It’s a Joke. You Need To Calm Down!

Friday morning I got a text from my wonderful fellow feminist friend Jenn. It shared the following…

It was followed by her statement “Now go make the most of the single day dedicated to recognizing that our contributions to society matter for the course of human history. 😘”

This tickled me, as you might imagine. I texted it to many of my woman friends, posted it on my Instagram account, as well as my “stories” which meant it then went on to my FB stories, where it would post for 24 hours then disappear. Facebook “friends” would have to click ont he story to see the words.

I was on assignment at the BU Women’s Guild Lunch and Learn to photograph a panel discussion about equity in the workplace. I was chatting with my boss prior to the start of the event and showed her the photo above on my phone. She got a kick out of it, and shared it with the women on either side of her.

“You should share that on Slack!” she told me. Slack is an app that allows groups to communicate with each other on a variety of topics. The UPAA board, for example, uses Slack. Our discussion threads are labeled things like symposium, website, general, membership, etc. so we can organize our conversations according to topic.

Our department at work has the same, and LOTS of my colleagues see it. It’s a strongly worded statement, the one in the photo above, “Put it on Slack?” I said to my boss.

“Yeah! It’s International Women’s Day! You can put it in (the category called ) Celebrations” she told me. Never would I post something like this in a professional thread on my own. I would worry I would offend male colleagues. (The irony of this is not lost on me, BTW).

So I did it. It was all I could do to not also add “(The boss) told me it was OK!”

Later in the day, I got a message alert. Someone had commented on the photo which was shared in my stories on FB.

He commented “Classy!”

And before you tell me “Maybe he thought it was cool and you misunderstood his tone?”

No, I did not misunderstand his tone. His tone was “You’re all about equity but you say nasty things about men. That’s not progress, that’s just hating men!”

I proceeded then to text many of my female friends about this so they could join me in righteous indignation. They did not disappoint. I have collected the right kind of friends and they all stepped up to the unspoken challenge.

I texted my friends, One of my former male colleagues just commented on my International Women’s Day post with “Classy!” And the irony is not lost on me.

My friends’ responses;
The truth hurts. Tell him to stop being emotional.
Tell him “Thanks for being on brand today, (Dick)!”…and then tell him to smile more.
UGGH! You should respond “case in point”.
(Tell him) “see how it feels???” The post made your point perfectly!
Oh FFS!

My friends, as they say, understood the assignment. I didn’t bother responding to him. His comment made it clear where he stood, and I just didn’t feel like climbing down there. I had other shit to do.