Dawn Is Me

I despise stereotypes.

I hate them like poison because they are the tool of oppressors. As a black woman (let’s skip the politically-correct and mealy-mouthed “African American,” shall we?), I have spent my entire life living down racial stereotypes.

I refuse to be defined by the color of my skin.

I refuse to be confined by the color of my skin — to certain foods or types of music or churches or neighborhoods or hobbies or friends or lovers or anything else. Freedom means the existence of options. Nobody takes my options away from me.

Beyond that, I detest stereotypes because I’m an intellectual snob and stereotypes are the product of sloppy, lazy thinking.

People are people are people. We are what we are. We are all the same. We are all different.

And so it is with gender stereotypes, like the question of ANGRY woman versus QUIET woman.

This is not a simple question. If you want to know which of these best describes me, for example, the answer is “Yes!”

Who are you, Dawn? is what you really want to know here. I can answer that question by telling you who I am from my own perspective, what it is like to live inside my own skin. Or I can tell you who I am from other people’s perspective, what it is like to be around me, to know me, to live with me, based on what they tell me and how they respond to me.

It will be a very rare individual for whom those two portraits of self are an exact match.

My children, who probably know me better than anybody, tell me that I am very laid back. It’s one of the things that my kids love about me. I am not very excitable, I tend to think first instead of just reacting, and that makes it safe for them to tell me things. Mom doesn’t sweat the small stuff. She speaks softly and, when she’s mad, she speaks even more softly — a terrifying prospect, or so I’m told.

I guess all of this makes me a quiet woman, right?

Not so fast. Inside my heart and head is a maelstrom. I am indignant about the many injustices I see around me. I am impatient with meaningless convention, especially when it is used as a substitute for meaningful connection. I grow easily annoyed with wilfull stupidity and I do not suffer fools gladly. Misinformation infuriates me. Hypocrisy makes me seethe.

I guess all of this makes me an angry woman, right?

Wrong again. All of this simply makes me a human woman — sometimes quiet but never silent, sometimes angry but never vicious, sometimes discreet, always passionate.

There is no such thing as a woman (or a man) who is always angry, just as there is no such thing as a woman (or a man) who is never angry, no matter how quiet she may be.

And, for the record, we experience a lot of other emotions, too, so that we are often neither quiet nor angry. I don’t know any women who are that dull.

ANGRY woman or QUIET woman?

Both!

Neither!

That’s what makes us so awesome. Women are all that and then some.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Angry Woman or Quiet Woman is our theme for January. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on our monthly radio show where I am a regular monthly panelist. Join us for a fun and intriguing conversation on our monthly theme on January, 19th from noon-1pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.com/womenontheverge.

I came across this clip by accident (new twitter follower –> her web site –> latest post with said clip; oh, and thanks for the follow, Ashley!) and, just to show you how elderly and out of touch I am, I don’t even know who these people are.

But everything they say is SEW TREW! that I absolutely had to post it here:

(Okay, having done just a tad of research, I learn that this is Louis CK [a comedian, I gather ... making him one of the new hard-hitting journalists] on Conan’s show.)

When you see a story like this, you have to ask yourself, “What are we becoming?”

Setting aside the legal ramifications of this case on all those state Good Samaritan laws around the country, what does this say about who we are?

Are we to become the kind of country where we look the other way and walk a little faster when we notice that somebody is hurt, drowning, burning alive in a fire, being raped on the street — because now we have to be worried that we might be sued if we help?

What kind of person can receive that kind of help from another human being regardless of the outcome and then turn around and file suit against them?

You know, I hope that the jury in this case finds in favor of Lisa Torti, even if the woman she rescued trots out a dozen medical experts who testify in support of the plaintiff.

I hope that jury realizes that, even if Torti did inadvertently cause or exacerbate those injuries, she didn’t do it intentionally. She was trying to help somebody who, she thought, was in serious danger of losing her life and she does not deserve to be punished for it.

I’m imagining all the people who will die or get seriously hurt because they now have to be worried about a lawsuit if they help. And I’m wondering how long it’ll be before somebody will play it safe and look the other way, and somebody will die — and the bystander will get sued because they didn’t help.

It’s interesting that they blame this stuff on trial lawyers. I had a kid get injured in an accident in a neighbor’s yard once. Despite his fears, it never crossed my mind to sue him over it and I doubt there’s anything a lawyer could have said to me to persuade me to sue him.

Why not? Because it wasn’t his fault.

I wonder if that makes me unAmerican?