(NOTE: strong feelings expressed ahead...yeah, like that never happens here
)
i've been trying to break my friends in gently, so i can use my wonderful tools without constant jibes and stares. the following happened this last week:
day one: i sit down to lunch with best galfriend. she knows about my knives but has never seen one of them. my lunch is bagel, unsplit, with cream cheese in separate container. my friend is chatting away, and i'm getting hungry...so i VEEERRRRYYYYYYY SLOOOOOWWWLY reach into the pocket of my pretty flowered dress, pull out the borrowed BF Native i'm carrying lately (it's keeping me company until my own arrives in the mail), and carefully, slowly, open it one-handed (other hand is balancing bagel so intent will be clear)...
zoom in for reaction shot: girlfriend stops in mid-word, mouth gaping. i show her the knife, say "see, it's a little portable serrated bread knife!" and proceed to slice the bagel and spread the cream cheese, spilling neither crumbs nor blood. girlfriend places hand on chest, sputtering various fearful phrases until i put my trusty blade "Scourge-of-Baked-Goods" away.
day next: i repeat the above scenario, verbally warning same girlfriend before the Scourge appeareth. she doesn't say anything this time, just watches. around the time the Scourge is laying into the cream cheese, a professor (i work for a university) steps into the room.
reaction shot: learned mouth drops open, learned eyes lock on poor little Scourge who is being enslaved in the name of hunger. i smile, nod towards Scourge, and say, "i was a girl scout, so i like carrying my own bread knife around with me." Learned one says, "well, you'd better be careful, you could really hurt someone with that thing!" i reply, with a twinkle: "you trust me to run the email server, surely you can trust me with a bread knife" ...
a week later: same girlfriend buys me a coffee and a bagel, and on the way out of the shop, runs back in for a moment. she emerges with a small plastic knife, and hands it to me, saying: "here! this is so you don't have to use something so sharp this time."
now
i'm the one with mouth hanging open and eyes staring.
the surprising thing is that these women are two of the most assertive and aggressive-in-a-really-good-way females i know. they are both tops in their fields, having won their places amidst all sorts of chauvinism and mysogyny. and yet, when it comes to a sharp knife, their lizard brains kick in, and they forget all that stuff about logic and confidence and self-reliance, and they act like frightened little airheads who are too weak and untrustworthy to handle a sharp blade--let alone even stand NEAR a sharp blade--safely.
*whew* gosh. can't believe i just typed that. wow...um. well. i guess i had to get that off my chest. (uhoh, more rant ahead
you guys have no IDEA how frustrating it is to be a female who's not interested in being "the little woman". now, i don't want to be a man, and i don't believe women are "the same" as men, either. (and i LOVE men, trust me on this!) but i do see that there is a real capacity for strength, competence, trustworthiness, whatever you want to call it, in women, just as there is in men, and i hate it when women ignore their own competence, when they forget to trust themselves. it is so frustrating when otherwise very strong women react to what amounts to competence-with-a-tool by freezing in place like a salamander in hopes that the nasty BeToothed Predator will forget they are there...
oh...ok. ok. ok. drop the chalupa, silverwing. :} (for the record: i know men can be silly sheeples, too!)
sorry. being a woman in a male-dominated field, being a woman who likes knives, some days i just want to stand up to my full 5-foot-almost-4-inch height and yell:
i'm extremely competent and can cut my own bagel with my own extremely useful tool without the knife leaping out of my hands and murdering everyone in sight, so just DEAL WITH IT!!
oh. there's that darn chalupa again... well, ok, just hand me your sifu, mr. mattis, and i'll cut it into slices so everyone can have a bite
(didn't mean for my fiftieth post to be such a memorable one. be easy on me, i had a hard day...)
silverwing
