Welcome to this week’s edition of wordcloud, a newsletter by Nicole Fallert about the space between reality and ideas. If you enjoy this content, please consider sharing and subscribing.
Nothing makes my spine sizzle more than being called “kiddo.” Maybe it’s because I’m the youngest of three kids and often played with other children who were much older than I. Maybe it’s because I repeated pre-k, so I was always kind of old for my academic year. Maybe it’s because I’ve had past boyfriends call me “kiddo” in mockery when I was trying to read a map or male math teachers used this word when they found a mistake I had made.
We only need to look at the first sentence of Joseph Epstein’s recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal to understand that no matter the situation, language that addresses women with child-like vernacular makes it much easier for misogynists like this writer to feel powerful.
“Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter,” Epstein writes. “Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”
The mission of this week’s newsletter is not to be political (even if there is no way around the fact that a man-with-dubious-academic-credentials-became-president-in-2016-without-the-world-batting-an-eyelash). The point is that we discuss how Epstein is attempting to make two arguments in one; he attacks non-medical doctorates to mask his sexist intentions.
Epstein isn’t just speaking to Dr. Biden - he’s addressing a community of women who have pursued leadership in their respective fields, hoping they legitimize his feeble argument. And with that, Epstein dug himself a grave in a very dark and lonely corner, and few people will break their backs to pull him out.
The very opposite of Epstein’s intention, which was to threaten this community’s credibility, actually happened. Over the course of the week, I noticed a number of reactions and Twitter threads about the op-ed. Read some of these here from The Daily Northwestern, Bustle, Missoulian and Elle. In the way #MeToo spread among survivors of workplace sexual harassment, I saw the indignation of women who have earned non-medical doctorates spark like wildfire.
These women didn’t say, “yeah, gosh, this guy IS right…” Rather, they called on one another to add “Dr.” to their social media profiles and demand their peers to refer to them by this nomenclature. “Dr.” became a form of protest.
And it’s a big community that’s mobilizing. According to an October 2018 report by Statista, 2017 was the ninth year in a row that women earned more doctoral degrees than men from U.S. universities.
Now you may be thinking “this op-ed isn’t a gender thing! It’s just an everyone problem! Why are you always making it about men versus women, Nicole!”
This is because Epstein’s argument is inherently gendered. And if we treat this kind of argument like it’s about everyone, it minimizes the experiences of women who have fought to be considered experts in their respective fields. And once women have earned their titles, their work is hardly over. Like the “Dr.” used in protest, they must apply consistent pressure to demand their recognition and that of their female peers.
That pressure chips away at the confines of a system and accelerates real change. Take Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who was fined $109,000 on Wednesday for appointing too many women in senior leadership positions (you read that right…TOO MANY WOMEN!).
The pressure Hidalgo applied gave way to real change.
"I am happy to announce we have been fined," Ms. Hidalgo said. To use Epstein’s language -“it’s a touch comic.”
French national law regulates the number of each gender that can hold top positions — no more than 60% of appointments can be the same sex. While this law may have had the intention of keeping too many men from holding public service posts, it inevitably hurts women seeking these roles, too. Rules like this stall progress - they force women to take a step back, release the pressure. That one step back could reverse years of progress.
"Yes, we must promote women with determination and vigor, because the delay everywhere in France is still very great," Hidalgo told the Paris Council, according to NPR. "So yes, to promote and one day achieve parity, we must speed up the tempo and ensure that in the nominations there are more women than men."
If we are going to accept that women deserve to work as vice presidents and mayors and doctors, we need to imagine a completely new shared community. Not our current system where women are always being included into, but rather one they get to be founding members of. Our gender is always so nicely tucked into worlds like academia and politics — if we’re deserving enough — and we’re given just enough power we won’t cause a ripple. But if that ripple turns into a splash, then it’s simply too much to compete with on the deserving-ness scale.
So we need to make our own splashes. Turn pressure into power. Determine our own criteria for success. If we’re called “kiddo” or our credibility is questioned or we’re told our power is illegal - then, as Hidalgo did, say “good.” And I thank Dr. Biden for committing herself to choppy waters. But I’ll admit, as will any other woman, it’s exhausting work.
Today’s Prompt:
How are the words we use to identify ourselves also forms of protest? What are your protest words?
Housekeeping: I’ll be taking next week away from the screen to celebrate the season with family and friends. Well wishes, and I’ll see you December 31.