I am educated and grew up upper middle class. Yet I do not live up to my potential and have lived all my adult life in poverty and powerlessness.
I was never sexually assaulted, thankfully. But at a crucial career-building time, I was done in by a Kavanaugh-style workplace ethos… and the short version of this story is: I gave up.
I couldn’t see a way to win against the values espoused by career decision makers. And I was afraid of what kind of person playing the game would turn me into.
Sometimes the harshest criticism is the most subtle. Because you hear kind words, you see smiles… and yet, what those around you are doing is ripping your hopes and dreams apart.
Even in my so-called "most desirable" years, I had, at best, unconventional good looks. If I applied for a job in Kavanaugh’s office, I would’ve gotten a helping of the same passive-aggressive messages, delivered in a friendly tone and often with a smile.
My mistake was thinking it wouldn’t happen in my location. See, Kavanaugh is from the Big City. DC, New York, corrupt to the core. I was in a university in Kansas… full of smart people, smart women. People, I thought, who were willing to help me grow and move beyond my personality foibles.
Alas, that wasn’t to be. My personal growth got little to no help from my community.
The criticism-- oy. I wasn't called ugly, or fat. That stopped after middle school. I wasn't even called what may be considered euphemisms for ugly and fat-- like sloppy or slovenly.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
No-- I heard "unprofessional". "Unaware". “Trying too hard.” “Stressing yourself out.” “Overthinker.” And, perhaps the nicest kiss of career death, "you need to polish your social skills".
Words that were even more subtle than I had anticipated.
Words that cut to the core of my being, and strangled my professional career in its crib.
Words that seemed tailor-made to rip my psyche apart... as if others knew I wouldn't be felled by just any criticism, but had to be taken down by a combination of this specific type of feedback and a blitzkrieg pace of action-- moving too quickly for me to mount an effective defense.
I heard a lot of, "don't let them get to you".
I say, they moved too fast for me to stop it getting to me. One blink and I was out of the game.
They say failure is a learning experience. It's not a learning experience if you're kicked out of the game. You don’t learn anything but what does not work. You don’t get to maintain connections with the group you’re separated from. You don’t get to try, try again, come back and do better than your mistakes.
If you get kicked out of the game, you’re considered not worth another try. The decision makers have so little faith in your ability to grow from your mistakes, that they just cut bait on you.
And if the reason for getting kicked out is, that you lack a certain je ne sais quoi… so much the worse. You lack an essential humanity. An essential spark. You can’t create magic in your life, or anyone else’s. What point is there is trying to build your skills? You will always be outshined by those who DO have je ne sais quoi. You will never truly matter in the way that matters.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I saw sympathetic smiles, heard "oh, you're SO smart!"... but. There was always, always a "but" that came after that-- a "but" that outweighed my smarts, indeed outweighed everything else I brought to the table.
I heard a lot about self-esteem, self-confidence, and extraversion... things I'd thought I'd had at least a decent amount of, before I met my professional detractors. That was the time I learned that self-confidence wasn't just an internal feeling... it was something I had to perform for others. And if I didn't give enough of a convincing performance, I wasn't confident enough... no matter how I actually felt inside.
That feedback destroyed my professional prospects. I'd had confidence in my abilities before; that feedback destroyed that.
I would watch who did succeed under this workplace ethos, and compare myself to them. I couldn’t see a difference, but evidently the world did.
See, that was the worst part of all: the knowledge that if I protested against this nice antagonism, this withholding of emotional, social and career nourishment, I would be called "self-unaware". In denial. Unaware of my effect on others. Unable to take feedback. Unwilling to take responsibility. Uncoachable.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I still don't know to what extent I truly was in denial, and how much of that was gaslighting. For all my pain, I don’t know how self-aware I truly am. Especially since self-awareness, like self-confidence and listening, is a performance I have to put on for others in addition to an internal feeling.
For all I know, my personality flaws have remained intact all these years, never adequately fixed because I never went down the right path to fix them.
Or was purposely led down the wrong path. You know, to keep me chasing my tail and "working on myself", because good, professional people work on themselves and wait until they're ready before they go for opportunities. Especially good, professional people with two X chromosomes.
I still don’t know what my strengths really are. Or my weaknesses. And a big part of me doesn’t want to know.
Because I will be denied an opportunity to do anything BUT my strengths once I am defined that way. I will be denied an opportunity to correct my weaknesses and add new strengths. There simply isn’t wherewithal in the corporate workplace to allow that.
And not being allowed to cultivate the parts of my personality I’d been hoping to cultivate in my youth, not being able to become the kind of person I wish to become, would be unbearable to me.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I think about all the women in the professional world who thought they were hired for their skills, but who really were hired for their looks and pliable personalities… and worse, had those qualities framed as “teamwork skills”, "people skills”, “emotional intelligence" and the like.
They thought they were not only the best people, but also that they had that elusive je ne sais quoi. Too bad it was a lie all along.
I’ve come to believe that in the service industry, “social skills” is code for “good looking in a white, bland, conventional way”. Why are so many POC and older people put in the back office? Why do so many people in customer- and client-facing jobs look alike, and have similar-sounding voices? The former can’t all be inept with people.
This black manager at Wet Seal was putting up great numbers, but she made a few white customers complain to the district manager that she wasn’t “Armani” enough; so she had to go. And now Wet Seal has gone out of business altogether. Death before compromising our ideas of what opens rich people’s wallets!
Would Kavanaugh advise me to go “polish my communication skills” while giving me the number to the local medical spa?
(But not the money to pay for it, oh no. Personal upkeep is entirely out of my budget.)
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It took me years to get over being emotionally Kavanaugh’d. And even now, my victory is only partial.
At least, I no longer believe I have low emotional intelligence. At least I no longer believe I have a losing personality, or even a personality disorder. At least I believe I can succeed with people now.
But will I be able to recover from the rest? Will I live in poverty and powerlessness the rest of my life? The fact is, I’ve lost a lot of prime career years. (Although, what are prime career years if you weren’t really hired for your professional skills? What do you learn in an environment where nothing was real from the beginning?)
I can’t go back and get a better past, and too many people around me have better ones, and I’m competing with them.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Then there are the longer-lasting psychological effects.
For the rest of my life, if I simply fail to get a desired result, if I simply have others say "no" to me... I will suffer more than I should.
I will wonder what was wrong with me to make them say no. What was wrong with my presentation, my voice, my demeanor. How did I fall short compared to others? Did my lack of je ne sais quoi show?
Have I lost any person who’s said “no” to me, forever?
I feel, as I did 20 years ago, like others' perceptions are in charge of my life-- not my self-confidence, not my decisions, not even my effort.
Because in the adult world, no one tells you that you suck. They just vote with their feet.
Not bad things happening to you-- just good things not happening to you. Goodies you’re not getting from others. Opportunities and conversations you’re left out of. Progress and speed you’re not making.
And the Kavanaughs of the world are subtle enough to play in that space, to use it to make judgments about our characters. To hold themselves out as our betters on business, self-presentation, communication, and personal virtues themselves.
To tear us down, one smile and piece of backhanded advice at a time.