the cultural issues relating to that.

My decision to focus exclusively on the experience of being a woman is not a statement of disregard for other genders or identities. Rather, this book is written from the point of view of the lens through which I have navigated the world.

I acknowledge and respect the diverse range of identities and experiences that exist beyond the scope of these pages.

Definitions

To avoid any uncertainty, I’ve listed below my definitions of some of the terms I use throughout the book.

Patriarchal society: A culture that is organised in such a way that men hold more power and authority than women and there is a cultural bias towards, or privileging of, men. Also, a culture in which traditionally ‘masculine’ qualities (such as aggression, competitiveness and physical strength) are seen as desirable and superior.

Sexism: ‘Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex’ (Oxford Dictionary).

Misogyny: I always thought this meant an open hatred of women, so it was relatively rare. However, although it can be this, it doesn’t need to be as extreme for it to be misogyny: ‘Dislike of, contempt for or ingrained prejudice against women’ (Oxford Dictionary) or ‘Feelings of hating women, or the belief that men are much better than women’ (Cambridge Dictionary).

Chauvinist: ‘Believing that, or behaving as if, women are naturally less important, intelligent, or able than men’ (Cambridge Dictionary).

Sex: When I mention sex, I’m referring to biological sex.

Gender: When I mention gender, I’m referring to the expression of our sex through socially constructed roles and characteristics – ‘gender norms’.

Introduction

I was in my mid-thirties. My son was a toddler, running around the kitchen, while I sat at the table eating lunch with my husband and my parents, who were visiting us for a few days. I felt tense and a bit apprehensive, but also excited. I was choosing my moment to tell them my news. My husband already knew.

At the time I was a full-time mum. After a variety of career paths in my twenties, including working as a researcher then a director in television, I trained as a fitness instructor, then stopped teaching classes when our son was born. In my mid-twenties I’d been keen to train as a psychotherapist, when I was offered a place on a sought-after university counselling studies degree course. I was also given the opportunity of a longer-term job as a researcher in television, which I had already been doing part-time.

I listened to all the voices of family and friends telling me to ‘take the TV job’. It must have seemed so much more glamorous, a much better opportunity, and more of a certainty career-wise. At the time, there were very few counsellors in full-time employment, and it wasn’t so commonplace for people to have counselling. Loudest of the voices telling me it was a ‘no-brainer’ was my dad, who implied that counselling was a bit ‘airy-fairy’ anyway.

I went with my conditioning, I went with the external pressure to do what seemed like the best option, the most sensible option. I didn’t listen to the small voice inside me that was urging me to do what I knew I really wanted to do.

So, there I was, several major life events and many years on from that fork in the road, about to tell my parents that I was finally going to go to university to get a degree and become a therapist. I was also going to tell them I’d realised that this was what I should have chosen all those years before. That it felt like what I was meant to do. That it felt meaningful and purposeful for me.

However, I didn’t get to the second part because the first bit went something like this.

Me: ‘I’ve got something to tell you both.’

Expectant looks.

‘I’m going back to education. I’m going to do the degree in counselling studies that I was going to do years ago. I’m going to train to become a psychotherapist.’

Mum nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Dad says, ‘What kind of money will you make at that, then?’

Me: ‘Well, it depends where I end up working, but if I’m full-time, maybe around £٢٥k a year.’

Dad scoffs, while continuing to eat his lunch, then says, laughing, ‘Ha, you could make more than that as a lap dancer.’

I don’t know what I said after that. I don’t think I said very much. I think the conversation changed course, after I limply said something about this being what I really wanted to do, and I was looking forward to it, then I continued to eat my lunch.

However, I remember exactly how I felt. I felt humiliated. I felt shamed. I felt like I wanted to burst into tears. I think I felt like a little girl. And as I write this now and remember that scene, I feel the physical sensations again: my face flushed and I felt sick. I can still feel the physical tension throughout my body that it took for me to stay sitting in my chair that day when what I really wanted to do was burst into tears and run out of the kitchen.

.oOo.

