The 7 Most Ridiculous Things About The New Ban Bossy Campaign

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2014-03-12 03:55

Article here. Excerpt:

'High-achieving women such as Beyonce and Condoleeza Rice have joined Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new campaign to ban the word “bossy.” No, really. They want to ban the word “bossy.”

'2) Girls are strong. Stop overprotecting them.

It completely conflicts with the “Lean-In” message to treat girls like they’re dainty little flowers who change their entire personalities if someone utters a not-even-that-mean word in their general direction. If you want women to take over companies and give up their wombs until they’re approaching 40 to do so, you have to toughen them up, not cater to their slightest hurt feelings. Seriously.

3) ‘Bossy’ isn’t even gender-specific.
True story. My 4-year-old came home from school on the day of the BanBossy campaign launch to tell me that a little girl told a little boy in the class that he was being bossy by not letting them play with the toy he was using. I think that the entire crew will survive this horrible slight and that they might even grow up to be functioning members of society. But the idea that “bossy” is something only girls hear is just not in any way matched by my experience. Or my daughter’s.
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6) Making people feel bad for using adjectives is pretty bossy. So wait, all the cool and beautiful girls who are super-popular and wealthy got together and decided that not only were they not going to use a word but that no one else could either? No, that’s not bossy at all, is it.

7) Not everyone’s a leader and it’s time to stop shaming people who aren’t.

This is perhaps the most important point. The BanBossy site says:

Together we can encourage girls to lead. Pledge to Ban Bossy.

This biases the idea that the only way to be a leader is to order people around or be super assertive. In fact, there are all sorts of ways of being human and even of being a leader. And the idea that girls aren’t fully actualized unless they’re acting the way boys used to act before we medicated them away from it is not nearly as female-affirming as it sounds.'

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I have seen it in action myself. It is true that women who are assertive in a "masculine way" (as if there is a masculine way to be assertive as such) are more likely to be the subject of criticism than are men behaving the same way. Thought experiment: Your boss, male, 35 years old, walks up to you and says "__So-and-so__[some director or other] just dropped three more accounts on us. Sorry _Your-Name-Here__, but you need to stay tonight until you get at least one done. We have to deliver by Friday and it's already Wednesday, and I doubt we can do all three by starting first thing tomorrow." Then he walks away, puts on his coat, and leaves.

Now replace the male boss with a female. Same everything: height, ethnicity, age, general bearing, etc. Review the transcript above and ask yourself what you'd be more likely to say to yourself when the female version puts on her coat and leaves.

Will you be faster to condemn her for some reason or resent her leaving with you sitting there plugging away? And the person in the stay-til-it's-done seat need neither be male or female. I think the reaction would be the same (or, the difference therein). Male boss is likely to illicit an internal response of: "Well, great. Thanks for leaving, but I suppose what would he have done, another account's details? He doesn't even know how. But maybe I can use this in my upcoming PA to get a better raise...", especially, if in staying late you need not cancel any plans you had for that evening. Now what does female boss get? I have heard it myself from men and women alike: "Can you believe the %$&^% she pulled on me on Wednesday?? Seriously, she just said, 'You gotta stay late!' and ixnayed for the door, gee thanks b*tch!" Yes, women, too. Once knew a woman who referred to one of her fellow female colleagues as "Miss Priss" because she thought the other woman was "too aloof". Men don't get much criticism for being "aloof". The word is usually "detached", and maybe that's as much of a criticism as he gets. Worst though is "out of touch," but arguably, that isn't an attitude issue, more of a bad state of mind to be in if you're supervising others. ("The commander must know the troops.") Being an "out of touch" manager of any kind is a pretty damning criticism, but it isn't like "bossy". I mean really, if your boss can't be bossy at least some of the time, who can be? Micromanaging is a different matter. So is being abusive, nasty, overly-critical, insulting, well, that's something anyone can be, and is not "bossy". It's mean, unlikable, etc., but not bossy.

BUT ANYWAY, as for trying to get people to stop using the word "bossy", hmmm, well, I can't recall the last time I even heard that word to describe a supervisor where I've worked. I do know this: people have been trying to stamp out far more objectionable words now for decades if not centuries and they just won't go away. So it's hard to predict with certainty that the campaign will succeed.

By the way, if we have to ban the word "bossy" (or "bitchy") when describing female bosses, shouldn't we also ban "overbearing" and "asshole"/"dick"/"dick-head"/etc. as ways to describe male bosses?

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Submitted by Matt on Wed, 2014-03-12 04:41