BEING

While I was teaching at a local middle school deep in the gangland, we adopted a uniform policy. Needless to say, the uniform – navy blue belted pants or skirt, white button-down or polo shirt tucked neatly in, and closed-toed shoes – was unpopular with the students and faculty alike. So unpopular, in fact, that much of that first year’s teaching time was engaged instead in uniform compliance enforcement and the inevitable referrals that accompany defiance.

And, of course, the female sub-population was the most difficult to bring on board – as I’ve said many times before, sometime around the age of eleven, young girls stop BEING and start BEING SEEN. Making them wear uniforms frightened them horribly (though they could not have verbalized it as such) because their power base had been completely removed. No more tank tops. No more middy shirts. No more skin-tight low-rise jeans. Their mechanism for displaying their status, power, and desirability had been yanked out from under them like a moldy rug. Without the mechanisms of BEING SEEN, the females could be seen casting about in confusion, looking for a way to restructure their pecking order.

One year later, assaults on campus had declined from two or three per day to two or three per semester. Thefts by students declined 80%. Participation in after-school programs increased dramatically. Gang-related crime on campus decreased dramatically. Standardized testing scores skyrocketed (NOT an exaggeration). The District had finally learned the lesson the military had known for years: take away the biology of status and sex and even uncivilized middle school students can become somewhat civilized.

You see, you can’t fight biology. That’s why many of us, confronted with questions about why we did something remarkably stupid, can only shrug our shoulders in shameful remorse. We don’t know why we do a lot of the things we do. But you can bet the motivation came out of our biology, out of our hard-wiring. You can bet it had something to do with perceived sexual signals, perceived status, or perceived power. Intellectually, we’d all want to deny that our motivators are so base. Yet, here we are, base creatures all.

The topic is on my mind because it’s made itself evident, in several manifestations, quite often over the past few weeks.

I battle biology every day. 20 years of my employment history has been spent in male-dominated fields, including my current career path. I’ve struggled for 20 years to maintain some semblance of femininity while earning the respect, trust, and esteem of my male co-workers, and biology notwithstanding have managed to fare pretty well. I can’t say it’s been a major sacrifice, as I failed every class in Girl School anyway; however, I have at times lamented that dressing up (for Court, for professional visits, for seminars, etc.) often results in dumbing down, at least in the eyes of my co-workers.

Yesterday (in the figurative sense), I was just “one of the guys.” Today (also in the figurative sense), I was dressed for Court and was suddenly treated differently by my male co-workers. I’m not sure it’s necessary, but I will make the distinction that I am not a shapeshifter or any sort of magical creature. I am the same person in the figurative today as I was in the figurative yesterday. The only difference is that in the figurative today, I was dressed like a girl and my legs and the general shape of my body were evident. In the figurative yesterday, those statements did not apply. Co-workers and other men (in the Courthouse, for example) who wouldn’t have given me a second glance yesterday - much less any sort of special treatment - suddenly acted in way that made no sense given the nature of previous associations: they opened doors for me. They did double-takes. They moved aside to allow me to sit. They offered to fetch me beverages. They made suggestive comments. They allowed their eyes to roam and linger. They did these things despite the fact that yesterday, they knew they’d get their asses kicked for treating me with such commingled respect/disrespect. Today they were surprised when I called them on it and then fervently denied such behavior.

Yesterday, I was a warrior. Yesterday, not a single one of my co-workers would have thought twice about my tactical positioning or ability to control a situation. Yesterday, I WAS. Today, I was only SEEN. What a transformation to undergo in only a few short hours: from BEING to BEING SEEN! From soldier to object! From manifested power to invoked subject! Why did this happen, you ask? Pure biology, plain and simple.

Ladies, we can say that we’ve “earned the right” to proudly display our femininity whilst retaining the “status equality” that our feminist sisters fought so inanely and futilely for, but it just ain’t so. Worse, some women know this to be true but insist upon dressing in a provocative manner at work and then having the gall to protest – sometimes even as far as into a court room – when they get exactly the sort of attention they are (maybe unconsciously?) seeking instead of the respect and cohesion their skills may very well deserve. We can’t fight biology, our own or that of the opposite gender. We can either minimize the effects of our hard-wiring in order to gain trust, esteem, and respect or we can maximize the effects to ensure attention. It’s a difficult and perhaps unjust dilemma, but the choice should be very clear.

Please don’t misunderstand. The inherent power of female can not be denied and should not be underestimated. It is a gift, and used wisely and with prudence, the power of female is and will ever be the civilizing force of humanity. The confusion seems to lie in the expression of it. The natural force of the feminine exists without makeup, without surgical enhancements, without push-up bras and “shapewear,” It exists without or without youth, without or without “standardized beauty,” and with or without higher learning. The unifying energy of the feminine is the birthright and responsibility of every female born, and needs only recognition and encouragement to bloom and grow. In other words, though our unique bodies are capable of demonstrating our Magic, the wellspring of our Mysteries lies elsewhere. Our power is in BEING, not in BEING SEEN.