The Experience of a Non-Oppressed Woman

I had a different plan for this week's blog, but in light of the Women's March and the things I have seen on my Twitter feed the last few days, I decided to change the topic.  Next week, I'll write about matching your college aspirations to your goals.

If aliens had visited earth for the first time on Saturday, they might have thought there were only two kinds of people on this planet that exist in monolithic, homogenous groups.  They would have thought of men as evil morons who, in spite of the apparent idiocy, managed to rise to power over the other, clearly superior group.  If those aliens managed to look at a Twitter feed, they might have divided the world differently, but still into two groups - those in favor of abortion and those against it.  If they only read the tweets of one of my more liberal friends, they might have thought the two groups were those who are open-minded and socially aware (read that "woke" on Twitter) and those who are close-minded and deluded.

We are not aliens, so we can be more aware than they would be.  We can recognize that there are more than two kinds of people on earth.  There are seven billion individuals on earth.  Each of them has their own story, and that story is only partially based on their gender, their view on a given social issue, their race, their level of political involvement, etc.  We, as individuals are shaped by all of those things, not just one of them at a time.  I would like to tell one of those seven billion stories - my own.  (NOTE:  This does not negate the story of any other woman or minimize their experience.)

I was born forty years ago in Raleigh, NC.  That makes me a Southerner, a Generation X-er, and a city dweller.  I was raised in a largely conservative home, and I attended both private and public schools.  I earned excellent grades, not because I have a superior intellect, but because I worked hard in school and loved learning.  I particularly enjoyed and excelled in science, and not one of my teachers asked how it was possible that a girl was doing that.  I grew up wanting to be an astronaut, and no one told me that a woman couldn't do that - even though I was five before the first U.S. woman was sent into space.

From the first time I learned the word abortion, I chose to be Pro-Life and worked for the NC Right to Life organization when I was thirteen years old.  I have marched for Sanctity of Human Life Day because it is my right as an American citizen to do so.  At seventeen, I became a blood donor, not because someone told me to, but because I made a choice at school one day.  When I registered to vote on the morning of my 18th birthday, I got to choose how I wanted to register, and I chose to be a Republican.  I have voted without coercion for twenty-two years, usually with my party but sometimes not because I have the freedom to vote however I choose.  I voted against Donald Trump's election because I am allowed to do that.  I am not oppressed or told how to vote by anyone.

I chose to take physics, and my female chemistry teacher insisted that I take honors physics, not because I was a girl but because she said it would be a waste of my skills for me not to.  I fell in love with physics and decided I wanted to teach it.  No one ever said to me that a woman couldn't teach physics, and I have been hired to do so in three different schools.

I earned my degree through both the school of education and the school of arts and science at Oral Roberts University.  I took classes in which I was the only female, and I also took classes in which there were no males.  I was held to the same standards in physics, chemistry, biology, and geology as my male counterparts, and I worked just as hard to earn good grades in calculus as the boys.  I never once had a conversation with a professor in which I as discouraged from pursuing my degree.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  I was highly encouraged by all of my professors at ORU, especially those I knew well in the physics and engineering department.  They even hired me to teach earth science labs while the regular professor was on sabbatical the year after I graduated.

I have taught science in three different schools, and in all three of them, my department chair was female.  I have worked under 14 principals and assistant principals, 8 of whom were women.  I don't discuss salary with my co-workers because there is no positive outcome to that, but when I look at my own paycheck, it reflects exactly what was on the contract I signed.  I have heard enough conversations about pay to be certain I am not paid thirty percent less than my equally qualified male counterparts.  I don't believe that anything I have done (or not done) in life is because of or in spite of my gender.

I am single because I believe that is God's plan for me.  One hundred years ago, that would have made me either scandalous or pitiful.  Now, it results in a few questions from my students, little more.  I don't feel unsafe at home or anywhere else without a man by my side, but I'm not reckless about my safety.  If I'd been alive at the turn of the 20th century, I'd have been a suffragette; but by 2017 standards, I am practically a chauvinist.

My blog is generally supposed to be about education, so here's my call to female teachers.  Don't complain to your students that you are treated as unequal.  Show them that you are not.  Modeling equality will always mean more than talking about it.

It is just as sexist to believe that all women believe the same way as it is to believe they are less than men.  In fact, because it is a more subtle form of sexism, it may be even more dangerous.  I am more complex than my gender, and so are you.  Women, feel free to march.  It is your right, earned for you by the blood, sweat, and tears of those women at the turn of the last century.  March for equality but not sameness.  March for your beliefs, but recognize that the woman next to you might believe differently than you do.  Recognize that if there are five hundred thousand women at a march, there are five hundred thousand DIFFERENT stories, not just one story.