Taking Up Space
"we shrink ourselves..."
Adri,
I am a white woman who is often in spaces with insecure white men in power. What is the most effective way to communicate with them without having to make myself feel and appear small.
Taking Up Space
Dear Taking Up Space,
The insidious thing about power is that we ourselves internalize so much—our perceived lack of it, our perceived place in the order of things. Culture and our institutions reify this in real ways, but your ability to reject it internally is still important. You know you aren’t small, inferior, or any such thing relative to these men. There is a deep power in knowing ones own worthiness—not cockiness, which is the mask of the insecure, but the calm self assuredness of competence and ones inherent value. These men do not belong more than you. They do not deserve more space than you. Period.
Race is the water we swim in in this country, but because whiteness is shared in this scenario, what I really want to focus on here is power, patriarchy, and (fragile) ego. The moments in my career when I have felt the most empowered, the most free from patriarchy, racism, classism, etc. have been times when I am “leading without authority”, which largely entails trusting myself, being self directed, looking at and treating everyone as an equal, doing quality work, and trusting that I can handle conflict if it arises. If it sounds a lot like fake it til you make it…well—not quite. You aren’t faking it—you are sure of it. You are an equal in this space. The only doubt is if these white men are so committed to the illusion of their own superiority that they will challenge you outright for daring to move as an equal.
I don’t want to get too woo woo about this though—how you feel, how you communicate, how you move in the space is something you do have some modicum of control over. But if you are being silenced, penalized, and passed over—that is something that may require more support, or an exit plan. You haven’t communicated that here, so I won’t dwell.
Once you are walking confidently in your own expertise, sure of your belonging and worthiness, remember to encourage others to do the same. Sometimes it will make sense to intentionally give up a bit of space if you can loan it to someone who otherwise wouldn’t have it—and the less you let these men make you doubt yourself, the better positioned you are to empower others.