A Strong, Smart, Difficult Woman’s Place

You have two choices: find your place or dim your light.

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This year, we had a lot of strong, smart women in the world who spoke up when it was apparent that the situations they were in were “muddy” and dangerous. These women, Gabrielle Union, Greta Thunberg, Fiona Hill, Marie Yovanovitch, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, are smart, accomplished, courageous, yet, because they stood up to power, they were painted in a “negative” light. Their voices of strength were deemed as too “difficult”.

I’ve had personal experiences of being an Asian woman who had trouble conforming to the Corporate hierarchy. I pushed against the system whenever I could without causing “too much” trouble. In a lot of ways, I suffered for that. I suffered from both sides. I suffered from repercussions of speaking up when I was fed up. I suffered from my guilt from not speaking up earlier.

In abusive situations that I encountered in my childhood, many of those situations were amplified because I was deemed strong and smart. If only I was weak and did not have a voice, less abuses would come my way. I would’ve been forgotten and that would’ve been a good thing.

Even in “friendship” circles, I was told to not speak about “politics” to “friends” who had strong feelings about immigrants, left-wing politics and paternalism.

This year, when someone asked me what I will not write online, my number one answer was “politics”.

The fear that stirs in my heart of being deemed as a “difficult” woman creeps up on me each time I write a controversial article. That fear is a trigger conditioned by all the bad experiences that I encountered when I spoke up.

Yesterday, I had a moment. I had a moment when I imagined all my followers stopped reading my articles. I imagined my presence on social media platforms going down to zero because I spoke up about something that many disagreed with.

The repercussions, the sacrifices that some of us make for speaking up is enormous. It means the difference between making a living and being homeless.

Disappearing livelihood is just the beginning.

Even when news cycles move on quickly, our actions will be scrutinized and we will be labeled by them regardless.

Because, if we decide to climb this mountain of honesty, we, subconsciously know that no one will catch us when we fall.

In my 20s, all I did was to avoid climbing this mountain of honesty.

Sitting with my legs crossed and not make a sound.

In meetings with men from power and privilege, even if I’m wearing pants, I instinctively crossed my legs. It’s as if I was trying hard to put a barrier between myself and all the paternalistic energy in the room.

Nodding a little too enthusiastically while giving my hair a flip.

I developed a routine of never appearing too “smart” in meetings. I resigned myself to nodding enthusiastically even when I disagreed. I was always afraid what would come out of my mouth will get me fired. To engage in the conversation without appearing “smart”, I flipped my hair. Occasionally, I interjected with what people “expected” me to say.

Agreeing to disagree. But, in passivity, you agree.

My significant other tried to “influence” me to agree on the fact that we have to eat pizza for dinner. Then, as I reluctantly agreed to this while nibbling on a salad to stay on my diet, I somehow just gave up my right to decide the movie we will watch later.

If you are wondering, yes, it’s a slippery slope.

Negotiating my salary by looking elsewhere for a job.

When compensation time came around, I answered a few phone calls from head hunters who wanted me to explore other opportunities. I didn’t even go on those interviews. My co-worker caught wind of this and told my boss. Suddenly, my entire year of “good performance” was deemed inadequate.

After compensation negotiations finished, at team drinks, my male co-worker humble bragged about how he snagged 5 times my bonus, by not doing much work during the year, and then getting a competing offer from a different company.

They had to match that offer!