Hi anita

There were a couple of instances –

1. We use an app called Slack to chat with other employees or groups of employees, at work. I was required to drop a message asking for one team to approve a certain workflow. They had 2 groups and I posted in 1 but got no reply, so I posted in the other after waiting a day for a reply in their first group – but I got a rude reply to the second message, implying I wasn’t following the process. It hurt my feelings. I felt the need to defend myself and I did. I explained what had happened and the person let it go. After that, I told myself the moment has passed, it doesn’t matter now. I am having to work to hold on to the moment. I can simply let it go. This I got from Peter and Tommy from the other thread, and you. Doing work when no work needs to be done. But also, I wanted to explore why it mattered so much – and using my questions – I was able to conclude that this was a mishap and doesn’t make me incompetent. Because, I think that’s what hurt me – that the other person was implying I was incompetent. And you know how much that has always bothered me.

Another instance, I am active on reddit where I both ask and give advice for developer related questions, including on one forum which has Indian developers. It is a male majority group. There was one post that was especially hurtful towards women. How people want to bring equality, but don’t consider men. I found that malicious because most developers know there are very few women and that is why this was required. Some of the comments were really offensive, implying they want women because they will do favours, if you know what I mean. This hurts because the treatment towards women is really bad, a lot of women quit here because of that. They get no support at work or home. And a lot of the conditioning that men have of women belonging in the kitchen plays out at work with both younger and older Indian men. But I don’t want us to quit because if we do we will forever remain in the clutches of our fathers and husbands. Some of these men are going to be those fathers and husbands. I made my own comment explaining why equality was needed. Another member was really rude, completely discarding what I was saying and instead attacking my tone and saying I am extreme and he hates that and went on to insult me saying it must be really hard for my team mates to deal with me. I was immediately able to recognize he was trying to prick at any insecurities I might have. This is new for me. I would have tried to defend myself. But this time I knew he was trying to get personal to hurt me. And knowing that, it helped me from not engaging in the conversation further. I was able to let it go thinking he said what he had to and the moment has passed, I am not going to change that.

The only reason I think I might be doing it wrong is – both those situations kept coming back on their respective days. I had to keep getting my mind away from them. Once you decided not to let the weather affect you because you can’t change it. Would it still come back? Or am I doing something wrong? My heart rate was high throughout the day for the second instance and I read that stretching increases the blood flow and relaxes our body. So, I had to do that multiple times in the day. Is it normal?

Also, since I brought it up, it makes me sad that a lot of men are not able to just let women be. The resistance to women having their own freedom breaks my heart.  The only thing that will fix this is having more women in the workplace, it wouldn’t be so easy to dismiss us. My team has a 5:4 women to men ratio, and just 3 of us women were able to slowly tire one of the men out and stopped him from making sexist remarks. It’s not like we coordinated it. It’s just that a lot of things women here used to put up with is because they had no choice. When we feel empowered, it is not easy to get away with treating us like a commodity and I think this is the reason for opposing freedom for women. I’m sorry for bringing this up here. I don’t have anyone to talk about this to. My family would just say let it go. But even after having my own freedom, if I have to let men walk all over me and accomodate the sexism, that is not real freedom.

Girija