What Women Remember

Women know what it is to experience oppression. And although it sometimes seems as if younger women don’t fully grasp some of what older women have experienced, they’ve lived with their own share of this problem just the same. So this isn’t going to be a discussion of who understands what.

We vote by mail here in Oregon. It’s great. Our ballots arrive in the mailbox and we vote in our living rooms. Or wherever. Then we mail them back. It works brilliantly. I filled out my ballot earlier today and I’ve been thinking about what a momentous election this is. It’s not that electing a woman as our President is going to instantly erase all of the sexism and misogyny women have experienced throughout the years, but that we have a chance to chart a new course. Women have felt the effects of the current course long enough, thank you very much.

Some memories..

I remember when my parents were divorced in 1974, my mother had to establish credit in her name which would have been impossible only a few years earlier. I remember my father recommending that I become a teacher so that I would be home with my children in the afternoon and summers. And I remember in the early 80’s when my mother sent me a check for my birthday written out to Mrs. Jerry Erickson. I nearly sent it back to her. I called her to ask her what she was thinking. She couldn’t believe I felt the way I did. I explained to her that I didn’t exactly lose my identity when I married my husband even though I chose to take his last name. Even that was a newer choice women were making then, taking our husband’s last name or keeping our own, as opposed to hyphenating.

When I began training in martial arts, I co-owned our karate school with my husband who was also my instructor. Training daily, I was promoted to Black Belt three years after beginning my training. It wasn’t easy. I worked diligently. But even female students from other schools made disrespectful comments because after all, I was the wife. My husband was a task master. He didn’t give away rank. In our school, rank was earned. But truth didn’t matter.

I co-owned a motorcycle shop with my husband for fourteen years, closing that business in 2013. Even though I was seriously ill for over eleven years of that business, my husband and I spent the first six years putting in ninety-eight hour work weeks. Yes, that’s not a typo. We were there seven days per week from early in the morning until late at night. We were the sole employees and we had to compete with the dealership in town.

I learned how to tune fuel injection motorcycles on a dyno, thoroughly annoying some of the male customers we had. One guy, who actually was my neighbor at the time, would come in the shop and announce to anyone who was there that my husband did a great job tuning his bike, knowing that it was me who did the tune. I could also put together engine jobs and discuss the rationale behind whatever I was suggesting to men who had no idea what I was talking about.

It was odd because so much of the engine information I would share with customers came from some of the top engine builders in that industry. I would call them and ask all sorts of questions and before I knew it I would be furiously taking notes as they educated me. None of them condescended the way some of my male customers did. Each one of these top guys in their industry treated me with respect. One really well-known guy shared with me his secret for carburetor tuning. And yes, I shared it with my husband. But the point was there were only a handful of guys who could have one of these conversations with me. Most of them had no idea what I was talking about and viewed me with complete suspicion, some with complete contempt. The guys who would sit and talk with me, however, were awesome.

Women see the world in a unique way..

I hesitate to say that I know what Hillary is going through because I don’t think there’s a woman alive who has experienced the level of misogyny that she has experienced. But in a sense, each woman does know what she’s experienced because we’ve all been there in one capacity or another. It’s the lack of trust that we deal with. We can’t be the boss because our children might need us. We’re unreliable and emotionally unstable because we menstruate. We have opinions that differ from our male counterparts so we’re definitely not to be trusted. And Goddess help us if we tune some guy’s motorcycle. Or put together an engine job for him. I was the woman who did both.

But we also might have the answers. Women see the world in a unique way. We have the survival of the species within us and that awareness often influences the decisions we make. So we’ll defend the family when necessary. But we’re savvy about it. Maybe our response amounts to a nudge, or a suggestion, when appropriate. But make no mistake about it. If our family is threatened, we act. And we do so in a decisive manner.

Not all women are Black Belts, but all women think like them. Trust me on this. We’ve had no choice in the matter. And we’re not going to stop until patriarchy is relegated to the dustbin of history. Because as Hillary’s opponent has suggested, we’re nasty like that.

In two weeks our country is likely electing our first female President. We made history in 2008 and 2012 by electing and then reelecting Barack Obama as our President. As amazing as that surely was, what we’re about to do has been a long time coming. Conservatives saw her coming back in the early nineties when they began their campaign to discredit her. But she worked for all of us in spite of them, becoming a Senator and then Secretary of State. And now, Hillary Clinton is poised to become the next President of the United States.

Chris Matthews said on Hardball one day that this is a really big deal for women of a certain age. He’s right. It is. For all of us who have experienced oppression in any form, electing a woman represents a goal that has taken far too long to achieve. And now, here we are, that long awaited goal in sight.

Blessings to all!