The incident I’ve just detailed is seared on my memory, and I realise that it must paint my dad as a sexist boor, which he wasn’t. He was a good man, and a good dad. I loved my dad very much, and I know he loved me: he wanted only the best for me, and for me to be happy.

So why, when my dad jokingly suggested that a better financial alternative to training as psychotherapist would be to become a lap dancer, didn’t I say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Or ‘That’s really hurtful.’ Why didn’t I speak up for myself? I was an adult. I liked to think of myself as a strong, capable woman who could handle herself. If someone was rude to me, I didn’t just take it. But on this occasion, though, I said nothing. I’d been told that I’d be better off using my body to earn my living, letting men leer at me wearing virtually no clothes, rather than using my mind, and my natural empathy and compassion. I’d been cut to the core. I’d been humiliated and made to feel small, in my own home by a member of my own family … and I said nothing.

Neither my mum nor my husband said anything to my dad either. (Of course, I understand why they didn’t: they didn’t want to ‘spoil the atmosphere’; ‘it was only a joke’; and of course, Dad was the authority figure.) For him to say something so outrageous and for it to be ignored by all of us seems unbelievable to me now. And why did my dad – an intelligent man, brought up to be respectful and decent, a family man who loved both his children and was really proud of me – think it was okay to say that to his daughter, even as a ‘joke’?

You might think that this wasn’t a big deal, or that I shouldn’t have taken it so seriously, but that’s because we have been taught to react this way, as women. That’s how we’ve been conditioned: into seeing these kind of incidents as ‘banter’, not harmful or threatening, in any way. We’ve been conditioned to think of them as not demeaning, derogatory or personal – even if they feel that way to us.

Crucially, that’s why it seemed like a big deal to me – because of how it made me feel. If I hadn’t been so affected by it, if it hadn’t really bothered me, if it hadn’t really hurt me, then I wouldn’t still remember it so vividly, and still get so churned up by it, over twenty years later.

As women, we’ve been programmed to discount our own experiences of sexism, of how things affect us individually, regardless of whether or not they would have the same effect on someone else in the same circumstances or situation. We don’t speak up in case we’re told we’re ‘too sensitive’ or we ‘can’t take a joke’ or we’re ‘being a bitch’. And some women don’t speak up out of fear of being met with anger or violence. It doesn’t matter whether other people think something is worth getting angry or upset about; only we know how these things affect us.

Many incidents throughout my life, like the one with my dad, have bothered me for a very long time. Often, this is because of my – and others’ – lack of reaction to them. This is just one of a catalogue of incidents where I’ve felt an uncomfortable emotional or psychological response to the way I – or another woman – was treated, just because we are female.

For most of my life, I’ve had lots of unanswered – or even unasked – questions around this kind of stuff. Women in our society just put up with an awful lot of things that are supposed to be part of being a woman.

This book is about the multitude of things that we women tolerate, ignore, pretend we don’t notice, or stay silent about – often at a cost to ourselves. From small, annoying things to huge, life-changing events, each woman will have experienced a similar series of events in their own life. I’m talking about times when you’ve felt vulnerable, humiliated, afraid, threatened, degraded, cheapened, ignored, sidelined, belittled or lesser – just for being female.

The book is also about the pressure we face daily to conform to prescribed roles and identities that we’ve been brainwashed into believing are ‘the norm’ and that we ought to aspire to: we risk disturbing the status quo and/or losing our sense of belonging if we don’t play the game by the rules we’ve been given. From the way we dress, our hair, our faces, our bodies to the way we carry out our roles at work and the household burdens we carry, it’s all up for scrutiny: we’re judged and criticised online, in the media, in our homes and at work, and we’re insidiously programmed to judge and criticise ourselves – and often other women – in the same way.

If you grew up in the Western world, you grew up in a sexist, patriarchal culture. It was all around us but we were largely blind to it. Nobody talked about it. We were left to swallow our discomfort, hurt, distaste or confusion at what we encountered, rather than society changing to align with what we deserve to experience as equal, valuable human