Why I added a handsome creepy bad guy to my book and where he came from.
One of the things I hope to do with my book is to start conversations.
One of those conversations comes down to a single word. It plays a big role in the conflict between the characters in my book.
Spot the clues in the next three scenarios.
First Scenario: Emma
Late one night about 11:00 pm my girlfriend Emma* is driving home from a professional training business event through suburban streets. Just as she pulls into her subdivision, she sees flashing red lights in her rearview mirror. “Damn,” she mutters because she realizes she must have been driving over the speed limit where it drops just a half mile from the street entrance.
As she pulls over and a police car slides in behind her, she texts her husband. “At the entrance. Pulled over for speeding.” He texts back, “Do you want me to come?”
“No, I’m good.”
It is a month later and Emma is conducting a training class to a group of police officers. Self-deprecating, she tells this story of being pulled over after speeding, but instead of creating a chuckling connection, she feels hostility. “Why would you text your husband? A police officer had pulled you over, not some random stranger!”
But Emma knows the experience of being a Black woman traveling alone late at night. Creating a situation where her husband would come out to assist her so late felt fraught.
Emma, her husband, the police officer doing his duty—please don’t focus on the specific individuals to come up with the word, the topic, of this post.
There’s something else I want you to see.
Second Scenario: My Mom
My mom was a good driver. Did all the things: smooth parallel parking with one go. Always used her turn signal. Drove about 4 miles over the highway speed limit. Hands at 10:00 and 2:00 o’clock on the steering wheel. After my dad died and we kids gave Mom a GPS, she didn’t know a horizon she couldn’t conquer.
Imagine my surprise one day when she told me that well into her 30’s—long after she’d had her four babies and was holding down a full-time teaching career— her palms would get sweaty while driving whenever she spotted a man in the car behind her. Any man. Old or young.
One instant, she’s calm and competent. In the next, she’s jumpy and tentative. What would cause this sudden reaction?
The word is not “anti-male” or “misandry.”
Third Scenario: 27-year-old Me
I’d just moved to NYC, living in a fifth floor walkup on 30th Street, but drove west every day through the Holland Tunnel to work in Passaic. Although my job as an advertising manager of an outdoor furniture company is in New Jersey, I want to live in the Big Apple.
I am an anomaly. Speak with a funny Midwest accent. Insist on driving through all that traffic just to live in Manhattan. Thought “pie” was apple and not a pizza. The only woman in the furniture plant office with a non-secretarial job.
The ribbing starts. “D’ja get any this weekend?’ “Thirsty last night?” “Those Manhattan boys keepin’ you satisfied?” Every day some kind of comment from my boss and others I laugh off. Be a good sport about.
Another manager takes to massaging my shoulders. I become adept at ducking and shrugging him off.
Maybe my fellow female friends today would’ve objected outright to the sexual comments or touching, but, honestly, it didn’t occur to me. I needed the job. It came with the territory of working alongside men at a small manufacturer. The price I’d unconsciously expected to pay.
Have you thought of the word yet?
A Subtle Shift
I’m tucking in one last scene. It takes place at another employer—in fact, the one where I flourish in the last few decades of my corporate career—during a new employee orientation meeting. A general partner of the firm headlines the class with a simple message: “Sexual harassment is not tolerated here.”
Startled, I remember side-eying the people on either side of me. I think, “Is anyone else hearing this? Is he for real?”
It created a shift. The public statement from someone in authority generated awareness and opened a space to possibly speak up. Underlying behavior and attitudes were suddenly out in the open. And in this corporate environment the zero-tolerance standard was backed up by rules with teeth.
The fact that the statement was made by a male authority figure mattered.
And the Word Is…
Patriarchy.
A system that’s dependent on participation. Larger than individuals. We didn’t create it, but we grew up in it and so learn through others what roles we carry out, how to identify ourselves, how to live our lives in ways that are defined as “normal.”
So accepted as the norm that it feels unremarkable.
We learn early on that we’ll be rewarded if we align with it and can be punished if we don’t.
It’s a ubiquitous standard and silent test: “Do you understand the status here? Do you understand your role— to dominate or to be subordinate?”
It’s an overall system of beliefs to keep order in place and influences how each person in my previous scenarios acted:
For my mom—she knew women were supposed to be bad drivers, even if she wasn’t. When a man appeared in her rearview mirror, he didn’t cause her to get nervous, the unconscious pressure of how she should act did.
For young worker me—I was silent because I knew that my bosses—above me in that company’s hierarchy—had more power. So much so that they could invade my personal space. I was subordinate in this set of relationships. This situation was made more fraught, of course, because my boss controlled whether I could keep my job or not.
And for Emma—her response was in perfect alignment with the unspoken knowledge women everywhere know. In a patriarchal system, the narrative of a woman alone at night means she is not safe, nor was Emma’s husband. Especially because they are Black.
You can see how this is not an anti-men essay. For men are caught up in it, too, with a set of expected roles and actions (e.g., “men don’t cry.”), burdensome in their own right. Whether we agree or disagree, we have membership in the status quo. And the system creates strange assumptions where, for instance, it’s assumed women are bad drivers.
Patriarchy Fun in My Book
Imagine my intrigue when I realized that the early 20th century is right on the heels of a time when capitalism is emerging as an economic system dominated by men and their interests. Especially white European men of a newly forming merchant class.
Industrialization is sweeping the continent. Men are scrambling at new opportunities to grab control. I could use this newly forming definition of patriarchy!
So, I personified the emerging status quo by creating a slick, handsome, kinda creepy antagonist named Georges Raulf. (He is one of the few fictitious characters in my book: a composite of the men Jo encountered.)
With the cut-throat Parisian art dealing world as his backdrop, Raulf is ambitious, thrives on competition, and is a bully hellbent on winning and control.
Who strides in to oppose him? The three Van Gogh Warriors, of course: Vincent (rebel artist), Theo (talent prophet) and Jo (radical crusader). Never mind that Vincent and Theo are gone for Jo carries their legacy. Raulf is a tenacious opponent.
Did I channel a few personal work life frustrations—being talked over in meetings, interrupted, undermined, ignored and yes, mansplained—to inspire some of these scenes?
You bet I did!
I could write tomes more but let me leave one last comment.
Here’s the thing: Despite the invisible, ubiquitous walls patriarchy throws up, if we are aware of them, it’s in our human nature to fight back. To want to be seen and heard.
Challenging the status quo as Vincent and Theo and Jo did took tremendous courage and tenacity. They inspire me by their examples.
And remind me to think about my behavior and what system I’m supporting through my participation.
I think all of this is worthy of a conversation.
Meanwhile, did you guess the word? Secondly, have you had experiences being the “odd one out”? If so, how did it make you feel and could/did you do anything in response?
I hear you,
P.S. *Not her real name. P.P.S. Did you note the caption at the top of this post? Patriarchy in action!
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